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OCR for page 15
LA UREN B. RESNICK
15
to the meaning of the symbols (Peterson et al., 1984; Resnick, 1987~.
Strong math learners also engage in more task analysis (Dweck, in
press); that is, they figure out alternative strategies for attacking
problems and generating solvable subproblems. These sense-making
and knowledge-extending activities parallel those that are so well
documented for high levels of reading skill. They are also activities
generally viewed as characteristic of high levels of mathematics think-
ing and problem solving. Thus, we again see a convergence between
the processes identified by cognitive research and those associated
with traditional elite mathematics education.
GENERAL REASONING: IMPROVING INTELLIGENCE
Mathematics and reading are not unique in the extent to which
high-level performance depends on processes of monitoring one's
understanding, imposing meaning and structure, and raising quest
tions about presented material. Much the same story can be told
about all the subject matter in the school curriculum and about all
but the most routine job performances. Recent research in science
problem solving, for example, shows that experts do not respond to
problems as they are presented-writing equations for every relation-
ship described and then using routine procedures for manipulating
equations. Instead, they reinterpret the problems, recasting them
in terms of general scientific principles until the solutions become
almost self-evident (Larkin et al., 1980~. Expert writers treat the
process of composing an essay as a complex task of shaping a com-
munication that will appeal to and convince an intended audience
rather than as a simple task of writing down everything they know
about a topic (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1982; Flower and Hayes,
1980~. In the social sciences, trained thinkers call upon a wide range
of knowledge relevant to a topic to construct proposals for action
and to build justifications for those proposals that conform to many
of the classical principles of rhetoricad argumentation (doss et al.,
1983~. Skilled technicians repairing equipment do not just proceed
through routine checklists; instead, they construct Mental modems
of complex systems and use these to reason about possible causes
of observed breakdowns and potential repairs (e.g., de Kleer and
Brown, 1980~.
In all of these cases, certain kinds of higher order thinking recur:
experts elaborate and reconstruct problems into new forms; they
Took for consistencies and inconsistencies in proposed solutions; they
OCR for page 16
16
ED UCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
pursue implications of initial ideas and make modifications rather
than seeking quick solutions and sticking with initial ideas; they
reason by analogy to other, similar situations. These similarities,
long noted in discussions of intelligence (see Journal of Educational
Psychology, 1921; Simon, 1976; Sternberg and Detterman, 1979)
and problem solving (Tuma and Reif, 1980), lead naturally to the
question of whether there might not be some general thinking skills
that would produce improved ability to learn across many traditional
curriculum areas. If such skills exist and if we can find effective ways
to teach them, we can imagine an important increase in educational
efficiency, for it would seem a relatively narrow instructional effort
might produce wide learning results.
The search for general learning skills is not a new one. both
educators and psychologists have long sought to identify and to char-
acterize such skills, the former because of the educational efficiency
such skills could help them realize, the latter in search of unifying
characteristics of human thought. Psychological research gives us
reason to believe in the reality of general skills for learning as well
as reason to maintain a degree of skepticism. In the next section we
will review recent efforts to teach higher order skills. These efforts
provide the newest body of evidence on the question of whether such
skills are teachable. Before proceeding to that review, however, we
should first consider what the body of past research would suggest.
Past Research
Psychometric research provides the best-established evidence for
the existence of cognitive skills that play a role in diverse kinds of
learning. When two or more cognitive abilities are tested, there is
almost always a positive correlation between the measures. People
who do well on one ability test are, on the average, likely to do
wed on the others. Virtually the only conditions under which such
a correlation is not found are those in which tests have been specif-
ically designed not to correlate. For example, investigators have
built tests of creativity explicitly designed to be psychometrically
independent of IQ. Tests that correlate positively are presumed to
share underlying processes. The fact that most intelligence tests do
correlate strongly and that a general factor can always be identified
through statistical methods such as factor analysis suggests that all
tests have some processes in common. These common processes are,
presumably, general abilities.
OCR for page 17
LA UREN B. RESNICK
17
Of course, such findings only raise new questions. How do we
characterize these common processes? Is there reason to think they
are teachable? When cognitive scientists do information-processing
analyses of complex skills, they find the same kinds of basic problem-
solving processes used in task after task (Simon, 1976~. For example,
one of the earliest uses of computers to explore processes of human
reasoning resulted in the construction of a program that solved sym-
bolic logic problems. This program was called the General Problem
Solver (GPS) in the belief that its processes would play a role in s~olv-
ing many kinds of problems, not just those of symbolic logic. This has
turned out to be partly true. Although GPS itself can solve only a
limited range of problems, the kinds of processes used by GPS appear
over and over again in simulations of human performance of complex
tasks. Processes such as means-ends analysis (comparing one's final
goal with results that would be produced by procedures currently
available), subgoal formation (forming a new goal that is easier to
solve and that Is en route to the final goal), generate-and-test rou-
tines (generating actions and testing them against constraints), and
other general problem-solving routines are used in tasks as varied
as inventing buggy arithmetic routines, planning compositions, con-
structing geometry proofs, and troubleshooting electronic devices.
