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Future thinking: One school's experience of teaching thinking strategies

Anne Sturgess
Abstract: 

Teachers are constantly urged to develop higher-level thinking skills in their students. This article describes one school's approach to developing these skills in Year 9 students in a way that is meaningful, transferable, and fun.

Journal issue: 

Future thinking:

One school’s experience of teaching thinking strategies

Anne Sturgess

Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the most perfect, the most sublime, the most useful, and the most agreeable.

St Augustine

Gardner (1983), Short and Weissberg-Benchell (1989), Silverman (1993), and Swartz and Perkins (1989). A basic precept of brain-based research is that learning is enhanced when it is linked with previous knowledge, experience, or understanding. In Future Thinking, students are explicitly encouraged to reflect, imagine, infer, ponder, guess, remember, consult, question, challenge, evaluate, and apply, as well as being given activities that encourage these actions.

Developing lifelong autonomous learners

An autonomous learner model was selected as the primary framework for the programme because it can be adapted to curriculum requirements and it readily accommodates students’ individual differences. This model promotes development of interpersonal and intrapersonal qualities, experiential learning activities, and the development of skills, concepts, and attitudes for life-long learning. Social, emotional, and cognitive strategies are taught within a context of interdependent and independent study.

The basic model is divided into five major dimensions:

•&&&&orientation;

•&&&&individual development;

•&&&&enrichment;

•&&&&seminars; and

•&&&&in-depth studies.

Orientation takes place when students are introduced to the course and to a few key strategies and ideas that recur throughout (such as brain-sprinting and listening with understanding). Students assume individual responsibility for the parts they play in their own learning and teachers act as active learning facilitators. Enrichment activities take the form of large-and small-scale explorations and investigations culminating in presenting findings to others in the class. Students work inter- and intra-dependently on futurisitic and problematic scenarios, investigate interesting facts, learn to apply criteria and graphic organisers to help them to distinguish between fact and opinion, and participate in a range of interesting and challenging activities that require the application of different types of thinking. The assignment paves the way for the in-depth study requirement of the autonomous learner model and provides a vehicle for the development of a wide range of skills.

Cognition, metacognition, and motivation

The explicit teaching of thinking skills and the use of cognitive maps and visual representations to aid memory and learning is critical to the development of effective thinking skills. Too often teachers assume that students arrive at secondary school with the essential skills and strategies for thinking. This is likely to be true only for those students who have already achieved academic success. One of the stated aims of the Future Thinking programme is to help students to develop as autonomous learners. To achieve this, students need to learn to self-monitor, self-test, and self-evaluate. This is accomplished by moving them through Swartz and Perkins’ (1989) four levels of metacognition:

1.&&tacit use—thinking without thinking about it;

2.&&aware use—conscious of doing a certain kind of thinking;

3.&&strategic use—using conscious strategies to organise thinking; and

4.&&reflective use—reflecting on thinking before, during, and after the process, considering how to proceed and how to improve.

When students are initially presented with a problem that challenges thinking (like a brainteaser) they usually try to find the answer without any thinking about how they are approaching the problem. For instance, some students rely heavily on recognising the problem or remembering a similar type of problem, while others may approach the problem logically, and others may work more experimentally and creatively. In this programme, approaches are discussed explicitly using a “Ways of Thinking” worksheet (Figure 1), often with a “Transfer of Thinking” table (Figure 3), to draw the students’ attention to the methods of thinking they use and to encourage them to evaluate each method’s effectiveness and efficiency.

Students are encouraged to consider whether their thinking at any given moment is logical, creative, lateral, reflective, intuitive, positive, negative, strategic, critical, habitual, imaginative, analytical, divergent, or convergent.

Students are moved into using levels 3 and 4 of metacognition through discussion and by considering the various ways in which a problem might be approached. They are encouraged to reflect on or to brainstorm on which method of thinking (that is, strategic, logical, or creative) is most appropriate for each problem. This is then applied to the wider context of approaching subject tasks (for example, tasks in mathematics or social studies). For example, a research assignment forms the second part of the Future Thinking programme. The assignment allows the teacher to demonstrate to the students how time-management tools (plans and logs), mind-mapping, self-evaluation (with specifically designed evaluation sheets), and ongoing review of work habits and thinking practices can enhance their learning experiences and can be fitted into the context of study on any topic.

