Supporting Students in Reflective, Critical Thinking
The following section is excerpted from Dartmouth Composition Program’s faculty development site. The discussion works with William Perry’s Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme (1970).
Perry argues that college learners pass through three stages of intellectual development before becoming sophisticated critical thinkers.
Dualism. Very young or unsophisticated thinkers tend to see the world in polar terms: black and white, good and bad, and so on. These students also have what Perry calls a “cognitive egocentrism”—that is, they find it difficult to entertain points of view other than the ones they themselves embrace. If they have no strong beliefs on a topic, they tend to ally themselves absolutely to whatever authority they find appealing. At this stage in their development, students believe that there is a “right” side, and they want to be on it. They believe that their arguments are undermined by the consideration of other points of view.
Relativism. As students progress in their academic careers, they come to understand that there often is no single right answer to a problem, and that some questions have no answers. Students who enter the stage of relativism are beginning to contextualize knowledge and to understand the complexities of any intellectual position. However, the phase of relativism has some pitfalls—among them that students in this phase sometimes give themselves over to a kind of skepticism. For the young relativist, if there is no Truth, then every opinion is as good as another. At its worst, relativism leads students to believe that opinion is attached to nothing but the person who has it, and that evidence, logic, and clarity have little to do with an argument’s value.
Reflectivism. If students are properly led through the phase of relativism, they will eventually come to see that indeed, some opinions are better than others. They will begin to be interested in what makes one argument better than another. Is it well reasoned? Well supported? Balanced? Sufficiently complex? When students learn to evaluate the points of view of others, they will begin to evaluate their own. In the end, they will be able to commit themselves to a point of view that is objective, well reasoned, sophisticated—one that, in short, meets all the requirements of an academic argument.
But how can we help our students to grow from dualistic thinkers to reflective thinkers? We can challenge our students to overcome black and white thinking and to avoid the indecision of relativism by designing courses that help them to understand argument in all of its complexities. Of course, there are countless ways to teach argument, but for the sake of discussion we’ve isolated three:
Encourage a “Cognitive Shift.” In other words, design reading and writing assignments so that students “shift” from subjective, personal understandings of a subject to new understandings that are more deeply, fully and reasonably considered.
Use the Socratic Method. Guide students to clear thinking by asking questions of texts (or of students) and pointing out inconsistencies in their answers. Plato is optional.
Teach Formal Logic and Argument. Familiarize students with the basics of argument and logic, and encourage them to evaluate an argument based on the formal principles of reason.
