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Student Development Theory – Cheat Sheet
Psychosocial Theories: Examine the content of development, the important issues people face as their lives progress, such as how to define
themselves, their relationships with others and what to do with their lives.
Chickering’s Theory of Identity Development - The Seven Vectors:
1. Developing Competence – Intellectual & interpersonal competence, physical & manual skills
2. Managing Emotions – Recognize & accept emotions and appropriately express and control them
3. Moving Through Autonomy Toward Interdependence – Increase emotional freedom
4. Developing Mature Interpersonal Relationships – Develop intercultural & interpersonal tolerance, appreciate differences; create healthy, intimate relationships
5. Establishing Identity – (Uses the vectors before it) Acknowledge differences in identity development based on gender, ethnic background & sexual orientation
6. Developing Purpose – Develop career goals, make commitments to personal interests & activities, establish strong interpersonal commitments
7. Developing Integrity – Humanize & personalize values & develop congruence
Applications: Programming, Evaluation of programming, “Residential Learning Contract”
Josselson’s Theory of Identity Development in Women - Themes:
1. Foreclosures: Purveyors of the Heritage – Women who graduate from college with identity commitment with no experience in identity crisis, little identity change, seek
security in relationships
2. Identity Achievements: Pavers of the Way – Break psychological ties to childhood & form separate, distinct identities, reorganize sense of self and identity, commit to who they
are in relation to others & decide how they want to contribute to other’s lives
3. Moratoriums: Daughters of the Crisis – Unstable time of experimenting & searching for new identities, internalize the paradox there are many ways to be right, sticks with one
way and if challenged, crisis will ensue.
4. Identity Diffusions: Lost and Sometimes Found – Lack of crisis & commitment, low ego development, high anxiety, withdraws from situations, fails to internalize varied
experiences, little attachment to inner self
Applications: Participation in college activities = achievement identity, student affairs, structure, facilitation, guidance
Racial and Ethnic Identity Development: (3)
The Cross Model of Psychological Nigrescence: (Stages)
1. Preencounter – Race is unimportant, prefer to be accepted as “human beings”
2. Encounter – Undergoes an encounter & powerfully affected by it
3. Immersion-Emersion – Discard remnants of old identity, commits to personal change
Phase 1: Total immersion into blackness while withdrawing from other groups
Phase 2: Progression out of dualistic reactionary mode into more critical analysis of black identity
4. Internalization – Beginning of resolution involving old identity and new black worldview
5. Internalization-Commitment – Translates new identity into meaningful activities that address concerns and problems shared by African Americans
Helm’s White Identity Development Model:
Phase 1: Abandonment of Racism
Status 1: Contact – Encounter the idea of black people
Status 2: Disintegration –Conflicted acknowledgement of whiteness while recognizing moral dilemmas associated with being white
