Week 1- Knowing and Learning

Engage

From your history and personal experiences, before you view the Explore video below, how would you define thinking?

Thinking involves the intentional and conscious use of the mind to unravel problems, reminisce over memories, and relive experiences. I include the phrase relive experiences because I feel that at our most basic level, thinking doesn’t necessitate the use of language. For those unable to speak or hear, they are still able to think. The process of thinking is also not easy to define because the nature of consciousness itself is not well understood. I’m thinking right now. Does thought rely on specific combinations of chemicals, electrical signals, and other variables? To be sure. But, in what combinations? Do we continue to think after clinical brain death is determined? How can we know? What can we assume? Should we even assume? Thinking can include wondering, which is what I just demonstrated. It can be me remembering that today would have been my father’s 76th birthday today. It involves recalling the time he taught me how to make a free throw, measure the volume of a bread pan, and thinking about the only day I ever heard him cry. (It was the day I called from MEPS in Albany, New York to say our group was next to leave on the plane for boot camp in Orlando, Florida.) Based on my personal definition of thinking, dreaming could be unconscious thinking because the mind unravels problems, recalls experiences, and remembers past events. However, what separates conscious thought from dreaming is the consciousness. Dreaming involves less easily understood metaphors and symbols which hinder their usefulness. In addition, details and people are more easily confused and misrepresented while unconscious. For that reason, I maintain that thinking involves the use of the conscious mind.

Explain

What is your reaction to Dr. Cabera's ideas about thinking skills and teaching thinking skills?

I’m fascinated by our different definitions of thinking. Dr. Cabera listed thinking into several categories that I didn’t contain in my understanding of thought which in hindsight seems too broad. I also agree with Dr. Cabera’s assessment that students aren’t learning critical thinking skills, scientific thinking skills, and interdisciplinary thinking (among others) and the way to fix education is to teach thinking skills. Another point of agreement we have is that increasing the amount of information will not enhance a student’s ability to think. If anything, it will hinder it. Also, I agree with his points about how to equip students with thinking skills.

Dr. Cabera names six types of thinking:

Critical thinking

Creative thinking

Interdisciplinary

Scientific

Prosocial

Emotional development

He states that the 4 universal thinking skills combine in different ways (what he calls DSRP -Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, Perspectives) and can be used to help students to think. He believes these tools will help students structure information in useful ways. The four universal skills outlined by Dr. Cabera are:

1. Teach them to make distinctions bt ideas, objects, things

a.Define our terms and learn to increasingly create more sophisticated and nuanced distinctions

2. Teach them to look at the parts and wholes that make up systems

a. Every part is a whole and every whole is a part

b. Two kinds of scientists- splitters and lumpers- we need splumpers who can construct new ideas and deconstruct existing

ideas

3. Recognize relationships between and among ideas.

a.W are teaching in departments, courses, and disciplines, but the world is interconnected

b.Need to see the connections

4. Take multiple perspectives

a. Everything looks different when we take a new perspective

b. Increased empathy, compassion, prosocial thinking, and emotional development

c. Increased skills of negotiation, conflict resolution, and spatial reasoning

Dr. Cabera made a critical point in his TEDx talk when he stated, “The ability to think lies at the root of democracies. In our Declaration of Independence, it says governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. What is the meaning of that consent if the governed are not thinking?” An uninformed voter not equipped with the ability to think affects us all.

How do your experiences with formal schooling compare with his description?

Because Dr. Cabera implied that thinking skills used to be taught with statements such as, “We no longer teach thinking skills,” I sat down and discussed with my husband our experiences with formal education. I graduated high school in 1986 from South Glens Falls Central High School in Upstate New York. My husband graduated in 1988 from William Allen High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Although we graduated in different years, from different states, and are different genders, we endured similar educational experiences. From kindergarten to about fourth grade, the day consisted of memorization of letters, words, basic math skills, the teacher writing on the board, show and tell, and physical education and the arts sprinkled in over the course of the week. From fifth grade until graduation, the physical education and art portion remained similar. However, the subject areas separated into different time slots, rooms, and teachers. The teacher still wrote on the board extensively, but now we took notes. Memorization still comprised much of the learning. In math class, we went to the board to solve problems. Learning seemed expected to result from homework assigned from a textbook we covered with brown paper bags and decorated with Sharpies markers and scratch-and-sniff stickers.

When and where did we learn critical thinking skills? At home. After graduation when we moved away from home and had to sink or swim. A difference we both noted was that our generation seemed to be the first in a while in which mothers needed to go to work to help make ends meet at home. Now, mothers and fathers sometimes have more than one job. Our generation lost out on some hands-on learning how to think from our parents and what we didn’t learn we couldn’t pass on to our children. It snowballed. Fortunately, people are recognizing this lack of thinking skills and educators are making significant efforts to remedy this situation. Project Based Learning is a move in the right direction in this endeavor.

What implications can you envision if we were to apply his ideas broadly to formal schooling?

If Dr. Caberas ideas come to fruition, students will grow into citizens that not only think better in general but will be better citizens, stewards, and people. Increased prosocial and emotional thinking could lead to less bullying both as children and adults. It could can the face of our government and re-prioritize government spending. I’m a huge Star Trek fan, and I like to think that life can imitate what we’ve seen in that franchise being not limited to the technology but also to the ideals.

In an attempt to extend my thinking on this topic and Dr. Cabera's video, I searched how to teach critical thinking skills. There is a myriad of pages dedicated to the topic. The information on one paper stood out to me. "Critical Thinking: Teaching Methods & Strategies" by Mark Jon Snyder stated the following:

The Research on Faculty Indicates…

 89% Claim Critical Thinking is a Primary Objective

 78% State Students Lack Critical Thinking Skills

 19% Can Clearly Define “Critical Thinking”

 9% Can Describe How to Teach Critical Thinking in their Discipline

 8% Use Critical Thinking Standards in Their Assessment Techniques

(Snyder, 2005)

I found it odd that 89% percent of teachers claim that critical thinking is a primary objective, yet only 19% can define it, 9% know how to teach it, and 8% use it in their assessment techniques.

Fortunately, the paper defines critical thinking, outlines ways to teach it, and provides resources. The author breaks down the definition in the following way:

Definition of Critical Thinking…

• Informed Decision-Making
• Thinking About Thinking & How to Improve It
• Actively Analyzing, Synthesizing, & Evaluating the Thinking Process
• A Product of Education, Training, & Practice
• Mental Habit & Power

(Snyder, 2005)

This is a website I saved under my favorites bookmarks for future use.

References

Snyder, M. J. (2005). Creating a Critical Thinking Classroom. Retrieved from

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/searchq=cache:_bfXZVR1yngJ:

https://www.wwu.edu/teachinghandbook/student_engagement/HANDOUT_-_Critical_Thinking_-

_Teaching_Methods_and_Strategies.doc+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Evaluate