Preparing Students and Graduates to Navigate Life's Challenges: A Dialogue on Self-Authorship and the Quest for Balance of Agency and Communion

Abstract

The authors of this dialogue discuss the developmental capacities that enable students and graduates to achieve the knowledge and skills required to navigate life’s challenges. They stress the need for a balance of agency and communion that is reflected in self-authorship, or the internal capacity to define beliefs, identities, and social relations. Their two approaches (one incorporating college student development theory and the other, philosophical perspectives) emphasize that providing conditions for the cultivation of self-authorship in students involves active engagement with, and a critical openness to, others’ perspectives.