In researching programmes that are consistent with Let’s Think pedagogy and have a good evidence base, I was lucky enough to come across this gem.
Philip Adey and Weiping Hu (2011) worked together with other Chinese researchers to test the efficacy of a Learn to think programme.  Full text

Since then I have been in touch with Weiping Hu who organised how I could buy their grade 1 (UK Year 2) to grade 8 (UK Year 9) “Learn to think” curriculum materials.
I will get them translated from Chinese and trial some lessons with primary teachers in our school. I cannot wait to use them.

The curriculum uses the 5 pillars of Let’s Think pedagogy plus  an element called the Thinking ability structure model (TASM) based on Chongde Lin’s (2003) theory of intelligence

This is based upon the development of awareness of various factors e.g  self-regulation, purpose, materials, process, non-cognitive factors, and qualities and outcomes of thinking.

The model has three basic characteristics expressed as a 3 dimensional grid.

The X axis is thinking content, Y axis is thinking method, and Z axis is thinking quality. All of these factors depend on each other, facilitate each other, develop together, and form an integrated system.

Their research with Grade 1, 2 and 3 students in an ordinary provincial primary school showed significant gains for all students. These were especially  huge for, long and far transfer in grade 3  children’s assessments of Mathematics and Chinese.  The d numbers in Table 10. ( Cohen’s d is defined as the difference between means of treatment group and control group divided by a standard deviation for the data). Effect sizes of 0.4 upwards are considered educationally interesting according to John Hattie (2008). So the staggering 1.32 and 1.31 for Chinese and 1.29 for Mathematics 3 years later are effect  sizes so much larger than the original far and long transfer reported by Shayer and Adey (1994) in the early CASE trials.

Could it be that grade 3  (in particular)  and grade 5 to 7 are the ideal windows for Let’s Think style interventions to be really effective? Adey , Hu et. al.(2011 p.550) discuss this possibility.

“It took longer for LTT to improve Grade 1 and Grade 2 students’ academic achievement than it did for Grade 3 students (see Tables 8–10, Figure 4–6). The probable reason is that, on the one hand, the 3rd or 4th grade is the critical period of the development of students’ thinking ability, and the development of thinking ability can improve the academic achievement effectively, but there is a delayed effect; on the other hand, the LTT curriculum of Grade 1 and Grade 2 is more related to students’ daily life, whereas the Grade 3 curriculum is more related to subject knowledge. This result also indicates that the training of thinking method must be combined with subject knowledge in order to improve academic achievement more effectively.”

Adey, P., & Shayer, M. (1994). Really raising standards – cognitive intervention and academic achievement. London: Routledge.

Lin, CD, Hu, WP, Adey, P & Shen, JL 2003, ‘The influence of CASE on scientific creativity‘ RESEARCH IN SCIENCE EDUCATION, vol 33, no. 2, pp. 143 – 162., 10.1023/A:1025078600616

Hattie, John A. (2008). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement.

Hu, W., Adey, P., Jia, X., Liu, J., Zhang, L., Li, J., Dong, X., (2011)  Effects of a “Learn to Think” intervention programme on primary school students: Effects of “Learn to Think” intervention programme. British Journal of Educational Psychology 81, 531–557. doi:10.1348/2044-8279.002007

What makes us grow as Teachers?

The training our group of teachers have received from Michael Walsh of the Let’s Think Forum has been the catalyst for many foundational thoughts and discussions. Mediating the thinking of children has challenged us to mediate our own learning. Subtle changes in what we have seen as the way thinking about the text and immediately related ideas to the text . Also reasoning outside and beyond has been so clearly revealed. Observing other teachers, including Michael, has allowed for a deepening of what team teaching can be. Almost a way to observe yourself is made available. Of course this is only metacognition.

In thinking about the essential role for teacher mediation I found the concept of lifelong learning or as the Lisbon treaty of the EU  calls it “Learning to Learn” totally relevant to my own professional development.
Learning to learn is defined by  Hautamaki et al. “The ability and willingness to adapt to novel tasks, activating one’s commitment to thinking and the perspective of hope by means of maintaining one’s cognitive and affective self-regulation in and of learning action” (Hautamäki et al., 2002, p. 39).

