-
TEACHINGTHINKINGIN THECLASSROOM
IN RECENT YEARS THERE HAS BEEN GROWING INTERESTacross the world
in ways of developing childrens thinkingand learning skills.1 This
interest has been fed by newknowledge about how the brain works and
how peoplelearn, and evidence that specific interventions can
improvechildrens thinking and intelligence.
Thinking skills are important because mastery of thebasics in
education (literacy, maths, science etc.), howeverwell taught, is
not sufficient to fulfil human potential orthe demands of active
citizenship. The challenge is to devel-op educational programmes
that enable learners tobecome effective thinkers, for if thinking
is how childrenmake sense of learning, then developing their
capacities forthinking will help them get more out of learning and
life.As Paul, aged 10, put it: We need to think better if we
aregoing to become better people.
WHAT ARE THINKING SKILLS?
Thinking skills are not mysterious entities existing some-where
in the mind. Nor are they like mental muscles thathave a physical
presence in the brain. The term refers to thehuman capacity to
think in conscious ways to achieve cer-tain purposes. Such
processes include remembering, ques-tioning, forming concepts,
planning, reasoning, imagining,solving problems, making decisions
and judgements, trans-lating thoughts into words and so on.
Thinking skills areways in which humans exercise the sapiens part
of beinghomo sapiens.
A skill is commonly defined as a practical ability in
doingsomething or succeeding in a task. Usually we refer to
skillsin particular contexts, such as being good at cooking butthey
can also refer to general areas of performance, such ashaving a
logical mind, good memory, being creative and soon. A thinking
skill is a practical ability to think in ways thatare judged to be
more or less effective or skilled. Thinkingskills are the habits of
intelligent behaviour learnedthrough practice; for example children
can become betterat giving reasons or asking questions the more
they prac-tice doing so.
If thinking skills are the mental capacities we use
toinvestigate the world, to solve problems and make judge-ments,
then to identify every such skill would be to enu-merate all the
capacities of the human mind and the listwould be endless. Many
researchers have attempted toidentify the key skills in human
thinking; the most famousof these is Benjamin Bloom. Blooms
taxonomy of thinkingskills (what he called the cognitive goals of
education) hasbeen widely used by teachers in planning their
teaching. Heidentifies a number of basic or lower order cognitive
skills knowledge, comprehension and application and a numberof
higher order skills analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
You could plan or analyse many learning activities interms of
Blooms categories. For example when telling astory, a teacher might
ask the following kinds of questions:1. Knowledge What happened in
the story?2. Comprehension Why did it happen that way?3.
Application What would you have done?4. Analysis Which part did you
like best?5. Synthesis Can you think of a different ending?6.
Evaluation What did you think of the story? Why?
72 E D U C AT I O N C A N A D A I C A N A D I A N E D U C A T I
O N A S S O C I A T I O N
TEACHINGTHINKINGIN THECLASSROOMROBERT FISHER
A GOOD TEACHER MAKES YOU THINKEVEN WHEN YOU DONT WANT TO. Tom,
age 10
msanjoseTypewritten TextYou are free to reproduce, distribute
and transmit this article, provided you attribute the author(s),
Education Canada Vol. 47 (2), and a link to the Canadian Education
Association (www.cea-ace.ca) 2010. You may not use this work for
commercial purposes. You may not alter, transform, or build upon
this work. Publication ISSN 0013-1253.
-
The human mind is made up of many faculties or capac-ities that
allow learning to take place. Our general capacityfor understanding
or intelligence was once thought to beinnate and unmodifiable. As a
child once put it to me:Either youve got or you havent and I
havent! This tra-ditional view of intelligence was challenged by
Vygotsky,Piaget and others, who argued that learners were
activecreators of their own knowledge. Some researchers claimthat
intelligence is not a single generic capacity but is madeup of
multiple capacities. Howard Gardners theory of Mul-tiple
Intelligence has had a growing influence in recentyears on
educational theory and practice, though not all areconvinced of its
claims. But whether intelligence is viewedas one general capacity
or many, researchers agree that it ismodifiable and can be
developed.
The key principle emerging from this research is thatteachers
and caregivers need to provide for:cognitive challenge, through
challenging childrens think-
ing from the earliest years; collaborative learning, through
extending thinking through
dialogue with others;metacognitive awareness, through reviewing
with children
their thinking and learning processes.
