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Anyone with responsibility for literacy across the curriculum
soon becomes aware that literacy, raising school achievement
and thinking skills are very much intertwined. Many areas
of this site are relevant to thinking skills.
Pupils as teachers
Physical movement and thinking skills
Thinking skills decline with age
Personalised learning
General update on thinking and learning styles
A TES Scotland article profiling Dr Edward De Bono, an expert
on the powerful effects of teaching thinking as a skill. Every
school in Venezuela has, by law, to teach his work; India
has asked him to train 55,000 schools; and China has a pilot
project with a view to putting his work into four million
schools. In September he spoke at the Scottish Learning Festival
2006.
To read this article in full visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2287505
(TES Scotland, 15 September 2006)
In this article, TES Scotland interviews Howard Gardner,
a Harvard-based professor best known for his work on multiple
intelligences, who has launched an educational theory in Glasgow,
Five Minds for the Future, which explores more creative uses
of the mind, problem-finding and problem-solving. To read
this article in full visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2287506
(TES Scotland, 15 September 2006)
Frank Coffield of the Institute of Learning in London has said that the majority of tools used to measure learning
styles were invalid and unreliable, and had negligible input
into pedagogy. Used indiscriminately, they could undermine
teaching. He warned: " The dogmatic claims of learning styles, which have
little or no basis in evidence, could be doing harm to students
of all ages by labelling them inappropriately."
Professor Coffield's criticisms follow an 18-month investigation
of learning styles and their implications for methods of teaching,
which he and his team carried out for the Learning and Skills
Development Council in England. The findings relate to post-school learning, but Professor
Coffield argued his research had wider relevance. "We
should be challenging any labelling within learning from pre-school
to lifelong learning," he said. "Yet we see learning
styles used in all forms of education."
His criticism centres on the unscientific basis of most of
the instruments surveyed. He claims that little evidence is
presented to support each approach, while the failure to provide
a common conceptual framework or language means the research
field is "theoretically incoherent and conceptually confused". Schools should not only study how students learn but also
show them how to enhance their learning by developing flexible
.
Learning Styles:
help or hindrance? is available from the National School
Improvement Network at the Institute of Education, price £1.50
(www.nsin.org).
(TES, 7 October 2005)
Building Learning Power (BLP) is a programme designed to
help pupils to become better learners. In 2005 it had been
adopted by more than 30 education authorities, and used
in more than 850 schools. The approach is based on the work
of Guy Claxton, a psychologist and visiting professor at Bristol
University. His ideas were taken on board by education consultancy
TLO. The approach is complex and is based around the idea
of four key learning dispositions, which Claxton calls the
4 Rs:
- Resilience: knowing how to stick at it
- Resourcefulness: the ability to learn in different ways
- Reflectiveness: the ability to take stock of your learning
- Reciprocity: or being able to learn on your own or with
others
These dispositions can, says Guy Claxton, be thought of as
learning muscles which can be exercised just as we exercise
physical ones. Expanding pupils' capacities to learn involves
the way teachers talk to children, organise their classrooms
and design activities, as well as the way they teach. The
approach calls for teachers to be constantly discussing how
to develop learning power with students, to encourage children
to use the language of learning.
(TES, 17 June 2005)
Professor Frank Coffield (Institute of Education) reports
on the vogue for pigeon-holing students by learning style.
Download report from: http://www.lsda.org.uk/pubs/dbaseout/download.asp?code=1540
(NGfL, May 2005)
Primary pupils have improved their attainment and social
skills by working in collaborative groups for science, a research
project has shown. Researchers from Strathclyde and Dundee
universities, working under the umbrella of a UK-wide research
programme funded by the Economic and Social Research Council,
measured significant gains in attainment when children worked
in groups. The groups were usually of three to four, in composite
and straight age classes and in rural and urban schools. Twenty-four
schools and some 600 upper primary pupils were involved in
the year-long project, which deliberately targeted schools
with different characteristics.
The researchers made it clear that group work should not
replace other strategies, but that it should be used for appropriate
activities. It has been under-used in recent years, they say.
(TESS, 14 January 2005)
Jim Boyd, Millfield's head of English, attended a two-day
course on the alternative methods of Barbara Prashnig, an
educationist in New Zealand who has pioneered fresh approaches
to learning. In the course, she explained how she helped turn
around a failing school in Dunedin, on the south island, with
the introduction of sofas, CD players and beanbags in classrooms.
The idea is that children perform best in the conditions
which most suit them. This approach almost completely changed
the culture of truancy in the school, as it became so much
more popular among its pupils. "I
have found that standards have risen and the pupils are more
interested and motivated as a result of the changes,"
said Mr Boyd. "I do not have to take time to discipline
them for fidgeting and this improves concentration."
