The third principle upon which Davide Perkins’ Smart School concept is based on is the focus on understanding. In a Smart School, the learning that takes place is a consequence of deep thinking and and the student is able to display deep understanding as opposed to rote learning of information or routines.

This is opposed to what traditionally happens in a  school where often students and teachers are engaged in a trivial pursuit of little bits of information. Often, what happens in a classroom is not far from a TV game show where questions are asked and the right answer is supplied. Very seldom is deep mastery of a subject asked to be displayed. For example, often in schools with high stakes examinations, students may be asked to list Newton’s three laws of motion or even asked to provide the answer to mathematical question based on the three laws. However, as Perkins pointed out, how many students have been posed with a question to describe what would happen if there  are astronauts arranged in a circle facing one another, each armed with snowballs to be thrown at one another? How many students who have learned Newton’s theory of motion in school would be able to explain what happens when the snowball fight begins?

Students who can answer the first two types of questions given above only show that their level of understanding is at best superficial. The first calls for mere rote learning while the second only calls for knowledge of routines to execute a mathematical problem. But the third calls for a deep understanding of Newton’s Laws. It calls for students to deeply reflect on their conceptual understanding of the subject matter. It makes learning challenging. Perhaps, only in such an instance is the student’s mind fully engaged in deep thinking while in the case of the first two, it would be almost “mindless”. There would be little meaning-making required when students know the only kind of assessment that would be of their learning is of the trivial pursuit variety. When assessment in the classroom is of the trivial pursuit variety, teachers cannot expect their students to transfer what they have learned to other spheres of their lives.

This brings us to the fourth principle that Perkins suggest would make for a Smart School, which is the need to teach for mastery and transfer. Underlying this principle is a real belief and commitment that every student can learn anything if they are given reasonable opportunity and motivation to learn. Teachers must work harder and be prepared to give the necessary time to allow this to happen. Teaching that is centered on scaffolding, motivation and building bridges to link students’ knowledge to new contexts is important. This is because it will ensure that students will learn well and use their knowledge more actively.

Schools in Indonesia would do well to take note of these two principles. While traditional assessment that is done at the end of a term has its place, schools in Indonesia who aspire to be truly Sekolah Berstandar Internasional (SBI) must be more conscious of developing the minds of their students as proposed by Perkins. Even the so-called international schools in Indonesia,especially those following too closely the so-called Singapore model, do not have a serious focus on understanding, and the teaching for mastery and transfer. Is it a wonder then that students who graduate from such schools are often described as exam smart and little else by their future employers?

Today Indonesian schools have a golden opportunity to undergo a more than cosmetic revamp. The demand for good schools in Indonesia has perhaps never been higher. Furthermore, the demands of the new workplace has also changed and parents and employers want schools to produce people who will display the characteristics of the workforce of the future. In my last posting I have argued that it is important that schools in Indonesia should adopt a model where thinking and deep understanding takes center stage in the school curriculum. I have also suggested that the Smart School model adopted by David Perkins be given a serious look and that Indonesia should not settle for school curricula that is very high stakes examination-oriented.

In that first posting, I have explained a key principle of Perkins’ Smart School concept, which was generative knowledge. A school that places emphasis on generative knowledge would have to look beyond the teaching of meaningless rote learning of facts and routines. It would mean that a serious look be given to what ought to be taught. Here lies the challenge for the teachers. Would the teachers be willing to design their own syllabus as to what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, what is to be assessed and how it is to be assessed? It would require work on curriculum mapping instead of just adopting what an international examinations syndicate gives you. The curriculum would have to be mapped out to ascertain what would be taught. Schools thinking of going in this direction should seriously look at whether their teachers are prepared to put in the time for such work. They also need to see if the teachers need to undergo further training or professional development. It also implies the schools would have to have more intelligent teachers.

Another key principle of the Smart School is learnable intelligence. The Smart School stands on the belief that students can and do learn ways of thinking that can boost their performance. This view stems from the research done by Perkins and his colleagues in Harvard’s Project Zero. This contrasts with the traditional view about intelligence being a fixed quantity. Other studies also have supported this view of intelligence.

However, inteliigence can only be boosted if the teachers in the school adopt a more rigorous teaching approach that requires the integration of the teaching of higher order thinking skills. The teachers would also need to adopt an approach of teaching that calls for the use of careful scaffolding. Scaffolding is important because it guides students to develop their own thinking processes. With the guidance through scaffolding, students will learn to see that they have a more accurate picture of their own abilities and potentials and how they learn.

For most schools in Indonesia (and even in Singapore), this will represent a tectonic shift. Schools chasing high stakes examinations syllabus will have great difficulty meeting this most basic demand of the Smart School. Such schools will always be short of time and racing to complete the syllabus in time for the examinations. Secondly, it would also often mean that teachers in such schools will only teach to the examinations. All else will be unimportant because the only real assessment of learning is only done at such examinations. But schools that move in the direction of the Smart School model, including schools aspiring to be SBIs, will be a school that is truly serious about student learning and very importantly, in such a school, every student will be valued because here, truly, it is believed that every child can learn.

Recently, I went to a local hospital where I heard an officer try to explain or convince the audience that there is no real loss to potential kidney donors if they ever decided to donate one of their kidneys. The officer said that on average, kidney donors live longer than the average person. She went on to explain that this is because the kidney donors are usually people who are already fit because otherwise they would not be considered as donors.

Of course the audience seemed convinced by her arguments and no one seemed to be able to detect the flaw in her argument. To put it simply her comparison was invalid. If the goal of her argument was to convince potential donors that their life will be least affected by the transplant, then she should compare the lifespans of those who actually donated their kidneys against those who are at the same level of fitness as these donors but who do not have their kidneys removed. This would show if there is a shortening of the lifespan of the kidney donors.