The reason that a single artificial intelligence program cannot solve
a wide variety of problems is not that the fundamental processes it
applies are widely different across domains, but rather that the pro-
gram must apply these processes to very specific, organized bodies
of knowledge. Each simulation must build in the relevant knowI-
edge, and so it becomes specific to its knowledge base (see Dehn and
Schank, 1982~.
Other processes that appear repeatedly in analyses of complex
task performance play a kind of ~executive" or self-regulatory role
in thinking. People use these processes to keep track of their own
understanding, to initiate review or rehearsal activities when needed,
and to deliberately organize their attention and other resources in
order to learn something. These activities have been shown to be
characteristic of effective learners, good readers and writers, and
strong problem solvers. The same processes are relatively absent in
younger or less intelligent individuals. These skills are sometimes
called ~metacognitive skills" (see Brown et al., 1983) because they
operate on an individual's own cognitive processes. They have been
suggested frequently as processes that could be taught and that would
enhance learning and thinking in a wide range of specific situations.
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18
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
The problem-solving skills identified in cognitive simulation re-
search and the metacognitive skills identified in developmental psy-
chology research have both been proposed as candidates for teaching.
The hope is held out that if we can improve specific skills through
some form of direct teaching, then people's ability to perform various
kinds of learning, thinking, and problem-solving tasks in which such
skills have been observed will also improve.
On the other hand, the very body of research that has helped
to identify the candidate 'Cgeneral" skills also provides reason for
questioning their educational importance. Cognitive research yields
repeated demonstrations that specific content area knowledge plays
a central role in reasoning, thinking, and learning of all kinds. ~ have
already alluded to several examples of the importance of specific
knowledge. Specific knowledge about a text's topic affects processes
of language comprehension, for example. Skilled science problem
solvers rely On their knowledge of scientific principles to recast prom
lems into more elegant and easily solvable forms. Political scientists'
argumentation becomes degraded when they know little about the
particular problem or the particular part of the world under discus-
sion (doss et al., 1983~. Even on the tasks used to assess general
intelligence or scholastic aptitude, recent analyses have made it clear
that much depends on specific knowledge: of vocabulary, of particular
number relationships, of possible transformations of visual displays,
and the like (cf. Glaser, 1984~. General skills such as breaking down
a problem into simpler problems or checking to see whether one has
captured the main idea of a passage may be impossible to apply if
one does not have a store of knowledge about similar problems-or
know enough about the topic to be able to recognize its central ideas.
Of course, to appreciate the dependence of general skills application
on specific knowledge is not to deny that such general skills exist.
Yet such an understanding raises questions about the wisdom of at-
tempting to develop thinking skills outside the context of specific
knowledge domains. It suggests that a more promising route may
be to teach thinking skills within specific disciplines and perhaps
hope for some transfer to other disciplines as relevant knowledge is
acquired.
On first consideration the hope for transfer of thinking abilities
across disciplines seems misplaced. A long history of research exists
on transfer among school subjects. Over the decades, educators
have espoused a recurring belief that certain school subject matters
"discipline the minds and therefore should be taught not so much for
OCR for page 19
LA UREN B. RESNICK
19
., ...
their inherent value as for their efficacy in facilitating other learning.
Latin was defended for many years in these terms; mathematics
and logic are often so defended today. Most recently, computer
programming has been proposed as a way to develop general problem-
solving and reasoning abilities (e.g., Papert, 1980~. The view that we
can expect strong transfer from learning in one area to improvements
across the board has never been well supporter] empirically. At
the turn of the century, Thornclike and Woodworth (1901) studied
transfer among school subjects and found that it was more efficient to
study the subject of interest (English vocabulary, for example) than
to study some other subject (e.g., Latin) that Prepared one's mind.
Subsequent reviews of research on transfer of school subject matter
generally have reconfirmed Thorndike ant] Woodworth's finding.
Nevertheless, the history of transfer research need not be to-
tally discouraging; most of this research does not directly address
the questions of most concern to those whose goal is the improve
ment of general thinking and learning abilities. First, the subject
matter teaching in these studies has rarely been aimed at develop
ing transferable skill and knowledge. We thus do not know wha
leverage there might be in instruction explicitly aimed at producing
general skills in the context of a particular discipline. Second, eval-
uations of learning outcomes have rested mainly on what knowledge
was acquired in the transfer discipline, rather than on whether skills
for acquiring knowledge in that discipline have been enhanced. The
issue of transferability of thinking and learning skills, then, is still
open.
