How to think
You can lead your students to knowledge, but can you make them think?
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Today’s newsletter is focused on a very big idea, what Deans for Impact calls the “core of learning”: effortful thinking. The way in which students think about what they’re learning, and how much effort they put into it, can change how well they learn.
Content knowledge has raised its profile recently—cognitive scientist Dan Willingham and knowledge advocate E.D. Hirsch, Jr., had an article out just this week acknowledging that “knowledge is having a moment in education fashion.” More schools are realizing the important role knowledge-building plays in learning, from improving reading comprehension to better solving math problems.
But what students do with that knowledge matters to how well they learn it, says Meg Lee and Jim Heal, co-founders of Learning Science Partners. They are two experts in thinking—Lee as former head of professional learning for Frederick County, Maryland, and Heal as former Harvard lecturer and co-author of books like How Teaching Happens and Instructional Illusions. What’s important is for students to work with knowledge, they say, to learn hows and whys and what happens when—connecting new knowledge to already known ideas and new ideas, creating a web of understanding.
In order to do that, students have to think—a notoriously difficult ask, since thinking is hard and their brains may not want to do it. But teachers and schools can create environments where thinking is more likely to occur, and create ways to recognize when great student thinking is happening, Heal and Lee say. Today they share 4 Big Ideas teachers and leaders should know about effortful thinking.
You can lead your students to knowledge, but can you make them think?
The idea of effortful thinking is closely tied to the workings of the mind itself, Jim Heal and Meg Lee told me in a recent interview.
