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Here’s a Thought: Let’s Banish Critical Thinking

February 4th, 2010

I’ve been thinking about thinking lately, and I’ve had it with critical thinking. Note the italics. I’ve had it with the term critical thinking, not the actual practice. From a recent immersion in thinking-related research, I’ve concluded that critical thinking is like the weather: everybody talks about it but few do anything about it.

No arena bandies the term about as widely as education. Few conferences fail to include at least one session devoted to the topic, and book vendors at these events hawk the latest tomes dedicated to it. Educators seem to agree on the need for students to learn to think critically, but that seems to be the end of their consensus. Ask three different educators for their definition of critical thinking and you’re likely to get at least four different ideas, and at least half of them will include a nod to Bloom’s Taxonomy. Somewhere in our history, many of us were convinced that if our questioning climbed a ladder and we called on students whose names we wrote on popsicle sticks and pulled randomly from a styrofoam cup, we were teaching students critical thinking.

Because of the confusion all these preconceived notions create, I propose that we stop talking about critical thinking and instead just think about thinking. To that end, I’ve started referencing a different model. Imagine thinking as a target. As any marksman knows, the center of the target is where you aim if you want the best result. However, though the center of this target represents the ultimate goal, the outer circles are not without value. Let’s examine the first of these outer circles: memorize.

Wait, don’t stop reading! I know memorizing lacks the flash and appeal of the target’s other circles, but our brains do indeed memorize information, sometimes without our consent. For example, I know every lyric to the 70’s classic but somewhat mind-numbing “Funkytown.” I never intentionally sat down and used flash cards to learn the lyrics. They just got stuck in my head, which is one way to define memorizing. We memorize when things get stuck in our heads, on purpose or otherwise.

When educators talk about memorizing, it’s usually with a scowl on their faces and the taste of battery acid on their tongues. Memorizing is so beneath us. We don’t have students memorize anything. Everything we teach is meaningful. It’s all the others—teachers who teach other disciplines—who make students memorize unnecessary information. We’re above such an approach. We climb questioning ladders and pull popsicle sticks, for pete’s sake!

But let’s be honest. Despite the fact that most everything factual can now be found quickly via technology, some information still possesses its greatest value when it’s memorized. At its best, memorizing enables efficiency in thinking and acting. For example, knowing how to spell the words critical and thinking saved me plenty of time in developing this post. If I didn’t know instantly how to spell most of the words I use in writing, I’d probably have far less to say. (I know what you’re thinking: that’d be a bad thing?) Can you imagine trying to compose any significant passage of writing if you had to stop and check your wireless device for the correct spelling of every word?

I once had an experience that provides a picture of what this might be like. My wife and I love going to the theater for live performances. One time, just before the curtain was raised on a new drama, the announcer spoke via the public address system: “Today the role of Countess Calista will be played by Jane Smith, script in hand.” Apparently the lead actress and her understudy were unavailable. Sure enough, Ms. Smith waltzed onto stage with “script in hand,” and read her lines throughout the performance. It was disjointed and distracting. So much so that I can’t even remember the name of play, let alone what it was about. Memorizing has its place, even when technology that can provide the next line or correct spelling exists.

However, at its worse, memorization becomes merely testable material that lacks any use beyond the end of an instructional unit. With such material, its measurability is often its sole benefit, and it’s a benefit for the teacher not the student. Unfortunately it seems that many schools would rather aim for this outermost circle, decreasing the likelihood of hitting any part of the thinking target. But if we aim for and even hit this outermost circle, we have problems. Memorizing, while valuable when engaged selectively, has its limits.

First, students who only memorize remain subject to dogma’s sway. Parroting is evidence of memorizing, and a student who has highly developed memorizing capacity without equally developed processing abilities will tend to repeat the ideas of others, often without understanding.

Second and relatedly, students only equipped to memorize tend to accept without question. Such individuals tend to take the words that fall from the mouths of people they like and repeat them whether they are true or not. Since they lack the ability to process the ideas the words represent, accepting and repeating those words become the individual’s way of “thinking.”

Third, individuals who rely solely on memorizing as thinking cannot entertain or even understand conflicting ideas. That which they’ve memorized becomes their sole reference, so anything new must conform with the previously memorized information.

In short, merely memorizing severely limits an individual. So, while hitting the outermost circle represents one element of mental activity, always aiming there produces individuals I don’t think most schools and teachers would claim as their intended outcome. We need to consider the inner circles (and we will in future posts) and actually teach students the cognitive skills associated with them. Popsicle sticks and questioning variety alone won’t get us there.