Current Programs for Teaching Higher Order Skills
Recently, a variety of courses and programs claiming to teach
reasoning and problem-solving abilities have emerged (see Nickerson
et al., 1985; Segal et al., 1985~. These represent the newest wave of
optimism concerning the teachability of general higher order cogni-
tive skills. Some programs focus on problem solving and reasoning
in particular disciplines. But most are aimed at enhancing general
skills or at using a combination of both approaches. Recent programs
thus offer an opportunity to update the empirical record concerning
the effects of various kinds of training in thinking and reasoning
skills. In the course of this study, nominations have been sought of
programs aimed at teaching various aspects of higher order thinking.
OCR for page 20
20
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
A large number of programs and reports have been examined. They
are discussed here in several broad categories.
Problem Solving m the Disc~nes
Faculty members in a number of disciplines have developed
courses or course-adjuncts designed to improve the problem-solving
ability of students in their disciplines. These are generally college-
leve! programs aimed at the full range of students in the discipline.
The majority of such courses have been developed in the physical sci-
ences (e.g., Reif and St. John, 1979), engineering (e.g., Fuller, 1978;
Rubinstein, 1980; Woods, 1983; Woods et al., 1984), and mathemat-
ics (e.g., Schoenfeld, 1982, 1983, 1985~. Wales axld Stager (1977; see
also Wales and Nardi, 1985) have proposed a general strategy, which
they call "Guided Design, for teaching problem solving and decision
making within the context of a variety of subject matters. Guided
Design courses have been offered in high schools as well as colleges
and in the humanities and social sciences as well as in the physical
. · ~
sciences and engineering.
Problem-solving courses and programs vary considerably in scope
and in style, ranging from individual courses or laboratory programs
to a multicourse sequence spread over several years of college. The
reported programs are probably representative of similar programs
being used on many campuses that have not been formally described.
Some of the programs are highly structured, with printed materials,
special lab notebooks, standard exercises, and regular evaluations.
Others are essentially suggestions to instructors, including guidance
in how to conduct classroom discussions to favor the development of
problem-solving skills.
Central to all prograrrLs is extensive practice in solving problems
or in designing and carrying out experiments. Supportive help is of-
fered, and problem complexity gradually increases. Some programs
also teach students to use particular heuristic strategies including
special forms of problem representation. For example, Fuller's chem-
ical engineering course requires students to prepare special graphical
representations (Polya maps) that show a problem's structure. Reif's
laboratory requires lab reports in which students organize hierarchi-
cally the important aspects of an experiment.
Various forms of social interaction are used, both to make visible
normally covert aspects of the problem-solving process and to in-
crease students' self-conscious monitoring and management of their
OCR for page 21
LA UREN B. RESNICK
21
thought processes. These include having the instructor think aloud
while solving problems set by students, having students work in pairs
or larger teams, and having students justify solutions to one another
and evaluate each other's solutions. Particular attention is often paid
to the uncertainties of problem solving and to the process of making
and correcting rather than avoiding or denying errors.
Formal evaluation of problem-solving programs is rare. The most
extensive quantitative evaluation data are presented by Wales (1979)
for freshmen for the first six years of the Guided Design program
in engineering at West Virginia University. Wales found definite
rises in both freshman and four-year grade point averages (GPAs)
even after controlling for grade inflation that occurred during the
study period. Before the introduction of Guided Design, engineering
students' average freshman GPAs were below the university aver-
age; after Guided Design, their GPAs were well above the average.
Students who had participated in the Guided Design program as
freshmen also had higher four-year GPAs than (transfer) students
who had not participated. During the same period, entering stu-
dents' ACT (American College Testing Program Assessment) scores
remained roughly constant. The percentage of students completing
the four-year course also increases; thus, the grade increase cannot
be attributed to a more selective university policy. Other Guided
Design users have reported similar results.
Other problem-solving programs have not reported this kind of
extensive quantitative data, but several document favorable student
evaluations of their programs and describe examples of improved
problem solving displayed by individual students (e.g., Fuller, 1975;
Reif and St. John, 1979; Woods et al., 1984~. In general, most
program authors cited here can point to long-term use of their courses
on their campuses, attesting to both faculty and student enthusiasm.
Further, because these programs are designed, by and large, to teach
skills that are directly desired in their disciplines, the question of
transfer is not as relevant as for some of the other programs to be
discussed. Nevertheless, more attention to evaluation issues-and
especially the use of more informative measures than overall gracle
averages would strengthen the case for these types of courses.
General Problem-Solving Skills
Another group of programs aims to teach general problem-
solving abilities that will be applicable in many different settings.
OCR for page 22
22
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
The CoRT Thinking Program (de Bono, 1976, 1985) and the Pro-
ductive Thinking Program (Covington, 1985, in press) represent two
visible and useful examples of this kind of program.
