Berlin and Cognitive Development

I'm writing about cognitive development in my thesis this week (I mentioned this in class on Monday) and a lot of it seemed relevant to Berlin, so although this is somewhat retrospective, I thought it might still be interesting.

William Perry's Forms of Ethical and Intellectual Development in the College Years and Belenky et al's Women's Ways of Knowing both posit schemes for understanding college student cognitive development, differing primarily in that Perry focused his study on males and Belenky et al on females. In both schemes, the student begins in a stage Perry terms “dualism” (66) and Belenky et al term “received knowledge” (35). In this stage, the student sees the teacher as an Authority who possesses Truth. It is the student's job to give back the Truth. This is usually where the student is at around their freshman year of college. After this stage, the student is able to move to “multiplicity” or “subjective knowledge” where he or she understands that there are a multitude of opinions with equal value. Then the student achieves “relativism” or “procedural knowledge” where he or she gains understanding of the processes involved in obtaining knowledge, such as using supportive evidence to understand complexities.

Try here and here for helpful charts.

It is only after the students have progressed through these stages that they are able to achieve Commitments in relativism (“an affirmation of personal values in relativism”), or “constructed knowledge,” where he or she sees is able to clearly integrate external complexities with his or her own views. It is also only at this point that the students can tolerate ambiguity and complexity. Students don't usually achieve this until graduate school or beyond.

What's important to note here is that what Berlin is asking students to do most certainly comes in the later stages of development. So what can we do to speed students along? Perry says not much, because it's a highly internalized process. However:

1. Perry suggests that “the realization that in the very risks, separateness, and individuality, of working out their Commitments, they were in the same boat not only with each other but with their instructors as well” facilitated a move towards higher levels (239). The student needs to not only feel that way, but he must also believe that others see him that way.
2. Teachers must have “visibility in their own thinking, groping, doubts, and styles of Commitment” to give the students the sense that they too are in the community (239).
   And this is why the teacher can't stand up there and say their political leanings, or whatever else. Because the discovery of those Commitments needs to be modeled for the students. In fact, as Belenky et al point out, our friend Freire writes that “problem-posing education affirms men as being in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncomplete beings.”