Thinking and learning: skills for the 21st
Century?
Professor Steve Higgins School of Education Durham University
@stig_01
International Thinking Skills Conference 2014
Monday 16th JuneSwindon
Overview
Evidence of the benefits of teaching thinking What are thinking skills? 21st Century skills? Pedagogy versus Assessment Thinking for the future?
Sutton Trust/ Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) ‘Toolkit’
Website of research-based approaches to support teaching and learning in schools
34 approaches so far classified by: Cost estimate (additional outlay for schools) Strength of evidence Potential learning gain (months progress)
http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkitEvidence
Teaching thinking
‘Metacognition and self-regulation’
http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/
1st =
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
Being ‘meta-cognitive’
Solutions
Guess (or copy!)
Sophisticated guessing (trial and error) Solve for the value of the pineapple
Apple = 7; Banana = 8; Cherry = 2; Pineapple = 3 Focus on the totals
Long – difference between all the totals Short - (28 + 16 = ? + 19)
What is thinking?
What is thinking? (1): classifying Report to LSDA (2004)
Identified over 60 frameworks Evaluated 35 in-depth Published by CUP as ‘Frameworks for thinking’ (Moseley
et al. 2005)
Examples Bloom (and Anderson’s recent revision for assessment) Halpern (for critical thinking) SOLO (good for assessment)
Synthesis of key features and categories The importance of ‘productive thinking’
What is thinking?
Benjamin Bloom
Bloom et al. (1956) Anderson et al. (2000)
Bloom, B., Englehart, M, Furst, E., Hill,W. & Krahtwohl, D. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. New York: Longmans Green, 1956.Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., Airasian, P. W., Cruikshank, K. A., Mayer, R. E., Pintrich, P. R., Raths, J., et al. (2000). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloomʼs Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Abridged Edition. Allyn & Bacon.
What is thinking?
What is thinking?
What is thinking?
S.O.L.O. Stands For:
S tructure of theO bservedL earningO utcome
Biggs, J. B., & Collis, K. F. (1982). Evaluating the quality of learning. New York: Academic Press.
Moseley, D., Baumfield, V., Elliott, J., Higgins, S., Miller, J. and Newton D. P. (2005) Frameworks for thinking: a handbook for teaching and learning Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moseley et al.’s (2005) modelMETA-COGNITIVE SKILLS
What is thinking? (2): Programmes
What is thinking?
Examples from programmes Top Ten Thinking Tactics P4C/ Storywise / Philosophy with Picture Books Accelerated Learning (ALPS)
What is thinking?
What is thinking?
Top Ten Thinking Tactics
What is thinking?
Storywise
Matthew Lipman’s Philosophy for Children (P4C)
Developed for younger children (by Karin Murris and Joanna Haynes - PwC)
Uses picture books/ videos Developing questioning and reasoning
What is thinking?
Creating a ‘Community of enquiry’
Procedure: Share a text (taking turns reading where appropriate) or
listen to a story, or watch a video Ask for questions and record them on a flip chart or IWB Identify questions for discussion Manage turn-taking in responding to the questions
“I agree with Harry because…” “I disagree with Hermione because…”
Encourage reasoning and interactive discussion
What is thinking?
What is thinking?
Some 10 year olds’ questions… Why did the pigs die when he sneezed? Why didn’t the wolf take the sugar when he
went to the first house? Was the wolf telling the truth? Why did they put the wolf in jail just for eating
a dead pig? How can pigs talk?
What is thinking?
Storywise
What is thinking?
Accelerated Learning
Nine ‘brain-based’ principles The new three ‘Rs’ Brain breaks VAK
What is thinking?
What is thinking?
Philosophical approaches
Brain-based learning approaches
Cognitive intervention approaches
ReuvenFeuerstein
Edward De Bono
Matthew Lipman
Thinking pioneers
What is thinking?
Infusion or immersion?
Critical Thinking training Infusion in subjects Immersion (implicit) Mixed/ blended
ES .38
ES .54
ES .09
ES .94
Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M. A., Tamim, R., & Zhang, D. (2008). Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 1102-1134.
