[excerpted and adapted
from Moore, W.S. (2001). "Understanding Learning in a Postmodern
World: Reconsidering the Perry Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development."
In B. Hofer & P. Pintrich (eds.), Personal epistemology: the
psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates]
NOTE: Citations in excerpt
can be found here
Based on a series of open-ended
interviews conducted primarily with Harvard undergraduates during the late
1950's and through the 1960's, and since replicated with a wide variety of
students and institutions, the Perry scheme emerged from exhaustive qualitative
analyses of the ways in which the students described their experiences and
transformations over their college years (Perry, 1970, 1981, 1998). Perry
and his colleagues were looking for, and expecting to find, personality differences,
in particular aspects of the authoritarian personality notions popular at
the time (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). Instead
of stable individual differences in personality, however, what Perry and his
colleagues found was a consistent educational journeyÑwhat Perry characterized
as "an intellectual
Pilgrim's Progress"(1974, p. 3). In his original book describing the study,
Perry (1998) compares the developmental progression seen in the model to "the
Fall" as depicted in the book of Genesis in the Bible, with this particular
Fall centered on students' understanding of knowledge and learning. As in
Genesis, the Fall consists not of goodness and evil per se, but of the knowledge
of goodness and evil, or as Perry describes it, "the knowledge of values and
therefore the potential of judgment...in a world devoid of Eden"(1970, p.
60-61). More precisely, this particular progression traces a Fall from a
world of Absolutes and Truth into a world of contexts and Commitments in which
one must take stands and choose as a way of making meaning of one's life
through identity choices.
The Perry model reflects the
critical intertwining of cognitive and affective perspectives at the heart
of a college education--a difficult journey toward more complex forms of thought
about the world, one's discipline/area of study, and one's self. Perry's
work underscores the notion that the most powerful learning, the learning
most faculty really want to see students achieve as a result of their experiences
with classes/curricula, involves significant qualitative changes in
the way learners approach their learning and their subject matter. Nine distinct
stages, or what Perry prefers to call "positions," as in positions from which
to view the world, were discerned in the students' common paths, although
two, the first and the last, were hypothetical extensions of the empirical
work, constructed for the sake of elegance and completeness. In Perry's original
conceptualization of the scheme, positions 1 through 5 describe the primarily
intellectual portion of the scheme: systematic, structural change toward increasing
differentiation and complexity. In positions 6 through 9, the primary focus
of the journey shifts to what Perry calls ethical concerns in the classical
Greek sense: issues of identity and commitments in a relativistic world.
Following the conventions of some of the most significant refinements in
the ongoing evolution of the model (Knefelkamp, 1974; Knefelkamp and Slepitza,
1978; Moore, 1991, 1994), the sequence of nine positions of the scheme can
be grouped into four major categories: Dualism, Multiplicity, Contextual Relativism,
and Commitment within Relativism.
Dualism: Positions 1-2
While position 1 has rarely been
found empirically, either in the initial work or in subsequent research (Moore,
1994), it represents the original "Garden of Eden" in terms of one's view
of the nature of knowledge and truth. In the position 1 perspective, there
is a completely unquestioned view of truth as Absolute Truth in stark black
and white terms. The identification with the Authority figure--parent, teacher,
Church--is absolute and unquestioned, with no tolerance for alternative
points of view. In position 2, different perspectives and beliefs are now
acknowledged but are simply wrong. Thinking in this position is characterized
by dichotomies and dualisms, i.e., We-Right-Good vs. They-Wrong-Bad or some
variation. The world thus consists essentially of two boxes--rights and
wrongs--and there is generally little trouble in distinguishing one from
the other.
Multiplicity:
Positions 3-4
Perry describes the entire progression across the first five positions as "successive modifications of right-wrong dualism in attempting to account for diversity in human opinion, experience and 'truth'" (Perry, 1974, p.3). The modification in position 3 represents the first acknowledgement of legitimate uncertainty in the world; instead of two boxes or categories, right and wrong, there are now three: right, wrong, and "not yet known." Thus, the knowledge that is not yet known is knowable, and will be determined at some point in the future. This acceptance of uncertainty as legitimate, albeit temporary, is a profound departure from the dualistic perspective, and for many students an exciting one. Positions 3 and 4, then, are characterized as Multiplicity--the confrontation and coping with diversity and "multiples" in virtually everything.
