Forms of Ethical and Intellectual Development in the College Years: A Scheme

Rating:
Summary: Superb! A pleasure to see republished.
Review: An excellent read for those interested in the literature of education and student development. The introduction, written by L. Lee Kenefelkamp, not only pays homage to Perry's work, but also places it's relevence in modern educational philosophies. A must have for anyone involved in education!

Rating:
Summary: Snoozefest for a college student
Review: Because I am getting certified to teach, I had to read Perry for a couple of college classes. While I recognize his importance to developmental theories (hence the 2 stars), I have to say that the book was dry, repetitious, sexist, and outright dull. I got no more from the book than I did from the handout my professor prepared, and the handout took less time to read. I'd say the worst part of reading Perry was the fact that he quoted verbatim what the students said, including every um, uh, ah, well, etc. Unless your looking to catch up on some sleep, find yourself a handout...

Rating:
Summary: Putting the Perry Scheme in historical perspective
Review: If you already know the secondary literature on the Perry scheme, you know his model of undergraduate intellectual and moral development. Students move through Positions -- NOT "stages" -- as they mature, from a rigid dualistic view of knowledge ("right" vs. "wrong") through various forms of multiplicity -- there is no certainty & so all opinions have the same truth status -- until they reach relativism, in which Position they recognize that all knowledge is contextual. Moving beyond relativism, some become commited relativists, learning to live with competing & contradictory commitments. This is NOT a simple deterministic developmental scheme, as some students retreat from relativism, others deny or reject the implications of their positions, and the time spent in any one position is indeterminate.

What current users of the Perry scheme may not realize is how meticulous he was in constructing it. This book charts the origins of the project from his counseling of students at Harvard & Radcliffe in the early 1950s, through his creation of the Checklist of Educational Values in the mid-50s, to the semi-structured personal interviews with 109 students from the classes of '62 and '63. Although he never lost sight of his ultimate goal -- developing a tool to help people who counseled college students on their journey toward greater self-understanding -- he invested heavily in methodological innovations, creating valid and reliable measures toward that end. Working with a team of graduate assistants, he created interview & coding protocols that are a model of careful scholarly work.

Two other points about the book's value today: First, it contains extensive quotations from the actual recorded transcripts of the interviews, thus allowing us to see for ourselves the correspondence between the model's Position descriptions and the students' own words. Second, Perry's scheme was built on a very strong normative position. He firmly believed that intellectual and moral growth are desirable outcomes of a student's college years. He wrote of the courage students needed to assume the risks of forward movement toward higher Positions in his scheme.

In the last paragraphs, Perry called for a new model of education that would support students in their risk taking, and his call is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Putting the Perry Scheme in historical perspective
Review: If you already know the secondary literature on the Perry scheme, you know his model of undergraduate intellectual and moral development. Students move through Positions -- NOT "stages" -- as they mature, from a rigid dualistic view of knowledge ("right" vs. "wrong") through various forms of multiplicity -- there is no certainty & so all opinions have the same truth status -- until they reach relativism, in which Position they recognize that all knowledge is contextual. Moving beyond relativism, some become commited relativists, learning to live with competing & contradictory commitments. This is NOT a simple deterministic developmental scheme, as some students retreat from relativism, others deny or reject the implications of their positions, and the time spent in any one position is indeterminate.

What current users of the Perry scheme may not realize is how meticulous he was in constructing it. This book charts the origins of the project from his counseling of students at Harvard & Radcliffe in the early 1950s, through his creation of the Checklist of Educational Values in the mid-50s, to the semi-structured personal interviews with 109 students from the classes of '62 and '63. Although he never lost sight of his ultimate goal -- developing a tool to help people who counseled college students on their journey toward greater self-understanding -- he invested heavily in methodological innovations, creating valid and reliable measures toward that end. Working with a team of graduate assistants, he created interview & coding protocols that are a model of careful scholarly work.

Two other points about the book's value today: First, it contains extensive quotations from the actual recorded transcripts of the interviews, thus allowing us to see for ourselves the correspondence between the model's Position descriptions and the students' own words. Second, Perry's scheme was built on a very strong normative position. He firmly believed that intellectual and moral growth are desirable outcomes of a student's college years. He wrote of the courage students needed to assume the risks of forward movement toward higher Positions in his scheme.

In the last paragraphs, Perry called for a new model of education that would support students in their risk taking, and his call is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.