William Perry’s model documents how students’ minds develop through distinct intellectual and ethical stages as they attend college. The Perry model, introduced in the 1970 book entitled Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme, consists of nine positions through which students “journey” over time with Position 1, the least advanced, observed to be a binary view of the world divided into right vs. wrong, along with a belief that “Right answers for everything exist in the Absolute, known to Authority” [emphasis in the original] (Perry 10-11). The stages include processing information in varying degrees of dualism, multiplicity, relativism, and commitment. Students move back and forth through the stages to the point at which they recognize “diversity of opinion” and “uncertainty” about “knowledge and values” and reject rigid binaries (Perry 11). The stages culminate in a student’s choice among multiple possibilities with inherent uncertainty of a “personal commitment…in some area" with the “issues of responsibility,” “affirmation of identity,” and “express[ion] of lifestyle” that accompany the commitment (Perry 11).
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