This Fall, though, is less about banishment and more about minds falling slowly open. The scheme, which represents one of several paradigms of evolving thought, is more than twenty years old, but it has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity. Perry interviewed Harvard students in the late 1950s through the 1960s to gain understanding about the students' growth experiences and transformations. He eventually created a continuum of thinking to reflect the conditional developmental process that may or may not occur depending upon the stimulation that students or young people receive. Perry divided the continuum into the nine positions described below.
Truth is defined by parents and by teachers.
The dissonance inspires them to let the ideas float. Process and methodology gain importance here. This acknowledgment widens the complexities of students' thinking. While students in Position Four have been quite aimlessly roaming the landscape of intellectual thought, students in Position Five realize that they can choose directions and create a path through that landscape. According to Perry, few undergraduates who are of the traditional age move beyond Position Five during their four years of college.