Helping Students Become Flexible, Sophisticated Thinkers

            In this Educational Leadership article, author/consultants Harvey Silver, Abigail Boutz, and Jay McTighe say that five thinking skills are essential to grappling with the modern world’s complex problems (acronym IDEAS): 

• Inquiry – Thoughtful questions drive an investigative process that seeks to explain and understand. Inquiry involves analyzing documents and data, generating models, and conducting experiments. 
• Design – An iterative process produces a new way of solving a problem, addressing a need, or improving an existing product or way of doing things. Designers describe a need, generate possible solutions, test options, and plan for implementation.
• Evaluation – Appropriate criteria are used to assess a product (for example, the strength of a bridge), an outcome (how the stock market did), or a process (did a group collaborate well?).
• Argumentation – This involves making a claim or critique and justifying it with reasons and evidence. 
• Systems analysis – Changes in one or more parts of a system may produce short- and long-term consequences. 

            These are the very skills that have been used during the Covid-19 pandemic: scientists inquired about the origins and mode of virus transmission; the pharmaceutical industry designed vaccines; government officials evaluated different strategies for reducing the risk of infection; everyone argued about which to prioritize; and system analysis is being used to address supply-chain issues. 

            Silver, Boutz, and McTighe believe the goal of K-12 education is to develop “sophisticated thinkers and learners who understand content deeply and can transfer their knowledge and skills to real-world challenges.” But even in schools committed to project-based learning, they say, there’s not nearly enough practice with the IDEAS thinking skills. They give examples of tasks that focus on authentic issues, are engaging and relevant, and require deep thinking and transfer of knowledge: 

            - A secondary social studies inquiry task – How did a ragtag colonial militia with limited financial support defeat Great Britain, at that time the world’s most powerful nation? 

            - A high-school psychology design task – After studying the behavioral and intellectual development of toddlers, create a safe educational toy that will appeal to toddlers and help them develop attention, memory, reasoning, imagination, and curiosity. 

            - A secondary ELA evaluation task – Examine three options for a complete 10th-grade reading list, make a recommendation, and explain your thinking. 

            - A primary-grade health argument task – Use insights from sleep research to advise your parents on how to respond to your sister’s argument that bedtimes are silly and she should be able to stay up as late as she wants. 

            - An elementary science systems analysis task – Research an endangered tropical animal and create a children’s picture book that explains the rainforest ecosystem and predicts what might happen if the animal became extinct. 

This link provides additional task starters and guiding questions for the five skills. 

 “5 IDEAS for Developing Real-World Thinking Skills” by Harvey Silver, Abigail Boutz, and Jay McTighe in Educational Leadership, May 2022 (Vol. 79, #8, pp. 38-42); the authors can be reached at hsilver@thoughtfulclassroom.com, aboutz@thoughtfulclassroom.com, and jay@mctighe-associates.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #937 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.