Despite widespread agreement on the need to teach thinking skills and the availability of a large number of programmes to boost thinking skills in primary schools, no one model for instruction is recommended over another. How does a school choose the right programme, one which is compatible with one’s school’s and student’s needs? Mc Guinness (1999) asserts that the more successful models or approaches for classroom instruction of thinking skills “tend to have a strong
theoretical underpinning, well designed and contextualised materials, explicit pedagogy and good teacher support.”
Developments in cognitive psychology like Vygotsky’s recognition of the role of social interaction as a developmental force in thinking, have encouraged new ways of examining instruction that combine analysis of learners’ mental processes with analysis of interactions designed to assist these processes. These are things that have to be considered when selecting a model for instruction of thinking skills.
A number of general issues in contemporary research are identified as useful to aid the search for a model for teaching thinking skills. These include:
the appropriate age to teach thinking skills, the “infusion versus separate” debate and
the theoretical basis underpinning the programme which you, as researcher, wish to follow.
Sternberg (1984b:47) identified a further range of general guidelines to assist in the selection of programmes to teach thinking. He suggested (among others), a programme that:
has a solid theoretical grounding and outlines the way it will be taught, explains the role of the teacher,
recognises the importance of metacognition,
teaches children when and how to use the strategies taught, in order to achieve skill transfer,
is attractively packaged and
uses activity-based, discovery learning techniques.
Many of these factors have already been looked at in this literature review and have been taken into consideration when selecting the learning intervention model for this particular research, into developing thinking in the early year’s child, through early science skills, in an Irish primary setting.
However in order to achieve the specific aims of this project, the researcher believes that materials should additionally be evaluated in terms of their:
practicability and usefulness for busy teachers, effects on pupils,
potential for providing cognitive stimulation, while at the same time remaining related to the development of early science skills,
possibility for building upon this with a follow on programme, provision for teaching for transfer of thinking skills to other contexts, suitability for instruction to early year’s children, while still
embracing much of the theoretical foundations mentioned earlier in this literature review, that can accelerate the development of thinking in the early years child.
Despite all the research that has been carried out in the area of developing thinking skills and the variety of programmes to enhance thinking skills on the market, a programme for instruction that is suitable for four and five year old children, that has embraced current research, is difficult to find. In addition to matching the above criteria the following factors from the Irish Curriculum suggested that the LTEY programme for developing thinking in four and five year olds could be an extremely suitable programme to research:
“It is a fundamental principle of the curriculum that the child’s existing
knowledge and experience should be the starting point for acquiring new understanding” (NCCA:1999b: 14) declares the Irish Primary School Curriculum. The focus of the LTEY programme material is the above, based on familiar fairytales, the family, toys, the house etc, all topics the early child can easily identify with. Moreover, “the curriculum incorporates the use of talk and
discussion as a central learning strategy in every curriculum area…thus deepening the child’s understanding” (1999:15) and the LTEY programme uses talk and discussion in each lesson as its main medium of developing pupils thinking. The methodology used in this programme involves a lot of collaborative learning and group work also to expand children’s thinking skills, which is
advocated by the Irish Curriculum. “Children are stimulated by hearing the ideas
and opinions of others, and by having the opportunity to react to them” (1999:17). Furthermore different teaching methods are required from those employed normally, when teaching for the stimulation of thinking in the LTEY programme, requiring the teacher to become more of a ‘mediator’ guiding the children with open-ended questions. This encouraged the use of this programme, as the issue of the use of a variety of teaching methodologies is extremely prevalent in Irish education at the moment. Both the ‘Curriculum Implementation Evaluation’ (2005) and the ‘Primary Curriculum Review’ (2005) stated this to be an area in need of development. The Irish Primary School Curriculum also asserts that:
To provide learning experiences for the child that are relevant to the challenges of contemporary society, the teacher needs to adopt innovative approaches to teaching…It is important, therefore that the teacher is committed to a process of continuing professional reflection, development and renewal (NCCA:1999b:21).
Many programmes attempt to teach thinking but few are grounded in a solid theoretical basis as recommended by Sternberg (1984b). The LTEY Programme for developing thinking with four and five year olds however, is a psychological model based on the work of Piaget and Vygotsky. Wadsworth (1989:184) highlighted doubts that could be cast on the application of Piaget’s theories of stage development, to the development of thinking in a class situation. He argued that this arose from the acceptance that children develop at different rates and that there are broadly varying potentialities for learning in any group at any given time. However the LTEY Programme appears to allow for this, encouraging and enabling each individual child to aim to improve their thinking skills at their own distinct level.
The decision to choose Science Skills as the curricular area for instruction and infusion was motivated by both my own interest and enthusiasm in and knowledge of science and the active science based classroom methodology used in the LTEY programme. The researcher became aware that the approach to teaching the relatively new Irish curricular subject science was largely didactic through textbooks, particularly with less confident science teachers. This tended to overemphasise analytical thinking to the detriment of other aspects, particularly creative and practical thinking skills. Science naturally lends itself to developing a wide variety of thinking skills, including developing reasoning and critical judgement and this LTEY programme’s teaching approach appears to embrace this. This programme could also help further develop the teachers’ method of science instruction.
Results from intervention programmes adopting this specific model for older children have shown success in enhancing children’s thinking as we will see in the next chapter, and this has helped the author decide on the LTEY programme for review.