Chapter 7

Teaching Thinking Skills¹

The purpose of education is not merely to enable students to accumulate facts. A major goal is that by the time students finish school they should be able to solve problems that will enable them to be happy and successful in life and to contribute to society. To achieve this goal, students need to develop higher order thinking skills. There are many terms that refer to the process of teaching students to use thinking skills more effectively - for example, strategic teaching, cognitive skills instruction, process skills instruction, and scaffolded instruction. Each of these terms refers to a general framework or focus for teaching children to think more productively.

This chapter will describe what we know about teaching students to formulate and solve problems, to think critically and creatively, and to apply thinking skills to problem solving. We shall first examine the nature of various thinking skills and then discuss a few of the many strategies to help student develop these skills.

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Describe the major categories of thinking skills, including the following:
   
   
   • learning-to-learn skills
   • content thinking skills
   • basic reasoning skills
     
     
2. Describe metacognitive skills and how they function.
   
   
3. Describe the general strategies for helping students develop their thinking skills.
   
   
4. Describe the process of self-regulation and strategies for teaching students to regulate their own learning.
   
   
5. Describe the concept of creativity and strategies for helping students develop higher degrees of creativity.
   
   

   Putting This Chapter in Perspective: The preceding chapter described important components of information processing. This chapter deals with strategies for helping students use those and other skills to solve problems effectively.

    

Thinking Skills

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in teaching higher order thinking skills. While theories and sub-theories have multiplied, educational psychologists have not yet arrived at widespread agreement regarding how to group these skills or the terminology to apply to these skills. This book will take the position thinking skills can be divided into three basic sets: (1) learning-to-learn skills, (2) content thinking skills, and (3) basic reasoning skills (Marzano & Arredondo, 1986).

 

Note that this book is not suggesting that every activity engaged in by students or teachers can be categorized as an implementation of one of the three types of skills listed in the preceding paragraph. A given activity might involve skills in more than one category. The point of discussing these specific sets of skills is that students use them in almost all their instructional activities; and it is possible to help students become better learners by helping them develop and use these skills more effectively.

 

The skills described throughout this chapter are valuable in the academic lives of students, but they are important in the world beyond the school as well. The American Society of Training and Development and the U.S. Department of Labor recently conducted a study of basic workplace skills. They concluded that there were thirteen basic skills essential to success in the workplace:

• learning to learn
  
  
• listening
  
  
• oral communication
  
  
• problem solving
  
  
• creative thinking
  
  
• self esteem
  
  
• goal setting/motivation
  
  
• personal and career development skills
  
  
• interpersonal skills
  
  
• teamwork
  
  
• negotiation
  
  
• organizational effectiveness
  
  
• leadership

It is no accident that learning-to-learn occurs first in this list. The report described this as "the most basic of all skills because it is the key that unlocks future success.... Equipped with this skill, an individual can achieve competency in all other basic workplace skills from reading through leadership" (Carnevale et al, 1988, p. 8).

Footnote:

1. This chapter, like the preceding chapter, deals with the application of topics from the field of cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology can be regarded as a field of basic research that occasionally has important implications for the more applied field of educational psychology. Two excellent, comprehensive sources of information on cognitive psychology are Anderson (1990) and Mayer (1992). An excellent resource for bridging the gap between cognitive psychology and practical instructional applications is the work of Michael Pressley and his colleagues (e.g., Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987).

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

• Introduction <<You are here>>
• Learning-to-Learn Skills
• Content Thinking Skills
• Basic Reasoning Skills
• Summary of Thinking Skills
• Metacognitive Skills
• Development of Thinking Skills
• Cognitive Skills Instruction
• Self-Regulation of Learning
• Notetaking
• Stimulating Creative Thinking
• Stimulating Critical Thinking
• What Teachers and Parents Can Do to Simulate Thinking Skills
• What Students Can Do to Simulate Thinking Skills
• Summary
• Annotated Bibliography