Let's Banish Critical Thinking, Part 2: Learn

Kyle examined his bookmarks. If he’d printed out all the information he’d found the paper would pile up to well over an inch high. Even though he’d been discerning in the references he noted, the information available was overwhelming and defeating, an obstacle that prevented Kyle from moving past the data collecting stage of his project. Whether he chose the traditional approach and wrote a paper or the technological option of a multimedia presentation, Kyle couldn’t communicate ideas he didn’t yet “own” himself, and the list of bookmarks represented more than he could ever apprehend.

His teacher expected evidence of his learning, but Kyle lacked the know-how that could enable his success. Kyle was a successful student in traditional classrooms, but he did not know how to learn, especially when he was responsible for the process.

As teachers we tend to focus on our teaching and assume students know how to learn. It’s a natural perspective—we teach, students learn. Focusing on learning can seem misdirected because what we’re going to do in the classroom demands our immediate concern—it’s what we describe in the required lesson plans. However, failing to focus on student learning capacity produces the predicament Kyle faced: expectation without enablement.

I suggested in the previous post that we examine thinking as a target. “Memorize” formed the target’s outermost ring. Learning represents a movement toward the target’s center and beyond mere recall. In fact, we’re moving from a relatively straightforward process (rehearse→remember→recall) to more complicated combinations of processes.

Learning often involves four core processes, or four “states” of thinking. (Thinking is more fluid than the term states suggests, but this simplification can help us understand its flow.) Through experience, the brain gains raw sensory data. During comprehension, the brain sorts, labels, and organizes the raw sensory data. Through elaboration, the brain examines the organized data for patterns, recalls relevant prior experiences, and blends the new data with your experiences to construct understanding. During application the brain practices using or expressing the new understanding. There’s much more that could be said just about these core processes (an entire chapter of The Architecture of Learning explores these in depth), but allow me to move on and introduce a related idea.

The influential book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times argues for a greater emphasis on “Learning and Innovation Skills.” Such skills, explain authors Trilling and Fadel, “are the keys to unlocking a lifetime of learning and creative work.”1 We should increase instruction in the skills of learning, not just guide student learning of core subject matter. In other words, we need to place more value and emphasis on teaching students how to self-teach (or self-learn). We need to teach them how to engage learning’s core processes; we need to teach them the thinking skills that enable self-directed learning.

As we explore learning’s core processes in detail, a myriad of related skills emerge. Here’s a partial chart I’ve compiled. (Click on the table to enlarge it.) All these skills either contribute to a core process or engage a combination of learning’s core processes.



Going deeper, learning to learn becomes even more interesting (or complex, depending on your perspective), but what we can actually teach comes into focus. For example, a group of educators in Philadelphia took part of the very first skill (identifying, clarifying, and phrasing questions) and discussed, “What is the range of this skill? What do its initial steps of development look like? What would its fullest expression look like?” After we grappled with these concepts, we considered when instruction for each step might begin and where it might mature to mastery. Here’s what evolved: As we saw this potential scope emerge, the group became excited. For the first time, many of them felt they knew what to teach to equip students to think critically. (I know, I used the term I’m advocating we banish!) My response, and what I still believe, is that we identified, at least in part, the skills we could teach that would equip students to learn independently. Learning is not separate from thinking but dependent on it:

What we know results from what and how we think. Researcher and critical thinking expert Diane F. Halpern explains:

Knowledge is not something static that gets transferred from one person to another like pouring water from one glass to another. It is dynamic. Information becomes knowledge when we make our own meaning out of it…[We] create knowledge every time we learn a new concept.

Educator Laura Erlauer agrees, explaining that thinking processes “allow the brain to thoroughly understand the new concepts and internalize them into meaningful memories.” Learning is a product of thinking.2

Where does that leave us? Here are a few possible conclusions:

• Learning is more than memorizing. It engages cognitive processes (comprehension, elaboration, application) that extend beyond rehearsal and recall. Learning is powered by thinking, and learning provides new material for thinking. (As one commenter on the last post put it, you have to have something to think about.)
• Teaching students how to become learners requires helping them develop these cognitive processes and their associated skills/sub-skills.
• The associated skills possess “steps” of development that provide more specific direction for what we can emphasize in the classroom.
• Teaching these skills should be our priority. Everything else, such as the specific topics we teach, should be the material students learn through practice in using these skills. In other words, these skills should “drive” the curriculum. That does not mean we do not teach the traditional disciplines, but that the traditional disciplines are a means to the desired end of equipping self-directed learners.

