Introduction

While all children need both a body of knowledge and some basic skills to enable them to be functionally literate, a rapidly changing society demands that young people be able to rise above such rote, factual levels to think critically, and creatively; to be flexible, and spontaneously to be able to solve ill structured, ambiguous problems in areas in which they have little first hand information.

Current curriculum and methods can successfully impart facts and rote skills, but are far less successful in developing higher order reasoning skills, ie., pupils can memorise large bodies of information for limited periods, but do not necessarily understand what they are learning. They don't internalise it. They don't 'work at it' so as to give it personal meaning. They can recall the information (possibly highly effectively) but unless they really understand it they are unable either to use it in different unfamiliar circumstances, or through its practice to build up skills which are, in a real way 'transferable'.

'Transferability' is at the nub of the issue about flexible skills, creativity and problem solving. 'Transfer means applying old knowledge in a setting sufficiently novel that it also requires learning new knowledge.' (Larkin 1989)

Does schooling have a 'commercial value' over and above the acquisition of tools of basic functional literacy, ie., can it create 'higher order skills,' not just accidentally for the few, but intentionally and specifically for the many? Why is it that some specialists are useless outside their own subject, yet others seem able to move rapidly into unfamiliar territory and quickly begin to make sense of this. What does one such individual 'have', that another does not?

The question of transferability has concerned theoreticians for years. In an age of rapid change it has to be a major concern to economic strategists, and politicians. Just how are transferable skills developed? What do we need to teach - or not to teach - that might develop these? Are some subjects of greater value in this than others? What is the most effective way of gaining such skills? We need to understand learning - we need a general theory into which we can relate our experiences.

The world did not need Isaac Newton to know that apples fall off trees, but it did need Newton to prepare a general theory that explained why they fell. With such a theory man was then able to go to the moon, and develop television. We need now a general theory of learning that will enable us to develop new, more appropriate forms of education. Cognitive Science has been developing rapidly over recent decades. The argument goes something like this.

1) The study of formal disciplines

From the days of ancient Greece and Rome the study of arithmetic, logic and geometry has been thought to build mental agility ... practice was essential; 'exercise in such subjects builds minds, as weight lifting builds muscles'. The 18th century, the period of the "enlightenment," added grammar and the classical languages.

Many students of such subjects found that this did indeed give them mental agility, particularly but not exclusively, when dealing with material of a similar structure. But not all such specialists could exhibit transferable skills; some were specialists imprisoned within their subject. Edward Thorndyke in the early 20th century tried to establish common elements of knowledge which might give a scientific basis for understanding transferability; lacking the understanding of later psychologists and the ability of computers to simulate, and then analyse, the manipulation of symbol systems in the brain, Thorndyke concluded that there was no scientific basis to transferability. He was not able to construct the Theory of learning which he sought.

2) General methods and intelligent behaviour

More than half a century later, in the late 1950s, psychologists began to apply computational insights to issues of expertise, intelligence and transfer. They identified certain methods and strategies which looked to be common to learning in different domains - study skills, thinking skills and structured approaches to problem solving. Such 'weak' methods were thought in the late 60s and early 70s to be of universal application, the explicit teaching of which would help the novice learner deal with completely new subject areas. Early success, however, was not borne out by later results; learning needs content to work on, and content shapes particularly kinds of learning. 'Hard methods', specific it was thought to the ways in which the brain operates in particular areas of intelligence, had to be the way forward. 'General programmes contrived to teach general skills are ineffective' declaimed E D Hirsch in 'Cultural Literacy' as recently as 1987, 'We should direct our attention undeviatingly towards what schools teach', by that he means the content.

3) Expert domain-specific knowledge

By the early 1970s attention shifted to 'hard methods'; methods directly related to forms of subject content where expert intelligent behaviour depends crucially on the knowledge people have, how they organise this, and the specific methods they learn or develop to process this. Experts, it was noted, had better memory for items in their area of experience, than elsewhere. Experts 'chunked' information - that is they turned large bodies of knowledge into pre-formed chunks, and memorised the whole simultaneously; novices do not have such skills (ie. in chess). Specialists also have the ability to 'cluster' related materials of considerable complexity.

Further research started to show that what Thorndyke saw as 'common elements of knowledge' did actually exist; that the brain selects specific parts of its structure to process knowledge and information from different domains. Students of a reflective nature could - and some did - think critically about what they were doing in their specialisms in ways which gave them the competence to look at a new subject as an 'intelligent novice'; others remained tightly within the security of their specialism. Research from the early 1980's, however, suggested that domain specific knowledge and skills are, of themselves, not sufficient - there is more to intelligence and expert performance than just subject knowledge. Thorndyke would have liked that.

4a) Intelligent Novices; Metacognition

The ability to 'think about thinking' (metacognition), to be consciously aware of yourself as a problem-solver, and to monitor and control one's mental processing, has engaged the attention of cognitive scientists since the early 1980s. It incorporates, but goes further than, the ability to perform routine tasks, or to demonstrate effective memory, or to use weak or strong methods; it is essentially the ability to see oneself and others as problem-solvers. Such a skill builds on domain specific material in ways which, by incorporating weak and strong methods creates truly 'Intelligent Novices', people who can move relatively easily from one higher order function in a particular domain to an understanding of functions in another domain.

Metacognitive instruction attempts to transfer the critics role from the teacher to the student. This is best done in stages (weaning). Historically apprenticeship models of learning adopted such strategies through modelling, scaffolding and fading, and specifically by making such skills explicit and overt (rather than the normal classroom teaching situation where content tends to hide the strategy) 'The Reflective Learner'; 'Making Thinking Visible' - are but two headline descriptions of the process.

"We have got to do a lot fewer things in school. The greatest enemy of understanding is 'coverage'. As long as you are determined to cover everything, you actually ensure that most kids are not going to understand. You have got to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something so they can think about it in lots of different ways and apply it - not just at school, but at home and on the street and so on." Howard Gardner, April 1993

4b) 'The New Synthesis' (Bruer, MIT, May 1993)

'The New Synthesis' suggests that domain specific knowledge, metacognitive skills and general (weak and hard) methods are all elements of intelligence and expert performance. It is with such a combination of high order skills that Intelligent Novices can use their knowledge flexibly to solve ill-structured, novel problems.

Educational practice grounded in cognitive theory (Resnick) "would transform the whole curriculum in fundamental ways. It would treat the development of higher-order skills as the paramount goal of all schooling." "If we change our representation of intelligence, learning and teaching ... we change relationships between students and teachers, schools and the community ... and our representation of what the classroom and schools should look like ... This will cost (a great deal in research into new applications) but if we want to improve our schools, and if existing methods are not working well enough we have little choice but to make this investment. We should focus on the educational process, not the product; a system in which our understanding and our educational practice can constantly evolve." (Bruer).

"To push for change without continuing to deepen our understanding of what we are doing will only intensify the problem, we seek to solve. We need solid research to tell us which experiments work best and under what conditions..." (Diane Ravitch, 1992). In other words, the shape of a workable theory of learning could now be coming much clearer ... what is needed however is the detail.

Two years ago Howard Gardner wrote in The Unschooled Mind, "We run the risk of investing incalculable resources in institutions that do not operate very well and that may never approach the effectiveness that their supporters, and for that matter their detractors - would desire ... it is my own belief that until now we have not fully appreciated just how difficult it is for schools to succeed ... we have not been cognisant of the ways in which the basic inclinations of human learning turn out to be ill -matched to the agenda of the modern secular school."

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21st Century Learning Initiative

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