Table of Content (click on blue
hyperlinks) 2.
The Problem:
Answer oriented learning and hyper change 3.
The
Challenges: Change-adept thinking and 21st century learning
4.
The Solution:
Move “Thinking” to the forefront of learning a.
Acquiring a
questioning attitude. b.
Developing
questioning skills within regular subjects. c.
Developing
thinking process skills within projects. d.
Assessing
students as questioners, not answerers. e.
Promoting
self-awareness as a foundation for thinking. f.
Teaching thinking
skills a separate subjects 5.
Developing a Pull Model of
Learning for the Workforce 6.
Flipping Traditional
Learning Upside-down
Mahatma Gandhi
“Those who know how to think become
their own teachers.” ■ Executive Summary ToC This white paper was
developed from a business and workforce perspective. It works backwards from
the needs of knowledge workers and addresses the question: How might students become better prepared
for a 21st century work place. It is based on this
premise:
A
“Question” oriented approach to
education The underlying theme of
this whitepaper and the cornerstone of this authors work efforts to develop
facilitated thinking technology is … Asking better questions can
significantly improve knowledge workers thinking effectiveness. Looking back at my
education, I can’t remember a single test that measured my ability to ask
good “questions”. What appears to
be needed in education today is a way to develop better questioning abilities
and measure students’ performance based on asking the right questions. In
other words: ■ The Problem: Answer oriented learning ToC Today’s
“Answer” oriented education A little more than a century ago
Industrial companies valued standardization. Factory workers were measured on
how efficiently (robot-like) they worked and how well they could memorize
routine work practices. They were not encouraged to ask a lot of questions or
do much on-the-job thinking. Education successfully
met those needs with standardized curriculums and standardized tests that
required memorizing standard answers. Even today, students are measured on
their ability to give the right Answers:
Answers
STOP thinking … Questions START thinking There is nothing wrong with memorizing
answers, in fact the more answers you can memorize the more successful you
become. The problem with this approach, however, is generally once an answer
is given … thinking stops.
Education
in an era of hyper-change Today, students graduate
from High School without even knowing what kinds of work will exist during
their Lifetime. So if we cannot
predict the kinds of jobs students will be doing, how can we predict what knowledge
students need to be taught? The answer is in
understanding how work has evolved from a world of much certainty and little
change to today’s world where the only certainty seems to be change. From
manual work to knowledge work In the past, the world
was largely comprised of manual (blue-collar) workers who became very
efficient in performing repetitive tasks. For the most part, the traditional
educational and learning models were fine for preparing students for this
kind of worker. But what about today’s workers? As Richard Florida
describes in his book, The Rise of the
Creative Class, the good old days have given rise to knowledge
(white-collar) work for about 50% of the US workforce, and growing. Today, information
driven knowledge-workers are being asked to think and modify the work routine
to better respond to any change in the marketplace, personalized customer
needs and be ready to capitalize on emerging opportunities. But
Wait … Most of us don’t like change! Change for most people represents
breaking habits and lifestyle routines, losing predictability and control, as
well as the potential loss of applicable work skills and knowledge. Change for most
organizations is also difficult. Organizations by their nature are not
predisposed to change. In fact, a primary purpose of organizational
structures is to produce predictable behaviors. Change strikes at all levels of an
organization, and has an impact across all functions. No aspect of corporate
life escapes its effects. The result is many
people, including life-long career
knowledge-workers, are now starting to lose confidence in their ability to
stay competitive and meet the challenges of change. A growing amount of
stress is entering the workplace. ■ The Challenges ToC The future of American
competitiveness is now about finding new ways to boost U.S. knowledge-worker
thinking productivity and is related to overcoming these challenges.
