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Re: [Phys-l] thinking skills (and how to teach thinking skills)



Thank you for voicing what I have been saying for years. One must be careful because the job of teaching thinking is a fairly complex one and often does not go the way you think it should go. For example puzzles can have some effect, but there is not much research to show that they are the key.

To understand what must be done, look at the work of Karplus, Renner and Lawson. Lawson has repeatedly demonstrated that a learning cycle approach raises scores on Piagetian tests. And Piagetian tests do measure vital aspects of thinking. This particular method of teaching thinking does not rely on puzzles. It also requires physical experience and moving from the concrete to the abstract. He has demonstrated a very large effect size using biology at ASU with a learning cycle approach.


The work of Reuven Feuerstein does use puzzles, but not the sort that are used by classroom teachers. He uses fairly complex curriculum independent puzzles which the teachers have to relearn every time they teach IE (Instrumental Enrichment). His methods raises IQ scores and has a large effect size.

Benezit apparently had a large effect by deferring conventional math education to a higher grade and instead concentrated on problem solving. His reasoning was that the conventional teaching of arithmetic blocked the reasoning skills. There is apparently a modern research paper that shows the same thing, but I can not locate it at present. His experiment has not been repeated and under NCLB would probably be forbidden.

Shayer & Adey in England have also had a large effect on reasoning skills using "Thinking Science". This is an application of the learning cycle with specific emphasis on building conservation, proportional, two variable, combenatorial... reasoning. It attacks what I see as the big lack in many of the PER curricula. It explicitly attacks the various facets of of thinking measured by Piagetian tests, but does it using the learning cycle. This program shows good gain across many fields and may achieve far transfer.

It is quite probable that many of the PER curricula build some thinking. In particular Modeling uses the quintissential question "How do you know that?" This type of questioning builds the ability to think. Essentially it is asking form metacognition.

While NCLB is certainly holding down the lid because many schools now do test review rather than education, it is not the root problem. The problem of developing thinking skills has always been there and it has never been faced by schools. The one school system that tried to face it was Manchester under Benezit. He eventually resigned, as I gather, because the parents did not like what he was doing. NCLB is making the problem worse and driving good teachers out of the public school system. If it continues in current form, it will probably become the root problem.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


A couple of weeks ago I was visiting UC Davis. Among other things,
I was invited to meet with Wendell Potter's "Science Education"
discussion group. The discussion opened with the question, if
you could change one thing about the way science is taught, what
would it be?

My answer was that we should rededicate ourselves to the idea
that _thinking_ is primary and fundamental. Thinking skills
can be taught ... but there is considerable room for improvement
in the way schools teach thinking. There is far too much that
goes on in the school that rewards rote regurgitation and/or
penalizes actual thinking.

A fraction of the problem -- but only a fraction -- can be blamed
on the ECLBE law (Every Child Left Behind Equally).

The topic of thinking skills (and how to teach thinking skills) is
discussed in more detail at
http://www.av8n.com/physics/thinking.htm
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