January 27, 2008
Teaching Thinking Skills 3
THE THINKING SKILLS RESEARCH
This summary is based on a review of 56 documents. Thirty-three of these are reports of research studies or reviews and are cited, with annotations, in the Key References section of the bibliography. Twenty-three are descriptive, theoretical, or guidelines documents or are concerned with research in areas other than the effectiveness of programs and practices. These reports are itemized in the General References.
Of the 33 key documents, 22 are research studies or evaluations, and 11 are reviews or syntheses of research. Subjects of these investigations include: general (or unspecified) student populations – 12 reports, elementary students – 9, secondary students – 9, and both secondary and postsecondary students – 3. The research involved regular, gifted, EMR, and Chapter 1 student populations; a representative range of racial/ethnic groups; and a balance of urban, suburban, and rural settings. Only three of the reports deal with student populations outside the United States. Five of the reports have teachers as well as students as their subjects.
The effects of many individual practices and whole programs were investigated. Many reports looked at the effects of instruction in various clusters of higher order thinking skills, including analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, together with the related skills and subskills of making predictions, making inferences, self-questioning and other metacognitive functions, formulating hypotheses, drawing conclusions, elaborating, solving problems, making decisions, identifying assumptions, determining bias, recognizing logical inconsistencies, and others.
Other reports looked at specific instructional practices, such as tutoring, using thinking skills software programs, and using advance organizers. Five were concerned with the effects of training teachers to conduct thinking skills instruction. The full thinking skills programs investigated by the research are discussed in the section on findings.
Outcome areas were likewise numerous, including student achievement as measured by assessments in the areas of reading comprehension, mathematics, general science, biology, physics, chemistry, art, social studies, and geography. Other outcome areas studied include SAT scores, commercial and locally developed higher-order thinking skills test scores, IQ test scores, and behavioral outcomes such as engaged time/level of participation. Research studies addressing effects on student attitudes or self-concepts were insufficient to allow for any general conclusions.
Teaching Thinking Skills 2
DEFINITIONS
Thinking skills. Critical thinking. Creative thinking. Higher-order thinking. Those who take an interest in this field of study soon realize that they cannot go tossing off these terms in a casual manner, since there are no universal agreements as to their precise meanings.
CRITICAL THINKING, for example, has been variously defined as:
- Reflective and reasonable thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do (Robert Ennis, quoted in Presseisen, p. 24)
- The disposition to provide evidence in support of one’s conclusions and to request evidence from others before accepting their conclusions (Hudgins and Edelman 1986, p. 333)
- The process of determining the authenticity, accuracy and worth of information or knowledge claims (Beyer 1985, p. 276).
Beyer goes on to say that “critical thinking has two important dimensions. It is both a frame of mind and a number of specific mental operations” (p. 271). Norris (1985) agrees, stating that:
Having a critical spirit is as important as thinking critically. The critical spirit requires one to think critically about all aspects of life, to think critically about one’s own thinking, and to act on the basis of what one has considered when using critical thinking skills (p. 44).
Lists of alternative definitions could also be generated for other terminology commonly used in the thinking skills literature. In an attempt to come to terms with these definitional differences, Alvino, in his 1990 “Glossary of Thinking-Skills Terms,” offers a set of definitions which are widely—though not universally—accepted by theorists and program developers. For purposes of the present report, these definitions are applicable. They include:
- BLOOM’S TAXONOMY. Popular instructional model developed by the prominent educator Benjamin Bloom. It categorizes thinking skills from the concrete to the abstract—knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. The last three are considered HIGHER-ORDER skills.
- COGNITION. The mental operations involved in thinking; the biological/neurological processes of the brain that facilitate thought.
- CREATIVE THINKING. A novel way of seeing or doing things that is characterized by four components— FLUENCY (generating many ideas), FLEXIBILITY (shifting perspective easily), ORIGINALITY (conceiving of something new), and ELABORATION (building on other ideas).