CoRT grows out of a tradition of training executives and design-
ers to increase fluency and creativity in practical problem solving
(see de Bono, 1970~. A version of the program suitable for schooichil-
dren recently has been produced and commercially marketed. It is
probably the most widely used thinking skills program, having been
translated into several languages and officially aclopted for school use
in several countries. CoRT focuses on mastering a set of ~attention-
directing" tools that, when applied, lead one to consider multiple
sides of an issue, to consider consequences, to select objectives and
weigh factors involved in a situation, to generate and evaluate evi-
dence, and the like. Lessons are as content-free a" possible- that is,
they use farn~liar situations and very short presentations to establish
contexts in which the tools can be used. A great premium is placed
on quick use of taught strategies and on the number and variety of
ideas generated. De Bono refers to this as perceptual rather than log-
ical thinking and is more concerned with effective "real-life" thinking
than with improving school performance.
The Productive Thinking Program was designed specifically for
upper elementary schoolchildren. It, too, teaches a variety of strate-
gies for planning, managing, and monitoring one's own thinking.
Although stated in quite different language and embedded in more
complex (though still nonacademic) problem settings, the strate-
gies taught appear similar in intent to those of the CoRT program.
Both programs seem to teach versions of the planning and metacog-
nitive strategies that have been identified in information-processing
research on problem solving (cf. Poison and Jeffries, 1985) along with
the kind of fluency in idea generation associated with certain defini-
tions of creativity. Covington's theory and program also emphasize
motivation and self-concept, helping students to think of themselves
as problem solvers and to resist immobilization caused by fear of
failure.
The Productive Thinking Program has been evaluated quite
extensively over a number of years (see Covington, in press, for the
most recent reports). There ~ evidence that students in the program
become good at generating ideas and questions and increase their
use of the planning strategies in the kinds of problem situations on
which training is given. Furthermore, trained students' advantages
last for some months. Most important, students seem to apply the
OCR for page 23
LA UREN B. RESNICK
23
program's planning strategies (e.g., analyzing the task, outlining an
action plan) to school tasks such as preparing a report or exhibit.
However, the latter assessments consisted of self-reports; therefore,
we do not know if students actually apply these skills in practice.
The CoRT program has been evaluated less often than its wide-
spread adoption might suggest. Nickerson et al. (1985, pp. 217-
220; see also Edwards et al., 1984) summarize several studies; these
show that students taking the course tend to become substantially
more fluent in producing ideas, may make some progress toward
higher levels of abstraction, and may take a more balanced view of
problems. Changes also often occur in students' conceptions of them-
seIves as learners. However, these findings come from performances
on problems very similar to those used in the CoRT training. The
only assessments of transfer to practical or school problem solving
come from students who report using the strategies in their everyday
lives. Thus, judgments of CoRT's educational value must depend on
the importance one attaches to the strategies directly taught and to
ideational fluency as such. We clo not have empirical evidence of the
kind of effects these have on school learning or on success in practical
problem solving, although many people fee} that the CoRT program
has helped them or their children in both.
Reading and Study Strategies
Perhaps the largest set of training approaches and programs is
clirected at teaching strategies for reading and studying from texts
(e.g., Dansereau, 1985; Jones et al., 1985; Jones et al., 1984; Paris et
al., 1984; Weinstein and Underwood, 1985~. Programs for enhancing
reading and studying skills have been developed for virtually every
educational level from elementary school to the university. Some
authors stress the study skill aspect of their programs; others em-
phasize the reading skill aspect. In fact, however, it is often difficult
to distinguish between the two. Programs anti research studies use
different labels to describe a common set of strategies including skim-
ming, using context to figure out words ant] meaning, self-testing to
check one's understanding, and generating summaries as one reads.
The strategies taught in these programs are all based on cognitive
research in reading; they involve various kinds of elaborations the
reader can make on the basis of the text. The strategies taught are
those that have been observed in expert readers and in strong stu-
dents but that are often found to be lacking in weaker readers. They
OCR for page 24
24
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
are also strategies that accord well with theories of reading expertise
and with cognitive science models of the reading process.
Some techniques are reminiscent of older study skill techniques.
These include special forms of notetaling intended to highlight rela-
tions among different parts of the text's content and to help readers
organize their knowledge (Dansereau, 1985; Jones et al., 1985~. Tr
some cases, the study skills and reading strategies are embedded in
fairly extensive programs that also help students plan their time,
manage study activities, control anxiety and mood, and apply delis
orate learning strategies in typical academic study situations (e.g.,
Dansereau, 1985; Weinstein and Underwood, 1985~.
Considerable effort has gone into quantitative evaluations of
these strategy training programs. Evaluation results reveal the the-
oretical and practical complexities of these research efforts. Paris
and his colleagues, for example, have studied carefully the ejects of
training elementary schoolchildren in strategies such as skimming,
using context to figure out unfamiliar words, and taking notes (Paris
and Jacobs, 1984; Paris et al., 1984~. In a series of studies, they have
shown that students became more aware of comprehension strategies
and report using them more often. On the other hand, the effect of
these improvements on general reading skill is slight when measured
by traditional comprehension measures, which typically require an-
swering questions about short passages. The trained children do
excel in tasks that evoke deliberate attention to the structure and
meaning of the text, such as detecting errors and filling in missing
words. Because good performance on such tasks is known to corre-
late well with reading comprehension, one might expect transfer to
the more commonly used passage comprehension measures. Deter-
mining why such transfer does not occur or what additional training
features might produce transfer is likely to occupy investigators in
the field for some time.
