มีคนศึกษาสังเกตลำดับขั้นของการคิดวิเคราะห์ที่เกิดขึ้นในชั้นมหาลัย ความซับซ้อนของความคิดจะค่อยๆ พัฒนาไป

จากคิดแบบสองขั้วตรงข้าม ➡️ เข้าใจว่าโลกนั้นมากมายหลายหลากไม่มีถูกผิดชัดเจน ➡️ความสัมพันธ์เชิงบริบท ความรู้และข้อสรุปต่างๆ ล้วนต้องมีบริบทมาครอบประกอบเสมอ

เราค้นเจอบันทึกอันนี้ไว้ช่วงปี 2012 สมัยที่เรียนวิชา Research Method ในคณะ

• A. Perry’s scheme begins with “dualism,” which is the belief that information is either right or wrong (i.e., “You’re either with me or against me”). Dualism begins early in intellectual development and often is reflected in the system of beliefs and acquired knowledge and viewpoints that a student brings with them to college from secondary school and is characterized by the need for an authority figure to transmit knowledge and beliefs. Independent or even collaborative learning is difficult for students at this stage. In this phase, students view teachers and other adults as “authorities,” and on the information provided by them as either “good” or “bad,” creating either “good authorities” or “bad authorities,” depending on whether or not they agree or disagree with the teacher’s information. Students in the dualistic phase of intellectual development are thus particularly unsuited for lessons the evils of the Internet, a source they view as “good” information. Anyone who has worked with college freshmen will most likely be familiar with this dualistic phase of development, and indeed the results of the Grinnell study discussed above make perfect sense in the context of Perry’s scheme.
• A more effective lesson on Internet information then, rather than specifically dwelling on “good” and “bad” Web sites, would be to present actual examples and to raise questions rather than giving answers, opening the student up to the next level intellectual development, “multiplicity.”

• B. Multiplicity is the ability to acknowledge that the world contains knowledge that the student cannot yet classify as right or wrong, knowledge which requires further study and thought (the so-called “gray area”). The student progresses from dualism to multiplicity as they encounter more and more diversity and legitimate uncertainty in the world, facts or occurrences that cannot be easily answered or explained. It is at this point that critical thinking has its roots; the student must use more complex reasoning to determine the validity or nonvalidity of any given piece of information.

• C. Contextual Relativism The student moves from multiplicity to “contextual relativism” when the knowledge characterized as multiplicitous begins to outweigh the knowledge that is thought to be either right or wrong, or dualistic. The student begins to see the world as primarily relativistic and context-bound, rather than as a world of black-and-white facts. Slowly over these last two periods, critical thinking begins to develop and is used more and more frequently.

ที่มา:  Information-Seeking Behavior in Generation Y Students: Motivation, Critical Thinking, and Learning Theory , Angel Weiler.