I realize this leaves plenty of unanswered questions, such as:

• What are the developmental steps for all the other skills?
• What about problem solving? creativity? reasoning?
• How can we “cover” the mandated curriculum while teaching students the skills to become self-directed learners?
• How does teaching students to become self-directed learners aid achievement as measured on standardized testing?
• Are there approaches we can use that would engage students in utilizing these skills while becoming knowledgeable of new subject matter?

I’ll address some of these in future posts, but honestly, I don’t have answers to all of them. It seems current educational mandates and structures hinder good answers to some of these critical questions (and produce the very problems Kyle faced). Changing direction likely requires a rethinking of current emphases and structures.

But then you probably already knew that.

References

1. Trilling, B. & Fadel, C., 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 49.
2. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 186).

The Life-Changing Dance

I'm currently working on a revision of the Architecture of Learning Basic Course. In an apparently analogy-minded moment, I wrote the following Introduction to the Course Book:

Why is effective teaching such a challenge?

On its surface, teaching seems like a simple activity. The teacher teaches, explaining or demonstrating some new concept or skill, and the student learns, absorbing and remembering the new material.

Watch what happens when we apply that same perspective to a different profession. On its surface, performing surgery seems like a simple activity. The surgeon operates, opening a human body and repairing or removing some internal malady, and the patient cooperates, showing up in the operating room and healing nicely when all is said and done.

Reduced to this level anything appears deceptively simple. However, every surgeon knows that operating is far more complex than this description suggests. Likewise, every teacher knows that fostering learning requires more than an explanation or demonstration provides.

Why? Because the human brain is not a computer; input≠output. On its way to becoming a recallable memory, new data passes through an embodied brain—a world of dazzling networks and constant activity. This world provides the setting for learning’s dance. The ballet begins, and dancers enter and exit as concepts blend and patterns emerge. Past experiences come out of storage to mingle with new data entering the stage via the senses. If the dance continues, the new data transforms into meaningful memories that can be called out of storage for future performances. This improvisational movement is learning. The teacher’s task is to provide the music that sparks this neuronal dance.

Now teaching does not seem so simple, does it?

In addition to the complexity of students’ inner worlds, external elements further complicate our work. Technology offers us an immense and ever-growing collection of tools—many of which feature enough bells and whistles to qualify as computerized cacophony if not used effectively. How do we design teaching that uses the best tools at optimal points in learning’s unplanned choreography?

Kevin Kelly, a writer and observer of “cyberculture,” offers a helpful insight: “Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other.” This quote works well as an explanation of Architecture of Learning. Strands that possess an inner consistency are layered according to focus. As the focus shifts from one “layer” to another, students engage in the mental activities that compose learning’s dance. The Architecture of Learning Blueprints help the teacher select and sequence “music” that awakens students’ neurons.

You are invited to join learning’s dance. As you move through this course, think deeply about the ideas you encounter. Have the courage to try new approaches. Permit yourself to become a learner—a student—as you enrich your professional capacity to design instruction.

Then return to teaching, recognizing the challenge, but eager to invite your students to the life-changing dance that is learning.

Hoping you've invited your students to the dance today!

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelunch_box/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

To Retain New Learning, Do the Math

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.

Making the Shift, Part 1: No More Objectives

The following statement preoccupied my thoughts for several hours: “As a result, a large gap separates the skills and strategies taught in school from the executive function processes needed for success there and in the workplace.” The basis for this conclusion, the cause, is education’s focus “on the content, or the what, rather than the process, or the how, of learning.” Our teaching frequently fails to emphasize executive functions—the cognitive processes that enable goal setting, problem solving, organizing, attention shifting, and metacognition.1

In introducing the Purview Project, I wrote about the shift to a more thinking-centric emphasis in education, and in a recent post focused on thinking within the disciplines, I described how researchers illustrated the difference between knowing what and knowing how by contrasting AP social studies’ students and practicing historians results on differing types of assessment. Despite the recent discussion of national standards in the US, I believe this shift is underway, necessary, and inevitable.