- CRITICAL THINKING. The process of determining the authenticity, accuracy, or value of something; characterized by the ability to seek reasons and alternatives, perceive the total situation, and change one’s view based on evidence. Also called “logical” thinking and “analytical” thinking.
- INFUSION. Integrating thinking skills instruction into the regular curriculum; infused programs are commonly contrasted to SEPARATE programs, which teach thinking skills as a curriculum in itself.
- METACOGNITION. The process of planning, assessing, and monitoring one’s own thinking; the pinnacle of mental functioning.
- THINKING SKILLS. The set of basic and advanced skills and subskills that govern a person’s mental processes. These skills consist of knowledge, dispositions, and cognitive and metacognitive operations.
- TRANSFER. The ability to apply thinking skills taught separately to any subject (p. 50).
Teaching Thinking Skills
Teaching Thinking Skills
November 1991
Kathleen Cotton
Perhaps most importantly in today’s information age, thinking skills are viewed as crucial for educated persons to cope with a rapidly changing world. Many educators believe that specific knowledge will not be as important to tomorrow’s workers and citizens as the ability to learn and make sense of new information.
—D. Gough, 1991INTRODUCTION
Throughout history, philosophers, politicians, educators and many others have been concerned with the art and science of astute thinking. Some identify the spirit of inquiry and dialogue that characterized the golden age of ancient Greece as the beginning of this interest. Others point to the Age of Enlightenment, with its emphasis on rationality and progress (Presseisen 1986, p. 6).
In the twentieth century, the ability to engage in careful, reflective thought has been viewed in various ways: as a fundamental characteristic of an educated person, as a requirement for responsible citizenship in a democratic society, and, more recently, as an employability skill for an increasingly wide range of jobs.
Deborah Gough’s words quoted at the beginning of this report typify the current viewpoint in education about the importance of teaching today’s students to think critically and creatively. Virtually all writers on this subject discuss thinking skills in connection with the two related phenomena of modern technology and fast-paced change. Robinson, for example, states in her 1987 practicum report:
Teaching children to become effective thinkers is increasingly recognized as an immediate goal of education….If students are to function successfully in a highly technical society, then they must be equipped with lifelong learning and thinking skills necessary to acquire and process information in an ever-changing world (p. 16).
Beyth-Marom, et al. (1987) underscore this point, characterizing thinking skills as means to making good choices:
Thinking skills are necessary tools in a society characterized by rapid change, many alternatives of actions, and numerous individual and collective choices and decisions (p. 216).
The societal factors that create a need for well developed thinking skills are only part of the story, however. Another reason that educators, employers, and others call for more and better thinking skills instruction in schools is that American young people, in general, do not exhibit an impressive level of skill in critical or creative thinking. The following observation from Norris’s 1985 review is typical:
Critical thinking ability is not widespread. Most students do not score well on tests that measure ability to recognize assumptions, evaluate arguments, and appraise inferences (p. 44).
Likewise, Robinson notes that:
While the importance of cognitive development has become widespread, students’ performance on measures of higher-order thinking ability has displayed a critical need for students to develop the skills and attitudes of effective thinking (p. 13).
There is yet another major force behind the call for improved thinking skills instruction. Educators are now generally agreed that it is in fact possible to increase students’ creative and critical thinking capacities through instruction and practice. Ristow (1988) notes that, in the past, these capacities have often been regarded as:
a fluke of nature, a genetic
predisposition….qualities [that] are either possessed or not possessed by their owner and that education can do very little to develop these qualities (p. 44).Ristow then goes on to say:
However, a great deal of the research currently being reported indicates that the direct teaching of creative skills can produce better, more creative thinkers.
Presseisen makes this point even more forcefully, asserting that:
The most basic premise in the current thinking skills movement is the notion that students CAN learn to think better if schools concentrate on teaching them HOW to do so (p. 17).
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