In this video webinar (well, more like a presentation), hosted by Redleaf Press, I give a general overview of the key concepts of promoting higher-order thinking in young learners. I didn’t intend for my dog, Zara, to be the main star of the show, but that’s what happened! Feel free to share it. To view the video, click HERE or on the image above.
Belief is an important new book by James E. Alcock. An extensive review of the book by Harriet Hall can be found on the Science-Based Medicine website.
Alcock explains the biological and psychological reasons convictions are so powerful that people will believe outrageous claims and obvious lies that conform to their convictions while dismissing clear evidence that contradicts them.
In the final chapter, A Firewall to Folly, Alcock offers ideas for mitigating the power of beliefs. These ideas can also be described as a how-to guide for becoming a healthy skeptic. They fall into two categories: dispositions (D) and critical thinking strategies (CTS), particularly parsing. Dispositions are mindsets or attitudes that open the mind to flexible and critical thinking. Each of the items below are labelled with its category.
- Remember that we can all be fooled (D).
- Be wary of your intuitions (D).
- Be wary of the Fundamental Attribution Error, attributing people’s behavior to their characters and intentions while overlooking the power of the situation (CTS).
- Be wary of validation by personal experience (CTS).
- Don’t rely on a single source of information (CTS).
- Don’t over-interpret correlations (CTS).
- Ask “compared to what?” – a wine was rejected because it was found to contain two million asbestos particles per liter, but the concentration of asbestos particles in the city water supply was higher than that (CTS).
- In the face of inadequate evidence, suspend judgment rather than jumping to conclusions (D).
Finally, he reminds us that critical thinking means we should be prepared to disagree with ourselves (D). In other words, question our beliefs and be open to changing them when presented with new information or evidence.
Alcock’s ideas complement the ideas in HOT Skills. Adults can model these dispositions and demonstrate the strategies, name and explain them to students, and, when opportune, teach them in developmentally and culturally appropriate ways.
As defined by the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University:
Executive function (and self-regulation) skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. ‘…the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.’
These skills rely on three main brain functions:
Working Memory, which governs our ability to retain and manipulate distinct pieces of information over short periods of time.
Mental Flexibility, which helps us to sustain or shift attention in response to different demands or to apply different rules in different settings.
Self-Control, which enables us to set priorities and resist impulsive actions or responses.
It’s helpful to regard executive function as a set of mental capacities and regard thinking skills as mental abilities. People with higher levels of executive function have a greater capacity for higher-order thinking than people with lower levels. However, that capacity will be unrealized if a person is not able to use higher-order thinking skills. In addition, greater mental capacity (i.e., higher levels of executive function) facilitates the ability to use more advanced levels of any and all thinking skills, whether lower-, middle-, or higher-order.
In the following analogy, a computer represents executive function and the person using the computer represents thinking skills. An inexpensive, basic-level, slow computer has limited capacity. It is difficult, but not impossible, to do sophisticated computing if the user has strong computer abilities and a lot of patience. If the user does not have strong computer skills, the computer still has practical utility to perform basic functions such as word processing, organizing files, sending and receiving email, etc. Here, there is a good match between the computer and the user. A high-end computer has tremendous capacity to do many things quickly. But the user with only basic computer abilities will not be able to take advantage of its capacity, while the user with strong computer abilities can find almost unlimited uses, including many that are unique and creative. Again, here there is a good match between the computer and the user.
While Teacher Tony is reading Caps for Sale to the group, the fire alarm rings. Fortunately, it is just a fire drill. Fifteen minutes later, when everyone is back in the classroom, Teacher Tony asks, “Where did we leave off in our story? What was the last thing that happened?” This is a challenging, more advanced lower-order thinking task (recall from memory) for most preschoolers because the interruption was long, emotional, complex, and particularly distracting. It was a little frightening, it involved following multiple directions, required physical movement and a change of environment, and was an uncommon, untypical activity. The children with a high level of focused attention (engaged while they were listening to the story before the fire drill) and with a strong working memory, were able to recall the last thing that happened in the story: the peddler woke up and saw that monkeys were wearing his caps.
Third Grade Example:
As part of a science/math unit on scientific methods and basic data analysis, third graders in Ms. Rodriguez’s class work in small groups to create a process and tools (e.g., questionnaires, surveys, tally sheets) to get the opinions of students in the school about how to address common concerns and problems. Each group takes a different issue such as the quality of food in the cafeteria, recesses being too short, teachers giving too much homework, bullying on the playground, etc. They will also collect information about each student’s gender, grade level, birth order, number of siblings, and favorite school subject. Ms. Rodriguez knows that each group needs at least one student whose good self-control gives them the capacity to use advanced lower- and middle-order thinking skills to plan, organize, and keep the group on track. In other words, attend to details. Each group also needs at least one student whose strong working memory and mental flexibility gives them the capacity to use higher-order thinking skills to hypothesize outcomes, anticipate potential problems, generate ideas, synthesize and interpret information, and analyze the data. In other words, see the big picture.
On almost every measure, people perceive things to be much worse than they actually are! Since 2012, statisticians from the British-based research firm, IPSOS, have conducted a large international survey of the perceptions of tens of thousands of people on a wide range of issues including rates of teen pregnancy, violent crime, terrorism, obesity, happiness, and the percentage of Muslims in their country’s population. Then they compare these perceptions to the actual numbers.
The discrepancies are much greater for issues that people fear the most, which varies greatly from country to county. Americans think that 17% of the population is Muslim, but it is only one percent (16 point gap). French people believe that 31% of the population is Muslim, but it is only 8% (23 point gap). In countries with less negative press about Muslims and fewer incidents of attacks by Islamic extremists, the perception/reality gap is much narrower. In Norway, Muslims make up five percent of the population, while Norwegians perceive it to be 11% (6 point gap). Note that they still get it very wrong; believing it to be more than twice what it actually is.
But, there are also differences among countries in the overall accuracy of their citizens’ perceptions. Germans and Swedes are the most accurate, while Italians and Americans are the least accurate.
Why do so many people misperceive reality so dramatically? There are many complex reasons, but chief among them are a lack of critical thinking skills and an inability to counter thinking errors and biases, particularly confirmation bias.
Here’s an excellent 25 minute video by the lead researcher, Bobby Duffy, describing the study and sharing some of the key findings. He also suggests ideas for improving the situation. Click on his name below the photo to access the video.
And here is a link to the book, “Perils of Perception”
Three chapters and some essays, about 100 pages, were eliminated from the original manuscript. My excellent editor, Danny Miller, recommended this and I (reluctantly) agreed. The content of one of those chapters, about thinking errors and biases, was abbreviated and incorporated into Chapter 6. A chapter about assessing higher-order thinking had some useful and important information, but really needed a complete re-write and we were behind schedule. I am working on this and hope to publish it as an article or a blog post soon. Stay tuned. The third chapter that was cut focused on thinking styles. It was overly complicated and academic but some parts of it I think are worthy of revising and resurrecting. For example, there are sections about the influence of culture and social class on thinking that teachers should find relevant and helpful. There is also a discussion of the concept of intelligence and how it relates to thinking. Here I came up with a new definition of intelligence that I will share for your feedback in an upcoming blog post.
My editor also performed a radical “snarkectomy,” wisely cutting many sentences and paragraphs that were overtly critical, cynical, negative, and political. I had used a number of current social and political events and statements from politicians as examples of faulty thinking, of the consequences of not using higher-order thinking, and to make the case for the dire need to teach higher-order thinking often and early. My reference to the “epidemic of stupidity plaguing America” on the “About” page, sums it all up nicely.
The following essay was also cut. But I like it and hope you will too.
Zootopia: A Movie about HOT Skills?
It’s hard to know if the screenwriters were intentional about this, but watching this delightful animated (Oscar-winning) movie is like taking a course on cognitive psychology. Zootopia is a bustling city of human-like animals; a utopia of the future where all animals live peacefully together…for the most part. The protagonist is a fresh-off-the-farm, young adult rabbit, Judy Hopps, who is a newly minted Police Officer. (Being among the smallest of the animals, she is a proxy for the children watching the movie.) Judy uses a full range of HOT skills to outsmart animals much bigger and stronger and to recruit the much-needed assistance of a street-smart fox, Nick Wilde. The drama centers around a number of animals who have gone missing. When Judy finds them, these otherwise peaceful former predators have become savage. This creates trouble in paradise because the animals that were formerly prey now fear and mistrust all former predators, who are a minority group living among the far more numerous former prey.
Although Judy is self-confident, capable, and hailed as a hero for finding the missing animals, she only becomes truly effective and successful when she critically reflects on her actions. When asked by a reporter why some predators have become savage, she repeats what she heard someone else say, “They are reverting back to their ‘natural’ state.” Here she uses lower order thinking–imitating and recalling–which leads to serious negative consequences. Alternatively, she could have used strategic and generative thinking to say, “I don’t know, but I will do everything in my power to find out.” She admits to herself that her attempt to make a better world has actually made things worse, so she leaves Zootopia and goes back to her family’s carrot farm. It is only when she withdraws and becomes reflective and receptive to new information, that she gains the knowledge she needs to solve the problem of the predators going savage.
A key theme of Zootopia is that things are often not as they appear. It requires higher-order thinking to look beyond surface appearances, to avoid making assumptions, to be appropriately skeptical, and to make considered judgments and good decisions. Judgments based on surface appearances and assumptions lead to stereotyping, which is a major barrier to understanding and problem-solving.
By the end of the movie we know that the predators were not turning savage. It was all a deliberate plot by the ruthless, power-hungry mayor of Zootopia. The mayor knew that a state of fear inhibits higher-order thinking and fosters lower order thinking, making it easier to control and manipulate her citizens. Turning a stereotype on its head once again, this evil mayor has the appearance and voice of a meek little sheep! Other examples of appearances and expectations being at odds with reality are: Zootopia is not at all a peaceful utopia, Mr. Big is tiny, the source of an urban problem is in a rural area, and those savage predators are actually victims. Nothing is what is seems! To use critical thinking skills and look beyond surface appearances is an important lesson that our students need to learn and this film conveys it beautifully and effectively with humor and heart.