The Reflective Student: A Taxonomy of Reflection Part 2 reflective student Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! At best, students can narrate what they did, but have trouble thinking abstractly about their learning - patterns, connections and progress. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach. 1. See my Prezi tour of the Taxonomy 2. Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. taxonomy of reflection Bloom's Remembering: What did I do? Bloom's Understanding: What was important about what I did? Bloom's Application: When did I do this before? Bloom's Analysis: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did? Bloom's Evaluation: How well did I do? Bloom's Creation: What should I do next? Image credit: flickr/Daveybot Trackback URL
Universal Intellectual Standards by Linda Elder and Richard Paul Universal intellectual standards are standards which must be applied to thinking whenever one is interested in checking the quality of reasoning about a problem, issue, or situation. To think critically entails having command of these standards. To help students learn them, teachers should pose questions which probe student thinking; questions which hold students accountable for their thinking; questions which, through consistent use by the teacher in the classroom, become internalized by students as questions they need to ask themselves. The ultimate goal, then, is for these questions to become infused in the thinking of students, forming part of their inner voice, which then guides them to better and better reasoning. CLARITY: Could you elaborate further on that point? PRECISION: Could you give more details? DEPTH: How does your answer address the complexities in the question? BREADTH: Do we need to consider another point of view?
The Critical Mind is A Questioning Mind Learning How to Ask Powerful, Probing Questions Introduction The key to powerful thinking is powerful questioning. When we ask the right questions, we succeed as a thinker, for questions are the force that powers our thinking. Thinking, at any point in time, can go off in thousands of different directions, some of which, by the way, are dead-ends. Questions define the agenda of our thinking. "By Their Questions Ye Shall Know Them" If there were a bible for critical thinking, "By their questions yea shall know them" would be a salient teaching within it. The Basic Building Blocks for Thinking: One Key To Powerful Questioning For example, one basic understanding essential to critical thinking is based on insight into the basic structures common to all thinking. The Elements of Thought The elements of thinking are as important to thinking as the elements of chemistry are to the composition of every substance. The Elements Enumerated Let us now consider these elements.
The Reflective Teacher: A Taxonomy of Reflection Part 3 reflective teacher Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Teachers are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. 1. See my Prezi Tour of the Taxonomy 3. Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. taxonomy of reflection Bloom's Remembering: What did I do? Bloom's Understanding: What was important about what I did? Bloom's Application: When did I do this before? Bloom's Analysis: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did? Bloom's Evaluation: How well did I do? Bloom's Creation: What should I do next? image credit: flickr/duane.schoon Tags: Bloom, Common Core, Critical thinking, Curriculum, Evaluation, Higher-order thinking, Innovation, Relationships, Relevance, Rigor Trackback URL
The Importance of Generalizations in Social Studies | Bridging the Gap Shiveley & Misco (2009) suggest that generalizations are a logical step in teaching kids to think critically about what they know and transferring that knowledge to a variety of topics within the social studies. After understanding the relationship between “fact” and “concept” students will be capable of producing high-quality generalizations that eliminate isolation of ideas and stimulate crossover and relevance to the social studies curriculum. Research Summary The authors suggest that a critical component to understanding the need for generalizations is the ability to discern between fact and concept. Fact: a specific and often isolated piece of information that is believed to be true and which can be confirmed by empirical evidenceConcept: an idea used to organize a class of objects or experiences, typically one or two words, which may be concrete (dog, chair) or abstract (love, justice).Generalizations: a statement of a relationship between two or more concepts. Citation: Like this:
Three Categories of Questions: Crucial Distinction Many pseudo critical thinking approaches present all judgments as falling into two exclusive and exhaustive categories: fact and opinion. Actually, the kind of judgment most important to educated people and the kind we most want to foster falls into a third, very important, and now almost totally ignored category, that of reasoned judgment. A judge in a court of law is expected to engage in reasoned judgment; that is, the judge is expected not only to render a judgment, but also to base that judgment on sound, relevant evidence and valid legal reasoning. A judge is not expected to base his judgments on his subjective preferences, on his personal opinions, as such. Here's a somewhat different way to put this same point. Those with one right answer (factual questions fall into this category). Only the third kind of question is a matter of sheer opinion. When questions that require better or worse answers are treated as matters of opinion, pseudo critical thinking occurs.
