1. Thinking Skills Approaches
How can we challenge and stretch students’ thinking?

2. What do we mean by Thinking Skills?
Thinking Skills is a method used by teachers to challenge their students to:
extend their understanding
use their imaginations
transfer learning across situations
and, above all to think for themselves
This summary is based on 30 studies that formed part of the Behaviour for Learning Anthology which can be found at:

3. How have thinking skills approaches benefited students?
Students have benefited from acquiring thinking skills knowledge by:
increasing their grade achievement in both end of year and GCSE exams
accelerating their development through even deeper levels of thinking and learning

4. Which techniques develop students’ thinking skills?
Over the past 20 years there has been considerable research in how students’ thinking skills can be accelerated. Techniques include:
preparing the ground
cognitive challenge
social construction
metacognition
building bridges
These techniques are outlined in the following slides

5. Preparing the ground
To make the most out of challenges students need to be prepared. To help students achieve this effective teachers:
help students recap on relevant aspects of what they have already learned
highlight and clarify the meaning of essential vocabulary through discussion with the students
help students to become familiar with the task and what they have to do through examples
Unless you define terms and vocabulary a problem may not be recognised as a problem

6. Cognitive Challenge
Cognitive challenge is an activity designed to make students think. It can:
challenge someone’s usual way of thinking
introduce new information that does not fit with previous experience
pose questions by bringing together ideas in tension with each other
Such activities lead students to be curious about the problem and prompt them to work through ideas themselves
The tasks set should be interesting and demanding, but achievable with the help of others

7. An example of cognitive challenge
In a secondary science lesson students investigated the effects of different variables on the note produced when they blew across the top of a tube.
Students considered the effect of:
length,
width
type of material
The cognitive challenge was about which variable was the key factor.

8. Social Construction
Once students have been set a challenge, effective teachers planned for them to work together to solve it, with support from each other and the teacher – a process of constructing understanding and solving problems collaboratively
Conversation between the students and teacher helps to:
build new knowledge and understanding
create dialogue within the group which helps children to refine their own thinking
‘In collaboration the child can always do more than he can do independently.’ Lev Vygotskty

9. Examples of social construction
One study involved a class in solving a mystery murder set in The project required students to work collaboratively to take on the role of history detectives, to think of questions, follow lines of enquiry and make hypotheses.
Another study found that secondary science students were more motivated to learn if they were set a task which required them to solve a problem from a real-life context by collaborative discussion. They were less enthusiastic if they received precise instructions from the teacher to carry out a task designed to solely convey a particular point.

10. Metacognition
Metacognition occurs when students become aware of / understand their own thinking
While students are working together on a task teachers prompting them to say what they are thinking and why leads students to:
become more aware of their own thinking
discuss ideas and concepts within the group
students may not be explicitly aware of their thinking, so holding a plenary discussion after the task can help to embed thinking by getting students to reflect on what they have done.

11. An example of metacognition
A secondary school designed a debriefing activity that could be used by students from years 7 to 10. Features included:
asking a high number of open questions
prompting students to carry on talking, so that they gave lengthy responses that justified their answers to questions
making frequent references to concepts such as cause, effect and planning, and to learning skills
summarising the discussion and learning for the students
securing evaluative feedback to students from both the teacher and other students.

12. Building Bridges
Bridging involves enabling students to take their learning from one context to another and could include:
using plenary sessions to broaden students’ understanding by connecting what they have just learnt to other situations
offering examples of similar situations to students and getting them to discuss the similarities and differences to help them make links between the two

13. An example of why bridging is important
A study from Brazil looked at young people who sold fruit on the streets. The teacher presented them with the same set of problems, but in three different ways.
The first was just like the buying and selling of fruit
The second was similar but involved different goods
The third removed all context and left abstract sums only
The young people answered almost all of the first set correctly, only three quarters of the second and scored an average of 40% on the decontextualised third set.
By using plenary sessions this type of issue can be overcome, by allowing students to connect their understanding and learning to other situations

14. How was the information gathered?
The evidence underpinning this bite was drawn together as an anthology of the evidence from 30 high quality Research for Teachers studies written for GTC during the period 2000 – The 30 underpinning studies were all selected as high quality studies which are directly relevant to current practice These included:
Assessment for Learning: putting it into practice -
Enquiry-based learning, cognitive acceleration and the spiral curriculum: Jerome Bruner’s constructivist view of teaching and learning -
Social interaction as a means of constructing learning: the impact of Lev Vygotsky’s ideas on teaching and learning -

15. How can teachers use the evidence in this study?
If you aren’t yet using thinking skills strategies, you could start by systematically asking students open questions about the connections between what they’ve done in a lesson and what they have learned, and use these to open up discussion about thinking in a range of contexts.
Bridging learning across a variety of contexts helps students’ understanding. Discussing connections between lessons and experiences outside school with the whole class can be valuable. Different students will spot different connections. You could encourage your classes to brainstorm and evaluate increasing numbers of bridges over time.

16. How can school leaders use the evidence in this study?
The evidence is clear about the value of students thinking aloud, so they can move towards new understandings.
To what extent are students in your school able to talk about their own thinking? You may wish to ask your teachers to video or record students reflecting on their thinking process during the lesson and to explore approaches together with teachers. What does this tell you about students’ confidence and skills in talking about thinking?
Do you, as a staff, need to use metacognition and model your own thinking aloud in order to help students develop an understanding of how they can talk about their thinking?

17. Follow-up reading
This BITE is based on the Research for Teachers ‘Behaviour for Learning Anthology’ accessible here:
See also:
Vygotsky’s ideas on Teaching and Learning:
Improving learning through cognitive intervention:

18. Contact details This presentation was produced by CUREE:
CUREE Ltd 8th Floor, Eaton House
Eaton Road
Coventry
CV1 2FJ