Thinking Through the Curriculum

Robert Burden, Marion Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134693313
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book tackles the contentious issue of whether and how thinking should be taught in schools. It explores how best to help children become effective thinkers and learners. The book also examines whether there is one set of underlying cognitive skills and strategies which can be applied across all the curriculum subjects and beyond. Its main thrust, however, is a detailed examination of approaches to developing cognitive skills which are specific to the National Curriculum. The book provides chapters from both generalists and subject specialists to illustrate how teachers in different subject areas can benefit from taking a cognitive approach to their subject. It will give teachers a clear understanding of different approaches to teaching thinking and how these fit together.

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HOW CAN WE BEST HELP CHILDREN TO BECOME EFFECTIVE THINKERS AND LEARNERS?

The case for and against thinking skills programmes

Robert Burden

Introduction

This book, as its title implies, is about whether and how thinking should be taught as part of the school curriculum. The issue is not new but it is contentious. On the one hand there are those who believe that even to ask the question ‘Should thinking be taught in schools?’ is itself absurd since thinking is an integral part of all learning and not something that can be separated out from other human activities. This particular viewpoint is most lucidly expressed by Frank Smith (1992) in his provocative book To Think.

An alternative perspective is presented by those who argue that thinking, like other generic activities, can be performed at different levels. If this is the case, presumably it should be possible to learn how to think more effectively and even to be taught to do so. It has been argued (Maclure, 1991) that even to consider the question of whether thinking can be taught carries the implication that particular kinds of teaching may improve particular kinds of thinking.

This brings us to the further point of exactly what it is that we mean when we refer to thinking within this context. A moment’s reflection makes it clear that the term has a multitude of meanings. We can, for example, think logically, creatively or critically. We can daydream, we can remember and connect aspects of our past lives to the present, we can look to the future and predict the consequences of this or that set of actions and we can interpret the activities of others according to our own constructed theories. Within the world of education, in particular, we can see thinking as a set of transferable skills, such as problem-solving and learning to learn, that all schools should be seeking to promote (Nisbet and Shucksmith, 1986; Nutbrown, 1994; DFE, 1995).

In many respects such questions relate directly to the school curriculum which can be seen as the main vehicle by which educational ideas are processed. If something is worth teaching, shouldn’t it be afforded curriculum space in its own right? Therefore, if we can make a strong case for the need for school-leavers to be able to think and act critically, creatively and independently, why not introduce a subject entitled thinking? This is an argument that has been strongly made by some recent theorists and which in many ways reflects the case that was previously made for subjects like Latin. In particular, adherents of this approach such as Feuerstein et al. (1980), de Bono (1976, 1981) and, more recently in the UK, Blagg and his coworkers (1993) argue for a significant amount of curriculum space and time to be devoted to highly structured programmes of work specifically directed towards the development of thinking skills, concepts and strategies. For Lipman et al. (1980), philosophy is a key subject that should lie at the heart of the curriculum.

Alternatively, there are those who believe strongly in a so-called ‘infusion’ approach whereby the very pedagogical process should and must involve the social construction of thought, which is centred upon key concepts, skills and knowledge within various curriculum areas (Nisbet, 1991). This view, like its counterpart, has been pressed more or less strongly in different (educational) cultures, in different historical eras and at different phases within our educational system.

Psychological ideas about children’s developing thinking have had a variable influence on classroom practice. While the influence of early Piagetian ideas on children’s cognitive development was clearly apparent in the Plowden educational revolution of the 1960s, the perceived implications for action by teachers tended to be non-interventionist, concentrating mainly upon setting the right conditions for the maturation of thinking processes to occur naturally. In primary schools, open-plan classrooms and ‘discovery’ learning were considered to be the most appropriate ways of setting the scene for cognitive skills to unfold without hindrance.

Slightly later, the work of Jerome Bruner (1971), culminating in his integrated curriculum project ‘Man; A Course of Study’ and subsequently drawn upon to great effect in the High/Scope programme (Weikart et al., 1971; Macleod, 1989), brought cognition very much to the forefront of primary education, in theory at least, and offered constructive alternatives for teachers who wished to become more actively involved in teaching their pupils to think. More recently the work of Robert Fisher (1987, 1990) has been particularly influential in the UK in keeping the developing of thinking skills on the agenda of many primary schools. What is clear from this work is an emphasis upon active learning, project work and general curriculum development as the most appropriate ways by which to approach this task. What is equally clear, however, is that the introduction of the National Curriculum into the British education system demonstrates that amongst those who set the educational agenda this kind of approach has fallen heavily out of favour in the 1990s.

