Intellectual and Ethical Development
William Perry (1970)

Perry has constructed a developmental scheme, that describes how college students learn that attempts to capture the evolution in how students view the nature of knowledge, truth, the world, and how one makes choices about the meaning of life, and one's responsibilities and values. The scheme is a progressive continuum that for descriptive purposes is divided into nine positions. Rappoport (2001) summarizes all nine of these positions. These positions are considered sequential.

Theorists suggest that students move through some or all of these positions during the college years. Some students may "stall" in the progression by "temporizing (delaying in a position and hesitating to make the next step), "escaping" (avoiding responsibility of commitment), or "retreating" (returning to dualism as a means of dealing with overwhelming environmental challenges). Pat King (1978) suggests movement along the developmental continuum can be facilitated by providing challenges to the current thinking processes of students, but providing enough supports to encourage the risk-taking and lessen the likelihood of "retreating".

In presenting Perry's developmental scheme, most authors collapse the nine positions into the following four categories:

Dualism:

Students view knowledge and life in absolute, concrete terms or categories: Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, Success/Failure. Right answers exist for everything. Teachers (external authorities) know these, and the job of students is to memorize "truth".

Multiplicity:

Students recognize not all knowledge is known and accept diversity of opinions and values in areas of uncertainty. However, all opinions are equally credible. Students do not yet have a means for evaluating the validity of these divergent ideas, and may rebel against such a process arguing that all opinions have value. Teachers become models of the scholarly process, and students often ask for guidance on "What do you want me to think?". Or, the teacher role may be trivialized, since all opinions have legitimacy.

Relativism:

Knowledge is seen as contextual and students are able to evaluate the validity of various viewpoints, including their own, depending on source, evidence, logical analysis. Even as students are able to reject some opinions as invalid, they may have difficulty making choices among equally valid alternatives. Teachers are valued as experts, but their opinions are not above scrutiny.

Commitment in Relativism:

Students make choices that affirm their roles and responsibilities within a relativistic world. Values commitments are made in such areas as politics, relationships and careers. Commitments are made recognizing intrapersonal diversity in interests, needs, and goals, and these commitments provide an integrative identity formulation experience that brings consistency and self control. The tentative nature of life is not forgotten, however, and one retains flexibility and openness to new experiences.

King, P. M. (1978). William Perry's Theory of Intellectual and Ethical Development. In Knefelkamp, L., Widick, C., and Parker, CA. (Eds.) Applying new developmental findings. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Perry, W. G., Jr. 1970. Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Rappoport, W. J. 2001. William Perry's Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development, http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/perry.positions.html

(This summary was modified from a version first drafted by Kathy Nevins, Department of Psychology, Bethel College and then subsequently modified and converted into html by Bob Kistler for use in HON301K.)