What is striking is that most (if not all) in the audience couldn’t spot the error in the comparison made by the officer. As someone who is very interested in the teaching of thinking skills, I am both amused and saddened by this error going undetected. I doubt that the officer concerned did it maliciously. I am in fact quite certain she herself didn’t realize the error in her argument. But this episode does point to the importance of teaching our students to think.

I will not elaborate at length why it is important to teach thinking skills as I have discussed it in some of my other postings about the economic reasons for teaching thinking and I believe the example above is sufficient to illustrate its importance in life in general. However, perhaps we ought to consider seriously about how the teaching of thinking skills is to be done. I will try and illustrate the issues concerned with teaching thinking skills with some examples from my experience in Singapore.

In Singapore, the teaching of thinking skills has been going on for quite awhile. Officially, the powers that be here, recognized the importance of teaching thinking. De Bono‘s CoRT was once a staple in Singapore schools until it went out of fashion. Today one is more likely to see the approach taken by Robert Marzano
and others which is basically to infuse the teaching of thinking skills into the subject content area in the school curriculum. However, even then I will argue the way that is implemented means that Marzano’s framework for teaching thinking skills has been sacrificed at Singapore’s altar of Pragmatism. While the thinking skills advocated by Marzano is used officially, the manner in which it is being used leaves a lot to be desired (see my comments here).

Furthermore, in practice, Marzano’s framework seems to be used only for the teaching of social studies, history and geography (they are separate subjects in Singapore). Little is heard about it being used for the other subjects like Maths, Science, Art and others . Why is this so? This is because only in this three subject areas, there are what is known as the thinking skills type questions in the examination papers. Even in the three subjects, the use of this framework for thinking becomes somewhat of a joke (see same link above for my comments).

If teachers in Singapore are cynical about the teaching of thinking skills, some of the blame perhaps can also be placed on the shoulder of the Curriculum Planning and Development Division (CPDD) of Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE). I have attended courses and briefings organized by the CPDD in the past. In their attempt to allay the fears of a tired and overworked teacher audience who is going to be asked to accept another “initiative” to their teaching load, quite often it is heard from CPDD officers that the then “new initiative” pertaining to the teaching of thinking skills is not new (duh!) and something that the teachers have been doing. If you are in that audience, you too would feel then there is no real need to change the way you teach since you have been teaching thinking already!

So what happens here is that although the MOE has officially accepted the idea of teaching thinking through infusion into the subject content areas, in reality, what is practised is very different. Thinking skills still exists in silos in Singapore’s education system.

The other issue that has to be considered with teaching thinking skills is the type of thinking skills that is to be taught. The post, “Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively” by Zaid Alsagoff, illustrates, among others, the dilemma that is faced by educators pertaining to the teaching of thinking skills. What teaching skills should be taught? Should we teach critical thinking or creative thinking or problem-solving (though they all may not necessarily be separate entities)? I think we are in this state of flux with regards to the teaching of thinking because we are not clear what end-product (kind of students and adults) we want. The economic needs seem to define the kind of “education” that ought to be given but are we clear how to get to the end product.

Personally, I see two approaches. At the tertiary level perhaps, the approach has been more focused on the kinds of workers we want in the future workplace. This leads to thinking courses being focused on perhaps problem-solving and creative thinking or the more specific stuff like SWOT etc. At the school level, educators tend to focus more on the more “generic” thinking skills as suggested by the Marzano model. I think there is a place for all these different approaches but in my view, they should be integrated or infused into the core curriculum and not taught separately.

The different subjects anyway will lend themselves quite differently to the different kinds of thinking skills. They should reflect the kind of thinking that is done by professionals in the subject areas, which means if they are taught thinking in history, they must be taught how a historian thinks. The thinking skills demanded by a scientist is quite different. Having said that, there are also thinking skills that overlap in the different disciplines. For example, the inquiry approach is common to both the historian and the scientist.

There are also the “thinking skills” that more reflect perhaps cognitive habits that must be inculcated in everyone. For example, the “Habits of Mind” as proposed by Costa and Kallick comes to mind. In short there is a whole range of thinking skills to be taught.

In my mind, the teaching of thinking skills should, therefore, not be done in a one-size-fits-all manner. To do so would be wrong even if it is in the name of teaching thinking skills. To use an analogy, very often at the tertiary level, the IT Department would conduct almost the same ICT course across the disciplines found in a tertiary institute. So a student studying accountancy would be given the same course as an engineering student (see this example). This is done usually out of administrative convenience or intellectual laziness, or perhaps also more likely, because the various departments do not know what ICT skills are really essential for their very different student requirements.

So the teacher of science should know what thinking skills lends itself best for the teaching of science. The teacher of History should know what thinking skills goes well with his discipline and so on for the other subject areas. This requires the teachers of the various disciplines to be clear themselves about what they think a product of their department ought to be able to do with his head.

Lastly perhaps,  the teaching of thinking skills should be explicit in the sense that students ought to know what thinking skills is being used or taught. Thinking skills should be taught explicitly because stduents must be made aware of the thinking that goes on in their heads. They have to be more conscious. Teachers too will be made more conscious that they ARE teaching thinking and that it is not done by some hidden osmosis-like and accidental processes. The teaching of thinking should also be done explicitly while the “content” is being taught instead of just dishing out “facts” from the textbooks. Teachers who are not familiar with the the infusion of thinking skills in their subject content areas should therefore seriously undergo professional training in this area.