Let’s think about thinking—teaching it, increasing it, developing students who actually can do it—but let’s leave our confusing dance with critical thinking behind.

Top Image: ‘la linea della vita, nichilismo’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/32347849@N08/3269623518

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Posted in Bloom's Taxonomy, critical thinking, Education, evaluate, learn, learning, memorize, reason, target, technology

Learning? Diving Required!

January 4th, 2010

If you’ve ever swum in a hotel swimming pool, you’ve likely seen the sign: “No diving! Water depth is too shallow.” The pool is not deep enough to allow safe diving, and the fear, of course, is that the hotel will be sued if swimmers injure themselves by diving head-first into the pool.

It is probably a good policy for hotels, but not for constructing lasting learning. According to memory researchers, depth of processing increases retention. Why? Because deep processing “allows a richer and more elaborate code, which in turn becomes more readily available.”1 This idea is not a new one. In 1890, William James wrote: “The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other will be the one with the best memory.”2

The message: to make learning memorable, engage students in deep thinking about new material. But what constitutes deep thinking in new learning? Research suggests two mental activities, comprehension and elaboration.

Comprehension involves organizing new data. “During comprehension, the brain sorts, labels, and organizes the raw sensory data.”3 As teachers, we often organize material as we prepare to present it to students. However, the research claims that the students must label and sort new material themselves to increase the likelihood of retaining it. Even if students replicate the teacher’s organization of the material, the act of sorting and labeling the data themselves contributes to learning. Learning is somewhat like medicine. If the teacher takes the medicine, it does the student little good. But when the student takes the medicine, when the student thinks deeply about new material, the medicine can work as intended.

So, what does comprehension look like in the classroom? Students manipulating representations of ideas into structured schemes, such as tables, sequences, hierarchies, or even stories. For example, after explaining and modeling the steps involved in eliminating unneeded or ineffective modifiers from writing, a teacher may have the students develop flow charts to illustrate and sequence the steps. Naturally, the teacher presents and models the steps in their correct order, but having the students sequence the steps engages them in one aspect of the deep processing that promotes retention and recall.

This is also true of deep thinking’s second mental activity, elaboration. Elaboration “involves linking the material being rehearsed to other material in memory.”4 The term conceptual blending aptly describes elaboration. “The brain receives and sorts sensory data causing patterns to emerge. The patterns direct the brain to search its long-term memory stores for previous experiences that illustrate similar patterns…Once recalled, the previous experience provides a reference point for further thinking about the newly received data.”5 Understanding develops as a student recognizes relevant connections between the reference point and the new data, and “blends” these ideas.

What does elaboration look like in the classroom? “Increasing the variety of ways the brain processes information (e.g., both verbal and nonverbal) increases connections between new and known information.6 Learners deepen their understanding of new information by representing it in varied forms.” Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences offers a way to vary the ways students interact with material. For example, during an earth science unit, a teacher may challenge students to find or create music that illustrates volcanic eruption or create personified accounts in which a volcano shares its goals, fears, and strengths as it prepares to erupt. “Note what such tasks require of the learner. Significant connections between the new material [e.g., volcanic eruption] and a nonverbal reference point [e.g., music] must be explored.” Such exploration engages learners in deep processing of the new material. “The resulting connections, which stem from the student’s life experience, create a conceptual network that gives him greater flexibility in thinking.”7

Unlike a shallow swimming pool, when it comes to learning, diving deep is good for one’s head!

Notes
  1. Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M.W., & Anderson, M.C., Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009) 102.
  2. Ibid. quoted on p. 102.
  3. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010) 8.
  4. Baddeley, 103.
  5. Washburn, 14.
  6. deWinstanley, P. A., & Bjork, R. A., “Successful Lecturing: Presenting Information in Ways that Engage Effective Processing,” in Halpern, D. F., & Hakel, M. D. (Eds.), Applying the Science of Learning to University and Beyond, vol. 89 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).
  7. Washburn, 21.

photo credit: englishpianobloke (Flickr.com)

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Posted in Baddeley, comprehension, diving, elaboration, Howard Gardner, learning, memory formation, swimming

Why Instructional Time Matters

November 30th, 2009

But time keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea
’til it’s gone forever…

At least that’s what the Alan Parsons Project suggested in their hit song. But poets and songwriters aren’t the only ones seemingly consumed by the passage of time. Educators frequently talk about the concept, discussing “time-on-task,” school start and end times, and the length of the school year. What’s behind this preoccupation with instructional time? Does it matter if the school day is interrupted for pep rallies, award assemblies, announcements from the office, and the like? Isn’t the school calendar that revolves around the needs of an agrarian culture adequate for today’s students? Why does nearly every conversation with teachers end up being a discussion of time and the lack of it in classrooms?

