Summary of Thinking Skills

Summary of Thinking Skills

The preceding pages have described the skills that students employ while studying within any subject area. A given activity might involve skills in more than one category. For example, while listening to a lecture, a social studies student might restate information to herself regarding the meaning of the constitution and how it applies to her own life. She might be doing this so that she can verify that she understands it thoroughly enough to earn a grade of at least a B in her course. While doing this, she would probably be employing the following skills:

Goal setting (a learning-to-learn skill)

Cognitive restructuring (a learning-to-learn skill)

Self-evaluation (a learning-to-learn skill)

Declarative knowledge (a content thinking skill)

Storage and retrieval skills (a basic reasoning skill)

Categorization (a basic reasoning skill)

Extrapolation (a basic reasoning skill)

Analogical reasoning (a basic reasoning skill)

Elaboration (an executive skill)

The student may be employing other skills as well (for example, she may be deliberately focusing her attention on the task - a learning-to-learn skill). Proficiency at any of these skills would help her conduct her study activity more effectively. Likewise, a weakness in any of these skills could seriously impede her attempt to study.

Measuring Basic Thinking Skills

What type of thinking does a student have to do to answer the following question?

dog : puppy :: cat :
a. mammal
b. tiger

c. kitten

d. camel

First, the student must be able to understand the meaning of each of the seven words. This is a categorization skill, often based on content-area declarative information.

Second, the student must be able to understand the nature of the relationship between the first two words. This is another categorization skill based on more complex (that is, more abstract) content-area declarative information.

Third, the student must determine what there is about the first relationship that is similar to the relationship between the third word and any of the possible answers. This is an extrapolation skill, based on complex (abstract) content-area declarative information, combined with the evaluation of logical reasoning (the fourth basic reasoning skill discussed in this chapter).

Finally, it is necessary to determine which of the new relationships is the most similar to the first. To do this properly, the student should state internally each of the four possible relationships and determine which is the most similar to that between the first two words. This part of analogical reasoning involves a cyclical repetition of the first three steps, until the student determines a satisfactory answer.

The example provides an easy task for most readers of this book, because the concepts are simple and their relationship is straightforward. A test taker would probably immediately recognize the first relationship and look for a word describing a young cat among the list of possible answers. On advanced tests the questions could involve more complex vocabulary, and more complex relationships - indeed, difficult analogy test items include words with multiple meanings and pairs of words with multiple relationships. The accompanying question would be much more difficult.

There are serious weaknesses in test items of this type. The major problem lies in the numerous reasons why a person might get the item wrong. For example, I might give a wrong answer because:

I have been exposed to all of the concepts, but have failed to categorize one or more of them correctly. (This would suggest that I might benefit from practice at categorizing, from enhancement of my learning-to-learn skills, or from further instruction in the declarative knowledge of the appropriate content area.)

There might be one or more concepts to which I have never been exposed, and so I may not have had the opportunity to acquire adequate information to answer the question. (This would suggest that I might need to be exposed to a wider variety of concepts. However, if other learners acquire these concepts at a much younger age, it might actually be difficult for me to master them now.)

Even though I understand both concepts in a pair, I might not notice the relationship between them - in spite of the fact that this relationship is one that I understand. (This might suggest that I might benefit from learning to focus my attention more effectively or from practice at extrapolating.)

Even though I understand both concepts, I might not notice the relationship between one or more pairs of words, because the relationship itself is a concept with which I am unfamiliar. (The action to be taken would depend on whether my unfamiliarity with the relationship has arisen because I have not been adequately exposed to it or because I was exposed to it but failed to learn it.)

I might understand all the relationships among the pairs of words but be unable to employ logic effectively in order to determine which relationship among the possible answers is most similar to the initial relationship. (The action to be taken would depend on whether my inability to use logic has arisen because I have not been adequately exposed to it or because I was exposed to it but failed to master it.)

I might have a faulty test-taking strategy. For example, I might notice a reasonably close relationship from the list of answers and impulsively choose that answer, without noticing that another answer would denote an even closer similarity to the initial relationship. (This might suggest that I don't know how to be more deliberate and reflective - or that I incorrectly value speed over deliberation - or that I have an emotional problem that induces me to be needlessly impulsive in responding to test items.)

The preceding is only a partial list of the many possible explanations for an incorrect answer and of the courses of action that could be taken to help the student answer similar questions correctly in the future.

In fact, it is not very useful to give teachers the results of students' performance on tests like the one described here. Wittrock (1991) argues that teachers could benefit much more from specific descriptions of why students make mistakes than from their overall scores on many standardized tests. In this example, each explanation for an error suggests a different course of action; but simply giving the teacher a cumulative score for performance on several items of this type offers little real advice for instruction. Teachers can design and deliver much more effective instruction to students on the basis of their own assessment of real reasons for student errors than they can deliver on the basis of standardized test items that offer no basis for assessment of actual thinking skills.

Review Exercise - Thinking Skills

Margie has been working on a science project. She noticed that when she accidentally put hot water into the ice tray in the refrigerator, it seemed to freeze more quickly than cold water. She has developed a hypothesis related to this observation, tested the hypothesis, and has developed a display showing her results. What thinking skills did Margie use during her science project? Identify the skills and the times at which they were used.

Answer

She almost certainly used all of the thinking skills described in the previous section.

She probably used attention control skills almost constantly throughout the project. She would have been successful to the extent that she was aware of when she was and was not attending to the task and adjusted her activity accordingly.

She probably set both long-term and short-term goals and used these as a basis for providing feedback to herself during the project.

She probably used cognitive restructuring skills almost constantly by talking to herself about her tasks - for example, by telling herself what to do next and how to do it and by wondering what was happening as she observed each particular phase of the experiment.

She probably used self-evaluation skills to monitor her progress toward her goals - by determining the extent to which she was carrying out her experiment in such a way as to satisfy her curiosity and by realizing that she was competently applying the scientific methods she had learned in class.

She used declarative knowledge when she recalled or used information about atoms, molecules, and temperature and about the way these concepts and others interact.

She used procedural knowledge when she demonstrated that she knew both the general process of how to conduct an experiment and the more specific processes of how to collect data, how to use a computer to make a poster, etc.

She used storage and retrieval skills on numerous occasions to transfer information to and from long-term memory. Although her project went far beyond rote memorization, her ability to automatically store and recall information enabled her to engage in the thinking that was necessary to test her hypothesis.

She used matching skills almost every time she thought about an aspect of her project. For example, she used categorizing whenever she gave a label to something she was thinking about. This enabled her to speed up her thinking process, to generalize and go beyond the information immediately given by isolated observations, and to insure that people reading her posters would understand what she was trying to say. She used other matching skills as well.

She used executive procedures often during the whole process. She used elaboration whenever she derived information she had not explicitly observed (for example, when she concluded that the inside of the ice cube was frozen). She used problem solving skills during the whole process of stating and testing her hypotheses. She used her composing skills to develop the report and display.

Click here to see a summary comparing all the major terms discussed in this chapter.

Click on a topic from the following list, or use your web browser to go where you want to go: