This week I attended an excellent ‘Culture of Thinking’ conference at Masada College. Masada has been developing a culture of thinking for five years. They use thinking routines from the Visible Thinking project at Harvard’s Project Zero and develop this culture through the use of fortnightly staff focus groups. The focus groups use protocols to closely examine what is occurring in their classrooms.

Ron Ritchhart keynoted the event and he quoted research from the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development which shows that 58% of what occurs in classrooms is basic skills testing, 95% of teaching is either whole class or individual, and only 1% of students are highly engaged. Ron also quoted Dan Pink: “Good kids are compliant, bad kids are defiant, but no one is really engaged.” Ron’s message was about shifting to learning which is interactive, engaging, and more focused on processing. He asked us to think about the underlying messages about learning that students are receiving in our classes. He explained that:
• Learning is a product of thinking
• Learning and thinking are as much a collective enterprise as an individual endeavour
• Learning involves uncovering complexity and delving deeply
• Our learning is often provisional and frequently changes with time
• Learning is an active process and involves getting personally involved
• Questions not only drive learning but also outcomes of learning as well