A Critical Analysis of Thinking Skills Development Programmes

Applied Learning Programme

• Connection between academic knowledge and real-world skills
• Connecting knowledge and skills across disciplines
• Applying thinking skills
• Stretching the imagination
• Applied within authentic settings in society and industry

ALP Sharing for Bedok South Secondary

NHPS ALP 2015-2022

• Gradual piloting and implementation by level
• 60 minutes per fortnight (EL period)
• 2015: P4 Pilot

NHPS ALP 2015-2019

• 2015: P4 Pilot
• 2016: P3 Pilot
• 2017: P5 Pilot
• 2018: P6 Pilot
• 2019: P2 Pilot
• 60 minutes per fortnight (EL period)

THE NHPS THINKING PROGRAMME FRAMEWORK

What is Thinking?

The Unthinking Approach

The Tools Approach

The Thinking (Partly) Approach

KEY PHILOSOPHY

RETHINKING ENERGY: Soccket (P3)

Rethinking Energy: Gravity Light (P3)

New Energy: Solar Buddy (P4 Pilot)

Design Thinking in Action (P3)

Design Thinking in Action: P3

The Art and Science of Design Thinking (P3-5)

The Art and Science of Design Thinking (P3-5)

Droid Programming (P3,4,5)

Droid Programming

Applied Mathematics

Droid Programming (P4)

Droid Programming (P4)

Droid Movie-Making (P5)

Untitled Slide

Droid Storytelling (P5)

Story-Driven Lessons (P4)

Story-Driven Lessons (P4)

Story-Driven Lessons

(IR)Responsible Gaming (P3)

LESSON DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

LEARNING POSSIBILITIES

AN INVITATION

Design Thinking

THE NHPS APPROACH

Standalone Thinking Programme

• Emphasis of skills and ability (Van Gelder, 2005)
• Resolves the low frequency or high-irregularity issues of thinking instruction (Halpern, 2001)
• Provides an anchor point for learners to understand how the form of Thinking (Critical, Creative, Applied or Design) is directly relevant (Kimbell & Perry, 2001)

DESIGN THINKING

• Encouraging Innovative and Reflexive Thinking (Burdick and Willis, 2011)
• Self, Other and Environmental Awareness (Roblin, 2012)
• Social Consciousness (Brown, 2009)
• Inspiration, Ideation, Implementation (Brown and Wyatt, 2010)
• Opening up 'Problem Space' to examine 'wicked problems' (Schön, 1983; Rittel and Webber, 1973)

LESSON STRUCTURE

• From Artifact, Media, Story or Experiential stimuli to concepts, themes and skills
• Question-centric, priming with information
• High interactivity, diverse response, degree of influence
• Technology as delivery platforms of content, responses, discussions, and questions

SAMPLE LESSON

KEY STATISTICS

• 85% of all fished marine species are overexploited (below 30% of peak population)
• 30% of fished species have collapsed (below 10% of peak population)
• Source: United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization
• All world fisheries will collapse by 2048 (Palumbi, 2006)

ESTIMATION EXERCISE

MEASURED WEIGHT

BIOMASS LOSS

12.2

SYNTHESIZING SOLUTIONS

THE CHILEAN SEA BASS

THE CHILEAN SEA BASS SOLUTION

• Formerly a discard: Ugly, heavy, deep sea, unknown food fish
• Rebranding in 1977: New name, free samples, extensive marketing, filleting at source.
• From 0 tons in 1970’s to 32 500 tons in 1990’s

THE CHILEAN SEA BASS PROBLEM

FRIGHTENING FACTS

• 110-150 billion kilograms of Marine seafood reportedly caught per year
• Less than 30 billion kg consumed
• Bycatch and discards (35%), food loss and food waste
• Majority of discards are juvenile fish, mortality rate up to 100%

AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE

THE PROCESS

CURRICULUM LINKS

• Science with Applied/Creative Thinking (P3)
• Critical Reading (P4)
• Applied Mathematics through coding (P4/5)

THE CHICKEN THIEF (P4)

LEARNING "UNIVERSALS"

• Good stories enthrall
• Challenges lead to endeavour
• Potential for Application leads to acquisition and refinement of concepts
• Best real-world application of concepts leads to effective and engaging demonstrations
• An element of surprise sustains interest

THE PROCESS

Resources Available

• Pedagogical
• Human
• Technological
• Financial
• Artifactual

Evaluating Process and Success

Evaluating Process and Success

Success Criteria

Agenda

• Sharing on Thinking Programme Philosophy, Pedagogy and Practices in US and NHPS
• Rapid Sampling Experience (Hands-on with NHPS Thinking Team)
• Question and Answer

Biodegradable Water Bottle (P4)

Biodegradable Water Bottle

The Science of Food (P4)

The NHPS Thinking Programme

Bad News...

"Knowledge acquired in school helps

is not well understood by the student,

... and perhaps not even by the teacher."

