Thinking Hard

“Learning happens when people have to think hard”

Professor Robert Coe

Keeping it in Mind

The idea that learners need to think hard in order to maximise their learning has some grounding in cognitive science and a return to the simple model of memory can help us understand that.

The transfer of information from the working memory to the long-term memory is not guaranteed and is thought to be dependent on the brain attaching meaning or importance to the information. This meaning is often created because information affects us emotionally, is deemed to be useful in the future or just receives sustained attention.

This extended attention could be seen as the 'thinking hard' that Professor Coe references

Questioning

Our questioning is one area where we can make changes so that learners think harder. This can be in the types of questions we ask or the expectations that we set for responses.

Question Type

Changing the type of question can vary the level of challenge and this can be decided during the planning process or responsively changed during the lesson to support or stretch learners. Some common techniques include:

• Asking more open questions (What, How, Where, When, Who...)
• Asking learners to ABC another learner's response (A= Agree, B= Build, C = Challenge)
• Use Socratic questioning to deepen a conversation

Socratic questioning is a really useful skill for teachers and requires them to 'play dumb' and to ask questions to extend a learner's thinking and response.

Expectations

Another way of raising the level of challenge or to deepen the thinking of learners is to raise the expectations of their responses. Over time this will become the norm but initially, learners will need reminders about:

• Including the question in the answer ("what is the first stage of...?") = ("The first stage of .... is")
• Answering in full sentences
• Using ambitious vocabulary

Task Design

Altering the level of challenge in activities is another way to get learners to think hard and can be as simple as changing the type of tasks we ask them to complete. Activities such as copying or transferring text may keep learners busy but are unlikely to support the transfer of information into the long-term memory.

Below is a range of tasks which are typically more challenging for learners:

Reflective Questions

If we choose to accept the idea that thinking hard helps us to learn then we should reflect on the following:

• How hard do learners typically think in our classrooms?
• When are they thinking their hardest?
• How does our questioning get them to think hard?
• How do our activities get them to think hard?
• What can we do during the planning process to increase the depth of thinking?
• What can we do responsively during lessons to increase the depth of thinking?