Kitchener, Karen Strohm (1943-)

Karen Strohm Kitchener is recognized internationally for her contributions to the fields of counseling psychology and higher education. Among counseling psychologists, she is best known for her work in ethics. In higher education, Kitchener is best known for her research on reflective judgment, the process by which people become increasingly able to draw conclusions about problems that do not have right or wrong answers (called ill-structured problems). Kitchener's work spans more than 3 decades and includes over 60 refereed articles and book chapters, over 30 presentations, and over 35 invited lectures, workshops, and consultations.

Kitchener was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1943 and spent much of her childhood moving from place to place as her father moved up in his career. Although her father's ambitions for her were limited to secretarial work, Kitchener earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a master's degree in education from Claremont Graduate School, and both master's and doctoral degrees in counseling psychology from the University of Minnesota. Kitchener noted that it was during her tenure as a junior high school teacher that she decided students needed counseling more than they needed a good teacher. This realization led her to pursue a master's degree in counseling, as she intended to serve adolescents in this capacity. However, after Kitchener received her master's degree in counseling, her husband, Richard F. Kitchener, obtained a faculty position at Colorado State University (CSU) as a professor of philosophy, and Kitchener took a position with the CSU counseling center. This position proved to be a turning point in Kitchener's career. James C. Hurst, the director of the counseling center, encouraged her to conduct research as a part of her job. This led Kitchener to conduct studies with Hurst on how to encourage faculty to use groups more effectively in the classroom. Kitchener was also influenced by Carole Geer, a counseling center staff member, who encouraged Kitchener to earn her Ph.D.

During her time at Minnesota, Kitchener participated in a seminar focused on college student development led by her chair, Clyde A. Parker. Participation in this group was another turning point, because it sparked her interest in the cognitive development of students and introduced her to Patricia M. King, with whom she would collaborate for over 30 years. Kitchener and King's participation in this group led to the development of a model of reflective judgment (based on William Perry's model of college student development). Their model focused on the intellectual development of young adults that involved changes in epistemological assumptions and how these changes affect making judgments about ill-structured problems. Kitchener and King's reflective judgment model describes seven stages of development and provides suggestions about how to assist students' progress through these stages.

Kitchener has continued to refine the reflective judgment model with King and has also jointly developed instruments (Reflective Judgment Interview and Reasoning About Current Issues Test) to assess the development of reflective judgment. Their model and [Page 270]subsequent instruments have been so successful that several universities now use them as a way to effectively enhance undergraduate curricula and to assess student development.

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