Perry Scheme and Powerful Learning

March 2009University of the Pacific

Stockton, CA

William S. Moore, Ph.D.360-528-1809/360-786-5094 wsmoore51@comcast.net

http://www.perrynetwork.org

Using a Developmental Perspective to Understand &

Promote Powerful Learning

As you can

clearly see on slide 397…

Courtesy of “Dilbert” & Scott Adams

Oh, no—not

another case of PowerPoin

t poisoning

!!!

Context for the Problem

“Do you mean ‘really

learning’ or ‘just

learning’?”Student quoted in Bill

Perry’s “Sharing in the cost of

growth,” from Clyde Parker, 1978

…Being able to repeat facts and plug numbers into formulae to get the right answers is handy, even essential. But it is not what education is fundamentally about…

Learning should be about changing the ways in which learners understand, or experience, or conceptualize the world around them…

“Powerful Learning”:Learning as Transforming

Understanding

Paul Ramsden

View of Knowledge is the Key

[Students] can improve their own skills of analysis and argument if they realize that knowledge, whether in lectures or in writing, is never a truckload of facts dumped into the driveway of the mind. Facts are always selected in the service of some idea and arranged to demonstrate it.

Kate Chanock, 1999

Every complex question has a simple answer…

…and it’s wrong.

H.L. Mencken

Nature of the Problem

Sources of Problems with Powerful Learning

• “In over our heads” (R. Kegan)

• Limitations of current educational practice

• Range of individual differences among learners

“In Over Our Heads”

Basically, you learn two kinds of things in college:•Things you will need to know in later life (2 hours)… •Things you will NOT need to know in later life (1198 hours). These are the things you learn in classes whose names end in ‘-ology’, ‘-osophy’, ‘-istry’, ‘-ics’, and so on. The idea is, you memorize these things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them. If you fail to forget them you become a professor and have to stay in college the rest of your life.

Dave Barry, 1981

Educational Practice?

Explanations for Individual

Differences in Learners

• Intelligence/aptitude• Skills/expertise• Learning styles • Motivation• Culture

• Dispositions• Socialization

process• Cognitive

strategies• DEVELOPMENT

Community of Practice

Learner

Situated Learning

Lave & Wenger, 1991

Learner

Learner

Learner

Learner

Different Conceptions of Knowledge?

Whose Meaning Matters the Most?

Look! Do I sound crazy in saying that the students are the source of the meanings they will make of you? All right, so you feel you are making meaning for them; you know your subject matter, they do not. But it is the meaning they make of your meaning that matters! Obviously. Why am I shouting? After all, it is the meanings you make of my meanings that matter, and shouting will not help…

William Perry, from The Modern American College, A. Chickering &

Associates, 1981

The Perry Scheme as a Way to Understand the

Problem

Exploring Student Perspectives on

Learning• Please review the essays you’ve been given and then discuss in

small groups the following questions:– How would you characterize these students as learners from what is

expressed in these essays? – What similarities and/or differences do I see across the essays?

• In particular, consider three broad domains:– View of knowledge and the nature/sources of learning?– Appropriate role/s of the teacher?– Appropriate role/s of the student and his/her peers?

• In what ways are these student perspectives consistent (or not consistent) with my general perceptions of your students at Pacific?

Right/Wrong??????????????????????

???

Right/Wrong

SELF

C

C

C

C

CC

CC

C

C

C

AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ‘PILGRIM’S PROGRESS’

A Dualistic Approach to Learning

Multiplicity Enters the Scene

In college you should amass as much knowledge as you can so you can use it when you get out.

Knowledge is the ability to answer questions, solve problems--not just knowing useless facts… The main job of college [is] giving you the tools to find the truth.

A Relativistic Approach to Learning

“Wallowing” in Contextual Relativism?

Taking Ownership of Learning

In my ideal class…I would want students to have the drive to learn for themselves. Students should be able to take learning into their own hands and use their teachers as mentors and guides to help them through the unknowns of knowledge. Students and teachers would work together as a team to help each other get through the long and arduous process of learning…

Contributions of Perry Scheme to Understanding

‘Powerful’ Learning

• Reflects critical underlying assumptions about knowledge that influence classroom behaviors

• Involves intellect and identity• Represents qualitative changes in how people construct meaning and interpret subject matter• Describes increasingly inclusive and complex forms of thinking

Using the Perry Scheme as a Framework for

Addressing the Problem

Diversity, social problems, environmental issues, and the changing geopolitical situation all require minds that can grapple successfully with uncertainty, complexity and conflicting perspectives and still take stands that are both based on evidence, analysis and compassion and deeply centered in values.

Craig Nelson, 1994

Why Does it Matter?

Instructional

Implications

of the Perry Scheme

Design learning environments, don’t “develop” students”

Help make learning accessible—”building a

bridge” for students

Balance challenge and support in the learning

process

Design, Not Develop

If the power [of the scheme] is to label students the better to develop them, we shall dehumanize them and ourselves. What’s more, as we do not possess such powers, we shall be defeated…

NOT this kind of “bridge-building”…

SUPPORTOpportunities for

structuring and/or organizing those challenges

Encouraging students to take risks involved in new understandings

CHALLENGEOpportunities for

engagement with complexity & ambiguity

Diversity of material, questions, perspectives, ways of thinking, etc.

Balancing Challenge & Support

Concluding Thoughts from Bill Perry

This is our creative obligation as educators: to find ways to encourage.

Hope & Loss: Real Learning Takes Courage

…It may be a great joy to discover a new and more complex way of thinking and seeing, but what do we do about the old simple world? What do we do about the hopes that we had invested and experienced in those simpler terms? When we leave those terms behind, are we to leave hope, too?

Bill Perry, 1978“Sharing in the cost of growth”

Lingering questions…?