Reflection 3

In the previous reflections, I have considered a vision of education and the reasons supporting its incarnation. In the next few reflections, I would consider some concrete applications.

For the past 5 years, I have had many educational adventures. As I was a teacher of GEP students (now called 'SBGE' (school-based gifted education) pupils), I had the opportunity to teach essentially JC topics to S4 pupils, while teaching 'normal' language and literature topics to S1-S2 pupils. As HCI, my previous school, had a 'sabbatical' system where teachers could use 1 week per term to teach whatever they wanted, I also initiated courses featuring metaphysics on the one hand, and economics on the other. When I departed to GE Branch, I continued mentoring some former students in English and economics--and this tutoring 'CIP' later evolved into a course on economics and philosophy. I relished the opportunity to continually translate what I learnt at the Branch into immediate practice.

In my adventures through English, literature, economics and philosophy—subjects which are pretty different from each other—I managed to apply and test many practices for teaching skills, understandings and facts. Throughout it all, my belief in the importance of engaging pupils in thinking continued to grow. In my last reflection, I have illustrated some of the grounds for that belief. It was a belief that I had from the beginning-though my methods and knowledge were primitive then, being largely confined to some basic training in Paul's elements of thought. This training was later supplemented (before and during MLS) by my readings in informal logic, questioning techniques, concept teaching strategies, concept-based curriculum and the analysis of text structures. Whatever I learnt, I quickly practised. Of course, many things did not work well, but many did.

Soon, I will be heading to Fuhua Secondary School as their SSD. While Fuhua pupils are relatively strong academically (compared to most mainstream schools), the profile of students there would be quite different from those I used to teach. A key concern then is how to differentiate the teaching of thinking for readiness. In this reflection and the next, I would reflect on some principles garnered from reading and experimentation that might prove useful in my personal teaching. I would have to reflect on my staff development work in future reflections.

Before I begin, I think it is useful to focus on a conception of teaching suited for the cultivation of thought. To be good teachers of thinking, we must, to some extent, be midwives. As Socrates, the archetypal midwife, puts it in the Theaetetus::

Soc. Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women; and look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the mid-wives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself….And therefore I am not myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the invention or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me profit. Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards, as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, they all make astonishing progress; and this in the opinion of others as well as in their own. It is quite dear that they never learned anything from me; the many fine discoveries to which they cling are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their delivery.

To be a good teacher of thinking, we must first have the correct self-image. We need to shift our self-conception from being solely a fertile dispenser of information (the clichéd ‘sage on the stage’), to being a barren Socratic midwife. Our objectives, instructional activities and assessment tasks should include at least some provision for easing the birth of thought and understanding, and for building our students’ capacity to give birth. We also need to have the constant habit of “thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man [person] brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth”, and provide feedback and adjust our instruction accordingly.

From this vision flows the rest.

1) Apply an Eclectic Conception of Thinking to Guide Instruction and Assessment

Midwives of thinking need to know a reasonably comprehensive list of thinking skills—they need to know the babies they want. Ideally, they should know at least one pedagogically useful model of thinking. There are many of these out there. The one I have used most frequently would be Richard Paul’s model of critical thinking. This model is useful for questioning (‘Socratic questioning’), and the design of instructional and assessment tasks. In addition, the model can be applied across most subjects—certainly it can be used in the four subjects I have dabbled in. (Math GEP teachers seem to have some difficulty using Paul’s wheel though, preferring Polya’s heuristics.) The Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is also useful for the same purposes, and its higher levels can be used to stimulate both critical and creative thinking. Costa and Kallick’s Habits of Mind are also a valuable and user-friendly list of intelligent dispositions that can guide our teaching and assessing.

Beyond these ‘pedagogically’ oriented models, I have found it extremely helpful to apply the insights of argument analysis in my teaching. The concepts of logical validity and soundness, and the distinction between premise and claim, the difference between deductive and inductive arguments (in informal logic, the former means the kind of logically valid arguments where if the premises are correct, the claim must be correct; the latter means the kind of arguments where even if the premises are correct, the claim is only probable) are also useful for the analysis of thinking. The art of turning a cloudy and wordy argument into a clear diagram on paper (‘to put into standard form’) is one that can usefully used to help students to examine their own thinking, and to help them construct arguments (more on that later).

For myself, I think the most optimal mode of operation would be to use Paul’s wheel and model as the basis for instructional and assessment design, but complement it with other perspectives (like the ‘creating’ level of Bloom’s; the different Habits of Mind; the concepts and skills of informal logic) where necessary. This is quite possible as there are significant areas of overlaps between the different taxonomies and models (after all they are dealing with the same phenomenon), and they are seldom contradictory.

Such an eclectic approach will probably allow maximum flexibility to differentiate for readiness, interests and learning profiles—something that will likely be sorely needed in my new environment. It is probably ideal to know a few models of thinking, and then apply them flexibly according to the situation.

In my next reflection, I would illustrate a few other principles for teaching thinking.