A shift in what we emphasize requires shifts in our own thinking about teaching and learning. If we teach more process and less content, textbooks will either change or become obsolete. If we emphasize how rather than what, assessment will need to engage students in demonstrating how to do rather than what to memorize. If we want to develop students’ executive functions, we need to reexamine every aspect of our practice. We need to close the “large gap,” beginning with one of our most ingrained ideas: objectives.

What we know and believe about objectives depends somewhat on how long we’ve been educators. I was trained to develop “behavioral” objectives that specified what students would specifically do and to what percentage of accuracy they would do it. Wording was a major concern and everything had to be measurable. (You can still see this philosophy being emphasized in current discussions.) Researchers then divided behavioral objectives into three types: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. We were told to display the objectives for students to see. Then, for a time, behaviorism and its objectives became “yesterday’s news” and "outcomes" became the focus. These were followed by objectives addressing student “emotional quotient” or “EQ.” Next came different objectives for each of the learning styles and/or multiple intelligences, and objectives based on various taxonomies of thinking. In many schools, more emphasis was placed on form and wording than imagination.

That’s right, imagination. Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”2 School-based learning happens as a teacher’s envisioned future becomes a student’s reality. If we are shifting to a greater focus on developing students’ executive functions, our notions of objectives need to be replaced with something more imaginative, something more forward looking than what we can measure tomorrow.

But what? What can provide a guiding vision that will focus our teaching?

In his book Think Better, Tim Hurson introduces the concept of “Target Future,” an “imagined future” so “powerful and compelling” that it generates motivation to achieve it. It generates “Future Pull.”3

That sounds great, but how do you develop one? Hurson suggests an act of imagination; he suggests telling yourself a story. Before you succumb to the temptation to write this off as too involved or requiring too much time, allow me ask a simple question: When you envision your students using the thinking processes you’ve taught them, when they’re applying such thinking on their own, what do you see? Stretch that vision, seeing your students utilizing the thinking they’ve learned in multiple scenarios outside of the classroom. Hurson suggests making this vision, this story as “vivid and sensory” as possible. How would your students feel? How would their use of the thinking influence their work and their interactions with others? Imagine all this as reality. That’s a “Target Future.” That’s what you’re teaching for—what you work to make real.

What’s the difference? Objectives tie us to schools, to classrooms, to limited contexts for our students to put their learning to use. “Each student will be able to answer two-digit addition problems with 85% accuracy.” See how that pulls you into the classroom. We feel like we are teaching for a classroom-based assessment that features an easily determined rate of accuracy. The problem is that we are not educating students to live successful lives in a classroom. We’re trying to close the “large gap” between school and successful living in the real world.

Wording a “Target Future” so that it satisfies those who insist on objectives may be a challenge. (Something for which you can offer suggestions in the comments!) However, we won’t educate for the real world until we envision our students operating within it, using the executive functions we’ve helped them develop.

In future posts, I hope to explore additional shifts we as teachers can make that will aid the inevitable shift to more thinking-centric education. For now, consider opening your next lesson with, “Students, let me tell you a story, a story in which you are the main characters…” Then use all your teaching ability to make that story their reality.

1. Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), xi-xiii.
2. Einstein, A. Albert Einstein Quotes, http://thinkexist.com/quotation/imagination_is_more_important_than_knowledge-for/260230.html
3. Hurson, T., Think Better, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 127-141.

Thinking in the Seams: Engaging Interdisciplinary Thinking

It was ingenious. So much so that some listeners wished to be high school history teachers so they could “borrow” the analogy. Even though my first listen was is in a semi-awake state, I understood enough to be informed, entertained, and left wanting to hear it all again. What caught my ear and interest was an NPR interview with Marc Lynch, author of an article that explained world politics through the analogy of a rappers’ feud. The clarity the analogy brought to the more complex issue of foreign policy and “rogue” nations amazed me. It truly was ingenious.

