Robert Kegan

constructive developmental theory; subject-object theory; developmental action inquiry; adaptive leadership theory; post-conventional leadership; higher education leadership; Robert Kegan; William Torbert; Ronald Heifetz; multiple-case study; post-positivist methods; ethnographic methods; multi-modal methods; haiku; dialectical thinking; paradoxical thinking; integrative awareness; double-loop learning; individualist action-logic; redefining action-logic; self-transforming leader; generative learning within ambiguity; logics of coherence; identity fractures; part-whole tensions; critical ambiguities; situationally-mediating logic of coherence; educative strategy

Psychologist Robert Kegan also discusses the topic of psychological maturity and positive personality transformation in his book, “The Evolving Self” [21](Kegan, 1982). Using a stage developmental perspective, he describes a theory of how people become progressively more socially mature across their lifespan. Kegan says that as we grow from being a baby into an adult, we become more socially mature and through maturation, we become progressively less subjective and more objective, and thus able to understand better the complexity of the social world. This expanded awareness is a result of emerging from being entrenched in one’s subjective egotistical perspective and, hence, increasing the ability to see things from multiple perspectives. We can see similarities of Kegan’s definition of mature personality qualities to those listed before the devoted practitioner of the Eightfold Path.
Mark Dombeck, Ph.D., in his article “Robert Kegan's Awesome Theory of Social Maturity” [22](Dombeck, 2007) suggests that using Kegan’s analysis, the culmination of an evolving mature personality is, ‘Where does this progression end? Theoretically, it ends in some kind of Buddha-like state of enlightenment, where everything that can be understood objectively is understood objectively and there is no more subjectivity to be embedded in anymore.’ Kegan’s earlier theory described five developmental stages or orders of mind: The Impulsive Mind, Instrumental Mind, Socialized Mind, Self-Authoring Mind, and Self-Transforming Mind. Later, in the book, “In Over Our Heads” (1994) [23], Kegan extends his perspective on psychological development used in the earlier five developmental stages for a newer "orders of consciousness" scheme. He states that all of us actively construct our own reality and that these constructs evolve qualitatively with increasing complexity over time (Kegan, 1994, pgs. 198-199). He developed a model depicting five levels of consciousness; each successive level incorporates more complex ways of knowing. A post fifth level has also been suggested by others including Kim Pearce in his article, “CMM and the Evolution of Social Consciousness”.[5]
Like the Ego Development Stage theories, a person on the Eight-factor Path or Middle Way also progresses with a cognitive development that transforms in relatively discrete stages, with each apprehending greater subtlety and refinement than the last. The Path’s goals are specific to transform, refine and purify our minds through the training of compassion, concentration, and insight. Even though enlightenment is sometimes not considered a process of attainment, the Buddha clearly taught that the Middle Way is a graduated path towards the achievement of Awakening. Bhikkhu Bodhi stated, ‘The Buddha presents his teaching in the form of gradual training. Buddhist discipline involves gradual practice and gradual attainment. It does not burst into completeness at a stroke, but like a tree or any other living organism, it unfolds organically, as a sequence of stages in which each stage rests upon its predecessor as its indispensable foundation and gives rise to its successor as its natural consequent.’ [26](Bodhi, 1978).

Research and theories of leadership development link the capacity for complex thinking to effectiveness at leading adaptive change. However, few empirical studies examine how this link operates in natural work settings, or explore its implications for practicing the kinds of leadership being called for in higher education today. In this study, I address this gap using post-positivist, ethnographic methods to examine how three higher education leaders, who are publicly recognized as effective change agents and demonstrate the capacity for complex thinking via research-validated instruments, use complex thinking to understand and lead adaptive change in natural work settings. Drawing on a conceptual framework that spans multiple theories of leadership and human development, including Torbert’s developmental action inquiry, Kegan’s subject-object theory, and Heifetz’s adaptive leadership theory, I interpret the data in the context of two research questions: (1) How, if at all, do three developmentally mature leaders in higher education use complex thinking to understand their adaptive leadership work?; and (2) How, if at all, do participants' uses of complex thinking shape their decisions and actions on the ground? I find that participating leaders use their ongoing awareness of the constructed nature of reality, combined with high attunement to convergence and divergence of local and broader situational factors, to help their communities identify and address three types of value-reality gaps: part-whole tensions, critical ambiguities, and identity fractures. I provide rich illustrations of how these individuals draw on complex-thinking capacities to pursue six action strategies: (a) dynamically balance autonomy and oversight, (b) create shared frames illuminating larger realities, (c) engage and reorient the community, (d) co-construct and dynamically interpret goals, (e) cultivate strategic relationships grounded in mutual trust, and (f) create conditions that help people weather uncertainties, build new identities, and shape the future. I also discuss five, complex thinking informed action themes that run robustly through these three participants’ leadership practices: (a) cultivate expansive multicentered purposes, (b) illuminate the invisible, (c) redefine and recalibrate, (d) keep things connected, and (e) orchestrate co-construction. I discuss implications for leadership practice and outline opportunities for future research.