Metacognitive reflection is an essential element of the programme, carried out through self-evaluation and review. To help them develop habits of metacognitive reflection, students are introduced to a set of questions at the start and end of the Future Thinking course:

•&&&&How do I learn best?

•&&&&What motivates me to learn?

•&&&&What de-motivates me?

•&&&&How do I remember?

•&&&&How do I organise my thoughts?

These questions help the students to focus throughout the programme not only on the content of the work, but also on how they process that content internally.

At the beginning of each lesson students are asked to describe how they have applied a new skill or strategy in another context, either in school or outside of school. At the end of each lesson, students are asked to identify a concept or strategy they have learnt during the lesson that they did not know before.

Every week, one or two particular questions may be selected as a focus for reflection and discussion, including:

•&&&&What was the high point of the week for you?

•&&&&Who did you get to know better this week?

•&&&&What is the main thing you have learnt about yourself this week?

•&&&&What changes did you make in your life this week?

•&&&&How could this week have been better?

•&&&&What did you procrastinate about this week?

•&&&&Identify three choices or decisions you have made this week. What were the effects of these?

•&&&&What future plans did you make this week?

•&&&&What unfinished business do you have left from this week?

•&&&&Open comment.

Students are taught to engage in metacognitive behaviours such as monitoring their own thinking, goal setting, time management, establishing and maintaining personal standards through evaluation, self-regulation, and applying individual learning styles to their own learning experiences.

Many of the learning activities are experiential, and students develop and discuss authentic scenarios where different strategies may usefully be applied. Students are also taught how memory operates in terms of input, storage, and retrieval. Techniques for enhancing memory are taught and practised. For instance, students are actively encouraged to develop and share mnemonics such as acronyms and visualisation techniques and to suggest how these memory-enhancing strategies may be applied within other contexts.

It is true that “nothing succeeds like success”. Feeling successful is only one part of the equation, being successful and recognising one’s own improvement is critical to increasing motivation. Success is also the end product of making mistakes and learning from them. People who constantly avoid situations in which they might fail are rarely truly successful, tending to achieve well below their potential. Student motivation is pivotal in the maintenance and generalisation of skills. The failure cycle begins with a lack of achievement and an ensuing decrease in self-esteem and continues as the student experiences less exposure to learning opportunities, more failure, and a further decrease in self-esteem.

The Future Thinking programme includes constant evaluation both of the effectiveness of the programme and of the students’ successes in the regular evaluation sessions, which use evaluation forms like the weekly student review form (Figure 2).

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Teaching for authenticity and transfer

Many “thinking” programmes occur as separate courses and are taught outside the normal curriculum. Increasingly, however, the regular curriculum is viewed as offering plenty of opportunity for the teaching of thinking strategies. Perkins (1995) suggests that a natural partnership exists between subject-matter instruction and the teaching of thinking but that thinking strategies must be explicitly taught and applied in order to advance students’ reflective intelligence.

It is not unusual to hear teachers of one subject complain that students have not been taught the basic skills they believe should have been taught within the context of another subject. It is most likely that students have indeed been exposed to these strategies but have failed to transfer them to other settings. When strategies are learned they should be applied across a number of tasks and settings and not simply taught as an inventory of strategies. To achieve this it is necessary to teach for transfer using systematic, explicit techniques.

Merely being told to transfer learned strategies is not going to bring about the desired result. Transfer occurs when teachers pay attention to transfer in contextual learning situations and when strategies are accompanied by self-monitoring. According to Fogarty (1994), in both context-bound teaching and a general heuristics approach, transfer must be shepherded. Sharing current cognitive learning theory with colleagues and applying the principles of theory in practice is critical in a school-based programme.

In the Future Thinking programme, students are encouraged to consider which mental approaches work best for various types of problem using a “Transfer of Thinking” worksheet (Figure 3). Practice with this helps them develop the ability to recognise which of their mental skills are most applicable to a given situation, helping them to transfer techniques from one subject to another.

At the end of each Future Thinking lesson, students are asked to consider one thing they have learnt during the lesson that could be applied within another context. This is applied if appropriate and its effectiveness is reported back during the following lesson. Discussion of strategies and lessons learnt always includes reference to other situations where it would be appropriate to apply these. Teachers who have participated in a professional development workshop about Future Thinking learn what strategies are used and how they could be applied within the context of their own subjects.