At the secondary school level, on the other hand, direct informational and skills-based input via the medium of subject specialisms has always held great sway. The history of curriculum development at the secondary school level has followed a path of some conflict between different subject areas for dominance in terms of time and status afforded to one subject over another. Where once Latin, Greek and religious studies were predominant, science, mathematics and English now hold the fort. Evidence of this trend, if evidence is needed, is provided by the amount of time allocated for the teaching of each subject within the National Curriculum. Moreover, an examination of the largely ‘objectives’-based approach taken to the specification of various aspects of the different subject syllabuses makes it clear that the transmission of certain kinds of prescribed information has come to be seen as the most appropriate form of educational instruction, by politicians and policymakers at least.

Despite the best efforts of such philosophers of education as John Dewey in the United States and Hirst and Peters in the UK, in emphasising the importance of the development of cognition through subject teaching, there has been increasing concern in both countries that schools have not been successful in producing young people who can think rationally, critically and creatively in dealing with the issues with which they and we are faced as the twentieth century draws to a close. Nickerson (1988) concludes, for example, in a review of a number of large-scale American evaluation studies, that it is possible to finish twelve or thirteen years of public education in the United States without developing much competence as a thinker. Moreover, a ‘state of the art’ report completed by the OECD found little evidence in the countries where curriculum policies and major programmes were reviewed that thinking had been identified as a major target in the organisation of the curriculum of basic education (Maclure and Davies, 1991).

De Bono (1991) argues that there are clearly identifiable reasons for this state of affairs. He suggests that ‘education’ is both inward-looking and complacent, its curriculum is too crowded, it does not really understand what is meant by thinking, and it is confused as to how thinking can actually be taught. As one might expect, he then goes on to advocate his particular approach to thinking as a cure for all these ills.

Nevertheless, geared as it is towards a notion of success that is measured in terms of examination grades, secondary education is inevitably in constant danger of being directed towards the achievement of relatively narrow academic aims. Education (as opposed to ‘schooling’) must surely be about more than this. While the transmission of culturally worthwhile knowledge from one generation to the next must certainly continue to stand as one important aspect of a ‘good’ education, and the inculcation of love of learning for its own sake as another, there must also be a form of preparation to meet the future demands of an ever-changing world.

An important concern arising from this discussion is how teachers can help to prepare children to become educated citizens, ready to meet the needs and demands of society. It is our contention that such a quest is not only worthwhile but essential for the future survival of our society and possibly even our planet. The organisational psychologist Charles Handy has argued persuasively, like Alvin Tofler before him, that we are living in a world of increasingly rapid but discontinuous change. A knowledge timeline makes it abundantly clear that more has been discovered in the past five years than in the previous thirty or in the previous hundred before that. There is now so much information available that what we ‘knew’ to be true yesterday will not necessarily be true tomorrow. The teaching of general knowledge or ‘facts’ has therefore become an extremely inefficient and ineffective way of preparing young people to meet the challenges of the future.

The problem is even more complicated by the discontinuous nature of this knowledge explosion. Change does not occur in neatly ordered steps, but often occurs in unexpected ways in unforeseen directions such that our preconceived notions about almost anything can be confounded at a stroke. Unless we are prepared to meet the challenges of chaos and uncertainty, survival seems increasingly unlikely.

An OECD report that provides the background to a highly successful conference entitled ‘Learning to think: Thinking to learn’ (Maclure and Davies, 1991) has identified five significant trends in societies across the world that call for a whole new range of cognitive skills. These are:

1. the increasing need for a flexible work-force capable of being retrained, perhaps repeatedly;
2. production tasks that increasingly require the application of intelligent judgement to technological tasks and systems rather than dexterity in manual skills;
3. the need for workers to comprehend, interpret and communicate, not between discrete processes but as participants within often intricate human and machine systems;
4. the emergence of enterprise skills in societies where possibilities seem limitless, but in which increasingly the prevailing culture seldom provides clear references for good practice; linked to this are
5. the increasingly complex demands of good citizenship, where intersubjective truth becomes less easy to identify.