In
many respects this could be considered thinking on autopilot. A common
example is driving to work that follows the same route. We know thinking
occurs, but sometimes we arrive at work not quite remembering how we got
there. This kind of autopilot thinking works well when nothing changes. But
what happens if our regular route is closed for construction … autopilot thinking
will not get you to work. Now, some real “change-adept” thinking is in order. ■ The Answer ToC There is no argument about accelerating CHANGE,
and no secret that the next five to
twenty years will be a very difficult road for the unprepared. So
why don’t we better prepare for managing change? Is it complacency?
Laziness? Denial? Why in the face of
obvious change do people interpret and filter information through the
relative 'safety' of the past? Are we scared of change, or is it purely a
fundamental lack of ability to engage in the right kind of thinking needed to
manage the process of change? The answer is the
later. Most of us have never been
formally taught how to “THINK” through change. Until now, there really was never a need
for this kind of “Change-adept” thinking. Autopilot thinking was sufficient
for most everything we did. What
is Change-adept Thinking? Compared to routine
autopilot thinking that is based on known information and past experience,
change-adept thinking is based on unknown and uncertain information. There is
no or very little past experience to guide our thinking. See chapter 2 for a
detailed description. Today, businesses are
starting to recognize the need for change-adept thinking because they are now
touting the value of creative and innovative thinking in their employees.
Google had over 60,000 hits on the phrase ‘Innovation Conferences’. While innovative and creative thinking are
obviously very important, change-adept knowledge workers must be able to do:
Systems thinking, Strategic thinking, Futures thinking, Contextual thinking,
Critical thinking and Collaborative thinking. But
… Thinking gives me a headache Autopilot thinking is
easy because it uses the same well oiled thinking paths. Change-adept
thinking is NOT easy because it goes down little used thinking paths. For
most people this kind of thinking is not fun, is hard work, and in some cases
too much of it can even give us a headache!
So what’s the answer?
How can thinking be made easier, more fun and a lot more effective? As this
book describes, the answer is in improving knowledge workers thinking
abilities with the aid of cognitive tools. BUT … how can High Schools and
Colleges also better prepare students for this kind of workplace? ■ The Solution: Moving THINKING to the forefront of education ToC
Is
American high-school education obsolete? As Microsoft’s Bill
Gates puts it: “American high-school education is obsolete. When I compare
our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for
our work force of tomorrow. Our fourth graders are among the top students in
the world. By eighth grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade,
U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of industrialized nations”. OK Bill, let’s assume
you are right. But you didn’t tell us why this is happening or what is the
solution? For our perspective, the
reason and solution are fairly straight forward and follows this basic
assumption: Students that ask questions
are more engaged in their own learning and are really thinking about their
learning. The relationship between
questions and performance seems to be:
Applying this premise to
Bill’s quote finds this correlation. Higher scoring fourth grade students
still ask lots of questions and are generally engaged in their learning.
However, as students move through higher grades they become less prone to ask
questions. When students reach HS, many are fearful of asking questions that
may make them took “stupid.” This fear turns into losing the ability to ask
good questions and results in poor performance in school and ultimately the
workplace. Recommendation What’s needed is a
comprehensive approach that puts THINKING at the forefront of High School
education. This can be done easily, quickly and without needing to change
much subject material or course content by implementing these six proposals. 1. Acquiring
a questioning attitude. 2. Developing
questioning skills within regular subjects. 3. Developing
thinking process skills within projects.
4. Assessing
students as questioners, not answerers. 5. Promoting
self-awareness as a foundation for thinking. 6. Teaching
some thinking skills as separate subjects. Note: Each of these
proposals have a web link with more detailed information, see below. 1.
