Teaching Children To Think

Can children be taught to think? According to recent research, the answer to that question is yes. Designing a classroom that fosters the thinking process is difficult and time consuming. Deciding how to assign grades to questions that have no “correct” answers takes time. But if teachers will “teach outside the box” then students learn to “think outside the box”.

A teacher's job should not be to teach a list of facts to students. It is easy to teach this way and of course, some facts are necessary. But the goal of education should be to create students who can think and learn for themselves. It is much more difficult to design classrooms where thinking is the prime goal. And with state and national mandated curriculum, it is becoming more difficult to do this.

Dr. Srikanta Swamy has observed that most teaching focuses on convergent thinking. This type of question will have one correct answer and children can learn the answers by rote memorization. But divergent thinking, the ability to think of new and creative answers, creates a student who can think for his/herself.

Dr. Srikanta Swamy (To read more about Dr. Swamy’s ideas, click here.) states that teachers may induce thinking in children by activities such as riddle solving, class discussions, and presentation of case studies. He also feels that at the physiological level, silence and meditation can improve thinking capabilities. And most importantly, children need to understand the power of positive thinking. Click here to learn more about the power of words.

There are some simple, but effective, ways to help students learn to think. The teacher must set high standards for the students. One way to raise the standard is to ask higher level quesitions. In this type of questioning, the student must know the basic (rote) information and then analyze it or use it in some manner. Asking "why?" challenges the student to think and solve problems. Projects and activities allow the student to be creative. Classroom discussions not only force the students to think, it helps develop communication skills.

Dr. Stanley Pogrow has developed a program for teachers called HOTS, higher order thinking skills, for at-risk students. Dr. Pogrow has found that traditional teaching benefits at-risk students until the end of third grade. Then these students don't make the leap to "understand understanding". Pogrow believes that most children develop these necessary thinking skills through normal interactions with their parents--during "dinner table conversations." At-risk students are raised by adults who can not or do not engage in reflective conversations with them. They lack basic communication skills and the ability to "think about their own thinking."

One skill that is important to independent learning is notetaking. This allows students to think about what they are learning and then rephrase the material in ways they can easily understand. For more detailed information about taking notes, click here.

The American Society of Training and Development and the U.S. Department of Labor recently conducted a study of basic workplace skills. This study concluded that there were thirteen basic skills essential to success in the workplace: