 | Intellectual quality
Introduction
Higher-order thinking
Deep knowledge
Deep understanding
Substantive conversation
Knowledge as problematic
Metalanguage Higher-order thinking Are students using higher-order thinking operations within a critical framework? Explanation Higher-order thinking by students involves the transformation of information and ideas. This transformation occurs when students combine facts and ideas and synthesise, generalise, explain, hypothesise or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation. Manipulating information and ideas through these processes allows students to solve problems, gain understanding and discover new meanings. When students engage in the construction of knowledge, an element of uncertainty is introduced into the instructional process and the outcomes are not always predictable; in other words, the teacher is not certain what the students will produce. In helping students become producers of knowledge, the teacher's main instructional task is to create activities or environments that allow them opportunities to engage in higher-order thinking. Lower-order thinking occurs when students are asked to receive or recite factual information or to employ rules and algorithms through repetitive routines. Students are given prespecified knowledge ranging from simple facts and information to more complex concepts. Such knowledge is conveyed to students through a reading, work sheet, lecture or other direct instructional medium. The instructional process is to simply transmit knowledge or practise procedural routines. Students are in a similar role when they are reciting previously acquired knowledge: for example responding to test-type questions. More complex activities may still involve reproducing knowledge if students are required to follow only predetermined steps and routines, or employ algorithms in a rote fashion. Example The topic of a Year 2 Maths lesson was classification and grouping generally, and more specifically set theory. The teacher brought in a range of diverse objects. Students, in groups, had to categorise the objects according to criteria that they determined themselves. At the end of that part of the lesson, the groups rotated around the classroom and in groups suggested the basis of each classification. The teacher then gave two hula-hoops to each group and asked them to place the objects into overlapping sets, so that objects in the overlapping or intersection set had characteristics in common with the objects within each of the hoops. The groups did this and again rotated and discussed the basis of the classification. The basis of the classification could be, for example, that the objects were all yellow, or all dirty, or all cubes. Students simply had to articulate reasons and justify their classifications. The lesson concluded with the teacher making comments regarding the use of symbolic representations in Maths. Continuum of practice | students, almost all of the time, are engaged in higher-order thinking. Students are primarily engaged in routine lower-order thinking for a good share of the lesson. There is at least one significant question or activity in which some students perform some higher-order thinking.
Students are engaged only in lower-order thinking; i.e. they receive, or recite, or participate in routine practice. In no activities during the lesson do students go beyond simple reproduction of knowledge. | |
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