Evaluation and reflection

At the end of the programme, the students are asked to reflect on their perceptions of the course content and on the contributions they had made to their own learning during the course. Some of the findings from this evaluation are presented here, along with sample comments that illustrate the range of the students’ responses.

Information on the teachers’ views about the programme was gained from 10 teachers’ responses to a questionnaire and is also summarised here.

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Student evaluations

Out of 500 available student responses, 100 were randomly selected and analysed qualitatively on the basis of the number of students’ responses to questions 1–6, while question 7 was analysed quantitatively. (Note that percentages in the analyses do not add up to 100 because students were able to give more than one answer to each question.) Comments from the students were also collected from the student evaluations.

The questions used included:

1.&&What did you like best about the Future Thinking course? (See Table1.)

2.&&Go through your book and list the skills you believe have helped you the most. (See Table 2.)

3.&&Choose one skill and explain the difference it has made to the way you think and/or interact with others. (See Table 3.)

What students liked best

Students’ questionnaire responses indicated that the things they enjoyed most about the programme were the entertaining features, like the movie The Matrix and various puzzles and games, and the information they received about how the brain works (see Table 1).

Students’ comments reflected this, and suggested that they also enjoyed the programme’s fostering of independent thinking and planning:

I liked learning all about different thinking strategies and the functions of the brain.

I liked being pushed to think. I believe that the greatest question ever asked was ‘Why?’ It made me think wider and better. I liked the brainteasers a lot.

It was great learning about myself and how I think and why I think like that.

I enjoyed the quotes from famous people and the discussions we had.

I loved the feeling of being free to learn for myself. I didn’t feel as though you were ramming it down my throat but I still learnt heaps.

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Background to the Future Thinking programme

Future Thinking was introduced in 1995 as an optional course for Year 9 students at Hamilton Boys’ High School. Originally modelled on thinking courses offered at a number of other secondary schools, it has since evolved into a compulsory course providing all Year 9 students with the opportunity to develop a range of cognitive and metacognitive skills and strategies considered important for achievement at and beyond secondary school.

This article looks at the history of the implementation and provides specific examples of what Hamilton Boys’ High School has done to assist students in learning thinking skills.

The techniques developed in the Future Thinking programme are applicable in many different situations. Strategies and ideas may be used for developing and improving separate programmes, like this one, or in extending day-to-day teaching practice in this area.

The aim of the Future Thinking programme is to provide students with the foundation skills necessary to become autonomous learners. The programme helps students to develop the ability to think in new ways, to expand their thinking and reasoning processes, and to develop skills essential to realising their goals. It is anticipated that students will apply skills learnt in Future Thinking to other subjects and to relevant activities outside the classroom. Students also learn and apply study and review skills across the curriculum.

There have been several changes to the course since its implementation in 1995; for example metacognition has assumed greater priority as more is learnt about the critical role it plays in student learning and remembering. Although information about the brain and memory has always been included, this aspect of the course has been further developed to include how memory works, brain development, interesting facts about the brain, and stress management through biofeedback. Students learn about the basic anatomy of the brain, how different parts of the brain impact on emotions, and how we react to situations. Also new to the course is Costa and Kallick’s (2000) “Habits of Mind” model, which teaches habits that can contribute to goal achievement. Daily reflection on their habits of mind encourages students to develop practical metacognitive skills such as inquiry, editing, flexible thinking, and how to view situations from various perspectives. The intent of these behaviours (habits of mind) is to help students develop the habits associated with intelligent and responsible behaviour. Students assess themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of the 16 Habits of Mind at the beginning and again at the end of the Future Thinking programme. Activities such as poster creation, debate, and discussion create greater awareness of each of the habits of mind and each student selects one habit of mind (disposition) per week to pay closer attention to in their own lives. At the end of the week they evaluate themselves in terms of how much closer they are to developing this disposition as a habit. The same disposition may be nominated in successive weeks.

