Development of Thinking Skills

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Young children possess only the beginnings of metacognitive and cognitive skills. They are able to direct their attention (the beginning of a metacognitive skill) but they lack other sophisticated skills needed to integrate higher order thought processes. In contrast, mature thinkers and strategy users possess a wide variety of higher-order, goal-specific, monitoring skills, in addition to factual and procedural knowledge to which they can apply these thinking skills (Brown, Armbruster, & Baker, 1984; Brown, Day, & Jones, 1983). That is, in addition to having a thorough understanding of a wide range of strategies, mature learners also know when, where, and how to apply their knowledge and strategies. They develop these skills by acquiring and overlearning these strategies and using them in combination with an ever-increasing knowledge about their world. At the present time knowledge about the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills is just beginning to develop. As this knowledge expands, one result will be more effective ways to train thinking skills in classroom settings (Pressley & Levin, 1983a, 1983b; Pressley, 1986; Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987).

Metacognitive and cognitive theory is deeply rooted in constructivism, including the ideas of Piaget (which were discussed in Chapter 4), and in contemporary insights from cognitive science and information processing (which were discussed in Chapter 6). One reason for developmental maturity of formal operational learners is that they are more skilled than younger learners at using appropriate metacognitive skills to assimilate and accommodate information. Of course, they have acquired this higher level of metacognitive skills through a gradual process of assimilation and accommodation as they progressed from the sensorimotor stage to the stage of formal operations.

Throughout their lives, successful thinkers (including most of the readers of this book) have developed numerous thinking skills. In most cases they have accomplished this by finding important, interesting things to think about – and then thinking about them. Effective thinking skills are logically and naturally adaptive; and as long as there are no obstructions to learning, many learners are able to develop effective skills “automatically” by thinking about problems at an appropriate level of complexity. Until recently, little specific attention has been given to instruction in metacognitive or other thinking skills. However, since a large number of learners &emdash; especially those who have trouble in school &emdash; rely on ineffective strategies, a greater focus on how to teach thinking skills would seem to be productive.

If learners are going to use cognitive skills and strategies effectively, they must possess the following skills (Garner, 1990):

1. They must be able to monitor their cognitive processes. If learners do not notice that they are not learning, for example, they are not likely to change strategies in order to learn more effectively.

2. They must resist using primitive strategies that superficially seem to get the job done. For example, they must know the difference between a verbatim restatement of a reading passage and a summary and be willing to engage in the more strategic process of summarizing information they wish to learn rather than merely restating it.

3. They must have an adequate knowledge base. That is, they must both have adequate information about the subject matters and strategies pertinent to that subject matter and adequate familiarity with the settings in which cognitive strategies will be used.

4. They must set goals and make attributions that support the use of cognitive strategies. For example, students with low self-esteem who attribute success and failure to something other than effort are unlikely to initiate or persist in the use of cognitive strategies (Borkowski, Carr, & Pressley, 1987).

5. They must transfer thinking strategies to new situations in which they would be appropriate.

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Metacognitive Skills

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Metacognition refers to learners’ automatic awareness of their own knowledge and their ability to understand, control, and manipulate their own cognitive processes.2 Metacognitive skills are important not only in school, but throughout life. For example, Mumford (1986) says that it is essential that an effective manager be a person who has learned to learn. He describes this person as one who knows the stages in the process of learning and understands his or her own preferred approaches to it – a person who can identify and overcome blocks to learning and can bring learning from off-the-job learning to on-the-job situations.

As you read this section, do not worry about distinguishing between metacognitive skills and some of the other terms in this chapter. Metacognition overlaps heavily with some of these other terms. The terminology simply supplies an additional useful way to look at thought processes.

Metacognition is a relatively new field, and theorists have not yet settled on conventional terminology. However, most metacognitive research falls within the following categories:

1. Metamemory. This refers to the learners’ awareness of and knowledge about their own memory systems and strategies for using their memories effectively. Metamemory includes (a) awareness of different memory strategies, (b) knowledge of which strategy to use for a particular memory task, and (c) knowledge of how to use a given memory strategy most effectively.

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