ENHANCING LEARNERS’ THINKING SKILLS
(Artikel Hasil Pemikiran)
Antonius Wahyana
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION PROGRAM FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS UNIVERSITAS KRISTEN SATYA WACANA
SALATIGA 2023
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ENHANCING LEARNERS’ THINKING SKILLS By Antonius Wahyana
(Email: anton.wahyana@uksw.edu)
Introduction
Most attention on thinking is devoted to the importance and definition than how to enhance it. Most articles on how to teach it are vague, even the domain specific articles. Notwithstanding, there are a few which have made meaningful suggestions on how to teach and enhance thinking skills of learners. Our learners are good thinkers who need someone to stir them up. Fisher (1990, p. 245) quoting Barry, a child who is only eight years old: “I’m quite a good thinker. I just need someone to start me up!”
This article aims to review the roles of teachers, parents, teacher institutions, the schools, professional teachers’ development and the learners themselves in developing their thinking skills. Besides, factors inhibiting thinking are also discussed.
Teachers’ Roles
The success of any program mostly depends on teachers. The Center for Critical Thinking (1996) suggests that teachers should let their students be aware of what they are in for the first day they attend classes, teachers should speak less in class, develop specific strategies for cultivating thinking, use concrete examples in class, regularly question students, and break class down frequently into small groups to work on specific tasks. The Center added that teachers should think aloud in front of the students and present concepts in context of their use. In addition, teachers should use various instructional approaches to enhance thinking skills.
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According to Cotton (2001), the use of probing questions, redirection and reinforcement increases students’ content knowledge and enhance the development of thinking skills. It has also been suggested that teachers use higher order questions in the classroom and also have enough waiting time for students to respond to a question.
These practices increase students’ participation in class activities. According to Beamon (1997), teachers need to use the cognitive instruction approach to teaching.
Similarly, Jones (1986) also suggest that learners have the capacity to learn and this can be improved considerably by building on their pre-existing knowledge and strengthening and expanding their current repertoire of thinking and learning strategies.
Consequently, in order to enhance critical and creative thinking (higher-order thinking skills), the teacher must be a model (Collins, 1993). The teacher must practice critical and creative thinking skills in the teaching process. The teacher must provide opportunities for students to select activities from a range of appropriate choices, seek imaginative, appropriate, and ethical solutions to problems, exhibit genuine interest, curiosity, and commitment to learning. Besides, the teacher should engage students in meaningful activities which incorporate students’ interest, abilities, backgrounds, and needs. It is also suggested that teachers enhance critical and creative thinking by involving students in role plays/simulations, using “structured controversy”, encouraging students to recognize contradictions, asking divergent questions, asking students to analyze the content of materials/texts, and asking students to defend their assertions with reasons.
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One area where teachers can work on to promote thinking among learners is to eradicate from the students any negative attitude that inhibit thinking and replace it with positive ones. Harris (1998) points out the following positive attitudes that teachers should inculcate in their students: curiosity, constructive discontent, the belief that problems can be solved, the ability to suspend judgment and criticisms, see good in the bad, problems lead to improvement, and a problem can be solved. Moreover, Fisher (1990) also suggests that teachers build self-esteem among the learners, reach all children in the class, listen to learners with care, be learners too, and be positive.
Another thing teachers can do to enhance thinking skills and thinking is to create conducive classroom environment. In Potts’ study (as cited in Keefe & Walberg, 1992) thinking in the classroom is facilitated by a physical and intellectual environment that encourages a spirit of discovery. Two suggestions are given to enhance the physical environment which include seating arrangement and visual aids in the classroom. The seating arrangement must be done in a way that each child can be seen to avoid passiveness and the visual aids should encourage ongoing attention to critical and creative thoughts processes. The classroom environment should be a motivating place for learners to express their views without fear of intimidation. There should be fairness, tolerance, and respect for each other’s opinion. Dialogue, negotiation, care, and active participation should be key elements in the classroom.
Beamon (1997) for instance, asserts that teachers should create an environment that will raise expectations and extend opportunities for students to use their ability to think. Also, the classroom environment must be created to motivate and challenge learners to think.
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In addition, Beyer (1988) suggests that teachers should do direct teaching of thinking skills in the classroom and that such teaching should focus on the specific operations that constitute thinking. Therefore, teaching and learning of thinking skills at the initial stages should concentrate on the specific skills to be developed rather than on content. Teaching skillful thinking must extend beyond practice and exercise.
Besides, direct instruction in thinking skills should primarily consist of carefully structured academic tasks, explicit instruction in their accomplishment, systematic practices to attain mastery, numerous opportunities for direct practice, and appropriate assessment. To make direct instruction a success, it is suggested that the teachers have understanding of the skills to be taught and apply the appropriate rules and procedures.