A Taxonomy of Reflection: A Model for Critical Thinking My approach to staff development (and teaching) borrows from the thinking of Donald Finkel who believed that teaching should be thought of as “providing experience, provoking reflection.” He goes on to write, … to reflectively experience is to make connections within the details of the work of the problem, to see it through the lens of abstraction or theory, to generate one’s own questions about it, to take more active and conscious control over understanding. ~ From Teaching With Your Mouth Shut Over the last few years I’ve led many teachers and administrators on classroom walkthroughs designed to foster a collegial conversation about teaching and learning. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I’ve developed this “Taxonomy of Reflection.” – modeled on Bloom’s approach. 1. Take my Prezi tour of the Taxonomy A Taxonomy of Lower to Higher Order Reflection Assume an individual has just completed a task. Trackback URL
Facts, Concepts, and Generalizations - Explanations and examples Examples:Concepts: Flowering plants have flowers that develop into fruits, roots, stems, and leaves. The following are also concepts: flowers, light, magnifying glass, animals, rock, soil, erosion, magnet, force, energy, Concepts summarize and categorize objects. The difficulty of learning a concept depends on the number of characteristics, the abstractness or concreteness, and the reasoning that connects the characteristics. The abstractness of a concept is related to how the concept can be experienced. Examples: Magnets attraction is stronger the closer they are to each other.
A History of Freedom of Thought Project Gutenberg's A History of Freedom of Thought, by John Bagnell Bury This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: A History of Freedom of ThoughtAuthor: John Bagnell BuryRelease Date: January 11, 2004 [EBook #10684]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by Jeffrey Kraus-yao. Home University Library of Modern Knowledge No. 69 Editors: HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. Copyright, 1913, by HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY IT is a common saying that thought is free. At present, in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is taken as a matter of course and seems a perfectly simple thing. The average brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of least resistance. The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased by a positive feeling of fear.
Problem Solving Techniques Accelerating Change The Nature of the Post-Industrial World Order The world is swiftly changing and with each day the pace quickens. The pressure to respond intensifies. New global realities are rapidly working their way into the deepest structures of our lives: economic, social, environmental realities — realities with profound implications for teaching and learning, for business and politics, for human rights and human conflicts. These realities are becoming increasingly complex; and they all turn on the powerful dynamic of accelerating change. This chapter explores the general character of these changes and the quality of thinking necessary for effectively adapting to them. Can we deal with incessant and accelerating change and complexity without revolutionizing our thinking? Consider, for a moment, even a simple feature of daily life: drinking water from the tap. Consider also the quiet revolution that is taking place in communications. We can no longer rely on the past to be the guide for the future.
Teaching Kids to Think for Themselves Once upon a time in school, a child would have a few classes on “logic” or “critical thinking.” It’s too bad that such lessons do not exist any longer. So, it’s a parent’s job to teach critical thinking to their child. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Now, how do you translate these ten points so that you can guide a child through the steps? Then, use the “translation for children” below to guide a child think through the critical thinking process. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. For younger children, it might be a good idea to note with pencil and paper the answers that they give you, so that you can review it with them once they complete the list. Remember that there are two keys to helping a child to learn to think logically and critically: how we as adults model and demonstrate the steps in our daily lives, and being consistent in leading the child through the steps when they need to use them, instead of doing all of their thinking for them!
Critical Thinking and Emotional Intelligence In addition to Goleman’s lack of sensitivity to the brain-to-mind translation problem, and his failure to acknowledge that we already know much about the mind through its works and constructs, Goleman’s work is often inconsistent and sometimes incoherent. Let us look at some cases. Two Brains Equals Two Minds Because Goleman’s “theory” of mind is based strictly on his interpretations of data from brain research, he comes to some questionable conclusions about the mind. For example, he states, “sensory signals from eye or ear travel first in the brain to the thalamus and then — across a single synapse — to the amygdala; a second signal from the thalamus is routed to the neocortex — the thinking brain. Based on this description of brain activity (and other similar descriptions), he concludes " . . . we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels . . . For either we grant that the amygdala has some cognitive capacity, or that it has none. Otherwise all emotions would be identical.
Reasoning Training Increases Brain Connectivity Associated with High-Level Cognition 121 3Share Synopsis A number of studies across various domains– from juggling to taxi navigation to meditation to music to motor learning to processing speed– demonstrate the importance of experience on patterns of neural connectivity. Finally, the cognitive ability domain is catching up. In recent years, neuroscientists have discovered a large-scale brain network critical for novel and complex goal-directed problem solving. One of the most exciting findings in the past few years is that coordination among the key players of this network is substantially affected by training and experience. In a more recent hot-off-the-press analysis, Mackey, Alison Miller Singley, and Bunge used the same study sample to investigate whether intensive reasoning training would result in stronger communication within the prefrontal parietal network. First, there was an effect of the course. To be sure, this doesn’t negate the role of biology. © 2013 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved