by Ed Nuhfer (Contact: enuhfer@earthlink.net; 208-241-5029)

Part 1 introduced the nature of adult intellectual development in terms of the stages ascended as one becomes educated. Each stage imparts new abilities that are valuable. This Part 2 reveals why awareness of these stages is important and offers metacognitive exercises through which students can begin to engage with what should be happening to them as they become better thinkers.

A disturbingly tiny contingent of professors in disciplines outside adult education have read the adult developmental research and recognized the importance of Perry’s discovery. Even fewer pass on this awareness directly to their students. Thus, recognition that the main value of a university education does not lie in acquired knowledge of facts and formulae but rather in acquiring higher level thinking abilities remains off the radars of most students.

Given what we know from this research, a potential exists for American higher education’s evolving into a class-based higher educational system, with a few institutions for the privileged supporting curricula that emphasize developing the advanced thinking needed for management and leadership, and a larger group of institutions fielding curricula emphasizing only content and skills for producing graduates destined to be managed. Until students in general (and parents) recognize how these two educational models differ in what they offer in value and advantages for life, they will fail to demand to be taught higher-order thinking. Overcoming this particular kind of ignorance is a struggle that neither individual students nor a free nation can afford to lose.

Teaching Metacognition: Mentoring Students to Higher Levels of Thinking

One way to win this struggle is to bring explicit awareness of what constitutes becoming well educated directly to students, particularly those not enrolled in elite, selective schools. All students should know what is happening to them, which requires understanding the stages of adult intellectual development and the sequence in which they occur offers the explicit framework needed to guide students to do beneficial “thinking about thinking.” (See Part 1, Table 1.) This research-based framework offers the foundation required for understanding the value of higher-level thinking. It offers a map for the journey on which one procures specific abilities by mastering successively higher stages of adult thinking. Through learning to use this framework metacognitively, individuals can start to discover their current stage of intellectual development and determine what they need for achieving the next higher stage.

I have included two exercises for students to show how the research that informs what we should be “thinking about” can be converted into metacognitive components of lessons. These modules have been pilot tested on  students in introductory general education and critical thinking courses.

The first, “Module 12 – Events a Learner Can Expect to Experience,” uses the research that defines the Perry stages (Table 1) as a basis for authoring an exercise that guides students through key points to “think about” as they start to reflect upon their own thinking. Instructors can employ the module as an assignment or an in-class exercise, and should modify it as desired. For many students, this will serve as their first exposure to metacognition. If this is the reader’s first introduction to adult intellectual development, work through this module, ideally with a colleague on a lunch break. Start to procure some of the key resources listed in the references for your personal library.

With the exception of Perry Stages 7, 8, and 9, Module 12 largely addresses the cognitive realm. However, when intellectual development occurs successfully, affective or emotional development occurs in parallel as one advances through higher cognitive stages (see Nuhfer, 2008). Metacognition or “thinking about thinking” should extend also to a reflective “thinking about feelings.” Since the 1990s, we have learned that our feelings about our learning–our affective component of thinking– influence how well we can learn. Further, our affective development or “emotional intelligence” determines how well that we can work with others by connecting with the through their feelings, which is a huge determinant in work and life success.

The second “Module 4—Enlisting the Affective Domain” helps students to recognize why the feelings and emotions that occur as one transitions into higher stages are important to consider and to understand. At the higher levels of development, one may even aspire to deeply understand another by acquiring the capacity for experiencing another’s feelings (Carper, 1978; Belenky and others, 1986).

Frequent inclusion of metacognitive components in our assignments is essential for providing students with the practice needed for achieving better thinking. Guiding students in what to “think about” can help students engage in challenges that arise at the finer scales of metadisciplines, disciplines, courses, and lessons. This requires us to go beyond articulating: “What should students learn and how can we assess this?”  by extending our planning to specify “What is essential that students should think about, and how can we mentor them into such thinking?”

REFERENCES CITED (additional references are provided in the two exercises furnished)

Arum, R. and Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Belenky, M.F., B.M. Clinchy, N.R. Goldberger, and J.M. Tarule. (1986) Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind, New York: Basic Books. (Reprinted in 1997).

Carper, B. A. (1978). Fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing. Advances in Nursing Science 1 1 13–24.

Flavell, J. H. (1976). Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), The nature of intelligence (pp. 231–235). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Journal of Adult Development (2004). Special volume of nine papers on the Perry legacy of cognitive development. Journal of Adult Development (11, 2) 59-161 Germantown NY: Periodicals Service Co.

Nuhfer, E. B (2008) The feeling of learning: Intellectual development and the affective domain: Educating in fractal patterns XXVI. National Teaching and Learning Forum, 18 (1) 7-11.

Perry, W. G., Jr. (1999). Forms of intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. (Reprint of the original 1968 1st edition with introduction by L. Knefelkamp). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.