Believing is Seeing: Exploring the Role of Student

Beliefs in ‘Real’ Learning

Washington Assessment, Teaching & Learning ConferenceMay 2006

William S. Moore, Ph.D.State Board for Community & Technical

Collegesbmoore@sbctc.ctc.edu

“Do you mean ‘really

learning’ or ‘just

learning’?”Student quoted in Bill

Perry’s “Sharing in the cost of

growth,” from C.A. Parker, 1978

Questions to Consider

• How would you define knowledge?

• How do you see your view of knowledge influencing the way you think about learning and your teaching?

Whose Meaning Matters?

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

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?

When bright people persist in doing stupid things, we know that powerful forces are at work.

“Perry-ism” #1

Explanations for Individual Differences in Learners

• Intelligence/

aptitude

• Skills/expertise

• Learning styles

• Motivation

• Culture

• Dispositions

• Socialization process

• Cognitive strategies

• DEVELOPMENT

Key Aspects of the Perry Scheme• Describes nine sequential “positions” from which

students view knowledge and learning

• Represents a series of encounters with diversity of:– Perspectives (positions 1-3)– Contexts (positions 4-6)– Commitments (positions 7-9)

• Reflects students’ evolving conceptions of –Knowledge–Role of teacher (Authority)–Role of learner (and peers)

VIEW OF KNOWLEDGE

ROLE OF LEARNER

ROLE OF “AUTHORITY”

•Isolated, verifiable facts•Discrete blocks of content•Clear rights and wrongs•Gathering & retaining information•Getting facts from teacher, not peers

•Source of right answers•Offers clear guidance--no tricks

DUALISM

•Supportive evidence•Socially-constructed understandings•Continua of certainty•Gaining expertise•Seeking most adequate solution/ interpretation

•Resource for context-specific expertise•Facilitator, guide

CONTEXTUAL

RELATIVISM

From Dualism to Contextual Relativism:

A Real Paradigm Shift (groan)

• Moving beyond received belief to “creative faith”

• Understanding the role and limits of reason, evidence and “data-driven” answers

• Coping with paradox: greater confidence in one’s own stands AND greater empathy for those who hold different viewpoints

…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…

Learning as Transforming Understanding

Paul Ramsden

Contributions of Perry Scheme to Understanding Role of Beliefs in

‘Real’ Learning• Reflects critical underlying assumptions

about knowledge (epistemology)

• Involves intellect and identity

• Represents qualitative changes in how people construct meaning and interpret subject matter

• Describes increasingly inclusive and complex forms of thinking

“Perry-ism” #2

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…

Instructional Implications of “Believing

is Seeing”

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

Help make learning accessible—”building a

bridge” for students

Balance challenge and support in the learning

process

“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?

FACILITATING ‘REAL’ LEARNING

NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE

ROLE OF “AUTHORITY” ROLE OF LEARNER

•Re-think content coverage•Explore uncertainty in field

•Address reasoning in context of specific content

•Consider teaching as functions, not role•Think out loud w/ students•Emphasize what students can do, not what you can do

•Help students make connections to prior learning•Encourage students to take responsibility•Insist students take stands, offer evidence

Re-Visioning Assessment from Perry Scheme Perspective

• Assessment as Learning

• Assessment as Meaning-making

• Assessment as Dialogue

Assessing Real Learning

Understandings ofcore concepts/themes

Ways of reasoningwithin disciplinary

contexts

Self-assessment of learning

Role of Self-Assessments in ‘Real’ Learning

• Fostering meta-thinking

• Promoting active inquiry

• Developing self-evaluation skills

• Integrating learning/ making connections

When All is Said and Done, It’s Easier Said than Done

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”

“Perry-ism” #3

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

Summary of Key Messages about “Believing is Seeing”

Students have differing personal epistemologies, and these conceptions matter in terms of learning

‘Real’ learning is more about transformation than transmission

‘Real’ learning thus involves risk-taking and courage on the part of students

Both assessment and teaching approaches reflect and reinforce epistemologies