Thinking skill development in the context of a mainstream subject area.

Abstract

University teaching and learning experiences which are characterized as unsatisfactory by many faculty and students can be more precisely defined as manifestations of poorly developed higher order thinking skills. Two hypotheses relevant to this problem are explored in this thesis. The first is that it is possible to use the characteristics of good and poor problem solvers documented in the literature as a productive way of recognizing and understanding the learning problems experienced by many university students. The second hypothesis is that the integration of the characteristics of effective problem solvers into a framework of general problem solving heuristics is a practical and effective strategy to move students along a continuum to better developed higher order thinking skills within the broader context of knowledge acquisition. The teaching strategy developed from the literature and illustrated in a case study, is designed to capitalize on the scholarship of faculty often underutilized in their teaching, by encouraging faculty to be more self-conscious in making process skills explicit in a way that is meaningful to their students. As demonstrated in the case study, it is a strategy which utilizes teaching opportunities and data sources available in the classroom situation. The results of the case study indicated that, in this case: (1) characteristics of good and poor problem solvers were observable in the classroom situation; (2) faculty could learn and use the strategy effectively in the context of discipline teaching; (3) the strategy did not seriously restrict the amount of content to be taught; (4) students did acquire skills specific to the strategy implemented; and (5) that particular areas of concern for further applications were encouraging students to actively engage in process tasks, to have more confidence in their use of reasoning as a tool and to place more emphasis on the cognitive skill of evaluation.