Weinstein has reported that her college-level study skills course
has positive effects on reading performance, using a general reading
test. She also documents Towered test anxiety and improvements in
student-reported study habits. Dansereau h" shown similar results,
using more direct study measures in which students were given an
hour to study 3,00~word passages and were tested a week later; these
tests included essay questions as well as more standard test items.
As with other programs, some evaluation problems did exist. In
both program evaluations it was difficult to establish optimal control
groups. Furthermore, the effect of a total study skills program, rather
OCR for page 25
LAURENB. RESNICK
25
than the effect of a particular study strategy or teaching method, was
under scrutiny. However, Dansereau has also conducted a number
of separate studies of particular component strategies. This mixture
of global evaluation with detailed analyses of the effects of specific
component strategies, pursued in a cumulative fashion and extended
so that long-term effects and transfer can be evaluated, is precisely
what we need to establish which elements of complex programs are
important to their overaI! ejects.
Self-Monitor~ng SkiBe
Direct strategy training may be only partially helpful in in-
creasing performance because many individuals primarily lack good
judgment regarding when strategies should be applied. Extensive re-
search supports this prediction. For example, research with retarded
individuals shows that it is relatively easy to improve memory task
performance by simply instructing people to rehearse or to engage in
verbal elaboration and other mnemonic activities. Typically, the im-
provement comes almost immediately, suggesting that the strategies
are, in some sense, already known. However, in these studies there
was almost complete lack of transfer, even to tasks that were only
slightly modified. This meant that retarded individuals' difficulty
was in not knowing when memory strategies were called for rather
than in being unable to use the strategies. Recent training stud-
ies that focused on appropriate application of strategies have shown
more promising results (see Brown et al., 1983, for a review of this
research).
Overuse of deliberate strategies can also be maladaptive. Read-
ing would be neither pleasurable nor efficient if one continuously slid
the kinds of deliberate processing taught in the study skill exper-
iments just described. These strategies are useful when automatic
processing breaks down, but they can be very intrusive and disrupt
tive when applied unnecessarily. The more skilled the reader, the
more likely he or she will know when to apply the strategies and
when to avoid them. Weak readers tend to apply strategies indis-
criminately, thus disrupting comprehension, or tend to drop them
entirely when there is no longer a teacher present to insist on their
use and demonstration.
Because of these observations, some investigators have suggested
that readers-particularly weak readers- might profit more from
developing self-monitoring skills than from practicing specific text
OCR for page 26
26
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
interpretation strategies. PaTincsar and Brown's (1984) work rem
resents the most striking advance in this direction. Working wit
middIe-schoot children who had extremely weak reading comprehen-
sion skills, they introduced a process of Reciprocal teaching" in
which children worked cooperatively to develop an interpretation of
a text. To facilitate interpretation, children took turns posing ques-
tions about and summarizing the texts. Sometimes they also made
predictions about what would be said in a following section of text or
asked for clarification. The teacher modeled these processes for the
children in think-aloud form. Other group members commented on
the quality of questions or summaries and tried to help improve them.
There was no practice in answering questions or in any particular
strategies for using context, analyzing words, or the like.
Reciprocal teaching sessions were conducted daily for several
weeks. During this training period the children's skill at answering
questions about passages that they read privately also began to rise.
They maintained improved reading test performance even after an
eight-week period without reciprocal teaching sessions. Furthermore,
scores on science and social studies comprehension tests, given in the
classroom rather than in the special reciprocal teaching laboratory,
also rose significantly. Comparisons with groups of children who en-
gaged in intensive reading practice without the reciprocal teaching
support establish the importance of reciprocal teaching in producing
these results. These lever of retention and transfer are rare in educa-
tional intervention studies. More important, accumulating evidence
demonstrates that variants of reciprocal teaching can be effectively
carried out by regular classroom teachers as part of their normal
instruction.
Other studies focusing on self-monitoring and meaning construc-
tion skills have also shown promising although not an dramatic results
as Palincsar and Brown's (e.g., Bereiter and Bird, 1985; Collins et
al., 1981; Day, 1980~. In all of these studies, learning proceeded
in a social setting in which tutor and students shared responsibil-
ity for text interpretation. The tutor modeled certain interpretive
processes; these were then taken over by students. There was some
attention to building students' awareness of their own level of under-
standing as well. Schoenfeld (1985) has used a similar approach in
teaching mathematics problem solving.
