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re: #3: Women's Ways of Knowing



Herb Gottlieb asked on Dec. 23:
"Your treatise about the intellectual development of women is
very interesting but does each statement refer to ALL women,
90 percent of women, or 68 percent of women ..... or ????"

Herb, in part 3 of my synopsis of WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING (posted on Dec.
23), each statement in quotations is the authors' statement about the women
in stage 3 (procedural knowers) of the 4 stages of intellectual development
that they found. The authors interviewed 135 women over 5 years and
watched them move from one stage to the next. Sadly, from my reading, it
looks as though about half of the 135 women never got to stage 3.

The women who were in stages 1 and 2 (see below) "DID NOT place "an
emphasis on procedures, skills, and techniques" and DID NOT "conceive
knowledge as a process"! Sadly, over half of the 135 women were at stages
1 and 2. Perry (at Harvard) places the shift from stage 1 to stage 2 at
early adolescence. Since all of the women in this study were from ages 16
to 60, all of them should have started out at least at stage 3, procedural
knowers, if their intellectual development hadn't been hampered.

The question is, HOW CAN WE PHYSICS TEACHERS ASSIST IN THE INTELLECTUAL
DEVELOPMENT OF OUR STUDENTS (both female and male), USING THE INSIGHTS OF
THIS STUDY?
-------------------------------
Below is a brief review of stages 1 and 2 of women's intellectual
development, emphasizing their attitudes toward science. (Quotes are the
authors' statements.)

STAGE 1: RECEIVED KNOWLEDGE: LISTENING TO THE VOICES OF OTHERS (dualism).
Most of these women were just beginning college or were receiving help in
social service agencies. They learn by listening (as opposed to the
voiceless women, who are unaware of the power of words for transmitting
knowledge). Dualistic: everything is black or white; thus they shun the
qualitative and welcome the quantitative. Truth comes from others, and
authorities receive knowledge from higher authorities (rather than
constructing it themselves). These women have no opinions and thus are
confused when asked to do original work. Literal; can't deal with
ambiguity: if two authorities disagree, they go with the higher authority.
Must have predictibility: "In deciding whether to take a course, [they]
want to know how many tests and papers there will be and how long the
papers. How many pages of how many books will they have to read? Exactly
how will their grade be computed?"
Thus they may be attracted to math and science. One interviewee at
this stage said, "There are absolutes in math and sciences. You feel that
you can accomplish something by - by getting something down pat. Work in
other courses seems to accomplish nothing, just seems so worthless. It
doesn't really matter whether you are right or wrong, 'cause there really
isn't a right or wrong. You can't say. It's all guesswork."
"These women either "get" an idea right away or they do not get it
at all. They don't really try to UNDERSTAND the idea. They have no notion,
really, of understanding as a process taking place over time and demanding
the exercise of reason." Their conception of learning is storing a copy
of the material, first in their notes and then in their head. "These women
feel confident about their ability to absorb and to store the truths
received from others....They may be quite successful in schools that do not
demand a reflective, relativistic stance."
This stage is similar to Perry's first stage in Harvard men.
"Perry's dualist position describes men who hold an outlook that is similar
to the received knowledge position we found in women's data. DUALISM, the
simplest way of knowing that Perry observed, was held only briefly, if at
all, among members of his elite college sample. Perry's men particularly
dichotomize "the familiar world of Authority - Right - WE as against the
alien world of Illegitimate - Wrong - OTHERS."
However, the authors found one significant difference: "[the women]
did not align themselves with authorities to the extent Perry described
occurring among men. This world of 'Authority - right - we' was quite
alien to many women. The women in our sample seemed to say 'Authority -
right - they' "

STAGE 2: SUBJECTIVISM (multiplicity).
" For many of the women,the move away from silence and an
externally oriented perspective on knowledge and truth eventuates in a new
conception of truth as personal, private, and subjectively known or
intuited.... subjectivism is dualistic in the sense that there is still the
conviction that there are right answers; the fountain of truth simply has
shifted locale. Truth now resides within the person and can negate answers
that the outside world supplies." They live by their gut, their instincts;
they are their own authority. Firsthand experience is a valuable source of
knowledge.
Almost half of the 135 women that the authors interviewed were
predominantly subjectivist in their thinking. They were of all ages and
backgrounds. "We encountered women from 16 to 60 for whom the discovery of
subjective truth was the most recent and personally liberating event of
their lives... thus women themselves attached the notion of growth or
developmental progression to the shift from silence or conformity to
external definitions of truth into subjectivism."

The authors find two types of subjectivism. One is similar to
Perry's MULTIPLISTS; and they call this group of young advantaged women
"hidden multiplists".
The authors discuss Perry's second stage, the MULTIPLISTS: "Unlike
dualists, Perry's multiplists no longer mimic the teachers' opinion or
memorize verbatim the words of the textbook; now they often insist that
their opinion is as good as the teacher's. By the time he reaches college
age, the average advantaged child, like Perry's Harvard men, has learned
that everybody is different, everybody has opinions, and the business of
the classroom is to express loudly what you believe and feel."
The women 'hidden multiplists' have backgrounds and values similar
to privileged Harvard men. But "unlike the advantaged adolescent male, who
has had years of practice in exploring and testing social limits,the
adolescent female from a similar background has frequently been rewarded
for her quiet predictability, her competent though perhaps unimaginative
work, and her obedience and conformity.
The result is HIDDEN multiplicity: "Unlike the male student, who
takes up the banner of multiplicity with vigor, the young woman usually
approaches multiplicity much more cautiously.
The form that multiplicity (subjectivism) takes in these women,
then, "is not at all the masculine assertion that 'I have a RIGHT to my
opinion'; rather, it is the modest, inoffensive statement, 'It's JUST MY
OPINION'. Their intent is to communicate to others the limits, not the
power, of their own opinions, perhaps because they want to preserve their
attachments to others, not dislodge them."

Perry at Harvard "locates the shift from dualism into
multiplicity/subjectivism as occurring in early adolescence."

The criterion for truth they most often refer to is 'satisfaction' or
'what feels comfortable to me' They do not mention that rational procedures
play a part in the search for truth."
"In situations in which the inner voice is silent and personal
experience is lacking, subjective knowers adopt a cafeteria approach to
knowledge, an attitude of 'let's try a little bit of everything until
something comes up that works for me'.There are no thought out procedures
in the search for lurking truths. The process is magical and mysterious:
'It's like the truth hits you dead in the face, and it knocks you out. When
you come to, that is it.'"

"The passionate rejection of science and scientists, while not true
of all subjective knowers, was very common. Whereas silent and
authority-oriented women often perceived scientists as ultimate authority
and looked to science for final answers, after the onset of subjective
knowing women often became alienated from things scientific. In many of
our interviews with women currently in school, the shift into subjectivism
was accompanied by a shift in academic major from science to the arts or
humanities."


Jane Jackson, Prof. of Physics, Scottsdale Comm.College (on leave)
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics, ASU, Tempe, AZ 85287.
602-965-8438/fax:965-7331. http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html
Genius must transform the world, that the world may produce more genius.