Learning and Teaching the "What" and "How"
1
LEARNING AND TEACHING
THE "WHAT AND "HOW"
DEVELOPING SKILLFUL THINKERS
Adapted from the book
Developing Minds;
A Resource Book
For Teaching Thinking,
Arthur L. Costa
It is often stated that schools over emphasize the logical/mathematical and verbal /linguistic intelligences. And it is often observed and discovered in the Pisa test; students are really working at low level skills. If we use
Bloom 's taxonomy as a guide we could say that students are involved in the knowledge and comprehension levels with a few opportunities to work at the application level. However, we need more students who can analyze, synthesize and evaluate from a range of options. The Pisa study focused on
15 year old students to see if they had acquired the knowledge, skills and attitudes required of an information/ knowledge driven society The results indicate that indeed our students do not have the requisite skills for our age.
Industrial countries involved in the PISA review have discovered that many of their students do not have the skills for the 21century. Changes have to be made and the point recognized that we, as educators, are now being asked not to produce workers, but to produce thinkers who can work. We know that many of the jobs our students will have in the 21st century have not yet been invented.
Norm Green
In teaching for thinking, we are interested in how students produce knowledge rather than how they merely reproduce it. Intelligent behavior is performed in response to questions and problems, the answers to which are
NOT immediately known. Thus, we are interested in focusing on student performance under those challenging conditions that demand strategic
2
reasoning, insightfulness, perseverance, creativity, and craftsmanship to resolve complex problems.
What behaviors are indicative of the efficient, effective problem solver? Just what do human beings do when they behave intelligently? Research in effective thinking and intelligent
LEARNING AND TEACHING
THE "WHAT AND "HOW"
DEVELOPING SKILLFUL THINKERS
Adapted from the book
Developing Minds;
A Resource Book
For Teaching Thinking,
Arthur L. Costa
It is often stated that schools over emphasize the logical/mathematical and verbal /linguistic intelligences. And it is often observed and discovered in the Pisa test; students are really working at low level skills. If we use
Bloom 's taxonomy as a guide we could say that students are involved in the knowledge and comprehension levels with a few opportunities to work at the application level. However, we need more students who can analyze, synthesize and evaluate from a range of options. The Pisa study focused on
15 year old students to see if they had acquired the knowledge, skills and attitudes required of an information/ knowledge driven society The results indicate that indeed our students do not have the requisite skills for our age.
Industrial countries involved in the PISA review have discovered that many of their students do not have the skills for the 21century. Changes have to be made and the point recognized that we, as educators, are now being asked not to produce workers, but to produce thinkers who can work. We know that many of the jobs our students will have in the 21st century have not yet been invented.
Norm Green
In teaching for thinking, we are interested in how students produce knowledge rather than how they merely reproduce it. Intelligent behavior is performed in response to questions and problems, the answers to which are
NOT immediately known. Thus, we are interested in focusing on student performance under those challenging conditions that demand strategic
2
reasoning, insightfulness, perseverance, creativity, and craftsmanship to resolve complex problems.
What behaviors are indicative of the efficient, effective problem solver? Just what do human beings do when they behave intelligently? Research in effective thinking and intelligent
References: Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1985. Baltimore: University Park Press, 1980. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.