From a Theory of Learningto a Theory of Thinking

Active Thinking

ConstructivistLearning Theory

- Foregrounds personal meaning-making…- Honors multiple contexts of learning -- personal, social, environmental, interpretive

-Involves accessing one’s own ideas, impressions, and feelings as sources of information and acting on them by…

… probing them, raising questions, exploring alternatives, pursuing self-identified paths of inquiry, forming interpretations, making judgments, etc.

“Learning is a consequenceof thinking” DP

Toward a theory of thinking:2 key questions

1. Normative. What forms of thinking are good? I.e., what forms of thinking are high-leverage in the sense that they support the development of understanding?

2. Descriptive. What is the mechanism of good thinking: how is it activated and sustained?

Normative

1. What forms of thinking are good? I.e., what forms of thinking are high-leverage in the sense that they support the development of understanding?

It depends in part on the context and on what it is you’re trying to understand. There are many possible ways of answering this question…

What are your ideas?

• Think about your own learning this semester at GSE/FAS. What forms of thinking and intellectual attitudes support your own inquiries and understandings?

Descriptive

What is the mechanism of good thinking? How is it activated and sustained?

Research background: The triadic theory of dispositions

Ability

InclinationSensitivity

From a Theory of thinking toAn educational approach

Back to normative:Which dispositions?

• Context: Federal arts integration grant.

• Focus: Looking at art, accessible to non-art teachers.

• Overarching goal: To encourages the development of thinking dispositions that help students think actively and deeply about works of art and other complex things

• Developed in Traverse City, Michigan.

• Currently used in schools and museums.

Questioning & Investigating

Observing & Describing

Exploring Viewpoints

Finding Complexity

Reasoning

Comparing & Connecting

From The Artful Thinking Program: Harvard Project Zero / Traverse City, Michigan Public Schools

Jacob Lawrence, Forward, 1967

What do you notice?

What are the details?

Observing &

Describing

Reasoning

What do you think is going on?

What are your reasons?

What do you wonder about?

What would you like to find out?

Questioning & Investigating

What different ways could you look at it?

How does it look from different points of view?

Exploring Viewpoints

What else is it like and not like?

How does it connect to other things you know about?

Comparing & Connecting

Finding Complexity

How is it complicated?

What are its different layers and pieces?

How do dispositions develop? (back to mechanism…)

One way is through routine patterns of behavior. You do something regularly, and it develops into a habit.

Thinking dispositions are habits of mind

“Thinking Routines” (Routine patterns of thinking-centered behavior)

Thinking routines are short, step-wise, procedures that can be used with works of art and other topics in the curriculum. They blend and intertwine different forms of thinking on the Artful Thinking palette.

Try some out.

Questioning & Investigating

Observing & DescribingExploring Viewpoints

Finding Complexity

Reasoning

Comparing & Connecting

From The Artful Thinking Program: Harvard Project Zero / Traverse City, Michigan Public Schools

What did youfind out?

Connect to palette

Lots of routines

Artful Thinking Website

• www.pz.harvard.edu/at/

• http://www.pz.harvard.edu/at/cc_intro3.cfm

From a Theory of Learningto a Theory of Thinking

From a Theory of thinking toAn educational approach

Active Thinking

ConstructivistLearning Theory

- Foregrounds personal meaning-making…- Honors multiple contexts of learning -- personal, social, environmental, interpretive

-Involves accessing one’s own ideas, impressions, and feelings as sources of information and acting on them by … probing them, raising questions, exploring alternatives, pursuing self-identified paths of inquiry, forming interpretations, making judgments, etc. Thinking routines are guiding structures for active thinking.

“Learning is a consequenceof thinking” DP

Thinking is dispositionalArtful Thinking is an approach to developing a specific set of thinking dispositions