STUDY GROUP OUTLINE
Learning to Think, Learning to Learn:
What The Science Of Thinking And Learning Has To Offer Adult Education
by Jennifer Cromley, published by National Institute for Literacy, c 2000.
Fact Sheet 9:
How Thinking Develops, Part 1—General and School-Based Development
Principle: Some Development is General, Some is Learned
- “Do adults reading at a 3rd grade level think like 3rd graders? Do
adults reading at a 12th grade level think like 12th graders?” (Pg
85) Consider the students in your class. Is their reading (or speaking) ability
indicative of their thinking ability? Have any of your students expressed
frustration with knowing their reading (speaking) skills are very poor—perhaps
even shame that others will look down on them and treat them as less intelligent
than they are? How did you handle their concerns?
- “A large part of what we think of as intelligence is made up of these
skills that people learn in school.” (Pg 86) Do your students equate
education and intelligence? Do you?
- The author states, “the spoken grammar of a six year old is almost
the same as an adult’s.” (Pg 86) What was your initial response
to this comment? Would your students believe this statement? Do they equate
good grammar with good (complete) education?
- Thinking skills identified as tied to school include categorization, learning
transference, ability to focus attention on specific problems, phonemic awareness,
memory practice, mental arithmetic skills, ability to create vocabulary and
verbal analogies, understanding of figurative language and symbol systems,
and expanded vocabulary. (Pgs 87-88) Which of these do you remember learning
in school and which did you learn at home or in another setting? Do you feel
competent in each of the skills? Are you aware of a lack in one or more of
these areas that has limited your ability to accomplish certain things as
an adult? (For example, is your ability to understand mathematic principles,
not just do arithmetic problems, a hindrance in pursuing a graduate degree
that requires a statistics class?)
- What is your reaction to this statement? Do you agree or disagree? “People
do not totally understand that all interpretations reflect a particular understanding
of the world and that there are no “objective” opinions until
college age or older (if ever).” (Pg 88)
- Research indicates that children can answer difficult questions and perform
advanced thinking skills if questions are worded in such a way that they
can access familiar knowledge. The author feels that this is also true of
adult literacy students. (Pg 88) If this is true, can we as teachers evaluate
a student’s thinking ability by his answers to our questions on a standardized
test OR can we only evaluate a student’s thinking after asking many
different questions about many different topics? What implication does this
have for the way we determine a student’s functioning level if we have
only asked questions that refer to unfamiliar topics?
- There are ten reasoning skills that children can perform as early as age
three listed on page 89. Did any of these skills surprise you? If so, which
one(s)?
- Robert Slavin suggests four principles for helping students learn abstract
thinking skills:
- Begin with familiar examples,
- Provide additional help during planning stages of a project,
- Ask students to restate concepts in their own words, and
- Provide many opportunities to practice various aspects of abstract
thinking. (Pg 90)
Choose two of these principles and describe how you can involve them in
your lesson plans for next week. Why did you choose those particular skills?
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