Such analogies are products of what I call “thinking in the seams,” thinking that merges ideas from different disciplines to generate something novel and beneficial. Researchers use varying terms for such thinking—cross-disciplinary thinking, multi-disciplinary thinking, and interdisciplinary thinking—and define it as the use of frameworks from one discipline as “points of departure for discovering or confirming similar structures and relations in other disciplines.”1 It stitches together perspectives or modes of inquiry from two or more disciplines to explore ideas. It is thinking “in the seams.”

Creativity, innovation, and deepened understanding can result from interdisciplinary thinking. Despite these potential benefits, schools rarely cultivate the “mental dexterity” required for thinking in the seams.2

Many education systems emphasize departmentalization, especially as students progress through the grade levels. Each subject is taught by an “expert” who specializes in the discipline and who rarely, if ever, designs instruction that engages students in interdisciplinary thinking. Specialization, while valuable in some contexts, prevents interdisciplinary thinking.

However, specialization should not be confused with deep understanding of a discipline. In fact, deep disciplinary understanding can foster interdisciplinary thinking if the understanding includes the recognition of patterns within the discipline. Patterns play a critical role in enabling interdisciplinary thinking.

According to researchers, interdisciplinary thinking often follows a sequence of mental actions: relationships between ideas within a discipline are recognized→the relationships are recognized as forming pattern(s)→the pattern(s) are decontextualized/generalized→examples of the same pattern(s) are recognized in other disciplines→ideas from one discipline “overlay” with another, generating new ideas.3

How can we foster such thinking?

First, teach the disciplines through patterns. By using patterns as entry-points to material, teachers can connect students’ prior experiences to new content. This helps students construct deeper understanding of the content and alerts them to associations between major ideas.

Second, teach to understanding. Moving from simple recall to understanding is moving from being able to answer a trivia question to possessing “usable knowledge”—knowledge that “is connected and organized around important concepts” and “supports transfer (to other contexts) rather than only the ability to remember.”4 Engaging students in connecting new content and patterns fosters understanding.

Third, challenge students to recognize other patterns within new content. Challenge students to explore how else the major ideas may be organized, identify the new patterns that result, and to generalize those patterns so cross-disciplinary possibilities can be explored. (This is a process of thinking that will need to be delineated and modeled for students.)

Fourth, engage in interdisciplinary thinking with colleagues. Explore patterns within the material you will be teaching and see if any possesses potential for engaging students in interdisciplinary thinking. Work collaboratively to design instruction in which patterns from both disciplines can be used to encourage interdisciplinary thinking.

Finally, encourage interdisciplinary thinking by designing time for thinking “in the seams.” Designate a period of time (daily? weekly?) in which students reexamine material to identify potential overlays of two or more disciplines. One relatively easy way to engage such thinking is to identify analogies, explaining Concept A from Discipline A by referencing Concept B from Discipline B. As students develop and express such analogies, they reprocess the content from both disciplines, deepening their understanding of both. By structuring time for it, students recognize that you value such thinking. That understanding may motivate additional interdisciplinary thinking throughout the school day.

Several teachers have expanded their own capacity for interdisciplinary thinking and for designing instruction that fosters thinking “in the seams” through instructional design models, such as the Architecture of Learning, that emphasize patterns. Teachers find their own thinking about teaching and material changes as they work with such models. Changing our approaches to material can lead to improvements in our teaching. Personal growth and professional growth are not mutually exclusive.

Do rappers and foreign policy elements share significant similarities? Yes, and examining one can truly enlighten thinking about the other. Interdisciplinary thinking is an effective tool for understanding and interacting effectively with our world. And isn’t that part of what we seek to equip students to do?

1. van Leer, O. in Perkins, D. N. (ed), Thinking: the Second International Conference (Philadelphia: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987), 405.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 407.
4. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R., eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 9.

Practical Skills & Application

The Architecture of Learning Instructional Design Model recognizes four cognitively-distinct processes: experience, comprehension, elaboration, application. These four represent learning’s core processes—processes that optimize each other’s contribution to learning. (A fifth process, intention, involves responding to current, “real-world” circumstances with previously learned content and/or skills.)

In Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success, Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko (2009) identify “four types of different thinking skills: memory, analytical skills, creative skills, and practical skills” (p. 19). Comparison between these thinking types and the core processes of the Architecture of Learning provide valuable insights.

“Practical skills” comprise knowledge students need “in living their own life” (p. 47). Practical skills can be applied to “real world situations” (p. 47). Verb phrases associated with practical skills include apply, connect to real life, identify examples, translate, show its benefit in different contexts, predict, design, problem-solve, implement, and advise.

Application, as defined in Architecture of Learning, is practice within the instructional setting that enables the use of understandings or skills within a widened or new (i.e., outside the instructional) setting. It provides the practice that constructs proficiency. Many of the verbs associated with Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko’s “practical skills” relate to activities that engage students in Architecture of Learning’s application.

This connection between practical skills and application is similar to those of memory and experience, analytical skills and comprehension, and creative skills and elaboration. These remarkable parallels reinforce beneficial insights.

First, authentic learning results from the combination and interplay of multiple ways of thinking. By authentic learning, I mean learning that results in understandings that can be recalled and applied to thinking or action within real-world scenarios. This depth of learning is rarely measured by achievement tests, so I’m not suggesting such learning will raise test scores. However, the sequence of both models suggests that mere experience or mere memorization is insufficient for quality learning. Both models engage students in thinking through and using new knowledge to construct full, authentic learning.

Second, great teaching is rarely spontaneous. Yes, it happens from time to time, and there are gifted teachers who know how to engage students effectively, but successful teaching usually requires planning. An instructional design model, such as Architecture of Learning, that requires a focus on learning’s core processes can guide teachers as they develop instruction. Such planning creates the conditions for optimal learning.

We need to revolutionize the way we teach many school subjects. A recent study found that 60% of college students show symptoms of anxiety as they approach mathematics. If they understood mathematical concepts to the point where they could use the concepts in thinking about and addressing real-world scenarios, the anxiety could be replaced with confidence. Attention to teaching that fosters authentic learning holds the key to such transformation.

Sternberg, R. J, Jarvin, L. & Grigorenko, E. L. (2009). Teaching for wisdom, intelligence,creativity, and success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Creative Skills & Elaboration

In Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success (Sternberg, Jarvin, & Grigorenko, 2009), the authors identify “four types of different thinking skills: memory, analytical skills, creative skills, and practical skills” (p. 19). Comparison between these thinking types and the core processes of the Architecture of Learning provide valuable insights. (For similarities between memory and experience or analytical skills and comprehension, see recent postings.)

Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko describe “creative skills” as those that enable us “to come up with new ideas (whatever the field)” and enable us to “deal with new situations or problems that we have never confronted before” (p. 35). At first, this may not seem to overlay neatly with the process of elaboration, but note several verbs associated with creative skills: present differently, “similize” (to form similes), “metaphorize” (to form metaphors), combine, pattern, tesselate, re-present, and personify.

Many of these actions require the blending of concepts—the very process that constructs understanding: elaboration. Newly organized sensory data, or knowledge, gained from a focus on comprehension and recall of relevant previous experience—a reference point from long term memory—provides the data (experience). During comprehension, the brain holds one input (e.g., the newly organized data) and examines its critical features. It then does the same with the second input (e.g., the reference point from long-term memory). Working memory processes blend both inputs to identify similarities, differences, and relationships between the new and the known. Blending the new and known enables the brain to construct understanding of the new data (elaboration).

What does this parallel reveal? First, creative thinking contributes to learning. Creative activities are not nice add-ons to “real” instruction. Engaging students in creative thinking actually enables learning.

Second, students need creative means of communicating their learning. If creative thinking empowers deepened learning, such learning cannot be measured through traditional assignments and assessments. When students engage in elaboration, the expression of their new understanding requires more response than filling in blanks or identifying multiple choice answers.

