Adults in contemporary America are expected to be productive citizens who can manage their own affairs. They are expected to make informed decisions for themselves and their fellow citizens, appreciate diverse perspectives, manage conflict appropriately, and act responsibly in their communities. They are expected to be lifelong learners in the face of constant change and incre a s i n g c o m p l e x i t y. Meeting these expectations re q u i res the ability to develop one' s own perspective-the capacity for self-authorship.
Self-authorship re q u i res complex assumptions about the nature of knowledge, namely that knowledge is constructed in a context based on relevant evidence, that evaluating evidence is necessary to decide what to believe, and that each individual has the capacity to make such decisions. Furt h e rm o re, selfauthorship re q u i res a sense of identity through which individuals perc e i v e themselves as capable of knowledge construction. It also re q u i res interd e p e ndence with other people to gain access to other perspectives without being consumed by them. As a result, self-authorship is more than a skill; it is a way of making meaning of one' s experience.
My longitudinal study of college students' assumptions about knowledge revealed that 2 percent of the seniors and 12 percent of the participants one year after graduation used contextual knowing (Baxter Magolda, 1992). C o ntextual knowing includes viewing knowledge relative to a context, understanding that some knowledge claims are more valid than others, and using i n f o rmed judgment to determine what to believe. Similar re s e a rch on re f l e ctive judgment showed that college seniors used reasoning characterized by the assumption that knowledge claims are personal opinions, and thus were unable to explain the role of evidence in making interpretations (King and