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  • Activating Children's Thinking Skills (ACTS) : The Effects of An Infusion Approach To Teaching Thinking in Primary Schools

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    Jeyaganesh Sellvaraju
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    The ACTS study examined the effects of an "infusion approach" to teaching thinking skills in primary schools. Teachers were trained to explicitly teach thinking skills from a taxonomy during regular lessons. Initially 1-2 lessons/week focused on thinking, increasing over time. The study involved 404 students ages 7-9 split into intervention and control groups. Measures of cognitive abilities, self-perceptions as learners, and social behaviors found that while cognitive abilities increased for both groups over the 2 years as expected, the intervention group's self-perceptions declined slightly but their social behaviors deteriorated compared to the control group whose social behaviors improved.

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    The ACTS study examined the effects of an "infusion approach" to teaching thinking skills in primary schools. Teachers were trained to explicitly teach thinking skills from a taxonomy during regular lessons. Initially 1-2 lessons/week focused on thinking, increasing over time. The study involved 404 students ages 7-9 split into intervention and control groups. Measures of cognitive abilities, self-perceptions as learners, and social behaviors found that while cognitive abilities increased for both groups over the 2 years as expected, the intervention group's self-perceptions declined slightly but their social behaviors deteriorated compared to the control group whose social behaviors improved.

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    25 views2 pages

    Activating Children's Thinking Skills (ACTS) : The Effects of An Infusion Approach To Teaching Thinking in Primary Schools

    Uploaded by

    Jeyaganesh Sellvaraju
    The ACTS study examined the effects of an "infusion approach" to teaching thinking skills in primary schools. Teachers were trained to explicitly teach thinking skills from a taxonomy during regular lessons. Initially 1-2 lessons/week focused on thinking, increasing over time. The study involved 404 students ages 7-9 split into intervention and control groups. Measures of cognitive abilities, self-perceptions as learners, and social behaviors found that while cognitive abilities increased for both groups over the 2 years as expected, the intervention group's self-perceptions declined slightly but their social behaviors deteriorated compared to the control group whose social behaviors improved.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Activating children's thinking skills (ACTS): The effects of an infusion approach to teaching thinking in primary schools

    The inftision approach was selected as it embeds thinking skills within the existing currictilum which uses teacher time optimally as it does not require additional lessons to be taught. Teachers are taught the different types of thinking skills based on the taxonomy of thinking from Swartz and Parks (1994). They are then trained to identify lessons in which these specific thinking skills can be tattght explicitly. Initially teachers were expected to teach 1 or 2 lessons a week but over time, as the principles of the approach became more embedded in their teaching practice, this would increase accorditigly. The theory underpinning the ACTS approach is based on the principles of infusion from Swartz and Parks (1994), which emphasizes the explicit teaching of thinking within the current curriculum. This aims to raise children s awareness of their thinking so that they can more readily apply it to their learning.

    Method. The study involved 404 children, 206 males and 198 females, aged between 7 years 6 months and 9 years 8 months (mean age = 8 years 8 months; SD = 4) who were in Year 4 at the projects commencement (September 2002). These were divided into a waiting list control and experimental group with 244 in the waiting list control group and 160 in the experimental group. 26 teachers were involved in delivering Ehe ACFS intervention. This included 24 females and 2 males with a range of years of teaching experience. Design The research was a between- and within-groups design in which a range of measures were obtained from two groups of participants from tbe experimental and waiting list control. The study was a 2 year intervention evaluation which was considered appropriate given the previous research indicating at least 2 years is necessary in order to generate cognitive change in children measures gained at three points during the study; a pre-, post-, and delayed post-test on a range of learner outcomes. In this manner tbe experimental n)up received tbe ACTS intervention for a 2 year academic period (October 2()O2-|iily 200) whicb allowed comparison witb the waiting list control who would receive ACTS for a 1 year academic period (October 2003-July 2004).

    Measures were administered to cbildren on a group level as follows.


    1.Cognitive abilities test - Third edition (CAT 3)

    assess general reasoning abilities and a pupil's capacity to apply tbese to verbal, quantitative, and non-verbal cognitive tasks.
    2.Myself- as - a - learner scale(MALS)

    Examine children s self-perceptions of themselves as learners.


    3.Taxonomy of problematic social situations for children (TOPS)

    It is a questionnaire that teachers complete to identify the specific social situations or tasks a particular pupil finds difficult.

    Results The ACTS intervention (condition) was examined in relation to its impact on the quantitative measures utilized with children namely the CATs, MAI,S, and TOPS using niultivariate analysis of variance (MANOWA)
    Children's cognitive ability development(CAT)

    Children s scores on the CATs increased over time. This would be expected given pupil's maturation and cognitive development over the 2 year time period. Feedback from teachers idcntitied that

    children think in a more structured tvay' . Likewise, it improves children's thinking and their ability to tackle different problems
    Children's self-perceptions (MALS)

    both groups saw a small decline in scores over time reflecting more negative selfperceptions of themselves as learners. This may represent the general developmental decrease in self-perceptions in the elementary years. Alternatively it could be that the ACTS inter\'ention made children more aware of what they hud yet to know.
    Children's behavioural change in social situations(TOPS)

    It was found that over time the experimental intert>ention group obtained increasingly higher scores which marks deterioration in managing behaviour in difficult social situations. In contrast the waiting list control group had a decrease in scores revealing an improvement in bebaviour in complex social situations.

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