Details of Barbara Prashnig's alternative approaches are
at www.creativelearningcentre.com.
(TES, 5 December 2003)
An hour a week of focused thinking, questioning and reasoning,
based on ideas from a novel or poem, can transform basic intelligence
levels of primary pupils. A study by Clackmannanshire LEA and Dundee University of
pupils engaged in the philosophy for children (P4C) initiative
claims IQ can rise by 6.5 points, putting children into a
higher group at school.
In the Clackmannanshire programme pupils and teachers share
a short story, picture poem with the class acting as "a
community of enquiry". Children generate their own questions
which are discussed briefly by the whole group before they
choose one for more intensive discussion. Pupils are
encouraged to show respect for other views and accept differences.
Six and seven-year-olds show they are as capable of critical
thinking as older primary pupils.
Professor Topping said the study countered the arguments
of some educators that improvement in thinking is impossible
to measure. Outcomes were measured by norm-referenced tests
of reading, reasoning and cognitive ability and by assessing
self-esteem and child behaviour. Children and teachers filled
in questionnaires.
Clackmannanshire LEA says that improvements were found across
children's verbal, non verbal and quantitative reasoning abilities.
"The possibility of such improvements occurring by chance
was found to be less than one in a 1000," it states.
A Derbyshire study carried out 10 years ago echoed the advances
with findings of significant gains in confidence, persistence
and critical reasoning, as well as reading ability. Other
international studies claim similar advances and no negative
effects.
*P4C programmes were devised in the United States more than
30 years ago and were found to improve logical reasoning skills
and reading scores on standardised tests. The differences
were regarded as significant two-and-a-half years later.
(TESS, 19 September 2003)
Bishop Davis Brown School in Surrey adopted lateral-thinking
guru Edward de Bono's six thinking hats approach to help improve
standards. Each imaginary hat represents a different kind of thinking
about a problem or issue. The whole group wears the same colour
hat at the same time, so everyone is doing the same kind of
thinking at the same time. The six different colours indicate
different kinds of thinking: fact gathering (white); gut reactions
and feelings (red); negative points (black); positive points
(yellow); creativity and new ideas (green); organising the
thinking (blue).
The school became the first to be accredited by Dr
de Bono to run his programmes and train others in his methods.
Around 30 other schools are working towards accreditation. The headteacher credits the tools in part for a big improvement
in her pupil's GCSE results.
(TES, 15 November 2002)
In 2002, the TES reported that the first-year intake at St Saviour's High in Dundee spent
the first four days of the new term learning about how to
learn. The programme, called Dynamic Futures, was organised
in co-operation with Dundee's education department. It claimed
to be the first in Scotland to introduce a whole first-year
cohort to the principles behind skills acquisition and continuing
progress at school. The programme covered four areas - motivation,
movement and health, mind matters, and mind management.
The aim was to give pupils a concept of their potential to
learn and teach them different learning styles, encouraging
them to 'open up' and try something new. The school hopes to arm the children with skills that they
will start to use in the different departments. It is also
trying to get the teachers to create a learning environment
in the classroom before they start delivering content.
(TESS, 23 August 2002)
Primary teachers were far better at pushing pupils' learning,
handling behaviour and helping to raise attainment after training in positive assertive management which encourages teachers to be less negative and more responsive, a major study by
educational psychologists, headed by Rodger Flavahan, in Angus found. It confirmed that
primary pupils were on task far more than they used to be and
learning more effectively in relatively calm classrooms.
British studies in 1987 and 2001 indicated that the balance
of positive and negative responses on academic tasks was 3:1
- but 5:1 negative/positive on behaviour. The evidence from Angus is that teachers have moved on a
long way to improve their practice and encourage pupils to
get their heads down. When children are positively engaged,
they spend less time disrupting others. The study focused on 29 teachers in 16 primaries whose classes
were observed for three half-hour periods. Staff were also
involved in self assessments.
(TES, 21 June 2002)
North Lanarkshire has formed a partnership with Tony Buzan,
a leading authority on the brain and learning techniques,
and Tapestry, a collaboration of educationists, politicians,
and other professional bodies committed to making "leading
edge thinking" and research accessible.
Tony Buzan uses a "mind
mapping" approach to learning and the applications and theory
of mind mapping to exams, essay writing and creative thinking.
Teaching and learning could be improved, he said, by considering
the duration and structure of lessons. No lesson should last
more than an hour without a break, and teachers should incorporate "key words" at the beginning and then recap and recall at
the end.
