William G. Perry

William G. Perry, Jr. (1913 – January 12, 1998) was a well-known educational psychologist who studied the cognitive development of students during their college years. He was a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and founder and longtime director of the Bureau of Study Counsel. While at Harvard, he developed his theory of the intellectual and cognitive development of college-age students through a 15-year study during the 1950s and 1960s. He published his work in 1970 as Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. His work was very influential in the field of student development. Perry also translated, with Alsten Hurd Chase, Homer's Iliad. He was born in Paris.

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).

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