Developing Young Thinkers: Discovering Baseline Understandings of Effective Thinking among Children and Teachers and Intervening to Enhance Thinking Skills

摘要

This thesis considers teachers’ and pupils’ conceptions of effective thinking, andudanalyses how these are developed through an explicit thinking skills intervention. Anudanalysis of children’s concepts of intelligence has shown that, with age, children tendudto associate ‘cleverness’ with knowledge acquisition rather than active thinking.udPerhaps as a reflection of this it is increasingly popular to teach thinking skills inudschools, although how best to support practitioners in this task remains contested. Thisudthesis presents findings from three linked studies conducted to discover pupils’ andudpractitioners’ understandings of ‘effective thinking’ (which few research studies haveudattempted) before intervening to explicitly enhance children’s thinking skills.udStudy 1 was questionnaire-based and investigated teachers’ definitions of effectiveudthinking, their views of thinking skills taught within the curriculum and whetherudthinking skills are fostered developmentally. 127 questionnaires were returnedudrepresenting teachers from 36 primary schools in central Scotland. A qualitativeudanalysis of teachers’ concepts indicated that many did not have a clear understandingudof ‘effective thinking’. Quantitative data indicated that practitioners believe thinkingudskills are more frequently integrated into some curricular areas than others andudhighlighted the lack of a developmental progression of thinking skills being taughtudthroughout primary school.udIn Study 2, 75 children were interviewed with 25 children from each of the followingudages: 5, 7 and 11 years. This study explored the development of children’s definitionsudof intelligence and effective thinking and the characteristics and causes associated withudeach. It also produced novel data on how children’s knowledge of thinking skillsudchanges over time. Content analysis revealed age trends in children’s definitions ofudintelligence, as, with age, children were increasingly likely to hold cognitive views andudincorporate knowledge into those definitions. Whilst no age trends were found inudchildren’s concepts of effective thinking, with all three age groups defining it as audcognitive ability, clear developmental trends emerged in children’s understandings ofudindividual thinking skills. The final study (involving 178 primary 7 pupils and their teachers) challenged theseudconcepts through an intervention designed to evaluate the effects of infusing thinkingudskills throughout the curriculum, and investigated the belief that collaborative learningudenhances thinking skills. There were three intervention conditions: collaborative,udindividual and control. Six thinking skills were focused on, with training sessions andudcurricular lesson plans devised to support practitioners. The intervention lessons wereudbased on an identified underpinning pedagogy of effective thinking (i.e., making theudthinking skill explicit; fostering appropriate thinking dispositions; developingudmetacognition and encouraging transfer). The intervention evaluation utilisedudstandardised and study-specific pre- and post-tests. Results demonstrated statisticallyudsignificant gains for the individual and collaborative learning conditions in a range ofudthinking skills. The greatest increase in performance was seen in the collaborativeudlearning condition.udThese three studies highlight the importance of gathering baseline data onudunderstandings of effective thinking before intervening to successfully developudawareness of the cognitive processes involved in ‘good thinking’ and enhanceudchildren’s thinking skills. The findings from this thesis have significant implicationsudfor education; practitioners need clearer guidance on how to teach a coherentuddevelopmental progression of thinking skills, and need to be supported when explicitlyudinfusing thinking skills throughout the curriculum.