Biases and Situatedness

The initial stage of cognitive development, defined as dualism by Perry (1970), is defined by Thoma (1993) as: “characterized by a view that objective and immutable answers exist for most questions and that authorities or experts know or can discover the eternal truths. The dualism, students hold a black or white, right or wrong, view of the world and have little tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. Knowledge is regarded as timeless and absolute. Learning is viewed as a process of the transmission of facts and truths from the teacher to the student.” Paul & Elder (2014) refer to habitual thinking as biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, and often downright prejudiced. Everyone is biased. Any one person’s view is always partial, partisan, and problematic (Eisenberg, Goodall, & Tretheway, 2014). Write a 250- to 300-word response to the following: How can I retarget the mechanism I use to spot bias in others and to spot the bias in myself? What is the experience of switching perspectives like for me? How fully am I able to inhabit the perspective of another? What barriers prevent me from letting go of my own worldview?