The Ways We Think E-Book

Emma Williams

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Journal of Philosophy of Education
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 519

Beschreibung

The Ways We Think critiques predominant approaches to the development of thinking in education and seeks to offer a new account of thought informed by phenomenology, post-structuralism and the 'ordinary language' philosophical traditions. * Presents an original account of thinking for education and explores how this alternative conception of thought might be translated into the classroom * Explores connections between phenomenology, post-structuralism and ordinary language philosophical traditions * Examines the relevance of language in accounts of how we think * Investigates the philosophical accounts of Gilbert Ryle, Martin Heidegger, John Austin and Jacques Derrida * Draws upon experience of own teaching practice as philosopher-in-residence

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Preface

Acknowledgements

1 Today’s Thinking

INTRODUCTION

THE POLICY AND PRACTICE OF THINKING

THINKING IN THEORY

THE SUBJECT OF THOUGHT

THE EXPERIENCE OF THINKING

2 A Brief Detour

INTRODUCTION

AUTHENTIC THINKING

POETIC THINKING

PROBLEMS WITH BONNETT’S ACCOUNT

BEYOND BONNETT

3 ‘Ahead of All Beaten Tracks’

‘AHEAD OF ALL BEATEN TRACKS’

A SHARED PATH

AT THE CROSSROADS

FORGING A NEW PATH

RYLE REVISITED

WAYS OF THINKING

4 A Way Beyond

INTRODUCTION

THE TURN TO LANGUAGE

A WAY BEYOND

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THINKING

CONCLUSION

5 Following the Sign

INTRODUCTION

A THEMATIC POINT

ROUTE ONE: PAST STRUCTURALISM

DERRIDA’S ACCOUNT OF SIGNS

TWO KEY NOTIONS

CONCLUSION

6 Out of the Ordinary

INTRODUCTION

AUSTIN

RETRACING DERRIDA

CAVELL’S CRITIQUE

OUT OF THE ORDINARY

7 The Way Before the Way Before

INTRODUCTION

PRELIMINARY THREADS

EARLY

MIDDLE

EARLIER

ANOTHER WAY TO THE OTHER

THE WAY BEFORE THE WAY BEFORE

8 A Weaving of the Ways

INTRODUCTION

REVISTING RATIONALISM

AN ALTERNATIVE PICTURE

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

RE-THINKING THINKING EDUCATION

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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The Journal of Philosophy of Education Book Series

The Journal of Philosophy of Education Book Series publishes titles that represent a wide variety of philosophical traditions. They vary from examination of fundamental philosophical issues in their connection with education, to detailed critical engagement with current educational practice or policy from a philosophical point of view. Books in this series promote rigorous thinking on educational matters and identify and criticise the ideological forces shaping education.

Titles in the series include:

The Ways We Think: From the Straits of Reason to the Possibilities of Thought

Emma Williams

Philosophical Perspectives on Teacher Education

Edited by Ruth Heilbronn and Lorraine Forman-Peck

Re-Imagining Relationships In Education: Ethics, Politics And Practices

Edited by Morwenna Griffiths, Marit Honerød Hoveid, Sharon Todd and Christine Winter

Education Vygotsky, Philosophy and Education

Jan Derry

Education and the Growth of Knowledge: Perspectives from Social and Virtue Epistemology

Edited by Ben Kotzee

Education Policy: Philosophical Critique

Edited by Richard Smith

Levinas, Subjectivity, Education: Towards an Ethics of Radical Responsibility

Anna Strhan

Philosophy for Children in Transition: Problems and Prospects

Edited by Nancy Vansieleghem and David Kennedy

The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice

Chris Higgins

Reading R. S. Peters Today: Analysis, Ethics, and the Aims of Education

Edited by Stefaan E. Cuypers and Christopher Martin

The Formation of Reason

David Bakhurst

What do Philosophers of Education do? (And how do they do it?)

Edited by Claudia Ruitenberg

Evidence-Based Education Policy: What Evidence? What Basis? Whose Policy?

