NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

Levels of Thinking and Educational Outcomes

Welcome back! Our two previous themes for several issues of Nutshell Notes were brain-based learning and levels of thinking as deduced by the Perry model. New faculty can find these past issues at the web site at the bottom of this page. In this issue, I'd like to tie together the two themes. 

The Perry model is not the only model for levels of thinking; it is the product of the classical study that put all subsequent studies on firm footing. In Table 1 (reverse side of this issue) you'll find general equivalence of levels as proposed by various practitioners. This table was deduced by a team effort between Mike Pavelich of CSM and me, and both of us believe that there could be endless quibbling about just where all boundaries of equivalence lie. However, the important thing to note is that all the researchers cited have considered what happens to thinking as a result of education, all have come at this issue independently, some with very unique ideas, and all have concluded about the same thing as Perry—education that is successful changes the way people can think—and the more successful the education, the more sophisticated the thinking abilities of students become. 

Classifications can be either discoveries or inventions. When a single worker proposes a classification, it is hard to tell whether it is a discovery of an important pattern or whether it is a mere invention that is molded by the means invented to test and to sort people into categories—people who would be sorted into different categories based upon other means. But when separate approaches yield the same sequence and kinds of categories, such as is the case here, this is a solid justification for stating that levels of thinking are no mere invention—they confirm discovery of thinking levels as one of the most important ever made in educational research.

Of the models shown in Table 1, that of King and Kichener (1994) is the most solidly backed by extensive data derived from students at many schools, from many disciplines, and levels through doctoral students. It shows that the primary demarcation between low-level thinking and high-level thinking lies in the ability to evaluate and to use evidence to confront open-ended problems. Many professors are familiar with the taxonomy of Bloom (1956—I'll summarize that next issue), and rely on it to produce high level thinking. Bloom's is a very useful cognitive taxonomy that links kinds of thinking to the kinds of questions capable of being addressed. Table 1 shows, however, that the upper stages of Bloom's taxonomy (and Blosser's model—also related to questioning) are reached by students with only intermediate level thinking capabilities. Such students also do synthesis and evaluation, but they do it without sophistication and without skill in discriminating poor from good. 

The replication shown indicates that brains themselves are changing in a consistent way as result of the educational process. DeBono's model isdeliberate in forcing use of several brain parts. In the brain, learning is achieved by building neural connections, and autopsies done at UCLA reveal that graduate students have 40% more neural connections than do high school dropouts. The transition to Perry level 5, which is beyond that of most undergraduates, is a punctuated change that may reflect a major brain reorganization necessitated by prolonged challenge.

In developers conferences and journals, we often hear about teaching and learning, but seldom do we hear about "thinking." Most new college graduates have Perry stage 4 as their upper mode of comfortable operation, and they reach that on average, by making an upward move of only 1/3 division on the stage from freshman to graduate. Increasing the functional level of thinking is perhaps the best of all educational outcomes to aim for. Yet, this is a challenge only a few institutions have taken on. Our next issue will focus on ways to get higher level thinking as an educational outcome.