Thinking Schools, TSAT Trust

Cognitive Approach to Education

A Thinking School is unique in their focus to share with your child the tools to become a life-long learner, and to develop the best possible habits for success in life. It is an educational community which involves both students and staff learning how to think reflectively, critically and creatively. A Thinking School is more than just a title, to become one the school has to earn the Thinking accreditation from Exeter University.

Visual Mapping

There are many different kinds of visual mapping techniques such as brainstorming webs, graphic organisers and conceptual and “systems” mapping. Usually visual mapping approaches mirror specific kinds of thinking skills or theories of learning. Some of these tools are used in isolated ways for certain tasks, some are open ended. There are also visual “languages” for school-wide use.

Collaborative Working

The techniques for cooperative learning are many and there are models for establishing collaborative groups, classrooms and schools. The research on cooperative learning in school and the need for high quality collaborative groups in the workplace connect to the recent evolution of social networking through new technologies as learners engage other learners around the globe.

Developing Disposition

Educators interested in the area of developing thinking often start by differentiating thinking “skills” such as cause-effect reasoning and the ability to make inferences from thinking “dispositions” such as persistence, remaining open-minded, and metacognition. Dispositions are often related to the new field of emotional intelligences and the developing empathy in relationship to others.

Structuring Environment

How the classroom, school, and surrounding area are physically structured has a great effect on teaching and learning. Positioning of students on the floor, seating arrangements in the classroom, and the accessibility of learning materials are all dimensions of the environment. The use of all the resources available within and around the school and wider community is key to engaging students.

Reflective Questioning

Reflective questioning is the use of prompts and questions to engage students in both thinking about “what” they know (factual memory) and also “how” they know (critical reflection). High quality questions guide students to think about their thinking (metacognition), dispositions that they are drawing on, and how they are collaborating with others as they are learning.

Thinking Skills

Psychologists, cognitive scientists, and educators have developed many different models and theories for defining and organising a range of thinking skills. Often these models differentiate between “lower” and “higher” order skills. In general terms, there are fundamental cognitive processes for generating and organising information, skills of analysis and synthesis, and processes of creativity and evaluation.

Thinking Maps

Hyerle and Alper (2011) state that, ‘Thinking Maps serve as a device for mediating thinking, listening, speaking, reading, writing, problem solving, and acquiring new knowledge’ and for our Trust schools these visual representations provide a method to communicate the thinking that is taking place in the heads of our students.

The infusion of Hyerle’s Thinking Maps across the whole curriculum has provided our students with a method to sort and present information, providing a rich vocabulary to express and discuss their ideas in relation to the content they are studying and their underlying thinking. The shared common language across all subjects and key stages helps to improve our students’ confidence and competence in their learning.

Thinking Hats

The six Thinking Hats each represent a different type of Thinking. They are used in lessons to encourage students to think carefully and critically – encouraging them to think beyond their own perspectives and holistically respond to situations rather than only using one type of Thinking.

The Thinking Hats provide an easy to remember visual for learners to ensure they look at all perspectives to provide well rounded responses. Younger learners can often be seen placing actual hats on their heads and discussing from the perspective of that hat, for example discussing the positive attributes of a book character and why, whilst sporting a bright yellow hat. Some younger learners within our Trust have actions for each hat to help them focus their thoughts whilst some older learners self-select which Hats they require to evaluate during a specific learning activity.

Thinking Keys

We use the first version of Tony Ryan’s Thinking Keys to stimulate different types of Thinking. As suggested by Ryan (1990), the Keys help ‘unlock’ critical and creative thinking. Some of the Keys are quite linear and some are creative, which enables them to be carefully selected and work well with different ages groups and across all curriculum areas.

The specific Key used in any learning episode is selected based on the needs intended to be met – this can be subject related or skill based. For example, the BAR Key might be used to evaluate a team performance in a Physical Education lesson or to assess a worked example in Maths. On the other hand, an Inventions Key might be used to start an English lesson and not be content related because it is used to set the tone for the creative thinking that will be needed in the lesson. Although some Keys are similar in terms of description and require similar thinking, the end results can look very different.

Habits of Mind

Our Trust has engaged specifically with the work of Art Costa and Bena Kallick on the power of Habit and the strong implications this has on developing student behaviours and developing successful dispositions as they journey through school from 4-18 years old.

The Habits of Mind are a set of 16 dispositions and behaviours, identified by Art Costa and Bena Kallick, that help students successfully approach problems and challenges they encounter in the classroom and in everyday life. The aim is to ensure that these dispositions are developed so that when students are faced with an answer that they do not immediately know, they display these characteristics in order to manage the situation ‘intelligently’.

Growth Mindset

The growth mindset suggests that ‘your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts’ (Dweck, 2006:7) which implies that intelligence and skillsets are not fixed. For students, this means they can grow and develop at different rates and encourages them to think of their journey of learning new things and skills as a ‘not there yet’ as opposed to a fixed mindset, in which they shy away from challenges and learning opportunities.

The language used to develop strong positive, personal understandings of learning is vitally important and even small changes such as the word ‘might’ in a question encourages more learners to offer answers even if they are not sure they are correct. When students self-reflect on their learning and development of knowledge and skills, they use words such as ‘yet’ to describe that they are getting better and they are willing to recognise that just because they haven’t mastered something or might be struggling with something it doesn’t mean that they cannot or will not get better with structured deliberate practice.