perry scheme and powerful learning
DESCRIPTION
workshop presentation at University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA, March 2009TRANSCRIPT
March 2009University of the Pacific
Stockton, CA
William S. Moore, Ph.D.360-528-1809/360-786-5094 [email protected]
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…?