ABSTRACT
Self-authorship is a holistic theory of development rooted in constructivist developmental epistemology. Self-authorship is holistic in that it attends to three interrelated domains of development, namely the cognitive, the intrapersonal, and the interpersonal. Development towards self-authorship occurs as an individual’s way of making meaning shifts from being formulaic and externally derived towards being increasingly complex and more internally defined. The capacity for self-authorship or the ability to think complexly across domains of development is necessary to negotiate the demands of modern adult life and to be engaged citizens. Self-authorship can also enhance students’ abilities to work collectively to advance social justice as they develop increasingly complex understandings of systems of oppression and how they affect people. Furthermore, researchers have asserted that self-authorship may not fully reflect the meaning-making processes of individuals who come from collectivist cultures since the theory privileges individualism rather than interdependence.
