Assessing Meaning Making and Self-Authorship: Theory, Research, and Application. ASHE Higher Education Report 38:3

One reason so many students fail to achieve complex learning goals may be that they rely too heavily on others’ opinions about what to believe, who to be, and how to relate to others. The meaning-making capacity of self-authorship provides a basis from which to understand and learn from one’s experiences; without this, students are at a loss to know how to make intentional choices about what to believe and how to act. Similarly, without a means to access and assess students’ meaning making, researchers are at a disadvantage in deciding how to interpret students’ academic performance and other behaviors, and educators are at a disadvantage in translating findings into the …