The following essay, albeit centered upon the theories of philosopher Paul Ricoeur and psychologist Robert Kegan, ultimately sets out to articulate specifically how the ways that people narrate meaning throughout their lives can be a source of theological and pedagogical insight. By making explicit the interconnections between Kegan’s and Ricoeur's seemingly disparate theses, a so-called narrative-developmental view of human identity is presented and outlined.Resulting reflections consider: the importance of valuing individual persons in religious education, identity-formation as creatio continua, consciousness-raising in adults as the expansion of identity towards greater authenticity and compassion; etc.

Uncertainty is a pervasive feature of our times. In this paper I argue that an age of uncertainty is not a reason for despair, but rather an opportunity to develop and mobilize our capacities for creativity, complexity, and collaboration. Creativity because the future is not determined and has to be created. Complex thought because in an uncertain, networked world our thinking cannot be reductive and disjunctive, but must be able to address interconnectedness and uncertainty. Collaboration, because the crises facing humanity today require an awareness of our shared destiny and in a pluralistic society we need the ability to navigate creativity and complexity together.

Christianity as a religion has much to say about identity and formation. As a religion based on the concept of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, identity formation takes on a “Christocentric” character, or, one’s identity is to reflect or imitate Jesus Christ.  For Christians, the concept of “being in Christ” is a significant mystery to the Christian faith and praxis.

Using homosexuality as a case example for this paper, and studying from the location of Christianity, the research question complicates to “what is the intersection between sexual identity and Christian identity vis-à-vis homosexuality?” While this study will integrate several insights from psychology on identity formation, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the issue of homosexual identity from a Christian theological perspective.

I survey three approaches to the intersection of homosexual and Christian identity: antithetical, compatible, and integrative. While I hold to an integrative view of Christian sexual identity, I will argue that care must be attended to the person struggling with the relationship between their sexual identity and their Christian identity. I offer several approaches to fostering Christian homosexual identity formation within churches. However, the navigation of the relationship will ultimately have to be situational, even with such preunderstandings.

This project explores the concept of identity through the lens of narrativity, a multifaceted concept that describes the way the consciousness makes meaning about life, throughout life. Narrativity depicts meaning-making as both an intensely personal and communal endeavor, epitomized in the way people tell and listen to life stories together. Narrativity is endemic to who we are as humans; yet it dramatically evolves over time. Indeed, it must continuously evolve, so that we might continue to learn, love, and maintain hope amidst the myriad circumstances and exigencies we face. And so when theologians and researchers in the social sciences alike speak of an “identity crisis” at work in the United States today, they are speaking directly to a deficiency in the way people make meaning together—a deficiency that, in the present view, is indelibly linked to the country’s history of hegemonic, colonizing practices of exclusion and domination by those in power. This history, which is also our present, has profoundly shaped the capacities of people from every walk of life to co-create meaning. 

Understood in this way, identity formation must be seen as a pivotal task for Christian religious educators in the United States. Of course, such educators are typically interested in the formation of a “Christian identity,” and rightly so. But this work makes the case that nurturing narrativity—that is, personhood and personal identity-development—is part and parcel to Christian identity formation, which in turn is inseparable from social and political engagement. In this view, narrativity is actually ingrained into the very pedagogy and praxis of the discipling community that Jesus cultivated through his ministry. Present-day Christian communities should likewise consider themselves as discipling communities, who embody this collective (or communal) identity precisely to the extent that they cultivate narrativity through their missional-pedagogical practices. This will require most US churches to radically re-imagine their structure and aims.