When a moment arrives in a thinking lesson to challenge students to make their reasoning more specific and clear, an opportunity to learn arises. This is how very different minds share the willingness to respond to each other with shared respect. Mediation is more than an isolated technical act. I feel we are all pulled into the need to respond adaptively to the new ways of thinking that are emerging.  In these moments we commit to share a perspective of hope.  The challenge these opportunities presents is a microcosm of a wider commitment. This is also a partaking in the deeply emotional and moral undertaking that lifelong learning is. During some of the observations  feelings arose that made me suddenly realise  that when a thinking lesson is in full flow it is a thing of beauty.

Hautamäki, J., Arinen, P., Eronen, S., Hautamäki, A., Kupianien, S., Lindblom, B., Niemivirta, M., Pakaslahti, L., Rantanen, P. and Scheinin, P. (2002) Assessing Learning-to-Learn: A Framework. Helsinki: Centre for Educational Assessment, Helsinki University / National Board of Education.

A short film “The hole” is the stimulus for a thinking lesson we have recently used. The reasoning patterns Intention and consequences are the target of the class discussions  launched by this stimulus. In a recent lesson a  grade 5 student put forward the analogy “If the photocopy machine had printed the class mathematics test, what would you do?” As a TOK teacher I jumped in with questions that explored this analogy and in what ways it was the same as the message in the film and how it may be crucially different. I was also tempted to explore more general features of reasoning by analogy with the students. This rich learning moment made me think very hard about the differences and commonalities between direct instruction and mediation. I now have several unanswered questions.

How far should we push  students with questions about their reasoning towards our own understanding of the forms of reasoning ? Should we just take the reasoning patterns students express in as the starting point? How much do we add to these forming notions? Do we stop mediating when we directly and explicitly point out reasoning patterns? Can we successfully move between direct instruction and mediator of thinking?

We are now approaching the end of the first six months of our action research. A lot has already been learned. Largely thanks to the excellent processes of social construction led by Michael Walsh. He is the co author of Let’s Think in English.

Michael Walsh, our Let’s Think in English tutor from King’s College London sent us an article to read in preparation for our next training. Relational thinking and relational reasoning: harnessing the power of patterning  by  Patricia A Alexander
The article explores the foundational, measureable, variable and teachable nature of relational reasoning. This is my visual attempt to make sense of it and link it to my understanding of Let’s Think methodology.

The world needs young people as its future citizens to be good thinkers more than ever. These concerns led me to look at some International comparisons. As part of out Lets Think research project we wanted to find out the cognitive development level of all our grade 5 and 6 students. We used a test based on the  original interviews of Jean Piaget. These were developed by Philip Adey and Michael Shayer at Kings College London.  It is  a group interactive test called Volume and Heaviness. There is a huge literature showing the spread of development from concrete to formal reasoning using such testing instruments. Formal reasoning is necessary to think about complex problems where many variables are interacting. Like say….. immigration!!.

In evaluating our results I came across Examples of data that show how thinking levels declined in the UK between 1976 and 2003. Also the distribution of thinking levels in representative US schools was measured in 2011.

Highlights are:

That the average 11 year old in the UK  in  thinking level down to that of a 8 or 9 year old over 27 years.

The second study (2011) shows 15 per cent of US school graduates were capable of formal abstract thought .

Whereas 19 percent of Finnish 14 year olds had already reached this level. This would seem to account for their outstanding performance in PISA tests.

Is the common factor that US and UK school systems have been dominated by , standardised testing, competition and accountability through league tables? Or is it like the joke about the high rates of teenage pregnancy in the UK and US  being caused by the common factor of speaking English. Do the Math!!

If we think about teaching High school biology courses (or any other sequential concept/content based course)  we often have to think hard about the logic of the order we start our course topics. Cells or molecular biology?

In our IB course documents Cell Biology comes first. However a consensus among my colleagues has been Molecular Biology should be  first. This allows us to then introduce cell processes with much more coherence and understanding. This order is also claimed to reinforce the learning about molecular levels of explanation. Two influences Inspired me to try out a new way of bridging these topics from student prior learning.  I have found that these have been covered in our MYP course and new students have nearly always studied them. Recent training in Let’s think in English I was part of and the ideas Deanna Kuhn developed in Education for thinking.  She writes about how new learning must be coordinated with existing theories about the world that students have developed. To do this they must become aware of exactly what it is that they are thinking. I was very interested to know what exactly their thinking was so I devised a thinking lesson plan instead of a traditional review lesson.

The lesson plan is here. I think the methodology can be widely applied. Give it a try or adapt for your own use and tell us about it.