Teachers have sound reasons for being concerned about time. More than 100 years of research suggests a significant correlation between time spent learning and the amount of learning that results. As memory expert Alan Baddeley describes it, “In short, as far as learning is concerned, you get what you pay for.”1 The relationship between this research finding and teaching may seem obvious, but let’s dive deeper into the research and its implications.Researchers originally connected expertise in playing the violin with the amount of time spent in individual practice. They found that experts spent more than 10,000 hours practicing, while lesser experts spent about 7500 hours practicing, accomplished experts spent around 5000 hours practicing, and committed amateurs spent around 1500 hours practicing. While the numbers fluctuate slightly, the general range has remained surprisingly consistent as researchers examined expertise levels in other disciplines.2

What does this have to do with teaching? Probably more than we realize. For example, every school system I’ve encountered has significant literacy goals for students. Most schools would like to produce expert, or at least lesser expert or accomplished, readers. According to the research, developing such readers requires at least 5000 hours of practice—5000+ hours that students focus on applying and developing their reading capacity. With that in mind, let’s examine a possible scenario. If a child spends one hour each day for 175 days of the school year from grades one through eight, she will have invested approximately 1400 hours in developing reading expertise—not even enough for “committed amateur” levels! What if we add kindergarten and high school? The student still comes up woefully short at 2275 hours—not even halfway to accomplished levels.

No, this doesn’t include the time a child may spend reading at home, but it would be a rare child who actually actually spend the extra 2300+ hours needed to achieve “accomplished expert” levels. And to make the situation more challenging, recent research on the amount of time students actually spend reading in school classrooms ranges from a low of seven minutes to a high of 23 minutes.3 (Note that the research focuses on time spent practicing—recalling and applying skills—not on the amount of time the teacher presents information.)

Admittedly, we are not attempting to produce readers for the stage at Carnegie Hall, but this research on time and learning should not be dismissed. Time spent learning does matter for a student’s achievement. We’ve only explored this connection to developing literacy capacity, but the same would be true if applied to other disciplines. Want to develop expert mathematicians (or at least “committed amateur” mathematicians)? Time matters. Want to develop accomplished scientists (or, again, at least “committed amateur” scientists)? Time matters. The time a child spends recalling and applying learning correlates with the child’s level of expertise. When it comes to learning, time invested in recalling and applying relates to ability and achievement.

In conclusion, here are some questions to consider:

  • What are our priorities? In what areas of the curriculum are we attempting to develop more than amateur capacity? In what areas of the curriculum are we striving for more than amateur achievement?
  • How does our time (both given and devoted) reflect those priorities?
  • What is needed to increase the time students choose to spend in recall and application of new learning?
  • What are the implications of this research for our own professional development?

Share your thoughts and insights!

References

  1. Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M. W., & Anderson, M. C. Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009), p. 70-78.
  2. Ibid.
  3. In-School Independent Reading. http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/literacy/in_read3.html

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Posted in application, expertise, instructional time, learning, recall, teaching

To Retain New Learning, Do the Math

November 8th, 2009

Every teacher experiences the frustration. Content and skills taught throughout the year seem to abandon students during springtime standardized testing. “How can they not know this?” thinks the the teacher. “We learned this back in November.”

Recent research reveals some likely causes, and the principles for retaining new learning may not be intuitive to us as teachers. For example, multiple retrievals rather than multiple exposures promote better retention of new learning.1 In other words, the more students are required to recall new content or skills, the better their memory will be. Reviewing the material with students does not have the same effect. The students must be engaged in activity that requires them to recall the material. Even when students recall details incorrectly, if the teacher promptly provides the necessary instructive feedback, engaging students in recall of the material fosters better retention of new learning than a teacher-led review.2

But how often should teachers be engaging students in recall of newly learned material? Two findings provide answers.