The primary tasks of this work are threefold: (1) It defines identity in terms of the psychosocial and spiritual notion of narrativity—and Christian identity in terms of discipleship, which awakens and restores narrativity. These definitions inform a holistic philosophy of narratival meaning-making, and a practical and liberationist approach to theological anthropology, ethics, and ecclesial mission. (2) It attempts to depict narrativity as it evolves through the lifespan, with the help of current research in neuroscience and narrative developmental psychology. This is articulated in terms of a “narratival-developmental” perspective. (3) Guided by these definitions, it suggests ways that churches in the present-day United States might begin to re-orient their missional and teaching practices around these notions of narrativity and narratival-development. Chief among these suggestions are four hypothesized principles for teaching for narrativity, which emerge at project’s end.

Spiritual Development

    Traditional theology teaches that there are three stages in the spiritual life: the purgative, wherein one moves away from sin; the illuminative, wherein one grows in virtue; and the unitive, wherein one attains abiding union with God. This conception was never  meant to define discrete successive stages. At any time in one's spiritual journey, any of the three emphases—purgative, illuminative, or unitive—might take priority over the others, or in some way one may be at all the stages simultaneously. Or again, if strict succession was suggested, it was only that of "beginning, middle, and end."
   
The history of spirituality provides many accounts of the "scale" or "ladder" of perfection. Scattered throughout the voluminous writings of Augustine of Hippo alone are at least eight accounts of the path of spiritual development, most with seven stages and some with three, but all different.  Clearly those accounts intended a suggestive and inspirational presentation and not a strictly systematic one. Nonetheless, inherent in these and all conceptions of spirituality is the notion of a path, a journey, a process, a developmental sequence.
   
Contemporary psychology also speaks of the human in terms of development. But with the rigor of a methodical science, psychology attempts systematically to delineate the stages of that development. If spiritual development were conceived as human development viewed against a particular set of concerns, the stage theories of psychology could significantly contribute to defining systematic stages of spiritual development. Then spiritual development  would stand with other psychologically defined conceptions of human development: Piaget's cognitive development, Kohlberg’s moral development,  Fowler's faith development, and Loevinger’s ego development.

                                    Psychology, Theism, and Christianity
That is the hypothesis pursued in this essay.  Acceptance of that hypothesis necessitates separate treatment of the psychological and the theological questions.  Accordingly, Part I of this essay begins by critically reviewing the scant literature at this early date, 1987, that theoretically either treats spiritual development from a psychological point of view or attempts to integrate psychological developmental findings into theological concern for spiritual growth.  Borrowing on the reviewed literature, the second chapter of Part I develops an initial definition of spiritual development and a list of the distinctive factors that determine it in contrast to other specific facets of human development.  Next Chapter 3 presents an overview of current research on the stages of human development.  Although all conclusions in this domain remain tentative, according to the purposes of this essay, focus will be on the integrative position in James Fowler’s Stages of Faith and of the encyclopedic statement in Jane Loevinger’s Ego Development.  Insofar as developmental research hazards to suggest such a conclusion, the result is a sketch of the more or less currently determined lines and stages of human development within the populations studied.  Finally, integrating this developmental material with the understanding developed in Chapter 2, Chapter 4 suggests a summary understanding of spiritual development and its stages.
   
Part I uses a critical, analytical, synthetic approach, sorting out the issues as they arise, consolidating issues where possible, introducing new material when necessary, all the time forging a progressively more coherent understanding of a very elusive subject.  In the end the hope is to have justified as reasonable that psychology properly conceived can appropriately and adequately deal with many of the questions about spiritual development traditionally treated in theology.  Indeed, within the contemporary context of extensive differentiation and specialization of disciplines, an adequate psychology and not theology is the discipline that properly treats questions of spirituality, at least insofar as practical issues are concerned.
   
