Relativistic - Thinking checks and balances [V]

Effective nurses aspire to be time travellers.

Why should flash traders have all the adventure?

They also need to think relatively and be relativistic thinkers, the latter as described by Johnson (1994). If this sounds like faster than light travel in a sense it is, or at least it should seem like. Meeting the patient as they or someone reaches for the phone to seek help: is obviously taking the anticipation of care needs to the relativistic extreme - so what is this about?

This page at JHU "Perry’s Scheme – Understanding the Intellectual Development of College-Age Students" lists how Perry's formulation is reduced from nine to four levels of development:

1. Dualism – knowledge is received, not questioned; students feel there is a correct answer to be learned.
2. Multiplicity – there may be more than one solution to a problem, or there may be no solution; students recognize that their opinions matter.
3. Relativism – knowledge is seen as contextual; students evaluate viewpoints based on source and evidence, and even experts are subject to scrutiny.
4. Commitment within relativism – integration of knowledge from other sources with personal experience and reflection; students make commitment to values that matter to them and learn to take responsibility for committed beliefs. There is recognition that the acquisition of knowledge is ongoing activity.

Previous posts from January 2016 - with links supplied below - have reflected on dualistic and multiplistic thinking. I'm still exploring how work in educational psychology might inform my own. Picking up this thread again how does Hodges' model engender and contribute to relativistic thinking? Relativistic thinking as relates to Hodges' model is about a journey and not just one as item #3 above suggests. The student's journey may fly-by in time, but it is long and quite dense. Learners must negotiate lectures, self-study, simulation, patient, carers and public encounters, learning journals, clinical placements, assessed work and assessments, student-mentor sessions and all that the curriculum entails. Within the student's career there are innumerable situations and contexts if we cared to count them.

Responding to #3 Hodges' model can encourage immersion in a given context that presents a learning opportunity. They can also evaluate the situation as the care domains provide an epistemological platform from which to take in viewpoints and in the care domains scrutinize the knowledge that is shared and found through study. This includes the knowledge of experts. Whatever the care domain as a platform and viewport the student finds themselves in they should find a tendency to anticipate the other vistas nearby. Not only that but cognitively if not literally the patient and family when relevant can be with them. For person-centred care isn't just a matter of what is relativistic, but quantum too. 'Where' the patient is: so we are too.

Johnson, D.D. (1994). Dualistic, Multiplistic, and Relativistic Thinking as it Relates to a Psychology Major. Honors Theses. Paper 202.
http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/uhp_theses/202/

See also:
William Perry's Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development
A journey along the 9 "Perry" positions (as modified by Belenky et al. 1986) by William J. Rapaport

Thinking checks and balances [I]

Dualistic- thinking checks and balances [II]

Dualistic- thinking checks and balances [III] (or: The-hyphen)

Multiplistic - Thinking checks and balances [IV]