Description of the programme

Future Thinking is offered as an 8-week one-semester course within the option subject timetable, providing four 1-hour periods per week. The programme is qualitatively different to many other programmes in that students are involved in the development of their learning activities to a much greater extent than can normally be achieved in the context of the regular classroom. This follows a style of teaching difficult to accommodate within subjects requiring the achievement of set objectives. For instance, the “perspective-taking” unit requires each student to interpret the stories and images in his own way and then to create a scenario from personal experience that demonstrates an application of his particular understanding of the content or application of any message he may have derived from the exercise.

In order to inform interested teachers of the purpose and content of the course, all staff were invited to attend a workshop on the topic. Teachers were offered opportunities to look through students’ books and assignments and to discuss the course in depth. Ways of integrating strategies and thinking into other subject areas were also discussed at this time and teachers were encouraged to provide suggestions about how concepts taught during Future Thinking could be successfully applied within their subject areas.

Each Future Thinking course is evaluated by students. Information collated from these evaluations over the past 4 years shows that students benefit most in the development of improved time-management skills and an awareness of how to capitalise on their unique learning preferences. Comments from parents also indicate strong support for the programme, with most comments relating to the sense of achievement experienced by their sons when they set and achieve goals related to assignment content and presentation. The nature of the course encourages students to discuss concepts outside the context of the lessons, so most parents are aware of course content.

Theoretical framework

The Future Thinking course was developed using information about brain-based learning, thinking skills, strategy instruction, metacognition, affective education, and teaching for authenticity and transfer derived from the works of Bellanca and Fogarty (1993), Betts and Kercher (1999), de Bono (2000), Perkins (1995), Fogarty, Perkins, and Barell (1992),

Skills that students believed they had gained

The students believed they had gained a wide range of skills, both practical and metacognitive.

Student’s comments suggest that these skills are not just the results of rote learning but of a deeper understanding of their own mental processes:

The habit of mind I have developed is persisting. At home I used to take shortcuts but now I will sit there and complete the task.

Looking at other perspectives has helped me to sort fact from fiction and to not just accept things the way they look on the surface.

Time management skills have made a huge difference to how I think. Constructing checklists for myself and making deadlines made me think more directly.

How students thought their behaviour had altered

The most common changes that students noted in their behaviour related to time-management, thinking, and interacting with others.

Comments from students suggest that the explicit teaching of mental strategies in this programme has enabled them to function at a higher level of metacognition in many cases:

The skill that has changed my way of thinking is that of learning to challenge information rather than just accept it at face value.

I think of all possible answers and look at different perspectives instead of just one.

… I know how to structure my ideas ready for an essay.

I have found the skill of looking at things from more than one or two perspectives very beneficial not only in my education but also with my interactions with others.

It means I get more out of things because I don’t just do the first thing I think of.

These comments all show that the student is considering the way they think as well as the subject of their thoughts. Other useful skills gained include social and time-management skills:

I learnt to listen to others and evaluate what they’re saying.

One of my skills that has improved is the way I interact with my friends; I show them more respect.

Chess made me have more friends because I had to play with people I didn’t know.

The time management helped me a lot.

The skills that have helped me the most are knowing how to make timetables and set plans so I don’t leave things until the last minute.

Now I don’t need to stay awake at night worrying, because I am more organised.

Corrective feedback is essential to better learning. Teachers who only ever comment on what students do well fail to allow students an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. In Future Thinking students are given feedback about what they have done so they are able to repeat their successful strategies and are also given advice about what they can do to improve. Corrective feedback focuses on what can be done to achieve success rather than on what has not been done. Student comments on evaluation included:

This course opens your mind and lets you evaluate yourself.

This course helped me become aware of my mistakes, it has helped me become more complete…

I realise that the course has helped me to realise that some things about the way I do my work are not up to scratch and I hope I will continue to use these skills in the future.

Teachers’ evaluations

Teachers were asked to rank students’ transference of Future Thinking strategies into other classes using a scale from 0 (no evidence of transference) to 5 (clear and ongoing application of the strategies). The teachers’ responses show that they also believed the programme improved students’ thinking and planning skills (see Tables 4 and 5).

Teachers’ comments included statements that the students’ analytical, time-management, research, and goal-setting skills had all improved, although there were suggestions that further emphasis on time-management and self-evaluation would be an improvement:

Kids’ goal-setting… needs to be reinforced by everyone to be really effective.

It was also suggested that the programme was valuable because it provided important new information to the students:

It is sometimes the first time that students have done any of this kind of thinking.