Part II of this essay turns to the question of God and theist faith.  Three chapters present a theory of theodicy, treatment of practical religious issues related to spiritual development, and the question of growth in holiness.  The overall argument is this.  Theism adds a further dimension of meaning to even an adequate psychological understanding of spiritual development.  This is a contribution to a comprehensive theoretical account of the matter.  But granted that God exists and is active whether acknowledged or not, theism changes nothing in an adequate psychological treatment and, as such, offers no answer to practical questions about spiritual development.  An adequate psychological account already provides this.  Finally, growth in holiness, understood as a profound relationship with God, is not the same as spiritual development.  The different possible coincidences of the two are multiple.
   
Part III, limiting its consideration to Christianity, treats the still further question about Christian faith and its contribution to a comprehensive understanding of spiritual development.  In the present context, the distinctive contribution of Christianity is the conception of human life as a process of divinization—theosis in the Greek, which provides a name for this distinctive facet of spiritual development, theotic (not merely theological or theist).  Because of the redemptive work of Christ and the sanctifying mission of the holy spirit, the human life created by God and studied by the human sciences is actually a growing participation in divine life.  Granted the incarnation and resurrection of the eternal son, Jesus Christ, an understanding of the Holy Spirit as God’s own Love poured into the human heart is the key to this specifically Christian contribution.  But once again, since divinizing grace is available to all whether they recognize it or not, Christianity’s contribution is a further expanded understanding of this matter rather than a distinctive prescription for living it or any change in its mechanisms and requisites.
   
Throughout, when practical issues of spiritual development are at stake, adequate psychological treatment retains the priority.  It explains the process of development, and it defines the stages.  Yet a comprehensive theoretical understanding of spiritual development is incomplete without the theist and Christian components.

This dissertation explores the implications of adult developmental diversity, especially for the ways in which adults with varying degrees of capacity for cognitive complexity manage the leadership challenges of conflict, complexity, and uncertainty.

In this paper I critically review and synthesize multiple strands within the leadership, human development, and education reform literatures to offer a new lens for understanding and addressing the complex, adaptive problems facing the US K-12 education system. Specifically, I explore how a particular set of leadership abilities—post-conventional developmental capacities—might serve as a resource in leading US K-12 reform efforts that are adaptive in their aims and effects.  In the process, I develop a preliminary conceptual framework to guide exploration of (through research) and experimentation with (in practice) the process of intentionally deploying specific post-conventional capacities to lead adaptive change. This analysis fills several gaps in the literature and provides a foundation for future leadership research and practice, both within education and more broadly.

This paper explores stages and styles of meaning making in a population at Kegan's (1982) developmental levels 3 through 5. It is a qualitative study of the relationship between adult personality development and how individuals speak about meaning and wellbeing in their lives. Nineteen participants ranging widely in age and socioeconomic class were selected informally through connections with the researchers, and snowball sampling. They were chosen from an original group of 50, based on informal interviews suggesting that they had achieved Kegan's developmental levels of "Socialized Mind" (stage 3), or especially "Self-Authoring Mind" (stage 4) or "Self-Transforming Mind" (stage 5). The subject-object interview (Lahey et al., 1988) was chosen for the study because it is a powerful instrument for examining adult developmental complexity in the context of a flexible variety of topics, in our case especially how the participants describe experiences of meaning making around the topic of wellbeing. In this investigation it was found that people experience wellbeing differently as meaning-making structures shift from concrete to more flexible and expansive developmental organizations. Here wellbeing was examined in exploratory interviews, allowing participants to talk openly. The study was able to capture and organize ways experiences of wellbeing shift in conscious across these three developmental levels. The participants articulated conscious links between experiences of wellbeing and experiences of more complex developmental stages, and many of the participants at higher developmental stages described a connection between altruistic thoughts and behaviors, and the highest levels of wellbeing.

Consciousness has basically been ignored by psychology (until recently) since the time of William James and the psychoanalysts, so Learning Theories have followed suit & stuck to an objective materialist (hard science) viewpoint. Learning, like the presumed mind-function of consciousness, has tended to be view objectively only. “Learning always involves a systematic change in behaviour or behavioural disposition that occurs as a consequence of one’s  of one’s experience in some specific situation.” It seems Learning is either an unconscious behavioural adaptation, as in training or mimesis, or an increase in conscious awareness and volition (or both, 2nd following the 1st). Herein I suggest the only actual learning is not being trained in new habit, but involves a growth or at least alteration in consciousness.