First, repeated recall should occur frequently immediately following new learning. For example, a teacher who teaches students to add fractions should engage students in recall and use of that material several times over the school days immediately following instruction. Again, even if students do not recall the skill correctly, requiring recall combined with immediate instructive feedback is more effective than reviewing the skill.3

Second, once the initial period of learning and multiple retrievals is past, students still need to be engaged regularly in recall of the material. In general, students need to recall the material after a delay of 10 to 20% of the time between initial learning and final testing.4 For example, if students learn a new skill with only a month of school (about 20 school days) remaining, they should be engaged in recall of that skill every 2-4 days. This increases the likelihood that the new learning will be part of their knowledge when they begin the following school year. (Ideally, they would be recalling that skill every 7-14 days over a 10-week summer break!)

So, let’s go back to our opening scenario: a teacher teaches material in November that students need to recall for testing in May—a gap of about six months, or about 120 school days. To increase the likelihood that students will recall the material in May, they should be engaged in retrieving it every 12-24 days, once or twice a month, probably closer to every 12 days for the first few months and every 24 days for the last few months. It is critical that every retrieval be accompanied by immediate instructive feedback.

One more principle helps us design activities that engage students in retrieving new learning. The more material students are required to recall, the better. For example, if students are required to retrieve or construct an explanation of how to add fractions and actually apply the skill to add fractions, their retention will be greater than if they are merely required to apply the skill.4

According to this research, many of our classrooms may be structured for minimal memory retention. If we begin every school year reviewing material from the previous years and spend the second half of the school year introducing new material, students are less likely to retain the new learning in future school years because they were not engaged in recalling it throughout the school year. We need to be teaching more new material at the beginning of the school year and reviewing that material as the school year progresses. Perhaps this helps explain another common teacher frustration: the “They should have learned this last year” syndrome that we’ve all experienced.

Retrieval + Instructive Feedback = Retention of New Learning.

  1. Devachi, L. The Limits of Memory: How to Maximize Your Memory Trace. Presented at the 2008 North American Neuroleadership Summit, New York.
  2. Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M. W., & Anderson, M. C. Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009), p. 70-78.
  3. Ibid. 74.
  4. Ibid. 82.

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Posted in Baddeley, Devachi, instructive feedback, learning, memory, recall, retention, teaching, Testing

Avoiding the Dickensian Curriculum

August 27th, 2009

Monotonous tedium and homogeneous uniformity — the great plagues of education. With rampant disregard for age, class, or ability, a curriculum lacking topography flatlines interest, dulls creativity, and limits potential. Yet, we find ourselves haphazardly careening toward fact based national standards, accountability systems, and teacher pay incentives that further cement our commitment to high stakes assessments. Such batteries that, by proxy, entrench pedagogical practices in the mires of conformity.
What we need now is a hyperbolized metaphor to cast the right light on the situation. Enter 19th century Dickens.
I’m reminded of the orphan scene from Oliver Twist, in which sallow eyed kids lament full bellies while heavy handed lords offer meager sustenance, the lowest common denominator for survival. “Please, sir, can I have some more?” “MORE?!”
Fast forward to the 21st century, the faces of students drawn down by boredom, teachers droning on and dolling out dittos of “test prep” materials. One curriculum looks the same community to community, offering little variety (or interest) for the educators or the learners. Students under such Dickensian conditions soon associate learning and schooling with drudgery, toil, and starved minds.
The rare lesson that engages students to dig deep into an idea or concept, to explore new avenues, and to get a bit messy with creativity awakens and feeds an enthusiasm long suppressed by the sameness of repetition. Students for whom such learning has been absent, or withheld, find their palates whet with the sweet taste of authenticity and relevance. “Please, marm, can I have some more?” “MORE?!”
A bit much you say? Too overstated? How could I possibly compare NCLB to the New Poor Law of 1834?
You’re right to question, to stand up for an education system that endeavors to educate all students, and to advocate on behalf of the millions of educators working to cultivate the minds of our young.
However, the fact remains that while the world around us has changed, much of the education system remains firmly rooted in an industrial society that no longer exists. It is less important now that students can repeat the same task over and over. The standard of yesterday’s literacy, “Can the worker read the signs in the factory to ensure the safety of himself and his colleagues?” no longer applies to the degree it once did.
We enjoy a world with abundant and assorted information, replete with mutliple access points for ideas, concepts, and knowledge. Students of diverse backgrounds (and of both genders) can reasonably vie for myriad careers and a range of higher level learning opportunities, if so interested. Given this, it is of absolute necessity that we seek to add topography to our educational landscape. Homogeneity must give way to heterogeneity if we aim to give all students connecting points.
How do we do that?
Teachers need the demonstrated ability and supported autonomy to effectively tailor curriculum for the unique culture, skills, needs, and interests of each class. Beginning with a framework of basic skills, concepts, and themes, the teacher must seek two main pillars to effectively differentiate for the individuals within an individual class.
What does that mean?
Connections and Contrasts
Constructing knowledge begins with connections. If students are to make any sense of material, they must first find a connection with it. If we are to believe Jay McTighe’s quip that, “Facts don’t transfer, big ideas do,” then it is imperative that we elicit student involvement in order to link the big ideas to their interests and backgrounds.
Teachers have known this for ages. The KWL chart (Know, Want to know, Learned) is a well known acronym in teacher-ese. Beginning with the connection, teachers then need to provide enough contrast so as to stimulate the brain and effectively engage the student. Building (or at least maintaining) nueral pathways requires broad exposure that keep the nueral connections alive, functioning, and well traveled.
Unfortunately, legislation has come to think of that as simply exposure to copious facts we want the students to know. What we’ve ended up with are standards that are a mile wide and an inch deep. What the brain thrives on is consistent contrast.
Students need newness, contrast in experiences, and depth of study. This is the great beauty of the differentiated instruction movement — it seeks to provide big ideas that span the curriculum and add multiple connection points for students. Combined with the Understanding by Design efforts, in which teachers create new experiences that offer a contrast to the experiences of the past, we have the potential for a rich depth of learning that students find relevant, meaningful, and ultimately, useful.
The challenge then becomes, if we aim to leave no child behind and recognize that each student is different, how do we standardize teaching and learning without monotonizing teaching and learning?
Image: BBC One

