| This project is a preliminary exploration of an ecologically-minded interpretation of Personal Construct Psychology (PCP). It consists of two parts. Part I, "Theoretical Aspects of Ecological Personal Construct Psychology," consists of three chapters that focus on two main issues in personal construct theory: the problem of drawing concrete distinctions between knowers and their environments and the problem of how to acknowledge the role that the environment plays in knowing. The last of these three chapters argues that these issues can be dealt with by coupling PCP with ecological perceptual theory. Part II, "A Constructivist Study of Affordance" presents a study in which ecological perceptual theory, particularly the theory of affordances, is used within the context of a traditional personal construct research framework. The aim of Part II is to begin exploration of an empirical framework within which personal constructivism can question the literal distinctions that are drawn between the person and the environment (problem 1 above) and account for the role that "external" structure plays in our construal of it (problem 2 above). Although there is some overlap between these chapters, I have chosen this approach in order to create four separate manuscripts (chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4--7) prepared for independent publication. |
