Theory to Practice Cognitive Development and Intelligence

1. Theory to PracticeCognitive Development and Intelligence

2. Linking Theory to Practice • Why is it important to have a “developmental bridge” between theory and practice in student affairs? • Theoretical basis allows for efficiency and effectiveness to be achieved • It brings professionalism to our work • Everyday reality of students must be connected to the theories for them to be relevant

3. Linking Theory to Practice • General Structure • Evaluation of the Situation • Identify, clarify, or define goals/outcomes • Interpret Situation through Theories • Select Theories that Best Address the Situation • Identify Challenges and Supports • Design Programs/Interventions • Implementation • Evaluation

4. Practice—To Theory—To Practice • Practice • Identify Concerns/Determine Goals and Outcomes (Is/Ought Discrepancies) • Description • Investigate theories that may be helpful • Analyze students through lens of theory • Analyze environment through lens of theory • Translation • Identify potential challenges

5. Practice—To Theory—To Practice • Prescription • Reexamine goals in light of analysis • Design intervention methods • Practice • Implement Intervention • Evaluate outcomes • Redesign intervention if necessary

6. Theory to Practice Example • Using the PTP Model decide how to respond to the following: A team of RAs specifically assigned to monitoring students’ academic behaviors and concerns have noticed that many students are struggling with finding a balance between socializing and studying

7. Cognitive Development • How people think, reason, and make meaning of their experiences • Most theories are rooted in the work of Jean Piaget (1952) • The mind is thought to have structures (i.e. positions, stages) that compose a set of assumptions by the individual as to how they understand and organize their environments

8. Cognitive Development • Traditional Assumptions • Different stages arise one at a time and always in the same order • Differences between stages represent qualitatively different ways of making meaning, content/beliefs can remain the same across stages • Each progressive stage contains elements of the previous one • Change occurs as a result of assimilation and accommodation

9. Piaget’s Foundational Work • Sensory-Motor Intelligence • Innate reflex actions • Preoperational Intelligence • Ability to represent concrete objects in symbols and words • Concrete Operations • Understanding concepts and relationships of ideas • Formal Operations • Ability to reason hypothetically, logically, and systematically

10. Other Cognitive Theorists • Perry — Intellectual and Ethical Development • King & Kitchener — Reflective Judgment Model • Belenky et al. — Women’s Ways of Knowing • Baxter Magolda — Epistemological Reflection

11. Discussion • Learning in Adulthood raised a number of issues regarding what is intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom. One of the primary criticisms raised by those who do not accept Piaget’s traditional assumptions is that intelligence is a social construction. • Based on the readings and your own understanding of intelligence do you feel it is a social construction? • Using one of the examples from the readings, do you in your day-to-day life do you make assumptions that silence is a sign of intelligence or lack of intelligence?

12. Summary of Perry • Operates on Assumptions of Piaget in Terms of What Causes Development • Dualism Multiplicity Relativism • Largest Criticism is that Perry’s Positions 1-5 Describe Cognitive Development; Whereas Positions 6-9 Describe Psychosocial Development

13. Summary of Perry • Prominent Emphasis on Transitions • Retreat—Active denial of Potential of Legitimacy in Otherness • Temporizing—Prolonged pause within any of the positions without evidence of entrenchment through structures of Escape • Escape—A settling for Positions 4,5,6 by denying or rejecting their implications for growth

14. Perry’s First Six Positions • Basic Duality • Authorities are the harbingers of knowledge; non-authority perspectives are irrelevant; if someone is wrong, they are not an authority • Multiplicity Pre-Legitimate • Perception that authorities may have different perspectives, but those authorities associated with “other” are not legitimate; non-authority perspectives remain irrelevant

15. Perry’s First Six Positions • Multiplicity Subordinate • Recognized that authorities do not have all the answers, but assumed that given enough time or study the answers can be achievable • Multiplicity Correlate/Relativism Subordinate • Authority as the source of knowledge is challenged; individual adopts perspective that everyone has a right to their own opinion on life issues; confusion of what can be known is common due to loss of absolutes.

16. Perry’s First Six Positions • Relativism Correlate • Relativism is seen as means to perception and analysis, that is to say knowledge is now seen as relative; commitments as to what one holds as knowledge is not yet seen as necessary