A simple framework that can help teachers reflect on how they teach thinking is to consider the three lenses below.
Teaching For Thinking
To teach FOR thinking is to provide students with the opportunity to engage in cognitively challenging tasks. This reflects on both our curriculum design and our pedagogy.
For example, we should ensure that our curriculum is challenging enough that students have the opportunity to use higher order thinking skills. We need to ensure that the tasks they are asked to complete are rich, engage them in problem based learning and the inquiry processes. They should have opportunity to work in teams, and to work with authentic real life problems.
In terms of our pedagogy, we need to ask ourselves if our actions allow for student thinking to take place. For example, are we asking higher order questions, and making use of strategies such as wait time. Are we identifying the cognition we expect students to engage in? See post-it note "Do you speak Cogitaire?"
Most teachers would be quick to agree they teach FOR thinking. We set challenging tasks, and require students to engage in higher order thinking. The problem becomes that the students don't actually do the thinking! The reason for this might be that we haven't focused enough on the other two lens: Teaching OF Thinking, and Teaching ABOUT thnking.