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Posted in Dickens, Differentiated Instruction, Education Reform, Jason Flom, Jay McTighe, learning, NCLB, Oliver Twist, teaching, Understanding By Design

Making the Shift, Part 2: Toolboxes not Suitcases

August 17th, 2009

Ever go through a turnstile and realize something you needed was left on the other side of the gateway? During my first encounter with a public transit system, I tried to take a rolling suitcase through a subway turnstile. Of course I ended up on one side of the gateway with my luggage on the other. Fortunately a friendly New Yorker (They do exist!) saw my dilemma and hoisted my suitcase over the turnstile.

Such gateways are one-way by design; they promote lawful movement in single directions. However, a similar design for teaching, learning, and thinking limits student learning and its usefulness. Much of what we should emphasize ends up like my suitcase—on the wrong side of the turnstile.

For example, we may teach a biology unit on cell construction and emphasize new terminology and locations of various cell parts. Then, after students seem to have absorbed the information and can recite it back, we may engage them in “critical thinking” by asking questions that represent various “levels” of a taxonomy. Like my suitcase, thinking gets pulled along behind and occasionally doesn’t make it through the gate. It gets left behind because of pressures to cover the curriculum or because the assessment will only involve the memorization elements of the unit. If time allows, if the gateway stays open, we might pull in some thinking.

But what if thinking were not a wheeled suitcase but a toolbox, something we carry in-hand and set in a central place to enable our work, our learning? What if instead of thinking of ourselves as teaching content, we viewed ourselves as teaching thinking?

That doesn’t mean students would not learn any content. In fact, content would be exactly what they’d gain by making thinking the force that “pulls in” new understandings. After all, students need to learn how to learn to function successfully once a teacher is no longer telling them what to know.

Activating executive function (EF) offers a potential gateway for developing both understanding of new content and strategic abilities for future learning and success. Executive function comprises “complex cognitive processes that serve ongoing, goal-directed behaviors,”1 including goal setting and planning, self-regulation and metacognition, and working memory processes, such as organizing and patterning data. Executive function serves both as “infrastructure” and “overseer” of other cognitive functions.2 By itself, EF lacks purpose, but when infused with ideas and concepts, it illustrates the brain working at its best. Perhaps most importantly for us as teachers, EF enables intention, the transfer of new learning to novel situations. Teaching only to know—that is, to repeat on demand—does not engage the cognitive processes that promote intention. Martha Bridge Denkla describes such knowing as being able to recall a strategy without the capacity to be strategic.3 Simply knowing does not require the level of EF activation that doing does.

