About the Author

Terri O'Fallon

Terri has lived enough life to appreciate her own tarnished halo. Life has polished her rather than worn her out. With six siblings, Terri literally grew up in the “Little House on the Prairie” lifestyle on a small family farm in central Montana-receiving the blessing of having actual experience with a world that was a generation before her time.

She received a BS in Education, teaching in one-room country schools for several years before completing her MS in Special Education. She started and led an organization that served developmentally disabled adults that served four Montana communities. Terri went on to receive certification in public school administration, which included superintendents, principals, and special educational administration certificates at which time she served as a school superintendent for five years, and an elementary school principal for 8 years. With the completion of her PhD she went on to teach at the colleges and university level.

Terri has been teaching now for 51 years. Her life’s purpose seems to be culminating in her work with the STAGES model. Its scoring system is derived from Wilber’s quadrant polar pairs, which provide the frame for his AQAL quadratic theory. This scoring approach reveals repeating developmental patterns, which can be used in the scoring of an Integral developmental inventory, and also in-the-moment with clients.

STAGES reveals intriguing possibilities: understanding the relationship between states and stages; pointing to collective evolutionary patterns; recognizing the role of the senses in the evolution of perception and perspectives; developmental grammar and semiotics; repeating patterns; and the place in our development for concrete, subtle and metaware objects. There is much room for exploration and prototyping, including matching practices to developmental stages.

Terri has two sons, a daughter-in-law and two granddaughters and loves to hike the mountains every day, ride her bike and contemplate how to develop the listening skills her mother had; though now passed away, “she is still raising me”.

Website: https://www.terriofallon.com

Posts by Terri O'Fallon

SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE

The Cycles of Time: Mapping Evolution at the Edge of History

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In this wide-ranging conversation, Terri O’Fallon and Keith Martin-Smith explore how human development unfolds through increasingly complex relationships with time, from infancy’s timelessness to the transpersonal awareness of timelessness beyond time. They examine how cultural evolution is accelerating, why recurring societal crises reflect developmental recursions, and how future leadership must integrate ethical maturity, shadow work, and a multi-generational vision.

SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE

Developmental Experiments in Individual and Collective Movement to Second Tier

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This article describes seven years of research on an ongoing experiment that fosters the development of individuals and groups through an integrally informed educational program called Generating Transformative Change (GTC). A progressively targeted developmental action research project involving seven cohorts is described and the conclusions about three of these participant groups, involving a total of 30 people, are presented.

SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE

The Highest Stages of Conscious Development

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Terri O’Fallon and Keith Martin-Smith dive into a deeper and more detailed exploration of Terri’s STAGES model, focusing on a smaller section of the model: stages 3.0 – 6.0 (roughly Amber/Orange to Turquoise/Indigo). Terri outlines what makes each level of her model unique from the last, what causes people to shift from one level to another, as well as what the mature expressions look like for 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 stages.

SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE

Perspectives on Development: Introducing the STAGES Model

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Terri O’Fallon takes us on a guided journey through her STAGES model, an integrally based development model that charts human development from infancy to the highest levels of development that humans are capable of. Terri’s research is based in the number of perspectives a person can take (1st through 7th) – and she explains how different levels of fluency with these perspectives can often cause us to talk “past” or “over” one another, and how familiarizing ourselves with these perspectives can help us stop doing that.