Attitude: Acquiring a questioning attitude ToC
Einstein once said: "What's
different about me? It's
my ability to ask the right questions clearly and cleanly." Our attitude is the
window through which we view the world and drives our thinking and actions. A
positive mental attitude prompts automatic responses for finding good. A
negative attitude prompts pessimistic responses for finding the bad in
situations. One of the more
important jobs of education is helping students realize that becoming a good
questioner is one of the keys for a successful life. This begins with helping
students acquire a questioning attitude. If students don’t have the intention
to ask good questions, nothing much will change. The mindset that students need to acquire
follows this Chinese proverb: “There are no foolish questions,
and no one becomes a fool until they have stopped asking questions.” Recommendation: Like most everything in
life, the key to acquiring a questioning attitude is simply a conscious
effort to start DOINIG IT. An easy way to start is to have a fun class
discussion that gets kids thinking about why
questions are important. The following is an application to help teachers
prepare for this discussion.
2.
Classroom: Developing “thinking skills” within content ToC
Critical
Success Factor – Teacher Courage & Humility Critical thinking maybe
more difficult to teach than to learn. Critical thinking questions encourage
students to engage and challenge their teachers and learning. This means
teachers will need the Courage to
withstand having their knowledge challenged. This also means teacher will
need Humility to understand that
they don’t have all the answers and that there are always new approaches and
different ways of learning Putting
the questioning attitude into practice in the classroom. Thinking skills include
questions that empower: critical thinking, higher order thinking,
collaborative thinking and contextual thinking.
Recommendation Teachers need to add
questions to their lessons with little change in lesson plans and content.
With a simple button click or voice inquiry, they need to access on-demand
questions they can use. The following is the main menu for an application
that does that.
3. Project
Learning ToC Projects
as a Game and Entertainment! There is a growing
interest in using things like simulation games, web based wiki projects and
Avatars in virtual reality to make learning fun for students ... even
ENTERTAINING! This is a powerful step
in the right direction, not just because it does a better job for learning
content, but because it promotes student thinking abilities to acquire the
content. As good as they are, the weakness in games is they still focus on the outcome
or the answer at the end of the game! The missing and important part is the
“thinking process” or the right thinking sequence that gets the student to
the right answer. Developing
“thinking processes” within projects. In the workplace, all
thinking has some purpose … to solve a problem, reach a goal, understand
information, etc. And all thinking is done within thinking processes or the
mental frameworks in which thinking occurs to solve
the problem, reach the goal or understand the information. Understanding the
thinking process (sequence of thinking tasks) can significantly influence
thinking. Skipping or missing a thinking task can lead to ineffective
thinking, for example:
Recommendation: Just as teaching content is best done by using a “Content within
Context” approach, Teaching thinking is best done using a “Thinking
within Process” approach. The best way to learn thinking processes is
through a fun project based learning approach. The recommendation is to provide teachers and
students with the following Project Planning application. The following
application mentors students with questions, skill builders and fun games and
exercises at each step of the thinking process.
4.
Assessment:
Assessing students as questioners, not answerers ToC Today the focus in
education is in teaching content with learning
how to think a byproduct of learning content. So quite naturally assessment is about
measuring content. A complete opposite
shift is needed in education where the primary focus is on teaching students
how to think with learning content
coming as the byproduct of thinking.
An assessment process needs to measure thinking abilities and should
be based on this premise: If … it
is true that students who have questions are really thinking and learning. Then …
would it be beneficial to give students exams that ask them to list all of
the questions that they have about a subject (content), including all
questions generated by their first list of questions. Answers
STOP thinking. Questions PROMOTE
thinking The current assessment
“of” learning process is mostly answer oriented. Its primary purpose is to
measure students’ mastery of content.
The test is generally the end result where thinking stops and most
content about the subject forgotten. Today, there is a
growing interest in assessment “for” learning where the focus is on providing
immediate feedback on a student’s strengths, weaknesses and gaps in skills
and knowledge. While this is a step in the right direction it falls short
because it still focuses on feedback to improve answers. Paradigm
Shift A paradigm shift is
needed that moves from an assessment process based on students giving
“answers” to students giving “questions.” When questions become the way to
assess student performance, the question itself promotes more learning. As
Thomas Merton would put it “The question is the answer” Recommendation:
AND/BOTH assessment process What is needed is an
assessment process that BOTH measures content mastery AND measures thinking
abilities through questions that promotes better
thinking and better understanding of the content. The following rubric
is designed to both measure content and students ability to think by asking
the right questions. It contains the “Query Fors
and “Listen Fors Formative Thinking Assessment Main Menu
■ 5.