A package of activities called SMART (stimulating maturity through accelerated readiness training) has been developed in the United States. It involves encouraging young children to spin on the spot which can significantly boost their early academic learning. Other brain-stimulating activities for children include hanging upside down, scrabbling along the floor on their stomachs and crawling along a trail of marked out prints.
Five and six-year-olds who have taken part have shown significant improvements, compared to other classmates, in early language and numeracy skills, according to Lyelle Palmer of Winona State University. In one group of 70 SMART kindergarten children, only one was referred for remedial services when usually a quarter would be.
Based on research into how the brain develops, the programme's activities are designed to stimulate brain cell growth, and have been used in 20 schools in Minnesota and 80 others across the US.
(TES, 19 July 2002)
Independent studies carried out in five schools using a physical movement programme produced marked improvement in motor, academic and social skills. At Mellor Primary in Leicester the experimental group showed a 23 month improvement in reading age compared to one of 10 months in the control group.
A similar study at Knowle C of E primary in Solihull, completed in summer 2003, showed a gain of 14 months in reading accuracy and comprehension compared to just eight and four months in the control group. However, the gains in reading and spelling were only part of the story, they were also calmer and more considerate as a result.
Motor competency is fundamental to learning and social interaction at all ages. 90% of communication is based on non-verbal language. Long before children learn to speak they make their needs and feelings known through posture, gesture, eye contact and tone of voice. Children whose own body language is restricted will have difficulty co-operating in social situations. Parents can make an enormous contribution by providing simple regular routines such as sitting down at the table for a meal together and reading a bedtime story.
A growing body of evidence suggests that if time is made available in the curriculum for daily physical exercise, it is more than compensated for in social and academic achievement.
(Article by Sally Goddard Blythe, Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology, mail@inpp.org.uk, published in TES, 19 September 2003)
Some of the oldest pupils at the Holmfirth primary school in West Yorkshire honed their maths skills on interactive whiteboards and used them to coach children in Year 4. The children now regularly give their young schoolmates 10-minute warm-up sessions in the subject before the Year 4 teacher takes over.
Mr McCormick said the scheme helped his pupils to revise maths and practise ICT skills. Nine-year-old Abigail Preston said she enjoyed being taught by older children. "They are better than a teacher," she said. "Because sometimes a teacher will use hard words. The children taught us using words we know. It's nice that they came into our class, because it helps them as well."
(TES, 15 July 2005)
Darlington Primary School in Devon took part in an initiative to allow Year 5 and 6 pupils to aim for the school's own primary qualified teacher status (PQTS). The initiative was launched in 2004 with two groups of Year 5 pupils. Pupils are taught to observe, plan and ultimately take lessons of fellow pupils in Year 1. Each pupil takes three or four small groups and spends other lessons assisting a whole class with the regular teacher.
To gain the award, pupils are assessed against five of the national QTS standards. Pupils have to demonstrate secure subject knowledge, that they have high expectations of all pupils regardless of background and show concern for children's development as learners. They should promote the positive values, attitudes and behaviour that are expected from pupils and be able to plan lessons for children's varying abilities and needs.
(TES, 7 January 2005)
Sir Ken Robinson, chair of the UK Government's report on creativity, education and the economy, described research that showed that young people lost their ability to think in "divergent or non-linear ways", a key component of creativity. Of 1,600 children aged three to five who were tested, 98% showed they could think in divergent ways. By the time they were aged eight to 10, 32% could think divergently. When the same test was applied to 13 to 15-year-olds, only 10% could think in this way. And when the test was used with 200,000 25-year-olds, only 2% could think divergently. Sir Ken commented, "The trouble is that nothing rewards people for thinking off-piste. Education is driven by the idea of one answer and this idea of divergent thinking becomes stifled." He described creativity as the "genetic code" of education and said it was essential for the new economic circumstances of the 21st century.
(TESS, 25 March 2005)
Researchers at Bristol University have found that children lose some of their ability to learn as they go through school. The team assessed 2,000 people aged seven to 25 in skills such as creativity, curiosity and persistence. The study found older children and adults were less able learners than primary children.
The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory project was funded by the Lifelong Learning Foundation. Dr Ruth Deakin-Crick, one of the co-directors of the study, said: "The mean score for key stage 3 pupils was statistically significantly lower than… for… KS2. There was no significant difference between KS3 and KS4, except for creativity which was lower."
Dr Deakin-Crick said there was no single solution to helping pupils learn. Instead, the profile allowed teachers to think creatively and find ways of helping pupils. She added; "The most important thing across the board appeared to be the quality of the learning relationship with the teacher."
(TES, 20 June 2003)
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