Evidence
An infusion strategy: Odd One Out
What is thinking?
More infusion: living graphs and fortune lines
Making connections ‘Human’ statements and abstract
‘frame’ Connecting different representationsWhat is thinking?
Fortune line
What is thinking?
Extracts from Anne Frank’s diary
Last night we listened to England on the wireless... I was so scared.
11.7.42
I’m so miserable... I’ve become very short sighted.
11.7.43
Should a girl of fifteen be kissing a boy of seventeen and a half?
17.4.44
If I just think how we live here... it is paradise compared to other Jews not in hiding.
1.5.43
The invasion has begun! Will this year bring us victory? It fills us with fresh courage.
6.4.44
I have dreams, but we will have to stay here until the war is over. 12.7.42
Based on Peter Fisher’s ‘Analysing Anne Frank : a case study in the teaching of thinking skills’ in ‘Teaching History’, (Issue 95, May 1999 pg. 24 -31. Historical Association.)
Fortune lines: Anne FrankThe invasion has begun! Will this year bring us victory? It fills us with fresh courage.
6.4.44
Last night we listened to England on the wireless... I was so scared.
11.7.42
I have dreams, but we will have to stay here until the war is over. 12.7.42
From Swartz and Parks (1994)
Examples of thinking diagrams and prompts for thinking……..
Philosophical approaches
Brain-based learning approaches
Cognitive intervention approaches
A metaphor from Winnie the Pooh
What is thinking?
Kanga
TiggerOwl
21st Century Skills: indispensible or a distraction?
Consensus on the need for digital skills ‘21st Century Skills’ Knowledge more easily accessible Less important ‘Just in time’ from internet or through social
media
21st Century Skills
Three fallacies
1. Digital natives and the net generation learn differently now
Multi-taskers, digital experts
2. A Confusion of ‘Information’ with ‘Knowledge’ Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom
3. Technology motivates children and young people to learn
21st Century Skills
Déjà vu: 1913 - Film
(Thomas Edison, reported in
The New York Dramatic Mirror in July 1913)
“Books,” declared the inventor with decision, “will soon be obsolete in the public schools. Scholars will be instructed through the eye. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed inside of ten years.”
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/02/15/books-obsolete/ Picture source: Google Images
Déjà vu: 1930s Radio
http://dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/2013/03/ http://www.pinterest.com/caturani/paleofuture-education-technology/
21st Century Skills
Déjà vu:1930sprediction for educational TV
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/2012/05/predictions-for-educational-tv-in-the-1930s/
21st Century Skills
1968Proto-Skype‘Picturephone’…
http://www.pinterest.com/caturani/paleofuture-education-technology/
Déjà vu: 1960s language lab
Source: Google Images
1958 vision of future education
http://www.pinterest.com/caturani/paleofuture-education-technology/
21st Century Skills
1950s Programmed Instruction
Source: Google Images
21st Century Skills
1900s prediction of schools in 2000
http://www.pinterest.com/caturani/paleofuture-education-technology/
21st Century Skills
Curriculum Pedagogy
Assessment
Assessment
Curriculum Pedagogy
Assessment
Assessment
Summary (1)
Teaching (for) thinking is both effective and efficient
Needs to be discrete, infused AND explicit Technology does not change this Beware the assessment ‘elephant’
Summary
Summary (2)
You need to be thoughtful about thinking - what do you want to achieve? Programmes AND infusion
It’s not (just) what you do, it’s the way that you do it Process AND content
It is the essential core of education Short term curriculum goals AND long-term
educational aims
Summary
Philosophical approaches
Brain-based learning approaches
Cognitive intervention approaches
Which one are you? Kanga
TiggerOwl
Summary
Why thinking?
We want our children and young people to think for themselves
Thinking is necessary for learning
Summary
More information
Centre for Teaching, Thinking and Dialogue, Exeter University: http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/teachingthinkingdialogue/
EEF Toolkit: http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/
E-mail: [email protected]