Character Education: Basis for thinking and learning ToC An important
underpinning for thinking and learning can be summed up by Socrates who said:
“The secret to leading a productive, ethical and meaningful life is in two
simple words – “Know thyself”.
For some students, the
search for an adequate sense of self can be so powerful that it takes
precedence over all else in the life … including learning. So if knowledge and content keeps changing
over a lifetime, one lifetime thing that can be taught is helping students
find a sense of self on which to build their lives. Students gain this self-knowledge by
regularly examining their behavior and reflecting on the kind of person we
are and would like to be. When students do reflective thinking, they are more
inclined to be more honest with themselves, admit what they don't know and
take responsibility for their actions. It works like this.
Recommendation High School students
need self-mentoring Character Education software that functions like a
counselor, teacher or advisor. The following Self-mentoring software
application prompts students to ask questions to help them become more conscious of their own personal characteristics,
beliefs and patterns of behavior. A major advantage of this approach is it
offers a completely safe, unbiased and non-judgmental environment for student
to explore who they are. This type of self-assessing software enables
students to explore their own ideas and solutions more thoroughly before
interacting with a teacher or guidance counselor.
6.
Curriculum
- Teaching Thinking as separate subjects
ToC Teaching
Thinking Skills Doing a Google search
found thousands of hits for the phrase “Teaching Thinking Skills” but only
few for “Teaching Thinking Processes.”
In summary, it was commonly found that teaching thinking skills were things like: observing, exploring,
defining, analyzing, classifying, synthesizing, comparing, evaluating,
planning, predicting, etc. Much seemed
related to Blooms Taxonomy. There was also
discussion about teaching thinking skills as a separate subject or within subjects.
The general consensus was the best way to teach thinking skills was through
‘infusing’ thinking skills into the teaching of content areas. While this is true, this approach misses
teaching thinking processes. Teaching
Thinking Processes Review of web sites on
teaching thinking processes found virtually no consensus on what even the
term even meant. Discussion ranged from teaching Howard Gardner’s Multiple
Intelligence to Dewey’s’ Constructivist
Theory. For our purpose here is a summary of Chapter 2 definition of Thinking
Processes.
Recommendation: In addition to infusing teaching thinking skills in subjects, it is
recommended that at least these two courses be taught.
Course
Objective: Understand the basic reasons for thinking and be able to select
the right thinking process for any situation encountered in life.
Course Objective: Every situation you encounter in life has a
“perfect” question that provides the best result for that specific situation.
