William G. Perry - Perry's Scheme

Perry's Scheme

The Perry scheme is a model for understanding how college students come to understand knowledge, the ideas they hold about "knowing", and the ways in which knowing is a part of the cognitive processes of thinking and reasoning. Perry (1970) proposed that college students pass through a predictable sequence of positions of epistemological growth. Fundamental to the Perry scheme is a student’s nine-position progression from dualist to relativist epistemologies. Learners move from viewing truth in absolute terms of Right and Wrong (obtained from “Good” or “Bad” Authorities) to recognizing multiple, conflicting versions of “truth” representing legitimate alternatives. Significantly, the intent of the original research was “a purely descriptive formulation of students’ experience,” rather than a “prescriptive program intended to ‘get’ students to develop” (Perry, 1981, p. 107). The Perry scheme of epistemic development becomes prescriptive when teaching and curriculum are “optimally designed to invite, encourage, challenge, and support students in such development” (Perry, 1981, p. 107). The nine positions of the Perry scheme can be grouped into three broader categories, which Perry (1981) identified as: 1) dualism modified (or dualism + multiplicity), 2) relativism discovered, and 3) commitments in relativism developed. The Perry scheme addresses issues distinct from those commonly discussed under the rubric of “critical thinking.” Critical thinking can be understood as the ability to weigh evidence, examine arguments, and construct rational bases for beliefs, but it also includes self-examination of reasoning processes (i.e., metacognition) to evaluate their appropriateness and effectiveness. However, Perry’s scheme speaks to epistemic issues underlying critical thinking: students’ assumptions concerning the nature and acquisition of knowledge (or truth).

Since his work, further research on epistemological beliefs and reasoning has refined, extended and adapted Perry’s developmental sequence. Perry's Epistemology has also been extended by Baxter Magolda and co-workers who were looking at students intellectual development and in particular the exposure to the research environment. Knefelkamp and Slepitza (1978) saw the Perry Scheme as a general process model providing a descriptive framework for viewing the development of an individual’s reasoning about many aspects of the world. They applied the scheme (with apparent success) to the development of an individual’s thinking about career planning. The assumption “that personal epistemology is unidimensional and develops in a fixed progression of stages” has been challenged (Schommer, 1990, p. 498). Nevertheless, Perry’s seminal work continues to function as the primary reference point for the discussion on epistemological growth in the adult learner.