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.

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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.