Edited by David Bridges, Paul Smeyers and Richard Smith

New Philosophies of Learning

Edited by Ruth Cigman and Andrew Davis

The Common School and the Comprehensive Ideal: A Defence by Richard Pring with Complementary Essays

Edited by Mark Halstead and Graham Haydon

Philosophy, Methodology and Educational Research

Edited by David Bridges and Richard D Smith

Philosophy of the Teacher

By Nigel Tubbs

Conformism and Critique in Liberal Society

Edited by Frieda Heyting and Christopher Winch

Retrieving Nature: Education for a Post-Humanist Age

By Michael Bonnett

Education and Practice: Upholding the Integrity of Teaching and Learning

Edited by Joseph Dunne and Pádraig Hogan

Educating Humanity: Bildung in Postmodernity

Edited by Lars Lovlie, Klaus Peter Mortensen and Sven Erik Nordenbo

The Ethics of Educational Research

Edited by Michael Mcnamee and David Bridges

In Defence of High Culture

Edited by John Gingell and Ed Brandon

Enquiries at the Interface: Philosophical Problems of On-Line Education

Edited by Paul Standish and Nigel Blake

The Limits of Educational Assessment

Edited by Andrew Davis

Illusory Freedoms: Liberalism, Education and the Market

Edited by Ruth Jonathan

Quality and Education

Edited by Christopher Winch

The Ways We Think

From the Straits of Reason to the Possibilities of Thought

Emma Williams

This edition first published 2016© 2016 Emma WilliamsEditorial organisation © Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain

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Cover image: Ismo Jokiaho, Dangling, oil on canvas, 60 × 60 cm, 2009. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.

For a long time now, all too long, thinking has been stranded on dry land. Can then the effort to return thinking to its element be called ‘irrationalism’?(Heidegger, 2010 [1947], p. 219)

Preface

To say that you are writing a book about thinking, or that thinking is the focus of your research, is apt to produce some puzzlement. The polite smile momentarily freezes. ‘Oh, thinking, you say? How interesting. Such a rich topic…’ And then the conversation moves discreetly on. Now if you say that you are studying critical thinking or the development of thinking skills, or that you are interested in techniques that help us think better – all these come within a more familiar range. After all, isn’t critical thinking just what is needed today? Spotting the flaw in the argument, seeing through all that propaganda and spin, being able to think through what you are doing with your life and so properly planning your career, finances, relationships, and properly managing your emotions … – yes, these things surely make sense. And doesn’t the pace of change today mean that we need people who can adapt to different roles and pick up new skills, because they have developed the kind of critical thinking that any subject needs and the transferable skill set that equips them for a range of roles and responsibilities? When it comes to education itself, from preschool to postgraduate research, wouldn’t children progress much more quickly, and doctoral students complete sooner, if only we had a clear diagnosis of their preferred learning styles and they had the meta-learning to see them through? Yes, all this makes good sense. But thinking by itself? What can research into that be about? After all, isn’t all philosophy thinking, and all research thinking anyway? What can this be about?

Yet one of philosophy’s achievements is surely to have paid attention to aspects of experience that have come to be taken for granted – taken for granted perhaps because they are too much in the background or too pervasive an aspect of our condition. In any case it is not as if thinking has not been a subject for philosophers, from Socrates to Hegel, to Michael Dummett and Gilles Deleuze. In a sense Descartes’ thought experiment is an experiment in the nature of thought, and its orientation for much of the philosophy that followed, and for much of Western thinking that followed in its train, is scarcely to be denied. Moreover, when Gilbert Ryle identified the ‘ghost in the machine’, he was articulating in a memorable English phrase a broader range of expression that traversed German and French and American philosophical traditions, at the least, and that was anti-Cartesian in substance and style. In Emma Williams’ The Ways We Think, Ryle’s insights are taken up in ways that reveal rich paths of connection, sometimes adjacent, perhaps meandering paths that take the reader through the work of Ryle’s contemporary at Oxford, J.L. Austin, and then along other intertwining paths into the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. The paths sometimes diverge, and some of them prove to be dead ends. But the journey along them, along this one and then that, as it gradually comes into view or crosses the place where you are walking, reveals contours in the landscape of thinking that might otherwise be too quickly passed by.

Ryle’s identification of the ‘intellectualist legend’ coincided with a time when the still relatively new discipline of psychology was increasing its influence, a time when Ludwig Wittgenstein could complain, on the last page of the Philosophical Investigations, of its mix of ‘experimental methods and conceptual confusion’: ‘The existence of the experimental method’, he wrote, ‘makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.’ It seems unlikely that Wittgenstein’s admonitions here have very much held back the advance of the subject. Indeed its influence has percolated through society in multiple ways. Although this has surely brought benefits of divers kinds, it has also led to an entrenchment in some aspects of life of those problems against which Ryle’s arguments, and Wittgenstein’s innumerable examples, were levelled.