The initial solution
to the problem of uncertainty is that "there are obviously right ways, or
methods, to find the right answers," and learning becomes a focus on process
and methodology. In position 4, the "not yet known" notion of position 3 often
becomes a new certainty of "we'll never know for sure," and thus what is
most important is one's own thinking. Self-processing and a sense of idea
ownership increases, but frequently in position 4 the stance taken is that
there is no non-arbitrary basis for determining what's right (Benack, 1982);
hence an attitude of "do your own thing" or "anything goes" tends to prevail
in this position.
Contextual
Relativism: Position 5 (and beyond)
The movement from position 4 to
position 5 is arguably the most significant transition within the Perry scheme. This transition represents a fundamental transformation
of one's perspective--from a vision of the world as essentially dualistic,
with a growing number of exceptions to the rule in specific situations, to
a vision of a world as essentially relativistic and context-bound with a few
right/wrong exceptions. The most significant distinction between the pseudo-relativism
of position 4 and the contextual relativism of position 5 is the self-consciousness
of being an active maker of meaning. As Perry
makes clear even in the title of his book (1998), one's task in life is finally
understood fully as intellectual and ethical--a question of judgments
and meaning-making in both academic and personal contexts. Johnson (1981)
clarifies this crucial distinction:
"In position five we
recognize that any act of knowing (thinking, talking, reading, writing) requires
taking a point of view, and we are forced to acknowledge our own. From this
point on, thinking becomes acting, [and] "knowing" will always represent
a placing of oneself, for better or worse, in one or another of many possible
positions in relation to persons or [ideas]." (p. 3)
Commitment
within Relativism: Positions 6-9
As defined by the model, the primary developmental emphasis shifts
beginning in position 6 from intellectual to ethical: namely, the anticipation,
clarification, and ongoing refinement of Commitments. These 'Commitments'
are distinguished from commitments or what Perry referred to as "considered
choices" by being chosen in the face of legitimate alternatives,
after experiencing genuine doubt, and reflecting a clear affirmation
of one's self or identity in a contextually relativistic world. Perry's original contention was that the changing
perspective beyond position 5 were not structural changes, at least not in
the same way as in the earlier positions, and there is some substantial work
(Slepitza, 1984) supporting that notion. Other researchers (e.g., King
and Kitchener, 1994) dispute this contention, and Perry himself seemed to
raise questions in later writings (e.g., 1985). Unfortunately, there has
been little additional work done on these upper positions, partly due to the
necessity of researching them through qualitative interviews, and partly
because work with the Perry scheme generally concentrates on undergraduate
students, a population rarely reflecting post-contextual-relativistic thinking.
The two significant efforts taking a closer look at these issues as students
move into their adult lives (and presumably the upper positions) are the ongoing
longitudinal projects being conducted by Alverno College and by Marcia Baxter
Magolda at the University of Miami, Ohio.
Space does not permit a more
detailed description of the Perry model here; more thorough summaries are
available elsewhere (Moore, 1994; Perry, 1998). Overall, however, the Perry
scheme reflects two central interwoven dynamics: 1) confronting and coping
with diversity and uncertainty with respect to new learning, and 2) the attendant evolution
of meaning making about learning and self. As depicted in the nine qualitatively
distinct positions (and transitions between them) of the Perry scheme, learners
cycle through three increasingly complex encounters with diversity in the
form of multiples:
As learners confront these different
forms of diversity and multiples, their meaning making shifts and evolves
in predictable ways. Most significantly, knowledge is seen as increasingly
conjectural and uncertain, open to (and requiring) interpretation. This central
epistemology about knowledge and learning triggers parallel shifts in the
learner's views about the role of the teacher--moving from an Authority as
the source of "Truth" to an authority as a resource with specific expertise
to share--as well as the role of the student, moving from a passive receptor
of facts to an active agent in defining arguments and creating new knowledge.