Developing high order thinking skils

The last few years have seen the growing interests of Indian psychologists and educationists to understand the learning process and the level of the Indian students in schools. About six years back a study conducted by one research organization found that most of the students did not have the age appropriate knowledge and that they were not able to answer questions which were put to them differently.  The schools selected were considered to be the top schools of the country. The children who were selected for this study were also the ones who had got good grades in their school examinations. Then what is the reason that they were not able to respond to the questions put by an external agency in a different way. Was it the fault of examination or the learning process of the children? This is what I have been stating in all my previous write ups, on the topic of reforms in school education, which are too much inclined towards examination. The most important thing which is to be changed in our education system is the methodology of teaching learning process in the classroom and outside.  The teachers must be trained in child psychology and the pattern of the learning process which takes place even before the children come to the formal education system. The teachers must realize that the children already have some concepts about many things without being formally taught or told by somebody. This already existing knowledge makes the difference in the mindset of the children to accept the new concepts introduced by the teachers in the classroom. For example, a child had seen an Apple at home with green colour but when the teacher in the school tells him or her the colour of apple as to be red, the child gets confused. His already existing concept will not allow the concept of red to be understood and accepted very easily till the time the teacher shows him a red colour apple.  In this case also, there cannot be just one correct answer for the question regarding the colour of apple. Similarly, different questions can have more than one answer and the teachers must allow the children to explore and explain the things in their own ways. At times the teachers also do not pay any attention to the difference between information and knowledge. Too much of information without understanding will never be good to a learner hence the teachers need to understand requirement of concept learning and skill development including thinking skills. I would also avoid deliberating upon the importance of brain for different people because this is a different topic in itself. But one thing is for sure that all children have the potential and capacity to learn more and more depending upon the exposure and environment around them.

Should the children be allowed to learn on their own and if no, then how much should be the influence of the teacher or any external source? While interacting with the parents, I have realized that many of them want the teachers to be doing lot many things in the classroom for the children. Not only this, even at home also many of them hire tutors for their children so that they complete their homework and other assignments.  In most of the cases, it the teacher who dictates and the children just copy that.  Do you think any learning will take place this way? Then should we leave the children without any guidance.  Here I would like to cite the example of the study conducted by Ilonca Hardy and others in Germany. They conducted a short eight session course for second grade toddlers on floating and sinking. They were asked questions like why needle sinks in water while a big ship floats. The children gave various answers as comprehended by them. Then they were given different items of different material and allowed to do experiments to make them understand that floating does not solely depend upon the volume.  The study also compared two different methods of learning; one in which the teacher was available but not actively participating in the experiment while in the second case the teacher was taking active part in initiating the discussion and also sometime guiding the children if they were haywire while doing the experiment.   The students in the first group were left free to play around with the materials and do their own experiments the way they liked. This was called Low Instructional Support. The teacher in the group was only to encourage to  discuss and made occasional observations but did not structure the process at all. The children had enthusiastically discussed many things and tried to do experiments,  making the observations as per their learning and previous knowledge.  The second group of the children got well defined support from the teachers.  As the sequence of learning was proper so focused discussion could take place. The researchers called it as High Instructional Support. These students did the experiments and completed their worksheet in a fixed sequence. This course was designed to change their concept regarding floating and sinking by exposing them to almost real life experiments.

The result was that the two groups did equally well on immediate test of conceptual understanding in comparison to the children who did not go through this course. The researchers thought that the children were able to understand the concept equally well hence both methods (Low Instructional Support and High Instructional Support) are equally effective but when the test was conducted after about an year or so when it was found the children of the second group (High Instructional Support) performed much better than the other group of the children (Low Instructional Support). This means that High Instructional Support enables children for efficient learning to solve the new problems. It is the responsibility of the teachers to decide and plan how much involvement and guidance would be required by the learners while handling different conceptual topics. For this, the understanding of previous knowledge of the children and their cultural background will be of great help. In our country, most of the teachers especially in middle school and secondary schools use lecture method which leaves very little scope for the children to be active partners in the teaching learning process. That is the reason why the children do not get enduring and long lasting knowledge and understanding in such classes though they may show immediate sense of learning. But from my point of view, that is just an information which has been received by them, which will not last for long because every teacher is doing the same in different subjects all through the day.  So if we have to develop Higher Order Thinking Skills in our children then guided support concept has to be adopted by the teachers so that the children are able to learn themselves under structured instructions from their teachers.  This requires a lot of efforts on the part of teachers and the parents as well. They have to work in tandem so that the children do not get confused between the learning “forced” on them in the school and at home. For this our teachers training institutes must improve their curriculum and methodology of training the prospective teachers. This will give freedom to our children to exploit their potential to the fullest.