An important challenge with which education systems throughout the world are faced, therefore, is one of how such needs can best be met.

Alternative ways forward

If, as we believe, the case that has been made above is irrefutable, the problem remains as to which methods are most likely to produce effective, flexible thinkers. As was mentioned earlier, there are those such as Feuerstein, Lipman and de Bono who have argued very strongly that the necessary techniques and ways of operating can be taught only by placing thinking on the curriculum as a subject in its own right. Thus, for Feuerstein the most appropriate way forward is to introduce into the curriculum twice-weekly lessons of his Instrumental Enrichment cognitive development programme over a two to three year period (Feuerstein et al., 1980). For Lipman development of a community of inquiry by means of the exploration of concepts is the preferred method (Lipman et al., 1980), while for de Bono lateral thinking fostered by using his CoRT programme (de Bono, 1981) is to be encouraged. Aside from the issue of whether any one of these programmes is more effective in achieving its aims than any other is the more basic question of whether thinking should be taught this way at all.

The main alternative to this ‘skills-based’ or direct teaching approach is largely based upon a skills ‘infusion’ model. Here effective thinking becomes a primary aim, but a deliberate effort is made to achieve this through the reconstruction of the content and approaches to teaching traditional curriculum subjects. This may lead to radical changes in the ways in which material is presented, in the nature of learning tasks and in the form of responses expected from students.

The debate between these two schools of thought has been hotly argued. In the 1970s and 1980s the skills-based approach grew to prominence due to the pioneering and highly publicised work of such theorist-practitioners as de Bono and Feuerstein. The programmes developed by these pioneers offered refreshingly different ways of stimulating students of all ages, classes and cultural backgrounds to learn how to learn. Soon they were followed by others, most notably in the UK by Blagg and his co-workers who produced the Somerset Thinking Skills (STS) programme as an extension of Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment. In fact, the STS programme was developed initially as an attempt to overcome perceived shortcomings in the ‘bridging’ process from learning thinking skills through Instrumental Enrichment to applying those skills across a range of more traditional curriculum subjects (Blagg, 1991).

It is this problem of ‘bridging’ or generalisation that gives rise to the scepticism amongst many teachers and academics about programmes like Instrumental Enrichment and de Bono’s CoRT programme. Basically, the issue is one of whether thinking can or should be taught independently of subject content. As one or two of the contributors to this book point out, (Carré, Chapter 6; Fox, Chapter 8), thinking cannot take place in a vacuum. We need to think about something. Is there a basic difference, for example, between the process as well as the product of thinking scientifically and of thinking, say, musically? The work of Gardner (1983), who posits at least seven different forms of intelligence, might lead us to suspect so. At its most basic level, if we want children to become effective scientific, mathematical or musical thinkers then surely the simplest and most productive way is to teach the appropriate thinking skills within science, maths and music lessons. In that way we do not have to add yet another subject to the curriculum and we can ensure that all subject teachers can become involved, not just the thinking specialists.

The responsibility for taking such an approach lies squarely within the subject areas themselves, in classroom practice, in approaches to ‘delivering’ the National Curriculum and also at the level of initial teacher training and continuing professional development. There are an increasing number of impressive examples of where this approach has been taken up in various subject areas (e.g. Halpern, 1992, in mathematics; Adey and Shayer, 1994, in science) but the range of subjects tackled in this way has tended to be somewhat narrowly confined to subjects that lend themselves most readily to a ‘rational’ approach. One of the purposes of this book is to broaden this range to show how teaching pupils to think effectively can and should be applied to all curriculum areas. There is the further problem that few texts currently exist at the secondary level to introduce these ideas to teachers and teacher traine...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1. How Can We Best Help Children to Become Effective Thinkers and Learners?: The Case for and Against Thinking Skills Programmes
• 2. Thinking Skills and Children Learning History
• 3. Art and Art Education As a Cognitive Process and the National Curriculum
• 4. Thinking About and Through Music
• 5. Teaching Thinking Through a Foreign Language
• 6. Invitations to Think In Primary Science Lessons
• 7. Recent Developments In Mathematical Thinking
• 8. Thinking and the Language Arts
• 9. Reading Recovery: A Problem-Solving Approach to Reading
• 10. Educating Ben: Thought, Language and Action for Children With Poor Language Abilities
• 11. Pulling It Together: The Challenge for the Educator