Asking Questions

In my quest to explore ways to teach thinking I've been canvassing a variety of theories and practical applications. I recently finished reading Make Just One Change by Rothstein and Santana which offers a unique classroom strategy: teaching students to ask questions. 

This very clear text explains the process of teaching students how to formulate their own questions about any subject or topic being covered. It sounds incredibly simple but it is rarely done in schools. The authors offer a detailed procedure for embedding this strategy in regular classes (but not everyday), and show how the strategy serves a variety of purposes.

I have experimented with a similar notion of questions as students are reading their novels. I have discussed this strategy, which I picked up from Cris Tovani, in an earlier post. However, I believe that the question strategy offered in Make Just One Change shows how students can be led to a deeper level of thinking. By insisting that teachers refrain from giving examples as students formulate their questions, it means that the ideas must come from the students' minds. It also means that a more personal engagement with the concept or material at hand is achieved as students are formulating their own questions, and working towards answering them. 

Cognitive Load Theory suggests that people are more likely to retain information when they have an interest in it. Apparently the more interest in a subject, the more likely the new information will be able to attach to existing information. I know from personal experience that devising my own questions for essays during my MA changed the learning immensely. Learning how to ask your own questions creates autonomy and a greater connection with the work is made in the process of mastering that material.  

One last point about this strategy is its potential for use in teacher/staff development. Aside  from using this with students, I will employ this strategy when presenting my research findings to adults, which I will need to do several times this year. I hope to generate interest at different points of the presentation so that my audience cannot sit passively through the educational 'show and tell'. 

Opportunities for Learning

I'm sorry I don't have time for extended discussion today but I did want to reference this blog post from Mind/Shift: Struggle Means Learning: Difference in Eastern and Western Cultures. Alix Spiegel writes about a UCLA professor, Jim Stigler, who has been studying the differences in how East and West approach "intellectual struggle". 

We seem to be spending more and more time talking about persistence and self-regulation, and about tinkering and successful failures, that I thought this post offered some different insights into how people might learn. 

I am not necessarily advocating students work though their thinking with a full audience. I do firmly believe the process counts as well as the product, and allowing time for that process to occur in a supportive environment should be the aim of all teachers. 

The Mind/Shift post is well worth a read. 

Thinking and Deeper Learning

http://www7.national-academies.org/bota/Education_for_Life_and_Work_report_brief.pdf

As I was reading a recent paper from the USA on the need for developing 21st century competencies, I came across this interesting diagram. It describes the interplay of capabilities needed for what is becoming known as deeper learning. 

Many of competencies identified above accord with my own reading (and blogging) over the past few years. On many occasions I have had conversations with colleagues about the importance of adaptability, self-evaluation and perseverance. Just seeing them overlapping with problem solving, innovation and critical thinking, reminds me of the connections needed for deeper learning. Indeed, it indicates to us that teaching to just one aspect of the student is not enough if we are to succeed in helping them navigate the 21st century with confidence. This theory also helps to explain why some very 'bright' students - with traditionally sharp cognitive skills such as analysis - don't always succeed to the extent that intelligence testing suggests they should. 

Teachers already have altered their teaching styles towards more student-centred, competency based delivery. As an English teacher in NSW, this approach has been the mode for many years as we connect literacy and literature to help students achieve their cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal goals.

I'm also pleased to see the new Australian Curriculum broaden its horizons with compulsory competencies such as Critical and Creative Thinking:

"Critical thinking is at the core of most intellectual activity that involves students in learning to recognise or develop an argument, use evidence in support of that argument, draw reasoned conclusions, and use information to solve problems. Examples of thinking skills are interpreting, analysing, evaluating, explaining, sequencing, reasoning, comparing, questioning, inferring, hypothesising, appraising, testing and generalising.

Creative thinking involves students in learning to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links that generate a positive outcome."

As we come to terms with these notions of deeper learning, 21st century competencies, and critical and creative thinking, we will need more education, learning how to model and 'teach' these essential facets of life - for the here and now, and for the future.