The objective of this course is showing you how to find and ask the “perfect”
question. ■ Developing a Pull Model of Learning for the Workforce ToC We all know that it is
necessary to train our workforce, but it can be difficult to measure its
ROI. Training is one of the most
difficult and challenging areas to see real benefits. Training takes time out
of the productive work day and course attendance can seem impossible. And,
managers complain that they do not have enough time or the expertise to
enhance their employee learning on the job. But, learning is more
important than ever for our workforce … yet most organizations invest much of
their budget on Formal training that “pushes” knowledge and information at
workers. A major weakness in this approach is that workers acquire
information they never use or the information they do need is likely to be
forgotten by the time they need it. What’s needed is a Pull
learning appraoch that uses self-mentoring software changes that because
trainees walk away with a tool to use in their daily work. It can be
viewed as a link between training and ongoing performance improvement. Or, an extension of classroom training into
the workplace with alignment to employees work requirements for use when and
where it is needed. The
“Push” learning approach This way of learning
tends to treat students as consumers whose knowledge and information needs
can be anticipated and pre-determined. Most company training
programs today use a just-in-case
learning approach that “pushes” knowledge and information
at workers… with hope that some of it will stick. New learning technologies
must allow workers to “pull” the learning they need … at
the exact moment when it is needed. Using a push model of
learning worked well in the era of little change where you did not have to
remember much. However, in an era of constantly changing work, push learning
has major weakness like:
The
“Pull” learning approach In a pull model of
learning, the student decides what they need to learn at the moment of
learning. The model strives to continually expand the choices available while
at the same time helping students to find the right cognitive tools
(Thinklets) and learning resources that are most relevant to them. Major benefits are: ·
Learning on
demand, immediate reinforcement ·
Learning while
working, not separate from working ·
Self-service,
flexible delivery ·
Peer learning,
community of practice, collaboration ■
Flipping traditional learning upside
down ToC Instead of thinking
being a byproduct of learning content … the time has come where
content becomes the byproduct of learning thinking. Informal
Learning Support System for continuous improvement Informal Learning
Support Systems enable knowledge workers to “pull’ the learning they need at the moment of need. With this
approach the workers call the shots when they need the knowledge to do the
job. This type of learning system essentially flips upside down the formal
learning model and uses a “backwards” learning approach that supports
continuous informal on-the-job learning.
Development of Thinking
& Learning Support Systems essentially flips upside down the formal
learning model and uses a “backwards” learning approach that supports users
on-the-job. It would include these
five levels. Level
1: Self-learning via facilitator questions: The
ultimate goal is for the knowledge-worker to think through continuous change
and “learn” when their jobs require it.
This level works by simply finding and asking the right question which
gives the workers mind the best chance to find the right answer. Level
2 – Self-learning via cognitive tools:
This level goes deeper with knowledge workers
(students) accessing cognitive tools that have encapsulated “Expert”
knowledge. Like any manual tool, knowledge workers choose the cognitive tool
appropriated for the thinking task at hand. Level 3 - Exercise Learning: If a person needs more
detailed learning this level provides exercises, examples, demos , videos,
etc. Level
4 - Coaching “Apprentice” Learning: This level is more of an
apprenticeship or learn-by-doing model and uses simulation software. Level 5 - Formal
Training and eLearning: The lowest level uses formal
training. This level focuses on knowledge acquisition for work tasks of a
complex nature that may require hands-on practice, or the distributing large
amounts of knowledge to new workers.
It can be characterized as instructor-led in face-to-face, virtual or
blended classroom settings or perhaps taught by simulation programs. One
semester of learning … in one hour. Traditional Process
Improvement (Six-Sigma Black-belt) training can take 5 to 20 days at costs
ranging up to $40,000 per person.
Not all organizations can make this kind of investment, yet the value of this
training should not be limited to companies who can afford it. Everyone
(small and mid-sized companies, school districts, churches, NPOs and
virtually any organization or individual) should derive the benefits. For example, in 60
minutes anyone can learn to use a Lean Sigma Thinking & Learning Support
System that emulates the knowledge, skills and abilities of Black belts. Now,
anyone can be continuously facilitated at each step of Six Sigma process as
if they had a skilled black-belt guiding them. In
the moment learning. The best way to describe
this is with an example: Let’s say you are in a meeting discussing a complex
problem, and
So within a matter of
minutes, person seven had a variety of system questions and a Systems Hierarchy
thinklet that the team started using … just as if Peter Senge
were personally facilitating the meeting. This approach works
because if you provide your mind with systems questions and tools
(thinklets), your mind will naturally start to do systems thinking. Now, of
course, reading Peter Senge wonderful systems books
is going to help … but this “learn by doing” approach is going to help you
even more. Co-author
wanted I would like to work
with an educator to develop another paper from an educational perspective. If interested, please contact me. Dennis
Heindl is President of Nth Degree Software, Inc. and can be contacted at dj@nthdegreesoft.com or at 414-529-1878.
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