Disciplinary & Interdisciplinary Studies

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences: As Psychology, As Education, As Social Science

A reflective paper (2011) by Howard Gardner about MI Theory and the ways in which it was developed and has changed since it's initial conception.

Educating for Global Competence: Preparing our Youth to Engage the World

Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World is intended for classroom teachers, administrators, informal educators, policymakers, community leaders, researchers, parents, students, and all other stakeholders interested in preparing our youth for the 21st century.

10 Ideas to Start Building a Culture of Thinking at Your School

10 detailed activities designed to promote Cultures of Thinking, where a group’s collective as well as individual thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted.

A Typology of Classroom Questions

A Typology of Classroom Questions: A look at the types of questions teachers ask and the answers/logic that they produce.

Recalling and reviewing of Knowledge and information

• Terminology

• Procedures

• Content

• Events and context

Procedural: Directing the work of the class

• Going over directions and assignments

• Clarifying

• Checking for attention, agreement.

• Task completion

• Organizational and management related

Generative: Exploring the topic

• Authentic questions or wonders that teacher doesn’t know the answer to.

• Essential questions that initiate exploration of a topic

Constructive: Building New Understanding

• Extending & Interpreting

• Connecting & Linking

• Orienting and focusing on big ideas, central concepts, or purpose

• Evaluating

Facilitative: Promotes the learner’s own thinking & understanding

• Requesting elaboration, reasons, evidence, justification

• Generating discussion among the class to hear different perspectives

• Clarifying and Uncovering

Uncovering students’ thinking about thinking using concept maps

Abstract: A method for uncovering students’ thinking about thinking, specifically their meta-strategic knowledge, is explored within the context of an ongoing, multi-year intervention designed to promote the development of students’ thinking dispositions. The development of a concept-map instrument that classroom teachers can use and an analytic framework for interpreting students’ responses is presented. In a preliminary study, the concept map instrument is piloted to evaluate changes in students’ conceptions of thinking after a year’s participation in classrooms where their teachers actively sought to make thinking more visible by noticing and naming the thinking observed as well as introducing and using thinking routines (Ritchhart and Perkins. Educational Leadership, 65(5), 57–61 2008). Concept maps from 239 students from grades 3 through 11 were analyzed. Results suggest that students’ conceptions of thinking do improve with age but also can be substantially developed through a classroom culture where thinking is modeled and rich opportunities for thinking are present. The concept map instrument itself proved to be a robust instrument for uncovering students’ thinking about thinking.