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

["John M Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Ah, here is one of the big questions.  This has actually been 
researched by Lawson in various articles in JRST.  It has been 
researched by Shayer & Adey and they have come up with some solutions 
(Thinking Science).  There is also an interesting piece of research 
done in the 40s by Benezit and it is available on the web.

Piaget originally noticed that at around age 10+ formal thinking 
skills seem to click in.  But his research was at an exclusive prep 
school, so this actually only happens to a fraction of students.  Now 
we know that the pre-frontal lobes go through rapid development at 
that time, and that this tends to promote "formal operational" 
reasoning.  Lawson categorizes this stage as being "hypothetico 
deductive" and the earlier stage as "empirical inductive".  (Note: he 
has also by experiment shown that inductive reasoning is actually 
hypothetico deductive.)

Basically certain types of thinking must be achieved before deeper 
thinking in physics can be attempted.  This is conservation reasoning, 
two variable reasoning, control of variables reasoning, and 
proportional reasoning.  Shayer and Adey did this with guided inquiry 
labs target specifically at these types of reasoning.  They roughly 
follow a learning cycle.  First students get concrete preparation, and 
then exploration with Socratic dialog.  Finally there is a summary 
generated by the students and the teacher does explicit bridging to 
situations not explored in class.  Lawson has found that you can get 
gain on a Piagetian test by using the "scientific learning cycle" 
which has been attributed to Karplus.  There are other types of 
reasoning which also should be improved, but they do not seem to be as 
important to elementary physics (statistical reasoning, combinatorial 
reasoning, probabalistic reasoning).

So essentially one must target the various types of reasoning.  Guided 
inquiry is essential to helping students reason, but providing them 
with concrete models or helping them to develop such models is also 
extremely vital.  Finally providing a framework for problem solving is 
extremely helpful.  This latter idea is exploited by the Heller's 
material which is available on the web, by VanHeuvelin in his Alps 
worksheets and also by Minds on Physics.

The really major increase in brain development is at age 10+ and if 
you target improvement of thinking skills at that age, there is 
evidence that it has maximal effectiveness.  There is also a window of 
opportunity around age 18, and also possibly one at age 26.  Beyond 
this there are other windows of opportunity in elementary school 
especially in first grade.  There has been some research which 
indicates that targeting thinking skills at the windows of opportunity 
is the most effective.  There have been some experiments that showed 
that heavy duty coursework should be done then, and that more life 
skills (work in the community) should be done in between those 
windows.

As far as research goes, the classroom can be a place of research. 
Action education research can be carried out by the instructor.  This 
is one of the best ways of getting into methods that are more 
effective.  This can be done in MS, HS,2YC, and Univ.

I would recommend two books by Shayer and Adey "Learning Intelligence" 
and "Really Raising Standards".  Beyond this the articles by Karplus, 
Renner, Lawson in JRST and elsewhere are excellent.  Then there is the 
venerable book "Instrumental Enrichment" by Reuven Feuerstein.  He has 
also shown that intelligence can be learned and has written about the 
techniques needed to do it.

The information is available, and discussion of pedagogy and 
"cognitive enhancement" could be much more intelligent if eveyone read 
the journals.  There is evidence that 85% of adults could be "formal 
operational"  (Arons book) Would you value the opinions of a physicist 
who does not read the physics journals?  Should you value the 
pedagogical opinions of those who do not read the relevant research in 
learning?  Being an Educator really requires just as much deep 
knowledge as being a research physicist.

John M. Clement
Houston, Tx

> 	How do you teach thinking skills to a person whose prefrontal 
> cortex is not completely present?  I'm sure every parent of a 
> teen-ager 
> would love to know th answer.  That's really a research project.
> 	According to historian Garry Wills, the Roman answer was: Don't 
> even try with anyone under 30.  You may have noticed, as I have, 
> that 
> older students seem to demonstrate thinking skills with very little 
> prompting.
> 				Regards,
> 					Jack