Dialogical Self Theory in Higher Education: A Few Preliminary Remarks, Ideas, and Hypotheses

I believe that Dialogical Self Theory (DST) provides a useful and important model for understanding intrapersonal and career development in college students. If we define college success along liberal goals (e.g., "students will be able to think for themselves") or occupational goals (e.g., "students will be prepared to enter the work force"), then an important but often unstated feature is how well students transition between where they are upon entering college and where they hope to end up. The change is a personal one. The change requires student investment, because who they are changes. Therefore it is important to understand this "who they are" component along with the nature of change.

The Problem: Students Are Undecided, Ambivalent, and Anxious

College students want to be successful in professional careers, but they often aren’t sure what those careers will be and therefore are unsure of how to work towards their goal. This manifests as first year college students who don't feel like they belong there (imposter syndrome), students who are struggling to choose a major or stick to one program, students who cannot pass a required course, and advanced students who are about to graduate but still don't know what they're supposed to do with their lives.

Because of the many situations just listed, students are anxious about their roles as college students and the future that depends on their education. One wrong move, they believe, and they will be ruining their future. This is shown each time a student stops by my office and says something like, "I'm already ____ and I haven't decided what to do with my life." The age is irrelevant. I've heard it all. 16, 18, 22, 30, 38, 44, 50. Everybody feels behind.

Sometimes students (particularly in their 2nd and 3rd years) claim to have made a decision about a career. At my school, this is popularly nursing. "I want to be a nurse," they say, even though there is little about the discipline and practice that interests them. (DST shows us that certain I-statements within these students adopt the major of nursing. Maybe it is a clear professional goal, and this satisfies their need for having direction. Maybe it promises good money, so this satisfies their need for financial stability. Maybe someone such as a mom or dad has pressured them, so this satisfies their need to please mom or dad.)

Finally, students often have sincere desires to succeed in college, but they constantly undermine their success by skipping classes, forgetting to study, and so on. (DST shows us that each student represents a complex multiplicity of selves that are often in conflict: the "A+ student" interferes with the "has fun student"; these both interfere with the "star athlete student".)

Students feel an uncertain urgency to succeed or improve or work or do something, but they won't know what or how. This confusion, anxiety, and uncertainty is unsettling. In the language of DST, students feel a cacophony of voices--a loud and unsettling maelstrom of motivations and inner/outer directives. Students have four solutions. They can:

1. Withdraw: skip class, watch TikTok videos, go mute, become apathetic/depressed, give up, drop out.
2. Outsourcing responsibility: They can give up their self-direction to somebody else--such as a professor, parent, coach, or mentor. "Just tell me what to do and I'll do it." This can be a useful strategy, but outsourcing responsibility is a very weak position to be in, because the person has no power and is willingly subjugated to the goals and interests of another person.
3. Sharpening the boundaries between self and other: Instead of resolving an inner uncertainty, time is spent prejudicially criticizing others for real or imagined problems. "________ people are so lazy. They have no direction in their lives. No idea of who they are."
4. Taking on additional responsibilities: Paradoxically, it seems, students will take on more roles in order to stay ever busier--keeping the weight of anxiety off. "What do I want to do with my life? I wish I had the time to even consider that--what with all of my jobs, honors societies, Greek life, etc., etc."
5. Facing the uncertainty: Spending time with the uncertainty and working through it. "On the one hand, I want to be successful and wealthy and happy, but on the other hand I... I guess I'm doubtful that I have what it takes to lead a happy life. Part of my wonders if I couldn't just be happy working at a gas station or shoveling manure...". (adapted from Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010, Dialogical Self Theory, pp. 3-4) 

The Solution

With DST, faculty encourage students to identify their many selves; acknowledge that some selves can be in conflict with others; recognize that selves are not immutable but are constantly undergoing changes that are initiated by social and historical contexts; and practice looking at themselves as subject ("I am a compassionate person") and as object ("My compassion can sometimes backfire, and others take advantage of me").  

What is Dialogical Self Theory?

DST is a constructivist approach to understanding the human self (or selves).

A. DST Defined Negatively:

• DST rejects the Cartesian belief in a discrete and complete self that exists separately from a body and separately from other persons' selves. 
• DST also rejects the psychoanalytic belief that the self is a complete and integrated entity in a health person (or fractured and dissociated in an unhealthy person).