Philip David Zelazo suggests that the EF processes of solving problems and attaining goals reveal EF “subfunctions.” These subfunctions can be easily understood by viewing their roles through the questions they attempt to answer:

  • representation: “What do I need to accomplish? What is preventing me from accomplishing it?”
  • planning: How can I get from the current state to the desired state?
  • execution: What’s next? Check. What’s next?
  • evaluation: Did that action accomplish its intended result? What do I need to change to make progress toward the desired state?4

Teaching students to successfully engage these subfunctions equips them to learn independently. Engaging these subfunctions as a means of learning new content equips students to use their learning beyond the classroom. This brief look at executive functions reveals some principles that provide guidance for making thinking more of a toolbox and less of a rolling suitcase. An emphasis on teaching for action, or on teaching for knowing how, is more likely to produce transferable learning. Since doing requires greater executive function engagement than simply knowing, teaching that engages students in doing better equips students to transfer their learning to new situations.

Knowing that should become more of a by-product of applying know-how. Rather than just asking, “What do students need to know?” we need to ask “What can students do/produce to foster learning of what they need to know?” (This has additional implications for what and how we teach. I’ll explore these in a future post.)

Increasing an emphasis on executive function is better education for life. It’s impossible to know what knowledge and skills will be essential in the future, but it is certain that EF will continue to enable successful living.

Before concluding, allow me to attempt to prevent some potential misunderstandings. First, I am not advocating abandonment of the disciplines. As the Purview Project states, the disciplines “have contributed to man’s construction of knowledge for ages.” I believe the disciplines will continue to form much of the content schools teach. What I am suggesting is that how we teach the disciplines needs to change. Others have recently suggested similar ideas—e.g., Jose Bowen’s “Teach Naked” approach, which advocates increased thinking in the classroom. But an implication of changing the “how” is changing the “what.” If we’re going to engage students in more thinking, we need to equip and strengthen them to think optimally. I’ll explore this more in future posts.

Second, the ideas expressed here are easier to envision in content-heavy disciplines, such as social studies than in skill-heavy disciplines such as reading and math. I’ll explore these differences in future posts and suggest ways these principles can be applied in both types of material.

In conclusion, I have a confession. I’m writing this post as much to process these ideas as I am to communicate them. I’m in the learning process, which means I have more questions than answers, vague ideas than concrete specifics, and swirling concepts than guiding frameworks. Over the weekend I was asked what was “going on” in my head. In reply, I listed at least seven different major elements. This post is a very initial attempt to sort through some of them. I hope to explore and clarify these ideas in future posts. Stay tuned!

  1. Meltzer, L. “Executive Function: Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 1-2.
  2. Denckla, M. B. “Executive Functions: Binding Together the Definitions of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Learning Disabilities,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 7.
  3. Ibid, 11.
  4. Zelazo, P. D., “Executive Function Part One: What is executive function?” http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/News/Executive-Function-Part-One-What-is-executive-function.aspx?
    articleID=8024&categoryID=news-type

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Posted in executive function, Jose Bowen, learning, Lynn Meltzer, Philip David Zelazo, teaching, thinking

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Conspiracy Theories: Patterns, Teaching, and Thinking

July 17th, 2009

The human brain loves patterns so much it can take random puzzle pieces and construct seemingly coherent, if wildly implausible, pictures. “The CIA stockpiled lederhosen in case of an Alpine leg virus epidemic, causing the severe shortage of appropriate menswear for high school productions of The Sound of Music.” See? Random pieces strewn together to create a wild yet coherent picture—a conspiracy theory.

While interesting and entertaining, conspiracy theories reveal important principles for teaching, learning, and thinking.

The brain constructs meaning via patterns, even occasionally imposing patterns to make meaning from random data. As John Medina explains, “We…are terrific pattern matchers, constantly assessing our environment for similarities, and we tend to remember things if we think we have seen them before.”1 Patterns provide a gateway to prior experience, and prior experience provides reference points for constructing new understanding. “Patterns are paths for memories to follow,”2 explains Judy Willis. When patterns fail to emerge from sorted data, the brain either ignores the data or imposes a pattern on it—hence, conspiracy theories.

