1.
REFLECTIVE
JUDGMENT MODEL
Shane Young

2.
Patricia M. King
Recent Positions Held
• Assistant Vice President for Student
Services at The Ohio State
University (1979-1980)
• Professor at Bowling Green State
University (1995-2000)
• Director of School of Leadership
and Policy Studies at BGSU (2000)
• Director ( 2003-2006) and Professor
(2000-Present) of Center for the
Study of Higher and Postsecondary
Education at University of Michigan
Awards & Recognitions
• Wise Woman Award
• Scholar in Residence
• Diamond Honoree
• Contribution to Knowledge Award
• Senior Scholar
• Robert Shaffer Award for
Contributions of a Graduate Faculty
Member to Student Affairs
• Faculty Scholarship Award
• Research Award

3.
Karen S. Kitchener
Recent Positions Held
• Assistant Professor in Counseling at
University of Minnesota
• Director of Counseling Psychology
at University of Minnesota (25
years) Awards & Recognitions
• Ralph Berdie Memorial Award
• Colorado Psychological Association
Lifetime Achievement Award
• APA Ethics Committee’s Ethics
Educator Award
Publications
• APA Handbook of Ethics in
Psychology
• Corsini’s Encyclopedia of Psychology
• Ethics and HIV related psychotherapy
• Foundations of ethical practice,
research and teaching in psychology
(2000, 2010).

4.
Underlying Assumptions
• Well-structured vs. ill-structured problems
• 2+2
• World hunger
• Why a stage model?
• Able to see changes between assumptions
• Showed the difference between the assumptions
• Allowed there to be consistency between all stages
• Reflective Judgment vs. critical thinking
• Critical thinking is a process
• Reflective judgment focused entirely on ill-structured problems

5.
Overview
• Pre-reflective Reasoning
• Stages 1-3
• Quasi-Reflective Reasoning
• Stages 4-5
• Reflective Reasoning
• Stages 6-7

6.
Stage 1 (Pre-Reflective)
• “I believe only what I have seen and thus know to be true”
(Love and Guthrie, 1999, p. 44).
• Knowledge is absolute
• No reason to ask why
• Transition
• Begins when the student is exposed to diversity and admits that
there are alternatives

7.
Stage 2 (Pre-Reflective)
• Knowledge is absolutely certain, but not readily available
to everyone (King and Kitchener, 2004).
• Either observed or taught by an authority figure
• Similar to Perry’s dualism (1970)

8.
Stage 3 (Pre-Reflective)
• “Knowledge is assumed to be absolutely certain or
temporarily uncertain” (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 14-
15)
• Example: Love and Guthrie (1999) give us a good
example:
• “I was stopped between classes today by a reporter from the
college newspaper and asked whether a proposed new college
regulation would benefit students. How am I supposed to know
that? No one will know the effect on students for years—long after
I’ve graduated! So I don’t know. I think I’ll find out how my
housemates feel about it before I sign the petition for or against. . . .
or maybe I just won’t sign at all.”

9.
Stage 4 (Quasi-Reflective)
• Knowledge is no longer certain
• There is always a layer of ambiguity
• Incorrect reporting of data
• Data lost over time
• Disparities in access to information

10.
Stage 5 (Quasi-Reflective)
• Knowledge is contextual and subjective
• Interpretations are different and so knowledge is different

11.
Stage 6 (Reflective)
• Knowledge is constructed through evaluation
• Solutions to ill-structured problems
• Based on “comparing evidence and opinion across contexts”
(Arnold & King, 1997, p. 147).
• Describes advanced graduate student

12.
Stage 7 (Reflective
• Knowledge as an outcome
• Process of evaluation- similar to stage 6, but with one important
difference
• Reevaluation
• New evidence, methods of inquiry, or perspectives become available
over time

13.
Criticisms
• Generalizability outside of higher education
• Reflective Judgment
• Does not say anything about gender, ethnicity, race, or other
demographic factors that likely affect development

14.
References
• Arnold, K., & King, I. (Eds.). (1997). College student development and academic life:
Psychological, intellectual, social, and moral issues. New York: Garland Pub.
• Dr Karen Strohn Kitchener. (2013, January 1). Retrieved September 30, 2014.
• Godin, E. (Ed.). (2014, July 16). Patricia M. King. Retrieved September 30, 2014.
• King, Patricia. Curriculum Vitae. Retrieved from http://www.soe.umich.edu/files/cv_king.pdf
• King, P.M. & Kitchener, K.S. (1994). Developing reflective judgment: Understanding and
promoting intellectual growth and critical thinking in adolescents and adults. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass
• King, P.M., & Kitchener, K.S. (2004). Reflective judgment: Theory and research on the
development of epistemic assumptions through adulthood. Educational Psychologist, 39(1).
• Liddell, D. (1995). [Review of the book Developing reflecting judgment: Understanding and
promoting intellectual growth and critical thinking in adolescents and adults]. Journal of
College Student Development, 36, 94-96.
• Love, P. G. and Guthrie, V. L. (1999), King and Kitchener's Reflective Judgment Model. New
Directions for Student Services, 1999: 41–51. doi: 10.1002/ss.8804
• Merriam, S., Caffarella, R., & Baumgartner, L. (2007). Cognitive Development in Adulthood.
In Learning in adulthood a comprehensive guide, 3rd ed. (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass.
• Perry, William G., Jr. (1970). Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College
Years: A Scheme. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.)