B. DST Defined Positively

1. DST maintains (the constructivist position) that the self is historically and contextually situated (change the context or history, and you change the self).
2. DST holds that every human person has any number of selves, and these selves can work in harmony or in conflict with each other. 
3. Selves operate as identities or I-statements. E.g., "I am weak," "I am a college professor," "I am a devoted husband." Conflicts can arise between them: "How I spend my weekends as a college professor conflicts with how I spend my weekends as a devoted husband."
4. Selves are not separate from others. They represent internalized - externalized features. For example, I can tell a joke and therefore present myself as a funny guy. But if nobody laughs, then their reception of my joke positions me as a fool or as out of touch. Therefore private selves are always being negotiated with the public reception of those same concepts. You and I do not possess a series of selves like photos in a wallet. Each self emerges in relation with others. I might think myself a tyrant, but I cannot be a tyrant alone in my backyard, because there is nobody there to tyrannize (save the squirrels eating all the figs). I can only be a tyrant in relations to others—provided others interpret my behavior as tyrannical. I can make outlandish demands and give cruel punishments to students, for example, but if the students smile and laugh and say, “Good one!” then I will be caught in an unresolved tension between tyrant and jester.
5. The process in item B4 can occur entirely in my mind, where I imagine that others will not find me funny/tyrannical. Or I can misperceive how others perceive me (e.g., imagining that they were laughing only to be polite)

What Might This Look Like in Practice?

We know that students enter college with vague ideas of who they are—at least insofar as they can make claims to the effect of, e.g.,

·      I am a people-person

·      I am compassionate

·      I like helping others

·      I’m religious

·      I’m responsible

·      I’m creative

·      I can’t stand lazy people

·      I love my family

However, the relationship between these selves—these I-statements—is often unclear, ambiguous, or in flux. 

Sample Activity

Students are invited to share their selves—their I-statements—with the class. These include:

1.     Historical selves (childhood interests, relationships, goals, motivations)

2.     Current selves (current jobs, friends, hobbies, interests, motivations)

3.     Future selves (the un/certain ten-year plan)

These selves represent real and perceived commitments that students have taken with respect to others in their lives and society more generally. Any confusion, uncertainty, ambivalence, procrastination, or inner conflict about what they need to be doing to identify and achieve their goals can be explained by a conflict between students’ selves. By providing students with an opportunity to engage these conflicts and work with others towards solutions, they will solve the conflict.

            The conflict is not in-them, but bound up between them and their world (expectations of others, ideas of who they are, relationships, and so on). Five solutions to conflict/uncertainty (HubertHermans)

A subsequent discussion will allow students to negotiate these self-constructs with one another. One student might hear the example and provide one of their own, which will either map neatly onto or conflict with the example given by the original student. Without realizing it, students will be participating in the social co-construction of selves.

Pedagogical movements:

There are three significant movements of self-change in DST. Looking back at the original problem, we understand that resolving uncertainty and anxiety means working through both. The following movements are constructive ways of resolving or accepting uncertainty and anxiety. [The positions are defined in Hermans, 2013, Dialogical self in education, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 26(2), 85-87]

1.     Third Position: After recognizing a conflict between two selves, a person recognizes a third I-position that, when occupied, resolves the conflict.

2.     Meta-position: A student takes a step back and examines their situation from a helicopter’s perspective. “Allow for a more encompassing view of the world.” The meta-position looks at all factors in the present situation and sees how they are best coordinated.

3.     Promoter position: “innovators of the self par excellence.” Maps onto Stephen Covey's "Leadership" mentality: A team of workers is tasked with bulldozing trees to make way for a new road, so everybody gets to work collapsing trees. Lots of workers seem to have their own ideas of what needs to be done. The leader position climbs to a high point to see the whole forest. They can see where the road needs to go and can therefore help the individual workers (selves) to work in harmony with each other. The Promoter has their eye on the future, or where the society of selves is headed.

Note: items 1 and 2 ask that the student reflect on themselves (their I-statement/self) as an object. It is only by looking at selves this way that integration can be found. Item 3 asks to consider a long-term perspective--where they're headed.

Some Preliminary Hypotheses

Hypothesis 1: 4^th year students will show 1) less uncertainty about future self trajectory and 2) less internal conflict between I-positions than will 1^st year students. I can say this because at my university, 4th year students represent the 34% of students who did not drop out. They have been forced to adopt responsibility for their learning and goals. However, I still see much of the same uncertainty and anxiety in 4th-year students.

 

Hypothesis 2: Spending class time discussing, sharing, and reflecting on student and instructor I-positions will facilitate greater integration of I-positions, which will be seen in changes to student I-positions and their valuations. (More on these assessments to come.)