Patterns In Intellectual And Ethical Development

By Author: Joan Smith
Total Articles: 2
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Patterns in Intellectual and Ethical Development, William Perry (1970) listened to the concerns and stories of students attending Radcliffe and Harvard Colleges for almost 2 decades before publishing his seminal volume, Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme. By conducting annual unstructured interviews with college students about their college experiences, Perry and his colleagues were able to detect several patterns of Replica Cartier thinking and organize them into a "scheme." Although many scholars (myself included, King, 1978) have taken issue with his research methods, definitions of given patterns, and some of his claims, it is notable that the basic patterns he described 40 years ago continue to capture key features of the development of college students that are observable today. And it is particularly appropriate to this article that the focus of Perry's scheme addresses intellectual and ethical development, linking rather than separating these domains of development.

Perry's own insights into the development of college ...
... students were grounded in the work of several lifespan psychologists who also proposed ways to chart the progress of human development, most notably Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Robert White, Gordon Allport, George Kelly, Robert Havighurst, and Lawrence Kohlberg. Several of these theorists, especially Perry, Erikson, and Kohlberg, were interested in whether the evolution in thinking Piaget (1950, 1932/1962) observed in childhood also occurred during and after adolescence. Asking this question enabled researchers to apply Piaget's developmental principles to college students and to expand scholarship in this area over the last 4 decades.

The focus of Perry's work with Fake Watches students was through his role as Director of Harvard's Bureau of Study Counsel (an office combining functions that today would be housed in a campus counseling center and a teaching and learning center). As he listened to students' concerns and worked with them to be successful in college and adequately prepare for post college responsibilities, he noticed patterns in "the making of meaning" (to quote the subtitle of Perry's [1981] chapter). Patterns of meaning making about their "unfolding views of the world" (Perry, 1970, p. ix) is at the center of his scheme. This broad focus on how students made meaning of their collegiate experiences, along with how they saw themselves, made value-based commitments, and envisioned their responsibilities in the post college world is consistent with the inclusion of both intellectual and ethical domains in his model.