By so doing, this will help students develop their self-confidence and self-esteem.
In the teaching process, teachers should structure learning tasks around problem solving, decision making, or conceptualizing which show students opportunities on how to use thinking skill (Beyer, 1987). In this process students articulate their claims, provide evidence, and reason in support of their claims. This makes students identify and respond to challenges to different points of views put forward, identify and examine the underlying assumptions and examine their consistency. Though this student-centered process, it offers the teachers the opportunities to interrupt the process to see how students are using the important thinking skills they have learnt in the execution of a problem or task (Beyer, 1987).
All in all, teachers need to encourage discussions in class, ask questions that cause students to think, encourage students to ask and answer questions, and feel comfortable to express opinions, and encourage students to respect the views of others. In addition,
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teachers need to probe for clarity of expression, give students choices and involve them in meaningful projects, and believe that they have the ability to develop and improve their thinking ability (Beamon, 1997).
Parents’ Roles
Another factor that enhances thinking skills among students is parental involvement. A study by Kashani, et. al. (1987) indicates that parental support has positive effect on the development of personality of the adolescents. Alpay-Altug, Ozkan, and Alpay (1998) in a study on parental attitude and critical thinking ability in adolescents identified that parental attitude plays an important role in the determination of learners critical thinking ability. This implies that parents should have positive attitudes and enhance thinking skills among learners. Parents should engage their kids in divergent questions, ask kids to give reasons for their choices and actions.
Furthermore, parents should engage their kids in games and activities that are likely to develop their cognition and their ability to think. Parents themselves should engage in critical and creative thinking (thinking skills). Parents should give encouragement to their kids when they get involve in thinking activities. Lopes (1995) in talking about how to help kids grow creatively, suggested that parents should relax controls which diminish self-confidence, should not always be critical to have the correct answer to a problem, should inspire perseverance, should provide creative atmosphere, and should offer but should not pressure kids. The implications of these are that parents need to encourage and give their kids time to develop the creative talents which is actually innate. Encouragement from parents reinforces the kid’s interests in thinking.
6 Schools’ Roles
Besides parental involvement, the school has a major role to play in enhancing thinking skills among students. The school environment should encourage, value and support the teaching of thinking skills. Schools should promote the intrinsic motivation of learners (Perkins, 1990). One factor that hinders the teaching of thinking skills is large class size. Schools should, therefore, have reasonable class sizes to facilitate the teaching of thinking skills. In addition, schools need to appreciate teaching and learning of thinking skills by awarding prizes to teachers and students engaged in thinking skills’ activities. By so doing, the school provides an ecosystem that nurtures, supports, and honors skillful thinking (Beyer, 1988). The school should also provide appropriate staff development. Teaching thinking skills do not come readily to all teachers. Staff development has to be undertaken to carry a thinking skills program from curriculum guide into effective learning. Schools must provide continuous staff development for teachers to be aware of the modern trends in teaching thinking skills and have the opportunity to use them. Schools can institute thinking skills day (once a month for example) to discuss issues related to teaching thinking skills (taken from journal articles, for example) and to provide demonstrations and presentations about good practices related to thinking skills.
Teacher Training Institution’s Roles
Teacher institutions also have a major role to play in enhancing thinking in learners by incorporating the teaching of thinking skills in the teacher education curriculum. Cotton (2001) points out that training teachers to teach thinking skills (critical and creative thinking) leads to students’ achievement. Teacher training is the
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key factor to most successful thinking programs. Crump, Schlichter, and Palk (1988) have identified that there is a positive relationship between teacher training and student achievement. According to Beyer (1988), in order to develop proficiency in the strategies and skills used in the teaching of thinking skills, a teacher training program must include the following elements: (a) provide education through lectures, reading, and discussion in the theories and research upon which they are based, (b) demonstrate constantly how these strategies work, (c) offer repeated practice and observation in the use of these strategies and skills, and (d) provide coaching. The kind of training given to teacher trainees should take into consideration teacher needs. The teaching of thinking skills in schools will be enhanced when there are quality teachers to handle them effectively in the classrooms.
Unfortunately, pre-service teacher institutions have failed in the above endeavor. Stuart (1999) in a comparative analysis study in primary teacher education identified that lecturers do not use appropriate methods that enhance thinking skills. It is stated that to get professional development designed to help prospective teachers to be able to teach higher order thinking skills is quite rare. Most lecturers stumbled into and trained them in the way they were trained when they did their under-graduate program many years ago.
To improve the students’ performance on thinking skills tests, pre-service teacher institutions must improve their teacher training curriculum. Teacher training institutions must teach cognitive skills to pre-service teachers before training them to teach thinking skills in the classrooms (Ashton, 1980). Teacher institutions need to incorporate thinking skills into all aspects of teacher preparation and train prospective
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teachers to be models of effective thinking strategies (Walsh & Paul, 1988).
