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 script
2. 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
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
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.
Perspective Taking Skills
Who 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 1
1. 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 3
1. 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
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...
Prompts
1. 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?