Students realise that there is more than one way to approach a problem and more than one way to learn.

Summary

Future Thinking as a course exists primarily to provide Year 9 students with a wide range of thinking and organising strategies that will serve them well throughout the rest of their lives. Its effectiveness lies in the satisfaction gained by the students themselves when they become aware of how they think and learn and realise that they can use this self-understanding to enhance their own learning. The method of instruction, which is largely experiential, is enjoyed by students, as they construct their own understandings and relate new learning to other contexts.

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References

Buzan, T. (1977). Make the most of your mind. London: Colt Books.

Checkley, K (1997). The first seven…and the eighth: An interview with Howard Gardner. Educational Leadership, 55(1), 8–13.

Costa, A., & Kallick, B. (Eds.) (2000). Discovering and exploring habits of mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

De Bono, E. (1992). Six thinking hats for schools: Book 4. Cheltenham: Hawker Brownlow Education.

De Bono, E. (2000). New thinking for the new millennium. London: Penguin Books.

Fogarty, R. (1994). The mindful school: how to teach for metacognitive reflection. Cheltenham: Hawker Brownlow Education.

Fogarty, R. (1997). Brain compatible classrooms. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Training and Publishing.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.

Perkins, D. N. (1995). Outsmarting IQ: The emerging science of learnable intelligence. New York: The Free Press.

Short, E. J., & Weissberg-Benchell, J. A. (1989). The triple alliance for learning: Cognition, metacognition, and motivation. In C. B. Mc-Cormick, G. Miller and M. Pressley (Eds.), Cognitive strategy research: From basic research to educational applications (pp. 33–63). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Silverman, L. (1993). The Gifted Individual. In L. Silverman (Ed.), Counselling the gifted and talented (pp. 3–28). Denver, CO: Love Publishing Company.

Sternberg, R. (1983). How can we teach intelligence? Philadelphia, PA: Research for Better Schools.

Sternberg, R. J. (1984). Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of human intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Swartz, R. J., & Perkins, D. N. (1989). Structured teaching for critical thinking and reasoning in standard subject area instruction. In J. F. Voss, D. N. Perkins, & J. W. Segal (Eds.), Informal reasoning and education (pp. 415–450). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Swartz, R., & Parks, S. (1994). Infusing the teaching of critical and creative teaching into content instruction. Pacific Grove, CA: Critical Thinking Press and Software.

Websites

www.edwebproject.org/edref.mi.intro.html An introduction to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and its implications for teaching.

www.ascd.org./readingroom/edlead/9709/checkley.html

Howard Gardner’s definition of intelligence and ideas about how multiple intelligences theory may be applied in the classroom.

www.HumorProject.com.

The importance of humor. Dr. Joel Goodman is founder and director of The HUMOR Project, Inc. in Saratoga Springs, New York.

http://www.thethinkingclassroom.co.uk

A website for teachers interested in knowing more about multiple intelligences and learning styles.

www.kidshealth.org/kid/body/brain

For information about the brain in language kids can understand.

Recommended readings

Betts, G., & Kercher, J. (1999). Autonomous learner model: Optimizing ability. Cheltenham: Hawker Brownlow Education. This very accessible book presents the theory underlying the autonomous learner model along with practical strategies and ideas for its implementation.

Forte, I., & Schurr, S. (1997). Graphic organisers and planning outlines. Cheltenham: Hawker Brownlow Education. An excellent resource book for classroom teachers seeking photocopiable examples of planning sheets and organisation tools for students.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Howard Gardner critically examines the development of intelligence as a theory and explains, with great clarity, what he considers to be the most important habits of mind and why.

Perkins, D. (1991). What creative thinking is. In A, Costa (Ed.), Developing minds: Programs for teaching thinking (Rev. ed., Vol. 1, pp. 85–88). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. David Perkins clears up some of the misconceptions surrounding creative thinking and provides practical suggestions for classroom teachers.

Anne Sturgess was awarded the Beeby Fellowship in 2002 while she was Assistant Principal at Hamilton Boys’ High School. She is an experienced primary and secondary teacher with a particular interest in students who need differentiated programmes to achieve their academic potential. Anne is currently based at the University of Waikato where she is both Regional Adviser and National co-ordinator for Gifted and Talented Education (Secondary).

Email: annes@waikato.ac.nz