Professional Teacher Development’ Roles
To solve the complex and daunting task of enhancing thinking and make it a success, there should be collaboration between teacher training institutions, classroom teachers, parents, educational planners, researchers, and learners but the teachers hold the key. The success of a thinking program or a thinking curriculum will depend on careful planning and implementation. There must be some components about a program or curriculum that will make it effective.
Teacher training and development is very essential. This component has been identified by McGuiness (1999) in a review and evaluation of research into thinking skills commissioned by the Department for Education and Employment in England in 1998 as a major contributing factor in program success. It has been pointed out that more successful thinking skill interventions have been characterized by explicit models of teacher development and teacher support. This implies that teacher preparation is key to promoting thinking in schools especially at the elementary level.
Teachers who model intelligent behavior are effective in creating an ecosystem for thinking in their classroom. Teachers cannot model intelligent behaviors when they have not been taught to do so. The major challenge of the classroom teacher is how to manage the complexity of working in subject areas to transform them into instructions that will stimulate thinking among learners (Branford, Sherwood, Hasselbring, Kinzer, and Williams, 1987). This challenge continues to exist in present-day teachers.
Teacher training institutions need to model such behaviors in their training for prospective teachers to emulate.
9 Learners’ Roles
After receiving instructions in thinking skills from teachers, learners need to use them. They have a major role to play in making their innate thinking skills ability work. Learners need to cultivate positive attitudes towards creative and critical thinking skills and do all it takes to enhance their use. Learners need to take active part in class activities (discussions). In order to enhance students’ thinking skills in a discussion group, according to Wilks (1995), students should not to yell or call out, they should concentrate on what others are saying, they should be tolerant, and they should say what they think and feel freely. Also, they must ask questions for clarification, listen attentively, make sound judgment, think before they respond to a question or comment, weigh the implications of what they say, give reasons for what they say or do, learn to practice thinking skills learnt, and learn to take risks. Therefore, according to Harris (1998), learners should do away with negative attitudes that block how they will use the creative and critical thinking they have learnt. These negative attitudes include using expressions like: “Oh no, a problem! It can’t be done! I can’t do it! But I am not a creative or a critical thinker! I might fail!” Learners need to be
trained how to develop their positive attitudes, such as: to be academically curious, to be able to challenge assumptions behind ideas, to be able to voice constructive discontent, to believe that most problems can be solved, to be able to suspend judgments and criticisms, to be able to see the good in the bad, and to be prepared to face and solve problems which lead to development. Besides, teachers need to develop their learners’ perseverance, flexibility, and imagination as well because all of these are important for successful learning.
10 Factors Inhibiting Thinking
Teaching thinking skills in schools has suffered setbacks due to certain factors. Bayer (1988) for instance, identifies several factors inhibiting the teaching of thinking skills in schools. These factors include inappropriate teaching methods employed by teachers, ineffective testing procedures used by both teachers and testing companies which fail to support and reinforce the development of thinking skills among learners, and severe overload of skills in the curriculum. The other factors are lack of consensus among educators on which thinking operations are essential and worth-teaching, and the inability of teachers, test makers, material developers, and curriculum designers to identify the essential thinking operations to select for teaching.
In addition to the above, educational policies negatively influences the teaching of thinking skills in schools. Most educational policies emphasize on standards and teachers’ accountability. There is increase prevalence of standards, high- stake testing, and outcome assessment (Ward & McCotter, 2004). This puts pressure on teachers preparing their learners for tests rather than helping them become creative thinkers in the learning process. In some cases, the culture of the school s and that of the societies do not support the teaching of thinking in schools. According to Leat (1999), the development of thinking skills in learners depend on cooperative group work. The school culture may offer some encouragement to teaching of thinking skills, but it is often not wholly supportive. The teaching of thinking skills in schools sometimes show lack of commitment on the part of teachers which often rests on a few enthusiastic ones. In addition, schools kill the intrinsic motivation by engaging in practices like emphasis on heavy grading, minimal informative feedback, lack of
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choice of activities, and constant scrutiny of work (Perkins, 1990). In most developing countries where information delivery is mostly one-sided (from the elderly to the young), the school runs into conflict when it tries to be open and democratic in information delivery in the classroom.
Final Remarks
This article has reviewed and/or discussed the roles of teachers, parents, teacher institutions, the schools, professional teachers’ development, and the learners themselves in developing the thinking skills of learners. Besides, factors inhibiting thinking are also discussed. In order to enhance learners’ thinking, teacher training institutions, classroom teachers, parents, educational planners, researchers, and learners themselves must collaborate and be committed to make it a big success.
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