The findings on reciprocal teaching and its cousins point to a
promising educational intervention. However, they also highlight
how little we know about exactly how such training produces its
OCR for page 27
LA UREN B. RESNICK
27
effects. How can instruction focused on overt, self-conscious strate-
gies that may not be actual components of skilled performance im-
prove normally automatic processes? Some cognitive scientists be-
lieve that question asking and summarizing become automated in the
course of learning ant] are present in skilled reading in abbreviated,
fast, and therefore largely invisible form. Others suggest that these
abilities are not actively invoked during the course of automatic
comprehension although they may well be used during studying
and when smooth comprehension breaks down. In that case, the
monitoring strategies taught and children's subsequent skilled read-
ing performance would be only indirectly related. Perhaps prac
tice in deliberate, rn~ndful, or ~intentional" reading activates certain
powerful knowledge structures that can be applied in subsequent
reading. Perhaps practice mitigates emotional difficulties associated
with years of perceiving oneself as a poor reader. At present, many
explanations seem possible, but the actual learning mechanisms have
not been identified. Research has located a "psychological spacer in
which eclucationally powerful effects seem to occur, but it has not
yet adequately explained what happens in the space to produce the
effects. Until we can provide a more substantial theoretical expla-
nation, we can probably expect mixed results from both laboratory
and classroom experiments aimed at training self-monitoring skills
and strategies because it will be difficult to determine in advance the
essential components of a training approach.
Con~onents of Intelligence
A number of programs aim to improve general intelligence
through special training. Among the best known of these are Whim-
bey and Lochhead's (1982, 1984) program for high school and college
students, Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment Program (Feuerstein
et al., 1985), the Venezuela Project Intelligences program (Bolt
Beranek and Newman, 1983), and Sternberg's (1986) program for
developing practical intelligence.
The program of actually defining intelligence is addressed only
indirectly by most of these program developers. Their programs pros
vice practice and feedback on the kinds of tasks that usually appear
in intelligence and aptitude tests. These include vocabulary-building
activities, exercises involving synonyms and antonyms, analogies,
spatial reasoning items, and certain kinds of logic tasks of a more or
OCR for page 28
28
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
less puzzlelike nature. By including such tasks, the program devel-
opers implicitly accept the validity of established tests as indicators
of intelligence. However, the history of the field (e.g., Journal of Ed-
ucational Psychology, 1921; Sternberg and Detterman, 1979) shows
that psychologists have never arrived at a fully satisfactory definition
of intelligence.
Recognizing this limitation, two of the programs extend their
reach substantially beyond the usual testlike tasks. Sternberg's pro-
gram aims to teach problem-solving techniques drawn from cognitive
research, strategies for memorizing and reading, various practical
skills (e.g., interviewing and clinical reasoning), and methods for
overcoming emotional blocks. The program text, intended for high
school or college courses, assumes that students' performance will
improve when they receive information about psychological theo-
ries. In this sense, it can be seen as the most recent in a series of
self-improvement courses designed by psychologists to reflect cog
~ _
... . .. · ~ ~ 1 t~ ~ ~ [I I__ 1~Q1.
nitive research on th1nkmg and problem solving (CI. Hayes, loot;
WickeIgren, 1974~. The Venezuela Project Intelligence course also
includes tasks that go beyond intelligence test types of exercises.
These include lessons on the structure of language and the analysis
of arguments that are similar to material taught in the informal logic
and critical thinking programs discussed in the next section of this
essay. Other lessons cover the use of graphic, tabular, and simula-
tion representations. A range of problem-solving, decision-making,
and design activities, similar to those included in programs on prow
lem solving in the disciplines, is also included. By contrast, several
programs marketed under the titles of Critical thinking," "reason-
ing,~ or Thinking skilled are actually composed mainly of testlike
exercises.
Two intelligence training programs, Whimbey and Lochhead's
and Feuerstein's, particularly stress social mediation in learning cog-
nitive skill. Whimbey and Lochhead suggest that their exercises
be used in a Pair problem-solving" process in which students alter-
nate the roles of problem-solver (thinking aloud) and listener-critic.
The intent, as in some of the mathematics and engineering problem-
solving programs described earlier, is to make the problem-solving
process overt and to give students practice in analyzing problems
and working through errors rather than avoiding them. Feuerstein's
Instrumental Enrichment Program is intended for functionally back-
ward students. It tries to provide, in condensed form, the kind of
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LA UREN B. RESNICK
29
help in explicitly analyzing tasks, formulating strategies, and e~ralu-
ating outcomes that is provided incidentally in normal development
through interaction with parents and other caretakers. In Instru-
mental Enrichment training, student-teacher interaction, together
with specially structured group discussions following the completion
of indiviclual exercises, plays this mediating role.
Adequate program evaluation is sparse, except in the case of the
Venezuela program. That program has been subjected to a fairly
extensive evaluation involving experimental and control classes in
the seventh grade (students aged 11-17) in barrio (impoverished
urban district) schools. Evaluation demonstrated a clear effect of the
course on a verbal A measure and on several general ability tests,
including reacting. Experimental students performed better than
control students on several measures of the skills directly taught in
the course. In addition, a smaller student sample also took special
oral and written posttests assessing qualitative aspects of thinking
such as appropriateness of a design, clarity of expression, and use of
supporting reasons. Here, too, the experimental group outperformed
the control.
