Effective Instructional Strategies: From Theory to Practice
Fourth Edition
Chapter Summary
- Chapter Summary
- This chapter focused on thinking skills. The main points associated with specific objectives were as follows:
- Learning Objective 1: Define thinking and differentiate among the various categories of thinking skills.
- Thinking is the act of withholding judgment to use knowledge and experience to find new information, concepts, or conclusions.
- Thinking can take place at any one of Bloom’s Taxonomy levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
- The thinking level most appropriate to a specific class depends on the maturity of the students and the needs of the content area. The most commonly taught thinking skills are critical and creative thinking.
- Learning Objective 2: Explain the four stages of the creative thinking process and various difficulties that can hinder the process.
- The four stages of creative thought are preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.
- Difficulties that can hinder creative thinking include difficulty in finding words to describe original images, an inability to let the imagination “go,” a tendency to analyze rather than synthesize, a tendency to “jump the gun” to synthesize before analysis of the facts is complete, fears of expressing new ideas, and getting too many ideas at one time.
- Learning Objective 3: Define and describe metacognition.
- Metacognition can be simply defined as thinking about thinking. Metacognition skills enable students to better benefit from instruction.
- Learning Objective 4: Describe different approaches and activities that can be used in teaching thinking skills.
- Thinking is often facilitated by a physical and intellectual environment that encourages discovery.
- Students should be taught to be more reflective about what they learn.
- Thinking skills can be taught separately (separate approach) or by infusing them into the content (infusion approach).
- Direct, specific instruction often proves useful in fostering critical and creative thinking skills.
- Learning Objective 5: Explain the eight behaviors that exemplify “nonthinking.”
- Eight behaviors have been identified that negatively affect the development of thinking skills: impulsiveness; overdependence on the teacher; inattentive behavior; restless rusher; dogmatic, assertive behavior; rigidity, inflexibility of behavior; fearful, lack of confidence; and responsibility forfeiture.
- Learning Objective 6: Describe the role of the teacher in modeling and teaching thinking skills.
- Teachers should create a classroom atmosphere of acceptance and support for thinking skills development and model out-of-the-box thinking.