Researchers suggest teachers should develop students’ pattern-recognition capacities: “The idea that experts recognize features and patterns that are not noticed by novices is potentially important for improving instruction…One dimension of acquiring greater competence appears to be the increased ability to segment the perceptual field (learning how to see). Research on expertise suggests the importance of providing students with learning experiences that specifically enhance their abilities to recognize meaningful patterns of information.”3 Judy WIllis agrees: “Education is about increasing the patterns that students can use, recognize, and communicate. As the ability to see and work with patterns expands, the executive functions are enhanced. Whenever new material is presented in such a way that students see relationships, they generate greater brain cell activity (forming new neural connections) and achieve more successful long-term memory storage and retrieval.”4

By using patterns, the brain is able to connect ideas from disparate disciplines. The conspiracy theory in the opening paragraph features ideas from government, virology, economics, and musical theatre. Sure, the example is ludicrously wild, but it demonstrates the brain’s capacity to weave tapestries with threads from different spools. As the mind perceives patterns within a discipline’s content, it can seek, and often find, the same pattern within other disciplines. This enables the overlaying of one discipline with another, the identifying of connections between the disciplines, and the emergence of new ideas that combine concepts from multiple disciplines. A new tapestry is woven with thread from different spools.

According to Howard Gardner, such a “synthesizing mind” is now a “core competence”: “The ability to knit together information from disparate sources into a coherent whole is vital today. The amount of accumulated knowledge is reportedly doubling every 2-3 years. Sources of information are vast and disparate, and individuals crave coherence and integration.”5

Students who do not perceive patterns miss opportunities for beneficial interdisciplinary thinking: “In their English classes, young persons may learn how to write effective prose; but if they fail to transport at least part of those lessons across the hallway to history class or to biology lab assignments, then they have missed an opportunity to link compositional strategies. Adolescents may be exposed to causal reasoning in their physics classes; but if they draw no lessons about argumentation in history or geometry class, then this form of thinking needs to be retaught.”6

How, then, do we teach to foster multi-disciplinary thinking? I hesitate to suggest thinking like a conspiracy theorist, but to a degree, that’s part of the answer.

Consider an earth science unit—volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain formation, etc. As the teacher explores the content’s details, a few “conspiratorial” questions can help:

  • What are the major ideas in this unit?
  • How can I “connect the dots”—what are the relationships between those ideas?
  • What succinct, general statement communicates the relationships?

With the previously mentioned unit, the teacher may notice that internal forces/changes and external forces/changes are prominent ideas. How are these dots connected? Internal forces can influence external changes; external forces can influence internal changes. Succinctly? The internal (or inside) can affect the external (or outside), and the external can affect the internal.

Now, as the teacher teaches the material, she frequently references the pattern and engages students in thinking about how the material illustrates it.

Take another look at the pattern. Can you think of other places, other disciplines where the same pattern can be seen? How about characters in literature? Do internal forces (beliefs, values, motives) affect external elements (actions, dialogue)? Do external forces (character, events) affect internal elements (beliefs, values, motives)? Do the internal and external ever mingle and cause mutual change in other disciplines?

Instruction that emphasizes patterns creates opportunities for cross-discipline thinking. Concepts and skills get transferred (Constructing a geometric proof can help me write that persuasive essay), ideas merge to enable critical thinking (The inner turmoil at Company X seems like the pressure build-up along a fault line, which leads me to predict…), and new analogies empower “well-motivated leaps” (If I envision the website as a real estate agent’s showing of a new house…).7 With access to information on a constant and meteoric increase, knowing how connect data from disparate sources and disciplines—how to use patterns to recognize and use interdisciplinary connections—becomes equally constant and meteoric in its increasing necessity. Thinking a bit like a conspiracy theorist, connecting concepts into coherent patterns, can help us structure our teaching in ways that increase student ability and potential for interdisciplinary thinking.

  1. Medina, J., Brain Rules (Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008), 82.
  2. Willis, J., Research Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2006), 15.
  3. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R., eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 24.
  4. Willis, 15.
  5. Gardner, H., Five Minds for the Future (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006), 46.
  6. Ibid., 64-65.
  7. Ibid., 66.

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Posted in conspiracy theories, cross-disciplinary thinking, earth science, Education, Howard Gardner, interdisciplinary thinking, John Medina, Judy Willis, learning, patterns, synthesis

TMI! Information Overload and Learning

July 6th, 2009

“Too much information—TMI!”

More than just a retort when conversations turn personal, TMI also describes a common student experience. When one period of steady information flow follows another, the rising data tide does not lift all boats. It overwhelms them.

We can maintain a quick and steady pace when we enter information into a database or spreadsheet, simply pushing “return” or “tab” to move to the next entry, but the brain is not a computer. It has limits. Data funneled endlessly through the senses prevents the processing required for learning.

What do students’ brains need to do to construct new learning? Let’s listen in as the neural “Data Manager” oversees the processing…

Okay, we got incoming data here. Everyone look alive!