The special posttest in the Venezuela evaluation is important
because it examines transfer of the skills taught to educationally
and practically relevant tasks. Researchers must establish this kind
of transfer whenever teaching focuses on activities that are valued
because of their association with socially valued competence, rather
than valued for their own worth. This is clearly the case for A tests.
These tests are used in evaluation studies because the tests are quite
good at predicting school performance. But students trained to do
well on the tests themselves will not necessarily clo better in school.
IQ tests probably correlate with school performance mainly because
doing well on both the A tasks and school tasks depends on learning
abilities and strategies not directly observed in either. Therefore,
specialized, targeted training on {Q-like tasks may not generalize.
Direct assessment of transfer is needecI. Unfortunately, apart from
the promising but limited evidence from the Venezuela program, such
assessments have not been made. Performance on particular types
of items or on A tests as a whole has been shown to improve with
training (e.g., Feuerstein et al., 1985; Sternberg, 1986~. However,
evidence that improved test scores predict improved performance on
problem solving or learning tasks closer to those of school or great
lifer is rare (see Lochhead, 1985, for a perspicacious discussion of the
difficulties of evaluations that include this kind of transfer criterion).
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30
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINK
Informal I`ogic and Critical Thinking
The final approach to the teaching of higher order skills to be
considered here emerges from a philosophical rather than a psycho-
Togical tradition. In the put several years philosophers at a number
of universities have turned their attention to problems of teaching
general reasoning and argumentation skills. Their work is rooted
in ancient traditions of rhetoric and In recent work on the logic of
argumentation (see, e.g., Toulmin et al., 1979~. The current focus on
the analysis of extended discourse on complex topics, usually social
issues, represents a new thrust within philosophy, offering an alter-
native to the traditions of mathematical logic and formal proof. The
new approaches maintain the normative stance of philosophy; they
prescribe acceptable forms of thinking based on standards of logic.
This contrasts with psychologists' efforts to discover and then to
teach students the actual processes used by good thinkers. Philoso-
phers promote an approach designed to discipline thinking and to
guard against the propensities of humans to accept fallacious ar-
guments and draw inappropriate conclusions. Indeed, the scholarly
heart of the informal logic movement is the analysis of fallacies com-
mon in undisciplined reasoning.
Most efforts to teach informal logic have focused on college-level
courses. Although organized Programs at this level are uncom-
mon, certain textbooks that are frequently used for informal logic
courses provide a reasonable sense of the field (see Johnson, 1981,
and Johnson and Blair, 1980, for reviews and analyses of several
of these texts). The books typically contain examples of texts for
analysis and often present techniques for displaying the relationships
among various segments of an argument. In most cases, the texts
emphasize identification of particular reasoning fallacies and include
technical vocabulary for describing argument structures and their
associated fallacies. In addition to philosophers, a small number of
people from other disciplines are linked to the informal logic mover
meet. For example, rhetoric has become a major element in many
English departments; in these programs, courses in writing and com-
position often concentrate on principles of argument construction
(see Lazere, 1982, for one such approach). Some social scientists
(e.g., Browne and Keeley, 1981; Hursh et al., 1983) have developed
courses and textbooks in critical thinking that share the concerns
of the informal logic movement, although not always the particular
analytic vocabulary.
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LA UREN B. RESNICK
31
Extensive attention to informal logic at the elementary and sec-
ondary school levels is quite recent. It has been spurred by the
recent press for critical thinking in the schools and by the inclusion
of critical thinking components in some states' competency testing
programs (e.g., California, Connecticut, and New Jersey). The only
fully developed and extensively assessed program for precollege stu-
dents is Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children. Philosophy for
Children's basic teaching method is extensive discussion organized
around issues raised in the course of storylike texts. These texts pose
traditional philosophical problems problems of meaning, truth, am
thetics, reality and imagination, ethics, and the like. In this context,
a variety of informal logic skills all focused on logical relations as
expressed in ordinary language-are expected to be developed. The
oldest and most widely used text, Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery
(Lipman, 1974/1982), is aimed at fifth- and sixth-gracie students.
Texts exist for younger and older students as well.
This brief consideration cannot do justice to the variety of prac-
tice and range of opinion in the critical thinking and informal logic
movement. For example, some programs focus largely on identifying
and correctly labeling reasoning fallacies; others concentrate more
or developing skills of argumentation in extended discourse, without
extensive formal analysis. An important debate in the field exactly
parallels psychologists' discussions of whether general cognitive skills
or specific knowledge is most central to intellectual competence. Most
informal logic philosophers believe that general reasoning capacity
can be shaped and that it transcends specific knowledge domains
(e.g., Ennis, 1980, 1985~. In an even stronger claim, Paul (1982, in
press) argues that we should seek to develop in students a broadly
rational personality rather than any set of technical reasoning skills.
