Perspectivism: a new theory for Learning Development

There have been recent calls for renewed focus on the theory of Learning Development (LD; Slawson and Eyre, 2024). A range of theoretical approaches are used across the profession (Johnson and Bishopp-Martin, 2024; Slawson and Eyre, 2024), though some of the more prominent, social constructivist, approaches have been critiqued in terms of their applicability and appropriateness to LD (Hilsdon et al., 2019; White and Dhillon, 2024). This piece responds to this call by introducing Perspectivism, a theory on how individuals perceive, create, and interact with their environment (Alrøe and Noe, 2012). This broadly critical realist model may provide a stronger way to describe LD than social constructivist-aligned models. The theory also offers a defence against criticisms of generic academic skills support (Richards and Pilcher, 2023) and an associated provocation to the centrality of discipline literacy practices in social constructivist theories in LD.