If learning is a change in long term learning, then planning
time should be devoted to ensuring this change. In order for this change to
take place first pupils need clear explanations, then they need to think deeply
about a concept for it to enter their long term memory and then there needs to
be regular retrieval to ensure it stays in their long term memory.
I recently read a book by Peps Mccrea where he distinguished between the durability of knowledge in long term memory (how long is stays there) with the depth of that knowledge (how much pupils think about and understand that knowledge) and this was encapsulated by Daniel Willingham’s quote that ‘memoryis the residue of thought.’
It seems logical, we remember what we really think about. I read
a bit on Albanian history last summer before I went there but I didn’t think particularly
deeply about it and so do not remember much of it, whereas a misspent childhood
analysing Arctic Monkeys lyrics mean I both deeply thought and remember every
word to every magical song!
The problem that I found though was to understand what deep
thought actually looks like.
There has been a lot of excellent work on effective instruction
(using examples and no-examples, dual coding and going from concrete to
abstract that I recently blogged about) and a lot on how to use concepts like
retrieval, spacing and interleaving to strengthen memory but there seems to be
less on how to get pupils to actually think deeply.
If memory is the residue of thought, how do you plan to
ensure your pupils think deeply? What follows are lessons from my painstaking trial
and error approach over the last 2 years.
Deep thinking is not critical thinking by another name
When I first started teaching, I was introduced to the idea
of a ‘business mindset’ and the idea that there were skills like making balanced
judgements and evaluating decisions were the skills we want our pupils to emulate.
Whilst that is a long-term aim, I made the mistake of
confusing this with deep thinking. When teaching about the economic impacts of
introducing a minimum wage for example, to get pupils thinking deeply about the
topic I would ask pupils to evaluate if the UK was right to introduce a minimum
wage to develop this ‘higher order’ thinking.
It’s something I see in all my early teaching resources and
so many shared resources that I see.
Daniel Willingham explains in detail why critical thinking
skills are not generic and can only be developed by having an extensive
domain-specific knowledge that pupils can draw upon from their long term memory
when making decisions so if I want pupils to evaluate the impact of the minimum
wage they need to fluently understand what a minimum wage, the impacts it has
on an economy and in which circumstances these impacts are most acute.
So I need my pupils to think deeply about the knowledge I have
taught them for them to remember it, not to take their shaky knowledge and use
it to solve a problem.
Answer lots of questions!
Given the limitations of working memory, for them to think
deeply all they should be doing is thinking about the concept. I would
sometimes get pupils to make mind maps of what they had learned. Whilst there
might be some merit in organising knowledge, pupils devoted most of their
effort to make the mind map look aesthetically pleasing and the thinking of the
actual concept was limited.
Mark Enser wrote in his book about an example where he asked
pupils to make a newspaper front page about the impact of a tsunami and how the
layout of the newspaper occupied most of their thinking capacity rather than
considering the tsunami. I’ve tried something similar asking pupils to create a
powerpoint presentation with similar results.
There are 2 things I have learnt from this. Firstly, is that
the best way to focus their thinking on content is on questions. I ask pupils
to answer lots and lots of questions on a concept, so they are practicing and
only thinking about that concept and nothing else.
Secondly, the format is standardised. Pupils have a booklet
of questions and every lesson follows the same format. Pupils know the routine
and so they are not thinking at all about what they have to do (reducing the
extraneous load) and purely on the content.
But this still does not answer our question. They might only
be focussing on the learning, but what is that learning? What questions do I
ask to encourage critical thinking?
There are 3 areas that I focus on to encourage deep thinking.
Consequences of chains of reasoning
The first is the impact of this on other factors. In
Economics everything has a knock-on effect and I want pupils to think about how
a minimum wage will impact on unemployment and firm’s costs as shown below.
What is important to remember here is that I am not asking
pupils to discover or guess these impacts, I have explicitly taught this.
Pupils deep thinking is not guesswork but explaining how different topics we
have taught link together. Daniel Willingham talks about this as being about consequences,
one of the 4 C’s of storytelling.
Differences and Similarities
The 2nd is on understanding the differences
between concepts. What is the difference between how a minimum wage and increased
trade union power impact the demand for labour? Also, in what circumstances
will these effects be the same?
They will have been explicitly taught these concepts, but it
is then understanding the differences between these that forces pupils to think
deeply about the subject. There is also an element of interleaving here as
pupils remember previously taught material when making these comparisons. Pupils
can look back in their booklets as a scaffold if needed. It’s worth noting a lot of this can be done through
verbal questioning also, as long as cold calling is used with their name chosen
after the question is posed so all pupils are thinking about the answer.
Application
Finally, I want pupils to be able to think about how this
learning applies in different contexts. In Economics part of this is explaining
something diagrammatically and linking their explanation of what they have
learned to a diagram. It can also be a news story where pupils may see how the
introduction of a minimum wage led to increased unemployment where pupils
explain why it was and what characteristics about that economy resulted in this
happening.
This is not critical thinking skills as they are not being forced to
make any decisions but applying their knowledge to a particular example.
So we can update our earlier model on how pupils remember:
If anyone has any views or advice on how to improve the
depth of pupils thinking I would love to hear them!