Third, tools such as Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences can aid teachers in developing effective elaboration activities. By asking students to take ideas presented via text or lecture and re-present them in a different “intelligence” (e.g., musical or bodily-kinesthetic), teachers foster creative thinking and enable students to communicate their learning in forms that fit their strengths (and/or strengthen their weaknesses!).

Authentic learning involves elements of both critical and creative thinking. We increase student learning by increasing student thinking. Architecture of Learning provides a tool for teachers to design such successful instruction.

Next up: “practical thinking” and application.

If any readers are on Twitter and would like to follow my “tweets,” I can be found @kdwashburn.

Sternberg, R. J, Jarvin, L. & Grigorenko, E. L. (2009). Teaching for wisdom, intelligence,creativity, and success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Analytic Skills & Comprehension

After describing memory thinking as cognition that provides “something in your head to reason about,” Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko (2009) suggest analytical skills as another type of thinking (p. 19). Analytical skills involve sorting or ordering ideas into valid schemata and are “sometimes referred to as critical thinking skills” (p. 22). Verbs associated with analytical skills include compare, contrast, sequence, organize, differentiate, identify (e.g., cause/effect), classify, categorize, combine, match, divide, and graph.

Like memory thinking and experience, analytical skills overlay nicely with Architecture of Learning’s process of comprehension. During comprehension, the brain labels and organizes data; we arrange isolated facts and examine their relationships to construct knowledge.

I disagree with the idea that comprehension or “analytical skills” equal critical thinking. I see comprehension as a precursor to evaluative, critical thinking. Comprehension enables me to see how knowledge is organized. By reviewing that organization I can assess validity, but that requires a step beyond sorting the data. However, there is a strong relationship: comprehension (or “analytical skills”) empowers critical thinking.

Again, the concept of learning as a process of varied thinking is validated. Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko (2009) suggest good instruction finds “a balance to make sure that all thinking skills can be proportionally represented throughout the curriculum” (p. 22). Architecture of Learning equips teachers to design such instruction, deepening student learning and increasing student achievement.

Up next: comparing “creative skills” (p. 35) and elaboration.

Sternberg, R. J, Jarvin, L. & Grigorenko, E. L. (2009). Teaching for wisdom, intelligence,creativity, and success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Memory Thinking & Experience

The Architecture of Learning Instructional Design Model recognizes four cognitively-distinct processes: experience, comprehension, elaboration, application. These four represent learning’s core processes—processes that optimize each other’s contribution to learning. (A fifth process, intention, involves responding to current, “real-world” circumstances with previously learned content and/or skills.)

While reading Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success (Sternberg, Jarvin, & Grigorenko, 2009), I discovered intriguing parallels between Architecture of Learning’s core processes and the authors’ identification of “four types of different thinking skills: memory, analytical skills, creative skills, and practical skills” (p. 19). While not a perfect match, the similarities are worth exploring.

Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko begin with memory because “if you have no information or skills to draw upon, there is nothing to analyze, create, or apply” (p. 19). Memory thinking involves gaining the information needed for analysis, creativity, or application, and storing that data with little or no additional processing. For example, I can recite the freezing points on both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales but not explain their significance. I can state the capital of New York State but not describe its significance. I have data, nothing more.Some verbs associated with this type of thinking include get, take in, obtain, and seek.

This description fits nicely with Architecture of Learning’s explanation of experience. During experience, the brain receives data from the senses—data that provides the raw material for additional processing and deepened learning.

What does this parallel reveal? First, a growing consensus suggests that merely obtaining data represents shallow learning. Encoding a fact simply provides data for beneficial thinking, and that thinking is what drives deeper learning.

Second, a growing consensus suggests that learning is a process—a cognitive process that requires different types of thinking at differing stages. Architecture of Learning, with its core processes and strands, represents teaching based on this view of learning. By equipping teachers with such instructional design tools, we can tailor instruction to the cognitive processes that empower learning.

The parallels do not end with Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko’s memory type of thinking and Architecture of Learning’s core process of experience. In the next posting we’ll explore the connections between analytical skills and comprehension. The links to critical thinking are especially interesting!

By the way, if you are on Twitter and would like to follow my “tweets,” I can be found @kdwashburn.

Sternberg, R. J, Jarvin, L. & Grigorenko, E. L. (2009). Teaching for wisdom, intelligence,creativity, and success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

"A-ha!": Insight and Learning

Researcher Mark Jung-Beeman, leadership and coaching expert David Rock, and author Jonah Lehrer presented the seminar “The Anatomy of an A-ha” at October’s Neuroleadership Summit in New York City. An “a-ha” is an insight, often a solution to a problem, that seems to “pop” into an individual’s mind as a whole. Insights trigger thought reorganizing, foster new connections between concepts, and often come “out of nowhere” at a time when the individual is not consciously focusing on the issue or problem the insight addresses.

Insight formation (for lack of a better term) follows a pattern. An individual becomes aware of ideas, issues, or problems that prompt additional thought. Periods of focused reflection and mysterious, unconscious processing follow. During one of these periods, the insight arrives with the feeling of, “A-ha!” fMRI scans reveal activity in various brain regions, including the right anterior temporal lobe, seconds before an insight is recognized.

Researchers believe the periods of focused reflection and unconscious processing are critical for developing insights—as if the brain needs to be consciously distracted in order to engage in the unconscious processing that ultimately produces the insight.

My experience illustrates this pattern. Many of my best ideas seem to “pop” into my head when I’m out of my office doing something totally unrelated, such as running or riding my bike. Periods of focused attention followed by seeming inattention yield the insights. (The change in scenery may also play a role, some researchers are now finding.)

How does this relate to teaching? Authentic learning mirrors insight. To learn, students need periods of focused attention and indirect or unconscious processing. You can see this in the classroom when a student raises their hand in the afternoon to let you know that they suddenly understand something you taught that morning. New connections formed in during indirect processing produce the greater understanding.

Unfortunately, time for reflection, focused and indirect, is often sacrificed for coverage. With textbooks hundreds of pages in length, teachers often feel that unless they are constantly talking, they will never “cover the textbook” within the school year. This is an unfortunate trade-off. Schools are learning institutions, and as such should model teaching that understands the necessity of reflection in learning.

Recently a teacher shared with me that using Architecture of Learning caused her to “slow down a bit” and allow the students to actually think about what was being taught. As a result, she saw more than a 60% increase in the number of students who mastered the new content over previous years when she focused on just “covering the material.”

There’s an insight worth our conscious reflection: engaging students in thought produces learning and increases achievement.

Maximizing Memory (and Learning)

Memory formation is a byproduct of other cognitive processes, explains Dr. Lila Devachi (2008) of NYU’s Centers for Neural Science and Brain Imaging. We cannot say to ourselves, “Okay, I’m now going to make a memory,” and then turn on THE memory-making brain function. However, we can engage the cognitive processes that construct memory as a “byproduct.”

Dr. Devachi lists six such cognitive processes:

1. attention: focused attention increases activity in the hippocampus, a brain structure in which increased activation correlates with memory formation
2. working with information: engaging in QUALITY processing (vs. mere quantity) of new material increases the likelihood of memory formation
3. organizing information: sorting new material and relating it to known ideas and previous experiences
4. generation: actually speaking the item, or retelling, increases the likelihood of memory formation
5. practice distribution: spaced retrieval of new memories increases memory formation; recent research indicates that multiple retrieval rather than multiple exposure (e.g., studying or re-reading a text) promotes better memory formation
6. context: imagining the time and place in which new material is encountered positively influences recall

What can teachers take from this list? Processing new material beyond merely seeing it or hearing it increases the likelihood of memory. A major emphasis of our teaching needs to focus on engaging students in such processing.

The Architecture of Learning™ instructional design model actually builds such processing into teaching. When not using such a framework for designing instruction, we need to be mindful of engaging students in quality processing of new material.

It’s the processing that maximizes memory (and therefore learning).

References
Devachi, L. (2008, October). The limits of memory: How to maximize your memory trace. Session presented at the 2008 North American Neuroleadership Summit, New York.