21 The teaching model
To use Thinking Science materials effectively requires particular teaching skills. Simply proceeding through the 30 lessons as practical exercises in which pupils do experiments, make observations, record results and struggle by themselves to reach conclusions is unlikely to have any useful effect. The essential feature of Thinking Science is the concentration on the pupils’ thinking. One of the key factors of the programme is the way in which the teacher changes his role from that of a good instructor, helping children understand scientific knowledge and motivating them so that they learn it, to that of a ‘manager’ who provokes peer interaction between pupils and cognitive challenge. The technique relies on the teacher having high expectations of what the pupils can do, even when these expectations are not necessarily met at the time. The teacher needs to develop a range of sophisticated questioning and listening techniques, and a sophisticated understanding of group dynamics. The teacher has to manage the classroom so that the interplay between group work and whole-class teaching maximises the likelihood of the pupils engaging with particular ways of thinking. The lessons involve pupils in lots of discussion and activity, but are still structured to follow the teacher’s ‘thinking skills’ agenda. All this has professional development implications. The transition of a teacher from a position of ensuring pupils are ‘comfortable’ with what they are trying to learn, to one where the teacher deliberately pushes pupils into their ‘discomfort’ zone, is not easy. We have developed what we call the ‘five pillars’ of cognitive acceleration. They are concrete preparation, cognitive challenge, construction, metacognition and bridging.
Most lessons start with a straightforward concrete, often practical, experience which we call concrete preparation. The purpose of this is for the pupils to become familiar with the terminology to be used, with the equipment and the practical context. The key words given for each lesson should be practised by pupils and their use shaped by the teacher so that a richer meaning grows in the pupils’ minds. The development of a shared language between teacher and pupil is critical to the success of the development of thinking in the lesson. This requires a lot of questioning, both in discussion with the whole class, and with individuals and small groups as they work. There are often points during the activity when it is necessary to call the whole class together, to summarise what has been done so far, consolidate observations and start to speculate on explanations, or on what will be the best way to proceed. At the end of the lesson, plenty of time should be left to summarise the meanings which have accrued to new words, to let as many individuals as possible tell you about the method or relationship which they have been using, and to link the work to other experiences in the school curriculum and in everyday life.
Stimulating the development of a particular reasoning pattern takes place through cognitive conflict or, if you prefer, cognitive challenge. In a number of the activities within the lessons pupils are led to make observations which come as something of a surprise, since they do not fit with expectations. These expectations are usually set up through an initial practical activity, or they may be part of what the child brings to the classroom from previous learning, formal or informal. This sort of surprise (the cognitive conflict) is an important element in cognitive development. When a child perceives evidence which does not fit in with a preconception, she must restructure her way of thinking in order to accommodate to the new evidence. Development may fail to occur following cognitive conflict either because the child already has well developed thinking skills which can easily assimilate the new evidence or, far more commonly, because she does not yet have sufficiently well developed reasoning even to see the situation as surprising. Very young children and older slow learners are often able to maintain apparently contradictory ideas or observations at the same time. This is because they are serially processing one idea after the other, and not, in fact, considering both ideas at the same time.
It is generally accepted that children play an active part in understanding knowledge. Teachers can provide bits of information and learning experiences but only when the child has actively put the information and the experiences together for herself has she made the knowledge her own and embedded it in her mind. This is what we call construction. We know that when we learn most effectively we use processes to transform knowledge in some way, perhaps by taking notes, using mind-maps, highlighting important parts of written text, repeated practice, answering questions or listing key words. Similarly we have to help pupils acquire techniques to construct their own knowledge. Thinking Science goes a step beyon this. It aims to put pupils into situations where they must construct the reasoning patterns of formal operations. This is at its most powerful when the process becomes ‘social construction’: i.e. between teacher and pupils and within groups of pupils mediating the construction of new meaning for each other (see ‘A bit of Vygotsky’, p. 10). Construction relies on the continual interaction between assimilation and accommodation, in a feedback loop (see ‘A bit of Piaget’, p. 8).
Metacognition means ‘thinking about one’s own thinking’. All the successful thinking skills programmes that we know of aim to develop children’s self-perceptions about their thinking strategies. It is important to promote cognitive development by encouraging pupils to become conscious of, and articulate about, the sort of thinking they are employing to solve different problems. Thinking back and reflecting aloud helps to develop this consciousness.
The Thinking Science teacher will often ask her pupils, ‘How did you solve that?’, ‘Please explain to the others in your group why you think that’, ‘What was the most difficult/the easiest part of the lesson for you? Why?’
Bridging is the process of linking the type of thinking developed in these lessons to the broader curriculum and to ‘real life’. This can happen in a number of ways. Specifically, a reasoning pattern (say, control of variables) dealt with in a series of Thinking Science lessons may be identified and recognised when it is met in the ‘normal’ science curriculum. Teachers can ask ‘Do you remember in the “brain training” lesson last week, you learnt about changing only one variable at a time? Think about that when you are designing this investigation.’
More generally, when you are familiar with the Thinking Science approach to teaching you will see many opportunities in your regular science curriculum for using strategies for provoking cognitive conflict and metacognitive discussion. The methods may be absorbed into your teaching.
The ‘five pillars’ do not give an indication of the phases within an intervention lesson, they describe cognitive activities the teacher needs to promote at the appropriate part of the lesson. The phases of a lesson are best shown as a cyclical process where the dynamic of the lesson is driven by the dialogue between pupils and teacher (see the diagram below).
Considerable time has to be invested by teachers in ‘thinking through’ how they will teach each lesson. However there is one compensation, there is no marking of work done in a Thinking Science lesson and no need to set homework or repeat a lesson that you feel has been ‘unsuccessful’. The main objective of the lesson will have been met if pupils have been actively engaged in thinking and talking with each other and with you.
Structure of a one hour intervention lesson