That entrenchment is painfully present in much contemporary thinking about education, evident in innovations such as BrainGym, in simplistic conceptions of thinking skills, and in new incarnations of the figure of ‘the learner’, whose technicism quite displaces any more rounded conception of the person. It is a factor also in contemporary assessment regimes and the performative culture in which they thrive: such assessment practices in turn cast their influence back, as it were, on the content of the curricula and the teaching through which students prepare to be tested, with the reductiveness of a new behaviourism. That all this surreptitiously imparts a certain conception of what thinking is seems to go without saying. In some countries, there is now a generation of teachers who themselves have never known anything different. Now surely that calls for thought.

In fact, it calls for thought about the nature of thinking, and that is exactly what this book provides. The Ways We Think moves beyond the current predominant approaches to ’thinking education‘ evidenced in educational policy, practice, and research, showing how severely restricted these are in their scope – restricted by a particular, limited conception of both the experience of thinking and the human being who thinks. Such ways of thinking derive from and reinforce an abstracted, disengaged conception of the human being. They perpetuate a representational, intellectualised image of thought itself. The more adequate conception of thinking for education to which Williams’ argument adroitly leads us involves an insight gained through her careful reading of supposedly disparate texts: that, for all the diversity of the traditions that Ryle, Heidegger, Austin, and Derrida represent, their shared commitment is to do justice to the ways we think. Williams deftly brings to light the way that these thinkers, each in his own way, demonstrate that human thought does not consist in the abstracted, self-sufficient activity of the ‘thinking subject’, that human subjectivity is, on the contrary, a concrete, mediated, and conditioned affair. It is recognition of this kind that leads the reader from ‘the straits of reason to the possibilities of thought’. These words from the book’s subtitle point to a release from a narrowly constrained conception of reason, which in the text that follows is sometimes characterised as ‘rationalism’, to a richer realisation of reason, in which the nature of signs, so essential to the meaningfulness of human life and the world, is appreciated. Exploring these ‘possibilities’ of human thought, possibilities inherent in the very structure of meaning, reveals what makes thought happen and what can and does happen when we think.

It is one of the achievements of this highly original text in respect of philosophy that it shuns any simplistic divide between analytical and continental thought. Rather, it follows the argument where it leads. Its insistence on this, in conjunction with the precision, fluency and elegance of the writing, achieves a clarity of thought that often escapes philosophical styles that flaunt the name and a greater rigour than the self-consciously muscular, rationalistic thought that Williams sets out to confront. It is one of the book’s achievements in respect of education that it takes seriously what is taken to be thinking in education and reveals the impoverishment that this often enshrines. It reveals possibilities of improved practice by showing us how we might think better, and how we might better think of thinking.

Paul Standish, Series Editor

Acknowledgements

To borrow a line from Heidegger, ‘in giving thanks, the heart gives thought to what it has and what it is’. So here, before Denken, is some appropriate Danken.

This work grew out of my doctoral thesis and, first and foremost, my thanks must go to my supervisor, Paul Standish. I am hugely grateful for his shared vision on my topic and for the careful consideration he gave to my writing throughout. Our discussions helped me to see when my ideas could be taken that little bit further, and I am sure that any value this book has would have been lesser without his advice and guidance.

I wrote the chapters that comprise this book whilst working as philosopher-in-residence at Rugby School, and there could not have been a more enjoyable environment to be in. I am grateful to the (then) Headmaster, Patrick Derham, who allowed me time away from school to attend conferences and seminars when needed. My thanks also go to John Taylor for his early encouragement to pursue research in philosophy and education. I am also greatly indebted to Jonathan Smith and Andrew Fletcher: the conversations of the “Rugby Circle” were a constant source of inspiration throughout this project and will, I am sure, continue to be so well into the future.

I am grateful to those who have commented on my work at conferences, seminars, and other occasions: in particular, Michael Hand for his help in the early stages of my doctoral project and Richard Smith for his thoughtful feedback on my thesis. I am grateful to Jacqueline Scott at Wiley-Blackwell for her help with bringing this book to print and to Simon Glendinning for kindly agreeing to endorse it. Finally, I am grateful to my family and my husband, Farshad Mashoof, for the happy distractions they have given me along the way.

