On BlueSky, Paul Richwine wrote:
It’s a good exercise to write down what you believe. It’s not easy if you are honest. You don’t have to share it with anyone. And it doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind later.
I was curious to see if the PRISM Framework would have a good way to handle this… provide a bit more specificity. If you aren’t familiar with PRISM, see more details about it below. It is designed to scaffold learning along the SOLO Taxonomy.
These sentence stems below provide a structured approach to exploring personal beliefs using the PRISM Framework.
They are intended to assist you in
- identifying patterns in your beliefs,
- reason through your thought processes,
- consider alternative ideas,
- contextualize your beliefs within broader situations, and
- develop methods to examine beliefs critically.
PRISM Framework Sentence Stems
This set of prompts can encourage deep reflection and analysis. Here are some examples of PRISM sentence stems adapted for exploring personal beliefs:
Patterns
- “I’ve noticed that my beliefs about _______ tend to follow a pattern of…”
- “The recurring theme in my beliefs is…”
- “My beliefs seem to align with the pattern of…”
Reasoning
- “I hold this belief because…”
- “The logic behind my belief in _______ is…”
- “My belief in _______ connects to my other beliefs by…”
Ideas
- “If I were to challenge my belief about _______, I might consider…”
- “An alternative perspective on my belief could be…”
- “Combining my belief in _______ with _______ leads me to think…”
Situation
- “The broader context that shapes my belief in _______ is…”
- “My belief in _______ influences other aspects of my life, such as…”
- “When I consider the bigger picture, my belief in _______ relates to…”
Methods
- “To test the validity of my belief in _______, I could…”
- “One way to examine my belief more critically would be…”
- “I could verify the strength of my belief by…”
About PRISM Framework
The PRISM Framework is intended to support thinking as it moves from unistructural to multistructural to relational to extended abstract, as defined in the SOLO Taxonomy. Simply, this means shifting from having no idea to some idea to several ideas (but not knowing how they connect) to seeing how ideas and perspectives connect but unable to make sense of the pattern. It concludes with coming up with a hypothesis of how things fit together and ways to test it.
Since PRISM is a scaffold for thinking, you can really use it for anything. What’s even more fun, I’ve created a Perplexity Space to assist with applying PRISM to new ideas.
| PRISM Element | Core Question | Deep Questions |
|---|---|---|
| P - Patterns | What patterns do you see? | • What big ideas keep showing up? • How do these patterns work in different places? • What general patterns help us understand better? |
| R - Reasoning | How do things fit together? | • How do pieces connect to tell the whole story? • What makes sense when you look at everything? • How do different parts work together? |
| I - Ideas | What different ideas can we mix? | • What happens when we try new ways of thinking? • What other ideas should we explore? • How do different viewpoints help us understand? |
| S - Situation | What’s the bigger picture? | • How does this connect to other things? • What else affects what’s happening? • What’s important beyond what we first see? |
| M - Methods | How can we check our answers? | • What other ways could explain this? • How do we know which answer is right? • What different ways can we solve this? |