This research and the pioneering work of Feuerstein, whocreated
a programme called Instrumental Enrichment,Matthew Lipman, who
founded Philosophy for Children, andother leading figures such as
Edward de Bono, creator oflateral thinking, have inspired a wide
range of curriculumand programme developments. These teaching
approachesinclude cognitive acceleration, critical thinking,
andphilosophical approaches. Philosophical approaches haveproved
especially successful because they ally cognitivechallenge to
collaborative and metacognitive discussion.They develop through
dialogue the moral, social and emo-tional, as well as the
intellectual, aspects of thinking col-laborative as well as
critical and creative thinking.
PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES:
STORIES FOR THINKING
A pioneer of the critical thinking movement in America isthe
philosopher Matthew Lipman. Originally a universityphilosophy
professor, Lipman was unhappy at what he saw
EN BREF La capacit de raisonnement est importante, car la
matrise des notions lmentaires de lducation, mme les mieux
enseignes, ne suffit pas pour raliser le potentiel humain ou
remplir les exigences dunecitoyennet active. Le dfi consiste
laborer des programmes denseigne-ment permettant aux apprenants
dacqurir une capacit de raisonnementefficace. Car si le
raisonnement permet aux enfants dapprendre, dveloppercette capacit
les aide profiter davantage de leurs apprentissages et de lavie.
Daprs lexprience des enseignants, lorsque des lves acquirent
unecapacit de raisonnement efficace grce au dialogue, leur
assurance grandit,leurs apprentissages senrichissent et ils sont
mieux prpars relever lesdfis futurs.
Blooms taxonomy built on earlier research by Piaget andVygotsky
that suggested that thinking skills and capacitiesare developed by
cognitive challenge. Teachers need to chal-lenge children to think
more deeply and more widely andin more systematic and sustained
ways. Or as Tom, aged 10,put it: a good teacher makes you think ...
even when youdont want to. Teachers can do this is by asking
questionsthat challenge childrens thinking, but challenging
thethinking is not enough. Learners must also develop aware-ness of
themselves as thinkers and learners and practisestrategies for
thinking with others if they are to develop theintelligent
behaviours needed for lifelong learning.
WHAT DOES RESEARCH TELL US
ABOUT THINKING?
Research in cognitive science and psychology is providing
aclearer picture of the brain and the processes associatedwith
thinking. This brain research has some importantimplications for
teachers. For example we now know thatmost of the growth in the
human brain occurs in earlychildhood: by the age of six, the brain
in most children isapproximately 90% of its adult size. This
implies that inter-vention while the brain is still growing may be
more effec-tive than waiting until the brain is fully developed.
Cogni-tive challenge is important at all stages, but especially
inthe early years of education.
Psychologists and philosophers have helped to extendour
understanding of the term thinking, including theimportance of
dispositions, such as attention and motiva-tion, commonly
associated with thinking. This has prompt-ed a move away from a
simple model of thinking skills asisolated cognitive capacities to
a view of thinking as inextri-cably connected to emotions and
dispositions, includingemotional intelligence, which is our ability
to understandour own emotions and the emotions of others. Thinking
isdeveloped through interaction with others, so we need todevelop
in learners the skills of dialogue and collaborativethinking.
There is also a growing realisation that we need to developthe
higher metacognitive functions, which involve mak-ing learners
aware of themselves as thinkers and how theyprocess/create
knowledge by learning how to learn.2
Metacognition involves thinking about ones own think-ing. It
includes knowledge of oneself, for example of whatone knows, what
one has learned, what one can and can-not do, and ways to improve
ones learning or achievement.Metacognition also involves
recognising problems, repre-senting features of problems, planning
what to do in tryingto solve problems, monitoring progress, and
evaluating theoutcomes of ones own thinking or problem-solving
activity.
This ability to think about thinking is promoted byhelping
pupils to reflect on their thinking and decision-making processes
and is developed when pupils are helpedto be strategic in
organising their activities and when theyare encouraged to reflect
before, during and after prob-lem-solving processes. The
implication here is that teachersneed to plan time for debriefing
and review in lessons toencourage children to think about their
learning and howto improve it. This can be done through discussion
in a ple-nary session, or by finding time for reflective writing
inthinking or learning logs.
PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES DEVELOP THROUGH DIALOGUE THE
MORAL, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL, AS WELL AS THE INTELLECTUAL,
ASPECTS OF THINKING COLLABORATIVE AS WELL CRITICAL AND
CREATIVE THINKING.
C A N A D I A N E D U C A T I O N A S S O C I A T I O N I E D U
C AT I O N C A N A D A 73
-
as poor thinking in his students. They seemed to have
beenencouraged to learn facts and to accept authoritative
opin-ions, but not to think for themselves. He became convincedthat
something was wrong with the way they had beentaught in school when
they were younger. He thereforefounded the Institute for the
Advancement of Philosophyfor Children (IAPC) and developed with
colleagues a pro-gramme called Philosophy for Children, used in
more than40 countries around the world.3
Lipman believes that children are natural philosophersbecause
they view the world with curiosity and wonder.Childrens own
questions form the starting-point for aninquiry or discussion,
which can be termed philosophical.The IAPC has produced a number of
novels, into every pageof which, strange and anomalous points are
woven. Lipmanargues that these novels should be used in separate
lessonsin Philosophy for Children. But the challenge for teachers
is:how do we get the teaching of thinking into all lessons?4
Many resources have been developed in recent years toapply
Lipmans approach to the needs of children andteachers across the
curriculum. Stories for Thinking is onesuch approach.5 The aim,
through using stories and otherkinds of stimuli for philosophical
discussion, is to create acommunity of inquiry in the
classroom.
In a typical Stories for Thinking lesson, the teachershares a
thinking story with the class. They have thinking
time when they are asked to think about anything in thestory
that they thought was strange, interesting or puz-zling. After some
quiet thinking time the teacher invitesquestions and writes each
question on the board, alongwith the childs name. The children
choose from the list ofquestions ones they would like to discuss.
The teacher thenfacilitates dialogue around the chosen question,
usingSocratic questions to encourage deeper thinking andengaging
children in a metacognitive review at the end ofthe discussion. In
creating a community of inquiry theteacher has a method for
teaching thinking that applies notonly to stories, but to any
lesson.
When reviewing the value of a Stories for Thinking les-son, one
child said: You have to ask questions and thinkhard about the
answers. Another said: Its when you listento others that you begin
to change your mind. A third replywas: It is better than just doing
reading or writing becauseyou have to say what you really
think.
Teachers note that through Stories for Thinking les-sons, in
which they may also use poems, pictures, objectsor other challenges
for thinking, the children become bet-ter at engaging in dialogue,
questioning and reasoning,become more confident in expressing
creative ideas, injudging what they and others think and in
applying theirthinking to fresh challenges.
Philosophical approaches to teaching for thinking pro-vide a
means to raising achievement through creating com-munities of
inquiry characterised by cognitive challenge,dialogue and
metacognitive awareness. The experience ofteachers suggests that
when pupils are taught the habits ofeffective thinking through
dialogue, they grow in confi-dence, their learning is enriched, and
they are better pre-pared to face the challenges of the future.
Children think sotoo as Arran, aged 9, put it: When you get out in
the realworld you have to think for yourself, thats why we need
topractise it in school.
Teaching for thinking is about helping children to thinkfor
themselves and with others, which is why it is both achallenge and
an adventure.
ROBERT FISHER is a teacher, writer and researcher on teach-ing
thinking, learning and creativity. His books includeTeaching
Children to Think, Teaching Children to Learn, Teach-ing Thinking,
and the Stories for Thinking series. His PhDwas awarded for
research on philosophy with children. Heis a part-time Professor of
Education at Brunel University inWest London, England, consultant
to many professionaldevelopment projects and keynote presenter at
nationaland international conferences. Website:
www.teaching-thinking.net
Notes
1 Robert Fisher, Teaching Children to Think, 2nd ed.
(Cheltenham: Stanley
Thornes, 2005).
2 Ibid.
3 Matthew Lipman, Thinking in Education, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
4 Robert Fisher, Teaching Thinking: Philosophical Enquiry in the
Classroom
(London: Continuum, 2003).
5 For more information and a list of resources, see
www.teachingthink-
ing. net
WHEN YOU GET OUT IN THE REAL WORLD YOU HAVE TO THINK FOR
YOURSELF, THATS WHY WE NEED TO PRACTISE IT IN SCHOOL.