Linking Ways of Knowing and Cognitive Flexibility to a Critical Controversial Issue: Guns on Campus

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if ways of knowing and cognitive flexibility are linked to students’ openness to rethinking and/or balanced thinking about highly controversial issues. Over 150 students (either from a university that does not allow guns or one that will have guns in the following academic year) completed measures of separate knowing, connected knowing, and cognitive flexibility. They wrote their opinion about guns on campus. After reading a debate presenting both sides of the debate, they summarized the debate and completed a comprehension test. Students, whose opinion about guns on campus were conditional and who wrote summaries presenting both sides of the debate, had significantly higher scores for connected knowing and cognitive flexibility. Higher scores in cognitive flexibility, separate knowing, and balanced summaries predicted high comprehension scores.

 

Keywords: Cognitive Flexibility, Guns, Ways of Knowing.