Learning and gender: Complexity and possibility

Abstract

Severiens and Ten Dam's efforts to link theories of learning and gender are applauded as a valuable step forward in understanding learning. Complexities of the relationships among epistemic structures, patterns within structures, and learning activities are highlighted as are dilemmas in assessing these multiple layers of learning. Severiens and Ten Dam's efforts in linking learners' learning conceptions, learning activities and gender are an important contribution to understanding learning. Their comparison of two theories - my theory on ways of know- ing (Baxter Magolda 1992) and Vermunt's (1996) on learning styles and conceptions - illustrates the complexity and possibility inherent in learning processes. Taken together, the two theories offer a multi-layered conceptual- ization of learning and knowing. My theory identifies epistemic assumptions, or assumptions about the nature, limits and certainty of knowledge, that form the structure of each way of knowing. Similarly, Vermunt's theory identifies mental models, or learning conceptions, that represent learners' views and beliefs about learning. Learners' beliefs about knowledge and learning con- stitute a core layer in understanding learning. I add a second layer in the form of gender-related patterns that represent preferences within ways of knowing. These preferences are differences in style, namely relational and separate, rather than differences in structure. Vermunt adds a third layer in the form of learning activities - the strategies learners use to process learning content, to cope with feelings that arise during learning, and to regulate their learn- ing processes. Both theories, to varying degrees, offer insights into learner expectations that stem from their beliefs, preferences, and activities. This multi-layered view of learning yields numerous possibilities for new insights into learning, many of which Severiens and Ten Dam articulate. It also reveals the complexity of learning which accounts, at least in part, for the lack of empirical connection the authors found between the Baxter Magolda and Vermunt theories. In the spirit of deepening the important dialogue Severiens and Ten Dam have begun, I address two complexities that mediate the task of connecting beliefs about knowing and learning activities: the relationship