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AG Published by the National Instiiute for Staff ar > © Irganizational Development
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TEACHING THINKING SKILLS

What can you do to teach thinking? I am going to condense what I take to be the trend of contemporary
research into seven principles, each one of which seems to enhance the teaching of thinking, whether in a
subject matter context or in a stand-alone course. For convenience, let us use the one word "wit" to stand for

problem-solving ability, inventiveness, and whatever other capacities for thinking one might want to develop. |

All seven of the principles have to do with two questions: "What is wit made of?" and "How does it get into
your head?" The general answer is: Wit in considerable part is made of thinking tactics, and we can improve
students’ thinking by imparting a greater and more effective repertoire of tactics. Three principles follow from
that, principles substantiated to some degree by existing research.

First Principle: Foster a tactical attitude. This broadest principle is perhaps the most important, too. It
recommends teaching in such a way that students begin to attend to their own processes and consider the tactics
they use to deal with a particular kind of situation, such as solving a math problem or writing an essay. By and
large, we tend to focus on the product in progress, the essay, for instance, or the problem solution, with little
attention left over for the process by which we create that product. A good deal of research suggests that skilled
problem solvers are often rather aware of the processes they use and that less skilled problem solvers can learn
to attend to and enhance their own processes simply by focusing on them from time to time and proceeding

. more mindfully.

Second Principle: Make tactics explicit. This can mean one of two things. It can mean direct teaching of
explicit tactics—for instance, for mathematical problem-solving or writing. In the case of mathematical problem-
solving, students can be taught strategies for making a diagram, considering a special case, or breaking problems
down into parts. But making tactics explicit does not necessarily mean "spoon-feeding" tactics to the students.
Direct teaching aside, it can also mean establishing an instructional context in which the attention of students is
drawn to the tactical side of things, and they are provoked into designing their own tactics and explicitly
articulating their tactics to themselves. Such an approach has been used for remedial math education where

students are asked to problem-solve by sitting with one another in pairs and talking about how they go about ,

doing what they are doing.

_ In regard to making tactics explicit, many people feel that this is somehow unwise, that what you should do
is set up a situation which is rich with the kind of thinking involved and expect students to soak it up.
Regrettably, the evidence is that this does not work, except for the more able student who will detect the pattern
even when it is not made explicit. Beware of the myth of "soaking up!"

Third Principle: Students need managerial as well as particular tactics. Managerial tactics mean tactics for
controlling the overall process of problem-solving or writing or whatever. Particular tactics are matters of
handling particular sub-problems that arise, like writing a paragraph or constructing an example. But besides
that, there is evidence that students need overall task management tactics, such as asking themselves these
questions every few minutes: "What approach have I been taking?" "Has that approach been working out
well?" and "Should I try a different approach?" Unless these high-level questions are asked fairly often,
students tend to lose their way amid the forest of lower-level tactics they may have acquired.

These three principles relate to the general point that wit is made up partly of tactics. Four more principles
are related to another notion—that wit is somewhat context specific. Research over the past decade has
disclosed that in such areas as mathematical problem-solving, history, problem-solving in physics, and so on,
there are a number of tactical principles that are particular to the discipline. You cannot expect to teach a
general problem-solving course that applies to everything in sight and have that course empower students
widely across all subject matters. What do we do about this?

Principle Four: Teach to the task. Think about what you want students to do and teach to that. For instance,
if you want students to reason well in writing essays, you do not teach symbolic logic. True, symbolic logic may
have something to do with reasoning well in essays, but characteristically, not enough; it is too different. Teach
reasoning in essayistic contexts if you want reasoning in essavistic contexts. Oddly enough, it is one of the

 

G Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712