Abstract:
Measurement of the intellectual development of undergraduate students can provide insights into their behavior, learning preferences, and attitudes. The Learning Environments Preferences (LEP) instrument objectively assesses intellectual development according to the Perry Scheme, which outlines the progression of intellectual and ethical development using nine hierarchical positions that are grouped into distinct ways of viewing the world: dualism (positions 1 and 2), multiplicity (positions 3 and 4), relativism (position 5), and commitment (positions 6 to 9). In this study, the LEP instrument was administered at the beginning (pretest) and end (posttest) of the fall 2002 semester to 60 students in two undergraduate horticulture courses to determine if different teaching strategies--a collaborative learning environment versus lecture-only--would influence students' intellectual development. At the beginning of the semester, all students were operating in positions 2 through 4. At semester's end in the lecture-only course, positions remained constant for 50% of the students; decreased for 44%; and increased for 6%. In the collaboratively-taught course, positions remained constant for 43% of the students; decreased for 45%; and increased for 12%. The two class means were not different. In the collaboratively-taught course, posttest scores of those students with previous horticultural experience in the subject matter decreased compared to those with no experience, suggesting that students who must reconcile new knowledge with previously learned information may retreat in their intellectual development in the short-term. This study supports the value and applicability of using the LEP instrument to recognize intellectual development positions 2 to 5 of Perry's Scheme.
Keywords:
horticulture undergraduates, Perry scheme, intellectual development
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