THE BIG PICTURE

What does it mean to think?

How can teachers help students to become better thinkers?
How do students learn and organize their knowledge about concepts? What are the main approaches to understanding what concepts are
and how they are used?
What are the main kinds of reasoning? What kinds of errors in reasoning do students make, and how can they avoid these errors?
What kinds of problems do students confront? What techniques can students use to improve their solving of both school and real-life
problems? What makes a student an expert problem solver?
How can you help students transfer knowledge and skills gained while solving one type of problem to other types of problems?
What steps can you take to promote effective thinking, inside and outside the classroom? How can you help students develop insightful
solutions to problems?

I. WHAT IS THINKING?
1.
2.

It involves manipulating and transforming information in memory. This often is done to form concepts, reason, think
critically, and solve problems.
A thinking skill is a mental process. This process can be divided into higher and lower order thinking skills.
According to Bloom the acquisition and comprehension of knowledge are lower order thinking skills. Evaluation,
synthesis, application and analysis are higher order thinking skills.

3.
McGuinness (1999) points out that thinking skills include some of the following:
collecting information (lower order skill)
categorising and analysing information (higher order thinking skill)
drawing conclusions from the information (higher order thinking skill)
brainstorming new ideas (higher order thinking skill)
problem solving (higher order thinking skill)
determining cause and effect (higher order thinking skill)
evaluating options (higher order thinking skill)
planning and setting goals (higher order thinking skill)
monitoring progress (higher order thinking skill)
decision making (higher order thinking skill)
reflecting on ones own progress (higher order thinking skill).

1. Concept Formation
a. What are concepts? Are categories used to group objects, events, and characteristics on the basis of common properties. Imagine a
world in which we have no concepts: we would see each object as unique and we would not be able to make any generalizations. If
we have no concepts, we would find the most trivial problems to be time consuming and even impossible to solve. Concepts aid the
process of remembering, making it more efficient.
b. Exploring concept formation

Concept maps

Hypothesis Testing

Prototype Matching
2. Reasoning and Thinking critically
Inductive Versus Deductive reasoning
a. Inductive reasoning involves reasoning from the specific to the general. That is it consists of drawing conclusions about all members
of the category based on observing only some members.
b. Deductive reasoning is reasoning from general to the specific. It consists of working with general statements and deriving a specific
conclusion.
Reasoning About Analogies
An analogy is a type of formal reasoning that involves four parts with a relation between the last two parts being the same as the relation
between the two.
Ex. Beethoven is to music as Picasso is to___________.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking involves thinking reflectively and productively and evaluating the evidence.
Some ways teachers can consciously build critical thinking into their lesson plans:

Ask not only what happened but how and why

Argue in a reasoned way rather than through emotions

Recognize that there is sometimes more than one good answer or explanation.

Ask questions and speculate beyond what we already know and create new ideas and new information.

3. Problem Solving
Problem solving involves finding an appropriate way to attain a goal.
John Dewey defined the first pragmatic approach to problem solving.
1. Problem definition
2. Development of hypotheses
3. Testing hypothesis
4. Selection of the best hypothesis
Wolfgang Kohler believed problem solving was best accomplished through insight. Kohler was one of the founder of Gestalt
psychology, argued that people ponder and think about problems. He believed that proficient problem solvers examine, weigh
and consider parts of a problem until flashes of insight provide a solution.
1. Identifying the problem. Kohler believed with Dewey that a problem had to be identified before it can be solved
2. Incubation period. He believed that individuals, confronting a problem, take time to think about possible solutions.
3. Insight. He believed that solutions to a problem occurred suddenly rather than incrementally.
4. Memory of insights solution. Once an individual solved a problem, Kohler believed that he or she would
remember the solution.
5. Generalization f solutions. He believed that problem solvers remember solutions and also retained the ability to
apply insightful solutions to future problems encountered.
Problem solving Techniques
Algorithms follow a clear and fixed set of steps that guarantee a solution to a problem.
Heuristics are informal, intuitive, and often speculative strategies that might solve a problem, but are not guaranteed solutions.
Means-ends Analysis - View the goal and then decrease the distance between the current state and the goal.
Working Forward - Analyze the current state then try to solve the problem from start to finish.
Working Backward - Start at the end goal and then try to work backward from there.

