One needs a certain amount of professional courage to provide a Thinking Curriculum. However, as leaders of change, teachers can be encouraged to promote a learning environment rich in opportunities of thinking. Rexford Brown (1993) stated that the greatest barriers perceived by teachers, and the major reasons schools did not move towards a Thinking Oriented Curriculum, were as follows:
• It was seen as too time-consuming (to implement, plan, evaluate, professional development requirements and so on).
• There was a false belief that the complete coverage of every facet of the prescribed curriculum was required.
• The belief that most students don’t have the intelligence/literacy levels to promote thoughtfulness.
• Most students were disengaged.
• Teachers did not know what was necessary to bring about change and did not perceive themselves as learners.
• A belief that thinking skills could not be evaluated.
Designing a thinking curriculum
None of these dot points can be defended if one considers the needs of our students today.
The major implications for teaching a thinking curriculum today are that, in doing so, we:
• create learners who engage in metacognition,
• provide an environment where students find connectedness with significant adults,
• provide mentoring that would help them achieve better results and an attitudinal improvement to learning,
• create life-long learners,
• assess learners developmentally so that education is less about competition with others and more about reaching individual potential, and
• differentiate the curriculum to cater for all students.
The more students believe their school (specifically the teaching staff) is emphasising thinking and learning strategies, the greater their motivation, and the more focus they will have on the perception that they are in control of their learning. They will hopefully see their teachers concerned more with individual ability and less with competition. This will help them understand that their school is guiding them to be better learners. They will value the journey that is the process of learning and in doing so make the sequential development a much richer and meaningful experience.
Designing a Thinking Oriented Curriculum at a classroom level is as impor- tant as in a whole school, district or statewide. The emphasis should be on class- room and curriculum designs that promote critical thinking teachers and students and where teachers develop their role as facilitators of learning rather than as experts.
Bibliography
Atkin, J 1994, ‘How students learn: A framework for effective teaching, part 2. Conditions which enhance and maximise learning’, IARTV Seminar Series Paper, No. 34, May 1994, Melbourne.
Bellanca, J & Fogarty, R 1991, Blueprints for Thinking in the Co-operative Classroom, Hawker Brownlow, Cheltenham, Victoria.
Bellanca, J, Chapman, C & Swartz, E 1996, Multiple Assessments for Multiple Intelligences,Hawker Brownlow, Cheltenham, Victoria.
Brown, R 1993, Schools of Thought: How the Politics of Literacy Shape Thinking in the Classroom, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
‘Department of Education and Training. Policies & Resources—School Education Reform Framework, Framework for Reform’. Speech delivered by Lynne Kosky, Minister for Education and Training, 28 May 2003.
Feuerstein, R, Rand Y, Hoffman, M & Miller, R 1980, Instrumental Enrichment, University Park Press, Baltimore.
Fogarty, R 1997, Brain Compatible Classrooms, Hawker Brownlow, Cheltenham, Victoria.
Fogarty, R & Stoehr, J 1998, Integrating Curricula with Multiple Intelligences, Teams, Themes &
Threads,Hawker Brownlow, Australia.
Kruszelnicki, K Dr. JJJ Radio Broadcast.6/05/2003.
McGuire, C & Warner, C 2000, The Key Elements of a Thinking Oriented Curriculum, Parkdale Secondary College.
Middle Years of Schooling http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au
Parkdale Secondary College 2003, Staff Handbook, School Charter.
Pohl, M 2000, Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn, Hawker Brownlow, Cheltenham, Victoria.
Queensland State Education, ‘The New Basics Project Developmental Draft’, Curriculum Implementation Unit, Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS), 2003 http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics
Wilson, V 2000, Can Thinking Skills be Taught? Scottish Council for Research in Education Research Report Collection http://www.scre.ac.uk/scot-research/thinking
Discrimination Ryan Eden
Year 7 Terang College
Designing a thinking curriculum
05
Testing everyone?
Susan Wilks
Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne
Substituting a narrow, skills-based approach for a dynamic, child-responsive curriculum will rob young children of the joy of discovering how much they learn and just how fulfilling school experiences can be (Hatch, 2002, p. 459).
Abstract
If we examine the activities and assessment tasks we set for our students, many of us would find we give fewer opportunities for the students who are skilled in areas other than the verbal and mathematical domains to experience success or satisfaction. Generally speaking, the critical thinking skills developed in the Arts and Technology (Materials, Systems and Design), as well as the advantages of possessing an aesthetic mode of knowledge, tend to be undervalued. It is diffi- cult to assess and reward visual perception using traditional models of evalua- tion that exist in current systems. In this chapter examples of attempts to test visual literacy are considered. Some existing restrictive and/or flawed test ques- tions are examined, and simple changes and some new examples are suggested.
A discussion of the benefits of authentic assessment follows.
Introduction
In 1969 Arnheim, the US art educator, wrote that, apart from in kindergartens where the children were encouraged to invent shapes on paper or in clay and think through perception, their educational system was based mainly on the study of words and numbers. He claimed that because words and numbers were stressed more rigorously from Grade One onwards, the arts were reduced to a
‘desirable supplement’ (1969, p. 2). By the time competition for university places became acute, he concluded, it was a rare high school that insisted on the preservation of the Arts. He also claimed it was a rare university that welcomed the inclusion of visual arts. Unfortunately the same could be said today.
The neglect of the arts and the undervaluing of visual literacy and the creative process results from a prevailing assumption that affective perception
does not involve deep cognition. Arnheim believed that educators and adminis- trators would not give the arts an important position in the curriculum until they understood that the arts were a powerful means of strengthening the perceptual component of thinking, without which productive thinking in any field was impossible (1969, p. 3).
Second year students completing a component called Philosophy in Education with me, were asked to read a chapter from Eisner’s text The Kind of Schools We Need (1998). In this chapter he put forward an argument for valu- ing aesthetic modes of knowing. The comments he made on the status of the visual arts in schools echoed Arnheim’s description 30 years earlier. When groups of students assembled to elicit the five main points of the article some made comments such as: ‘I read this over and over again and couldn’t make sense of it’; ‘I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying’; ‘What does aesthetics mean?’ Given the above, such questions and comments did not surprise me. But a lone voice said: ‘Why are we reading this, it’s common sense, it’s what happens in schools isn’t it?’ I will return to this remark later.
So what was Eisner (1998) saying in his chapter that was so foreign to the students? He claimed that Plato’s view that knowledge could not be relied on if we depend on information provided by the senses has had an enduring effect on conceptions of both knowledge and intelligence. To be intelligent is seen as the ability to move away from our senses and manipulate ideas in the same way abstract concepts are employed in mathematics. Then, he says, further down the perceived ‘hierarchy’ come the natural and social sciences because they depend on empirical information. Even lower in rank are the arts and making things, particularly if emotion enters the picture (pardon the pun). At this level people are described as talented rather than intelligent. In 2000 Gardner, presenting a paper in Melbourne, lamented the use of the ‘talent’, rather than ‘intelligence’, for those skilled in the fields of art, design and music.
Does the dearth of the aesthetic in the curriculum teach students that we do not value it? There are endless opportunities if teachers know where to look.
In a history method class, I recently asked some postgraduate student teachers (high achievers by most standards) to sketch a prominent person. They were embarrassed and ashamed of their sketches that were roughly equivalent to fifth graders (11 year olds). I think the sketches offer a snapshot of a gap in their education. Why aren’t their drawing and writing skills equally honed in their 15 plus years of education?