Teaching Thinking is, it is said, a growing area in schools and colleges – and Thinking Skills are often rushed into by enthusiastic teachers but there are now so many approaches that it is unclear what kind of activity is supposed to do what.
Teaching Thinking is, it is said, a growing area in schools and colleges – and Thinking Skills are often rushed into by enthusiastic teachers but there are now so many approaches that it is unclear what kind of activity is supposed to do what. The techniques include: Odd One Out, Fortune lines, Living Graphs, Mysteries, Memory Mapping, Mind Mapping etc). The researchers looked at 23 studies and found the majority reported positive impacts on student’s learning, and around half, immediate positive impact on measures of attainment. It was found that students DO benefit from explicit training in the use of thinking skills strategies and they CAN apply the learning to other contexts, and even if there is no immediate gain, these can appear over time what is particularly interesting is that these techniques may have a greater effect on low attainment students. However, the skill of the teacher was paramount in being able to set up collaborative groups of students, to develop effective patterns of discussion and in eliciting student responses in a skilled way. So –teaching Thinking Skills seems to be a really good idea in skilled teachers’ classrooms, though the researchers make clear that the types of interventions need to be selected carefully to match student’s learning needs. I wish I were more confident that there were skilled teachers able to do this ! |