Creative Thinking and Schools

• Importance of a crystallizing experience to attach child to domain (Feldman, 1994)
• Schools and teachers are crucial to the development of creativity (Piirto, 1992)

Creative Thinking and Schools

• Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves...We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.” (Robinson, 2015)

Critical Thinking (Pithers and Soden, 2000)

• Identifying a problem and its associated assumptions;
• Clarifying and focusing the problem;
• Analysing, understanding and making use of inferences, inductive and deductive logic;
• Judging the validity and reliability of the assumptions, sources of information

Research Question

• How is Creative, Critical, Applied and Design Thinking taught in schools in the US and what are the conditions for such programmes success or failures?

Data-gathering process

• Field experiences in Indiana and Brashear
• School visits (Pittsburgh, NYC)
• Conference (Design Thinking Conference 2019 in Austin)
• Meeting with experts (Academic and Practitioners)
• Site visits to centers of Innovation and Education (IBM, Museums)

A Guide to Teaching Thinking in Singaporean Schools

Applied Thinking

• Known by many other names (Authentic Learning, Applied Learning, Transfer, Learning by Doing, Discovery Learning, practical intelligence, etc.)
• Isolated facts and formulae do not take on meaning and relevance until learners discover what these tools can do for them (Bruner, 1961) .

www.teachingthinking.education

e-book

to Sustained Brilliance

The Design Thinking Ideal

 Design Thinking as a System, rather than a Process (LUMA Institute) 

Teaching Thinking

The human brain is Not

Thinking is effortful and strenuous.

The brain is hardwired for laziness.

Thinking is a conscious mental activity which manages cognitive resources for a directed purpose.

Conceptual Model of Thinking (Lim, 2009)

Sternberg’s Successful Intelligence

• Triarchic Model of Intelligence (1985) vs g
• Analytical = Critical Thinking
• Creative = Creative Thinking
• Practical = Applied Thinking

Defining Thinking Skills (Cuban, 1984)

• Defining thinking skills, reasoning, critical thought and problem solving is troublesome to both social scientists and practitioners. Troublesome is a polite word; the area is a conceptual swamp (p.676).

Definitions (Lim, 2019)

• Humanist and Cognitive approach
• Creative Thinking is thinking that seeks to create novel and valuable products or ideas that work to improve the human condition.

Definitions (Lim, 2019)

• Critical Thinking is the making of informed decisions through the analysis and evaluation of ideas and situations in order to discover their truths, falsities and worth.

Definitions (Lim, 2019)

• Applied Thinking is the transposition of concepts, knowledge and ideas to authentic and practical situations.

Definitions (Lim, 2019)

• Design Thinking is iterative solution-centred thinking building on empathising with the user, redefining problems, ideating, and prototyping solutions.

The Negative Flynn Effect

Only 1% of participants consistently wanted to know about every upcoming negative or positive event.
(Gigerenzer & García-Retamero, 2017)

A Nation at Risk (1983)

• "Many 17-year-olds do not possess the 'higher order' intellectual skills we should expect of them. Nearly 40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material; only one-fifth can write a persuasive essay; and only one-third can solve a mathematics problem requiring several steps (p.9)."

Education Reforms in the US in 21st Century

• No Child Left Behind Act (2001)
• Common Core Standards Initiative (2010),
• Every Student Succeeds Act (2015)

The Standardised Testing Problem

• Teaching to the test
• Limitations of Testing: Narrow, 95% lower-level Thinking
• What they can measure and count are isolated skills, specific facts and functions, the least interesting and least significant aspects of learning. (Ayers, 1993, p.59)
• Time-consuming

Thoughts of a Parent

• The focus of education should be on learning communication skills, thinking skills and real-life skills that give people a chance in society. Schools are doing the students a disservice by not teaching that.

Thoughts of a homeless man

• I just wanted to get out of school as soon as I could. Where I was, there are only two choices after graduating: McDonald’s or the military. We had no skills, nothing and no one dreams of college... Maybe school works for those who are going to college, but it doesn’t help the rest of us.

The Economic Benefits of Thinking

• Valued by corporations and society (Korn, 2014),
• Yield far greater wage premium (Autor & Handel, 2013),
• Yield greater payoffs than technical skills (Liu & Grusky, 2013),
• Teachers’ notions of what Thinking is and what society and employers actually need are far removed (Gormley, 2017).

Thinking, be it Critical, Creative or Applied, can be taught. (Gormley, 2017; Sawyer, 2012; Hattie, 2009; Pinker, 2009; Sternberg, 2003; Torrance, 1972)

A mixed approach utilising both general and subject-infused courses was most effective in developing critical thinking among students. (Abrami et al., 2008; Kennedy et al., 1991)

The development of Thinking skills, be it Critical, Creative and Applied, has a multiplier effect on academic achievement. (Hattie, 2009; Whimbey, 1985; Costa, 1984).

The Pirate Paradigm

The Pirate Paradigm for Education

• Take risks as a rule, not as the exception.
• Cut out unnecessary timelines, schedules, processes, reviews, and bureaucracy.
• Use regular short-cycle milestones to encourage continuous improvement.
• Results orientation: Students First, and Students Only.
• Challenge everything, and steel yourself for the inevitable opposition.