II. Teaching for Thinking

Stand-Alone Program - thinking is taught as a separate unit or as a separate course.

Infused Instruction - teaching how to think is an integral part of a curriculum.

III. Metacognive skills

When an individual "thinks," the main mental operation they use is called cognition. Cognition is having the intellectual capacity to reason about
information and then learn something about, and retain bits and pieces of, that information. All of us, at varying levels, have cognitive ability. Better
"thinkers," though, have metacognitive ability. People who can "metacognate" have the ability to think about their thinking. Such people can "stand"
outside themselves and evaluate and monitor their thinking. Learners who regularly use their metacognitive abilities are not only conscious of their
own thinking, but they problem solve while they are thinking.
People who are good "metacognaters" are also very good thinkers. They plan a course of action before beginning a task. They monitor themselves
in process. They consciously support or adjust their plan. Most importantly, or as importantly, they evaluate themselves (i.e., the finished the product)
on completion.
Having strong metacognitive abilities enhances students' ability to learn. To strengthen and encourage metacognition in learners, teachers should have
discussions with their students about their thinking. Compare approaches among students to problem solving and decision making. When doing
activities and assignments, help students identify what is known, what needs to be known, and how to produce that knowledge.
Metacognitive instruction can include learning how to learn, teaching how to study for a test, using appropriate questioning strategies before, during,
and after reading something, and knowing how to learn best.
Metacognitive strategies and skills (see Beyer, 1988, p. 69) include:
Planning
Stating a goal
Selecting operations to perform
Sequencing operations
Identifying potential obstacles/errors
Identifying ways to recover from obstacles/errors
Predicting results desired and/or anticipated.
Monitoring
Keeping the goal in mind
K eeping one's place in a sequence
Knowing when a subgoal has been achieved
Deciding when to go on to the next operation
Selecting next appropriate operation
Spotting errors or obstacles
Knowing how to recover from errors, overcome obstacles
Assessing
Assessing goal achievement
Judging accuracy and adequacy of the results
Evaluating appropriateness of procedures used
Assessing handling of obstacles/errors
Judging efficiency of the plan and its execution

METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES
Strategy

Description

Organize / Plan
Calendar

Manage Your Own

Learning

Plan the task or content sequence.

Set goals.

Plan how to accomplish the task.

Determine how you learn best.

Arrange conditions that help you learn.
Seek opportunities for practice.

Focus your attention on the task.

Pace Yourself
While working on a task:
Check your progress on the task.
Check your comprehension as you use the language. Are you
understanding?

Monitor
Check

Check your production as you use the language. Are you making
sense?

After completing a task:

Assess how well you have accomplished the learning task.
Assess how well you have applied the strategies.

Evaluate
I did it!

Decide how effective the strategies were in helping you accomplish

the task.

IV. Teaching for Transfer

An important educational goal is for students to be able to take what they learn in one situation and apply it to new situations. An
important goal of schooling is that students will learn something in school and to be able to apply it outside of the classroom
A.

What is Transfer?
Transfer occurs when a person applies previous experiences and knowledge to learning or problem-solving in a new situation.

B.

Types of Transfer
1. Near Transfer occurs when situations are very similar. If the classroom learning situation is similar to the transfer
situation, near transfer is at work.
Example:
Driving a Ford and driving a Chevy
Typing on a typewriter and on a computer

2.

Far Transfer means the transfer f learning to a situation that is very different from the one in which the initial learning
took place.
Example:
Using one kind of word processor and then another one (same concepts are present) Driving a car and driving a powerboat

3.

Low- Road Transfer occurs when previous learning automatically, often unconsciously, transfer to another situation.

Example:
learningtodriveacarpreparesyoufordrivingatruck.Drivingatruckissimilartodrivingacar
4.
5.
6.

C.

High Road Transfer is conscious and effortful. Students consciously establish connections between what they learned
in previous situation and the new situation they now face.
Forward- Reaching Transfer occurs when students think about how they can apply what they have learned to new
situations.
Back- Reaching Transfer occurs when students look back to a previous situation for information that will help them
solve a problem in a new context.

Teaching for Positive Transfer

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

Think about what your students need to know for success in life.
Give students many opportunities for real-world learning.
Root concepts in application
Teach for depth of understanding and meaning
Teach strategies that will generalize