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Literature Review in Thinking Skills, Technology and Learning Rupert Wegerif

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Literature Review in Thinking Skills, Technology and Learning Rupert Wegerif Literature Review in Thinking Skills, Technology and Learning Rupert Wegerif To cite this version: Rupert Wegerif. Literature Review in Thinking Skills, Technology and Learning. 2002. hal-00190219 HAL Id: hal-00190219 https://telearn.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00190219 Submitted on 23 Nov 2007 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. FUTURELAB SERIES REPORT 2: Literature Review in Thinking Skills, Technology and Learning Rupert Wegerif, School of Education, Open University ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Asking other people for help is perhaps the most effective but least commented upon thinking skill. I am very grateful to those who were kind enough to help me prepare this review. I would like to thank Steve Higgins and Keri Facer for their feedback on the first draft, Steve Higgins again and Margaret Kirkwood for providing me with material, and Julia Gillen, Richard Joiner, Peter Scrimshaw, Lyn Dawes and Charles Crook for helpful advice and references. The comments of all the other people I buttonholed at conferences to ask what they thought about technology and thinking are also acknowledged with thanks. ABOUT FUTURELAB Futurelab is passionate about transforming the way people learn. Tapping into the huge potential offered by digital and other technologies, we are developing innovative learning resources and practices that support new approaches to education for the 21st century. Working in partnership with industry, policy and practice, Futurelab: • incubates new ideas, taking them from the lab to the classroom • offers hard evidence and practical advice to support the design and use of innovative learning tools • communicates the latest thinking and practice in educational ICT • provides the space for experimentation and the exchange of ideas between the creative, technology and education sectors. A not-for-profit organisation, Futurelab is committed to sharing the lessons learnt from our research and development in order to inform positive change to educational policy and practice. FUTURELAB SERIES REPORT 2: CONTENTS: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 Literature Review in Thinking Skills, SECTION 1 TERMS AND CONTEXT 4 Technology and Learning SECTION 2 CAN WE TEACH THINKING SKILLS? 12 Rupert Wegerif, School of Education SECTION 3 Open University TEACHING THINKING SKILLS WITH TECHNOLOGY 20 SECTION 4 AIMS AND PLAN The use of new technologies is often IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE, CURRICULUM linked to the development of thinking DEVELOPMENT AND The purpose of this report is: skills or ‘higher order thinking’. This THE DESIGN OF review will explore some of the LEARNING RESOURCES 34 •to clarify what is meant by thinking claims that have been made in this GLOSSARY 37 skills and their relationship to area and summarise the useful technology findings that emerge from research. INTERNET LINKS 37 There is a range of different • to identify the role of ICT in promoting approaches to understanding thinking BIBLIOGRAPHY 39 thinking skills skills and learning, each one of which • to produce guidelines for the has an impact on how the development of digital learning relationship between thinking skills resources to support the teaching and and technology is conceptualised. learning of thinking skills The first part of the review explores • to evaluate the general direction of the literature about teaching thinking research in this area and how this skills and their relationship to should inform educational practice. technology. The second part focuses more on technology, exploring claims that have been made about the relationship of information and communications technologies to the development of thinking skills. This report has been designed to enable both rapid identification of the key findings and in-depth exploration of the literature. The key findings and implications of the report are presented within the Executive Summary and Implications Sections. The main body of the review enables readers to explore in more detail the background to these headline issues. 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY offer reasons can therefore be seen as a part of the self-reforming process of ‘Thinking skills’ and related terms are higher order thinking. used to indicate a desire to teach processes of thinking and learning that can Most approaches to teaching thinking do be applied in a wide range of real-life not focus narrowly on procedural skills. In contexts. The list of thinking skills in the fact, successful thinking skills English National Curriculum is similar to programmes promote a variety of many such lists in including information- apparently quite different kinds of things processing, reasoning, enquiry, creative including, strategies, habits, attitudes, thinking and evaluation. While some emotions, motivations, aspects of approaches to teaching thinking treat such character or self-identity and also it is generally skills as separate, other approaches treat engagement in dialogue and in a them all as aspects of high quality thinking community of enquiry. These ‘thinking accepted that or ‘higher order thinking’. Higher order skills’ are not united by any single there is a range thinking is said to be complex thinking that psychological theory. They are all those requires effort and produces valued things that practitioners believe can and of relatively outcomes. These outcomes are not should be taught or encouraged in order to general learning predictable because the process of higher improve the perceived quality and/or the order thinking is not mechanical. This effectiveness of their students’ thinking. strategies that makes higher order thinking hard to can be drawn out define. Nonetheless it is possible to recognise higher order thinking and HOW ARE THINKING SKILLS, of some contexts to teach it. LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY and applied RELATED? The existence and nature of thinking skills again in new is contested. Few experts in the field would Technology is a broad term for human contexts now support the claim that there are tool systems. Human learning and universal thinking skills or completely thinking is mediated by tool-systems. general strategies for learning and These could include words within a problem solving. However it is generally language, a notepad and pencil or a accepted that there is a range of relatively computer network. In this review I limit general learning strategies that can be myself to looking at computer-based drawn out of some contexts and applied technologies used to handle information again in new contexts. and aid communication (ICT). Some have criticised the thinking skills Thinking is both individual and social. movement as being too western, There is a constant movement of the masculine and middle class. However the internalisation of social thinking into ideal of being able to listen seriously and individual thinking and externalisation out empathetically to challenges and to again into social thinking. Higher order respond to reasonable challenges with thinking is to be found in the whole reform is central to higher order thinking. movement of thought and not just in the Criticisms of particular ideas and practices individual part of this movement. in the teaching thinking movement that Technology, in various forms from 2 REPORT 2 LITERATURE REVIEW IN THINKING SKILLS, TECHNOLOGY AND LEARNING RUPERT WEGERIF, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, OPEN UNIVERSITY language to the internet, carries the teaching machine, as providing ‘mind- much of the external social part of the movement tools’ and as a support for learning of thought. conversations. current interest in teaching Much of the current interest in teaching A review of the evidence suggests that thinking skills is prompted by technology- using technology does not, by itself, lead to thinking skills driven changes in the nature of work. transferable thinking skills. The success of is prompted by There is a consensus that new technology the activity crucially depends on how the is bringing about a new kind of economy in technology is used. Much depends on the technology- which the main products are information role of the teacher. Learners need to know driven changes and knowledge rather than material goods. what the thinking skills are that they are Workers in this new economic climate learning and these need to be explicitly in the nature require transferable thinking skills more modelled, drawn out and re-applied in of work than content knowledge or task-specific different contexts. skills. They particularly require an ability to learn how to learn new things since The evidence also suggests that accelerating technological change is collaborative learning improves the making old skills (and knowledge) effectiveness of most activities. Tutorial redundant and generating needs for software alone is not effective for new skills (and knowledge). developing thinking skills, but tutorial software used as a basis for discussion between learners can be a good way of CAN THINKING SKILLS BE TAUGHT? infusing thinking skills into the curriculum. The effectiveness of computer tools, There have been several
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