Get that bit there and put it with the other that’s like it. Those two bits there, move them to the right. Move those others across the room to that grouping there.

Is that it? Do we have all the data? Okay, let me get up to the observation platform to see what we’ve got here. Hmm, okay. Put this label on that grouping there. And give that group to the right this label. That last group needs this label.

Okay, let’s see what’s really going on here. Seeing some patterns! Get the librarians searching for past records with these patterns.

Got something? Great. Let’s overlay it with this new data.

A-ha! The new data is like this past experience in some ways. Get the insights to the consciousness office and tell them to hit the “Give a lift” button! We’re constructing understanding right now!


Obviously no such director exists for cognitive activity, but the processing illustrated by the imagined “Data Manager’s” actions do reflect the brain’s approach to constructing new learning. Incoming data gets sorted and labeled as the brain engages in comprehension. The sorted and labeled data reveals emerging patterns that trigger recall of similar past experiences as the brain engages in elaboration. These cognitive processes empower learning.

But TMI floods the brain with data, preventing comprehension and elaboration, and thus, preventing learning. Jonah Lehrer suggests the danger of too much information is “it can actually interfere with understanding.” Why? Because the brain has a do-it-yourself attitude toward learning.

As teachers, we think through material when we plan its delivery. But students’ brains need to engage in that same process to learn for themselves. In short, we process the new material to teach it. Students must process the information similarly to learn it. As Daniel Willingham, author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, explains, “Good teachers design lessons in which students unavoidably think about the meaning or central point” [emphasis added]. Thinking cannot overcome TMI, but TMI quickly overwhelms thinking. In short, TMI prevents learning while unavoidable thinking promotes it.

When you stop informing and engage students in thinking, you empower learning. In other words, you truly teach.

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Posted in comprehension, Daniel Willingham, data manager, elaboration, Jonah Lehrer, Kevin Washburn, learning, teaching, thinking, TMI

Integrated Living. Separated Learning? (Part 2)

June 26th, 2009

This article, written by Jason Flom, is cross-posted on Ecology of Education
In such an integrated world, where the reverberations of problems and solutions ripple far beyond their localized sources, we must learn to think in terms of systems (called systems thinking), to see beyond compartmentalized events, and work with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures toward common goals.

That’s a tall order for a human race often short on patience, tolerance, and understanding.

Additionally, thoroughly analyzing influencing factors beyond the immediate manifestation of a problem is often impossible alone, and cannot be attained by accident. Successful systems thinking requires both critical faculties and collaborative cooperation. Helping students navigate that balance is part of our responsibility as educators: it must be intentionally taught, cultivated, and prioritized.

Project Learning can provide much of the framework and substance for learning skills farther up Bloom’s taxonomy. However, simply providing students with projects and experiences is akin to drinking decaf coffee: its got the taste without the kick.

What’s the kick? Reflection and skill development.

Learning that prepares students for identifying, evaluating, and tackling problems that cross over systems and cultural boundaries must be diversified. No one style or approach can possibly cover the gazillions of options. Students need opportunities to immerse themselves in sweeping projects in which they apply a broad range of skills.

But they also need opportunities to learn, practice, and hone specific skill sets. Exploring and finding the balance between integrated projects and separate skill development should be a primary objective for both reflective practitioners and innovative administrators.

The problem we face today is the over-emphasis on what one of my students’ parents referred to as “the low hanging fruit” — basic skills. With almost exclusive focus on filling a student’s tool box with testable skills (without accompanying opportunities to employ those tools in novel and complex situations), we risk sacrificing holistic, integrated, and systems thinking in order to hold teachers and schools accountable. The sacrifice results in not just bland teaching and irrelevant schooling — the real consequence is that we inadvertently limit the potential of our students.

The compartmentalizing of all skills and learning makes for a cubicle education, while outside the schoolhouse doors students are living in an iPhone world.

Perhaps that is the perfect compliment — isolated schooling and integrated living? With today’s students forever connected to one another through sprawling digital networks, perhaps they are learning systems thinking themselves, and it is only the basic skills they need from schools.

I, myself, am not ready to gamble that. For now, I’ll continue to build curriculum around broad scope projects, breaking them down into bite size, skill development chunks, doing my best to take advantage of integrated living through an understanding the pieces.

Image: MIT Senseable City Lab

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Posted in Collaboration, Education, globalization, integration, Jason Flom, learning, Project Learning

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