Conditions for Success

Curriculum Time

• Stand-alone subject, minimum 60 minutes a fortnight, year-long, over entire school life

Curriculum Time

• Stand-alone subject, minimum 60 minutes a fortnight, year-long, over entire school life

Teachers

• Specialist teachers, versed in both the teaching of Thinking and in academic content, harnessing their academic training, background and passion.

Students

• Every student, be they gifted or learning-disabled, rich or poor, should undergo the programme

Content

• Inter-disciplinary, with thinking skills relevant to academic content previously covered or in progress
• Relevant to the experiences of the students (e.g., dealing with gaming addiction)
• A problem manifesting in the community or environment (e.g., littering)

Pedagogy

• Collaborative, activity-centred, hands-on learning, constructivist, dialogic, inquiry-based, independent work time, problem-solving, authentic experiences, novel, playful and joyful experiences, grounded in latest theoretical developments in pedagogy and psychology

Teaching Resources

• Teacher-generated, customised rather than off the shelf

Programme Structure

• Divided using Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory
• Introductory: Age 7-10
• Advanced: Age 11+

Introductory Programme

Advanced Programme

Thinking Programmes

Critical Thinking

Creative Thinking

Design Thinking

Applied Thinking (STEAM)

Community Involvement

Field trips to museums and science centres significantly improved students’ critical thinking skills, and it is especially advantageous for students from high-poverty and rural schools. (Greene, Kisida, & Bowen, 2014)

Liberty Science Centre

Da Vinci Science Centre

Hands-on stations

Teaching Creative Thinking Skills

• Collaborative Problem-solving
• Critical Event
• Learn through Play

Teaching Creative Thinking (2)

• Mumford et al.'s (1991) 8 stage process: Problem construction, information gathering, category search, selection of best-fitting categories, combining and reorganising category information, idea evaluation, idea implementation, and monitoring

Teaching Creative Thinking (3)

• Using the SCAMPER (Substitution, Combination, Adjustment, Modify-Magnify-Minify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, Reverse-Rearrange) Technique (Eberle, 1996) for brainstorming.

Teaching Critical Thinking

Story-driven Lessons

Teaching Critical Thinking

• Debates
• Analysis of biases and fallacies
• Experiments on sociological or psychological phenomenon

Teaching Applied Thinking

Teaching Applied Thinking

• Hands-on, hands-on and more hand-on!
• Deconstruction and extreme reverse engineering
• Games: Off-the-shelf and teacher-created

"Education has been at an impasse, and the improvement of thinking skills has been hailed for holding out the promise of lifting it to a new level of excellence."
Matthew Lipman, Thinking in Education

The Crisis of Thinking

Note on seating

• Please take a seat at a table which corresponds to your field of interest (Creative, Critical, Applied or Design Thinking)

Session Overview

• Barriers to Thinking
• What is Thinking?
• Why should Thinking be taught?
• How can Thinking be taught?
• Hands-on Thinking Activity
• Question, Answer and Feedback

What is Thinking?

Why should Thinking be taught?

How can Thinking be taught?

Activity Time

An Invitation

Deductive and Abductive Reasoning (P6)

Design Thinking Process

System 1 vs 2

Dead Manta Ray

Rp 2 Juta per day

False beliefs

Higher Critical Thinking ability leads to significantly fewer negative life events.
(Butler, Pentoney, & Bong, 2017)

Pedagogy

• Activity-centered
• Playful and Fun
• Authentic experiences
• Problem-based Learning

System 1 vs 2 processing

Moving Thinking Forward

Four Stages of a Thinking Lesson

• Plan
• Pilot
• Practice
• Perfecting

What a Thinking Lesson looks like

Proposed Frequency

• One Thinking Lesson per subject per level per term

Proposed Model

• 1-2 Lesson Designer/s per lesson
• Lesson Designer/s to pilot AND conduct lessons
• Class teachers as assisting instructors

Are your teachers ready?

Thinking and Values

The Inspiration

Lesson Sharing

• Teaching Thinking Keynote
• Applied Science (Instant Biodegradable Water Bottle)
• Critical Thinking (Moral Dilemmas)
• Applied Mathematics (Droid Programming)
• Design Thinking
• Creativity in Language Learning

Future Master Teachers in Action

The Next Step

Recruiting "Pirates"

Central Question and Exploration

Key Features of the "Pirate Project"

• Subject, level, skill or topic focus
• Solving your own teaching problems
• Mentorship by multiple "experts": Subject matter, pedagogy
• Free to fail mindset
• Design Thinking Approach
• Full resource at your disposal

Session Outline

• Overview of the NHPS Thinking Programme (25 mins)
• Breakout Room exploration of 3 key areas: a) Programme Design and Implementation; b) Teaching of Creative and Critical Thinking; c) Teaching of Applied and Design Thinking (15 mins)
• Consolidation, Question and Answer

An Engaged Learner (NHPS)

• Beyond academic excellence
• Joy of Learning
• Life-long Learning
• Future-ready

Breakout Rooms (15 mins)

• Programme Design Philosophy and Implementation Processes;
• Teaching of Creative and Critical Thinking;
• Teaching of Applied and Design Thinking