This view usually, but not always, supports calls for independent
critical thinking courses. However, a competing view, most strongly
stated by McPeck (1981), argues that no general reasoning skill is
possible and that all instruction in thinking should be situated in
particular disciplines. Despite their parallel concerns, psychologists
studying the teachability of cognitive skills and philosophers promot-
ing critical thinking instruction have communicated very little with
one another. That is beginning to change, with each group express
ingmoreinterestin the other's work (e.g.,Norris, 1985; Perkins,
1982), and more mutual influence is probable in the future.
The college-level courses discussed here have enjoyed little or no
formal assessment apart from regular course examinations. There is
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32
EDUCATION AND LEARNING TO THINIf
an implicit claim that the kinds of analysis taught in informal logic
courses can and should permeate performance throughout the uni-
versity curriculum, although this has not been tested empirically. As
in the case of science, math, and engineering problem-solving courses,
then, judgments of the educational importance of university-level in-
formal logic courses must depend for the moment on the extent to
which the forms of argument analysis taught are judged to be valu-
able aspects of learning in their own right. Several evaluations of
Philosophy for Children, most of which were conducted by evalua-
tors not directly connected with program development or implemen-
tation, provide evidence that the program when well implemented
and given adequate time in the instructional calendar can produce
rather general gains on tests, including improvement on reading com-
prehension and A scores (Lipman, 1985~. This program, then, more
than most, has been subjected to evaluations on a transfer criterion
and has fared quite well.
Problems of Assessment: Some General Comments
Before summarizing the evidence on the teachability of general
thinking skills, it is important to reflect on the question of what
constitutes appropriate evaluation of programs designed to teach
problem-solvir~g and reasoning skills. The most common evaluation
reported for the programs we have considered is mastery performance
(Arbitman-S~riith et al., 1984), that is, performance on exercises sim-
ilar to those included in the program itself. In other words, evaluation
provides evidence that students who have used a program learn to clo
the things the program teaches. This is a necessary first evaluation
step, a minimal test that the program in question is worthwhile.
Although necessary, such evidence is rarely sufficient to establish
the program's educational value. If the program teaches skills that
are in themselves considered valuable, then clear evidence that stu-
dents learn and maintain those skills Is adequate. But if a program
is meant to teach skins that facilitate other learning but are not
valued in themselves, then more is needed than merely tests of the
performances directly taught. In these cases, assessments of trans-
fer beyond the course or program itself must be included. Various
measures of such transfer can be used, including standardized test
scores, subsequent grade point averages, measures of course reten-
tion, or advanced program placement. What matters is that the
ultimate measures assess socially valued performances.
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LAUREN B. RESNICK
33
There are strong theoretical and practical reasons for this. Even
when two measures have been correlated repeatedly for example,
Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and college grades-nothing
guarantees that the correlation will still exist if conditions leading to
high scores in either measure are changed. Under normal learning
conditions it is safe and practical to treat SAT scores as an indicator
of probable college grades. But if special, targeted training produces
an increase in SAT scores, one cannot safely assume that college
grades will also go up. The correlation was establisher} under partic-
ular learning conditions; if those conditions change, the correlation
must be reestablished by verifying empirically that the program pro-
ducing increased SAT scores also produces increased college grades.
The same is true for metacognitive skills associated with reading.
We know that students who perform well on standardized reacting
tests usually exhibit more metacognitive behaviors such as elaborat-
ing on what the text says, summarizing as they react, and raising
questions. But this does not necessarily mean that if we teach stu-
dents to elaborate, to summarize, and to ask questions, their reading
test scores will go up. Useful evaluations of higher order skill train-
ing programs require that the educational outcomes of interest be
directly assessed. We cannot afford to rely on evidence that cer
tain performances traditionally associates! with strong educational
outcomes have improved.
On this criterion, even reading tests, probably the most fre
quently used measure in the studies reviewed, are somewhat prom
lematic. These tests examine abilities that are themselves valued.
They are thus better for evaluation purposes than intelligence tests.
However, many of the higher order training programs aspire to types
and levels of cognitive functioning to which standardized reading
tests are not likely to be adequately sensitive. How, for example,
should we assess whether skills of argument analysis have permeated
students' study of the social sciences or their reading of the ciaily
newspapers? How can we determine whether the problem-solving
skills taught in a high school or freshman college course have altered
performance in science courses or on-thejob creativity? A crude (and
not infrequently used) indicator of academic improvement is course
grades. But even gracles are only indirect indicators of changed cog-
nitive abilities. They do not reveal the quality of thinking, and they
offer no indications of transfer beyond purely academic settings.
Clearly, a most important challenge facing the movement for
increasing higher order skill learning in the school is the development
Representative terms from entire chapter:
critical thinking
