Perspective Taking Skills:What they are,

how they are promoted, and how they are assessed

Robert L. Selman, Silvia Diazgranados, and Michelle Dionne

Why Perspective Taking?An Answer from Theory and

Research

• Within the CCDD curriculum, perspective taking is a measured outcome that can be utilized within every unit to improve discussions and debates—and,

• To promote reading comprehension!

Why Perspective Taking?The Curriculum (and Instruction)

Response• We would like students to be able to read

about a given situation with social implications and identify how different stakeholders are likely to feel, think and react to the situation given the relationships between characters, and to generate solutions that consider an increasingly large number of people.

To promote this skill, we ask students to answer the following

questions about read text:• Who is involved in the situation?

• How do they feel or think about the situation?

• Why do they think or feel this way?

Why Readers Theater?

• Provides students with an opportunity to read engaging and accessible material.

• Is a vehicle for introducing the key selected “academic language” vocabulary that is so important to the CCDD approach.

• Allows for the exploration of abstract (and often complex) themes, like power or oppression, in concrete terms and with understandable examples.

Why Readers Theater? (Cont'd)

• Puts into effect the theory behind CCDD that those skills students most need in order to better comprehend science and social studies materials are academic vocabularies , the ability to use complex reasoning, and the ability to develop their perspective taking skills.

Using Readers Theater to Promote Perspective Taking

1. Through the analysis of the script2. Through the discussion of the script with peers

in the class, guided and scaffolded by the teacher

• The Case Study: Is Raul’s parent acting like a Pharaoh?

• Group Activity: Reader's Theater (in binders) and discussion

Does CCDD have an impact on students’ perspective taking

skills?

What is the way we assess perspective taking?

To assess this skill, we give students social dilemmas and give them the opportunity to propose solutions that may include the perspectives of different actors:

• What would a specific character recommend to another character?

• Why would this character make the recommendation s/he made?

• What might go wrong with this recommendation?

A typical dilemma for assessing perspectival skills

Teasing: Jariah’s Weird Sense of Style• You have lots of friends in your class this year and you

are enjoying school. In January, your teacher introduces a new student to the class, Jariah, whose family arrived from a different far away city very recently. Jariah’s hairstyle is really strange.

Also, no one in the class likes the music Jariah listens to. Some students are teasing Jariah because they think Jariah is weird. Casey is a student who has many friends and gets along with most classmates. Casey has been observing the situation and does not know what to do. Casey is asking different people for advice...

A typical dilemma for assessing perspectival skills

Lee is a student who often gets excluded from games on recess, because others think that Lee doesn’t fit in the group. One day, Terry found a journal that Lee had written with lots of private information. Terry and other students were reading it out loud, laughing, and talking about how they were going to tell everybody about Lee’s secrets. Rene is a student who was recently elected by other students as the classroom ambassador, and works with others students and with teachers to make the school a better place. Rene has been observing the situation and doesn’t know what to do. Rene is looking for advice.

Prompts1. Ali is a student who is often teased by other students.

What do you think Ali would recommend to Casey? Why do you think that Ali would make that recommendation to Casey? What might go wrong with Ali’s recommendation?

2. Sam is a student who often goes along with the perpetrators. What do you think Sam would recommend to Casey? Why do you think Sam would make that recommendation to Casey? What might go wrong with Sam’s recommendation?

3. Now that you thought about what other people would recommend to Casey, think about what you would say to Casey. Imagine Casey comes to you and asks: What should I do? What would you recommend to Casey? Why would you make that recommendation to Casey? What might go wrong with your recommendation?

Perspective Taking SkillsWho is involved: The act of identifying the various

people involved in a given social situation.How do they feel or think: The act of describing

the thoughts, feelings or orientations to action of a person in a given social scenario.

Why do they feel this way: The act of providing evidence for why a person feels or thinks they way they do, including how the position a person holds in a scenario, or how people are related to each other in the situation.

Taken from PT Codebook, Diazgranados, Weinstein, & Selman (2012).

Example 11. What would you recommend to Rene?

I would say that it doesn't matter if you are different.

2. Why would you make that recommendation?To tell how it's good to just be yourself

3. What might go wrong with your recommendation?

That some people may start teasing you

Example 2: Sam is a student who often hangs out with the

teasers…1. What do you think Sam would recommend to Rene?

That he might think teasing is a part of life and never stop.

2. Why do you think Sam would make that recommendation?

Because he probably thinks there (sic) cool and might think teasing makes you cool and popular

3. What might go wrong with Sam’s recommendation?Some people will disagree and might not think teasing will make you popular, cool or be a part of life

Example 31. What would you recommend to Rene?

I would recommend to Rene to become friends with Lee. I would to this because if the teasers see that we don't care about his style, then they won't either. Next, I might ask Lee to tell us more about why he likes the music he listens to.

2. Why would you make that recommendation? I would make this recommendation because that

is a friendly thing to do and since you have so many friends, others will follow your lead.

3. What might go wrong with your recommendation? Some people may start to dislike us.

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive Statistics (Cont'd)

Descriptive Statistics (Cont'd)

Historical Perspective Taking

A flood occurs when land that is normally above water is covered in water. From a scientific perspective, the flooding of the Nile is caused by rainfall far to the south that causes the water level in the river to rise.

This water makes its way north into Egypt and spreads across the low-laying land around the Nile.

Historical Perspective Taking (Cont'd)

Even though ancient Egyptians recognized that the floods were orderly, in other words they could predict when the yearly floods would begin and could measure the height of the flood to know how much food they would be able to grow, they believed it was a god that controlled the flood.

Why did they attribute the flooding to a god? Why did they think that the gods controlled how much flooding occurred each year?

Historical Perspective Taking (Cont'd)

Small group discussions about historical perspective taking example and classroom application of concepts

Questions/ Comments about presentation