1Today’s Thinking: Following the Lines of Rationalism

INTRODUCTION

‘But I can see very well how it is: my mind likes to wander, and cannot yet contain itself within the precise limits of truth’

(Descartes, 1998 [1641], p. 108)

Three years ago, whilst teaching Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy to my A Level Philosophy class, I was struck by the quotation above. It comes at a stage in the Meditations when Descartes has just rehearsed the celebrated Cogito argument, his first ‘clear and distinct truth’, established by means of that purely deductive, a priori reasoning, which Descartes sought to establish as the method proper for all philosophy (and, of course, for all knowledge itself, insofar as knowledge was to rest upon the secure foundations of philosophy). Yet it seemed to me that something in the aforementioned quotation testifies to a disquiet and a restlessness that lie at the very heart of Descartes’ project: it is as though an excessive quality marks our thinking even when, indeed precisely when, we seek to make our thoughts progress along highly controlled, disciplined lines. As one of my students remarked at the time, ‘it’s almost as though he [Descartes] knows he can’t actually think the way he says he does’.

Of course, in Descartes’ project such an excess is treated as a blip, something to be corrected or ‘ironed out’ once one has become more accustomed to (perhaps, we might say, disciplined in) the way of thinking Descartes takes as his ideal. What Descartes wants from his thinking above all else is, as Martin Warner puts it, ‘a way of philosophising that will bring certitude equal to that of the demonstrations in arithmetic or geometry’ (1989, p. 1). To achieve this level of certainty, we need to use geometric means; we need to think, that is, like Sherlock Holmes, the ‘master of deduction’, and use modes of reasoning conceived after the model of logic.

And yet, in the time since, some philosophers have turned their attention to what Descartes, in his solitary mode of meditation, cast out as a mere malfunction. Whether through a direct consideration of the ways human beings actually think or through an exploration of the relations between thought and language, we find a number of philosophers within very different traditions testifying to a richer conception of thinking than is afforded by the Cartesian project. Gilbert Ryle, to use but one example, has referred to the ‘polymorphous’ nature of thinking (2009b [1951], p. 272) and to the inadequacies involved in construing thinking purely in terms of the ‘dry and chilly’ arenas of ratiocination and logic (2009b [1962], p. 430). As Ryle has put it, ‘not all of our walks are journeys’ – and in the ‘wanderings’ of our ways of thinking, there is much more at stake (2009b [1958], p. 405).

In what I have just said, there is much to be discussed. I have, indeed, made some quite bold claims in a fairly casual manner. Yet I have made them for the purpose of introducing the wider project of the present book within which they will be taken up much more fully. This is because the present book is concerned directly with the nature of thinking. More specifically, it is concerned with the way thinking has been understood, and is presently being understood, within an educational context.

Currently, there is a great interest in thinking in education. Whether in the form of policy makers’ declared intent to embed ‘thinking skills’ across the National Curriculum, the upsurge of practical ‘thinking programmes’ that have occurred in recent years with their corresponding textbooks and teacher guides, or the lively theoretical debates regarding critical thinking, thinking skills, and philosophy for children, thinking in education remains big business. Yet it is the contention of the present book that, in and through such mechanisms, thinking in education gets cast predominantly in a particular and limited kind of way. Throughout the present book, I shall term the kind of thinking that is currently being foregrounded in education the ‘rationalistic’ conception. This is an understanding of thinking that is somewhat brought into view by the above-made reference to Cartesian philosophy – although, as we shall come to see in this chapter, there is much more at stake here than the cursory remarks I initially made.

Let me be quite clear about the aims of the present book from the outset. This is not a negatively critical book. In other words, it is not one that will seek to bemoan the current state of ‘thinking education’ and focus negatively on its problems and limitations. Moreover, and as we shall come to see, it is not a project that will seek to argue against rationality. How, indeed, could a book argue against rationality? What I am aiming for is something much more positive. In short, the aim of this book is to articulate an account of thinking that does justice to the ways human thinking actually works. To this end, I shall seek to provide an account of thinking that is more adequate than the current rationalistic conception, and exposes as faulty the surreptitious assumptions about human thought – and indeed the human being itself – that underpin this account. If I achieve my aims, the final chapter of this book will be able to look towards a reconceptualization of thinking education today – one that gets beyond the ‘straits’ of rationalism and opens up new possibilities for thinking in education.1

I shall say more about how in particular this book will achieve its aims in the later sections of the present chapter. Before moving on to this, however, it is necessary to firstly lay out what I perceive to be the current predominant conception of thinking education in more detail. To do this, I shall trace some representative ways in which thinking is discussed in educational policy and practice. Following on from this, I will analyse key sources coming from the theoretical field of thinking education and work to show how, in each case, a certain conception of thinking is foregrounded. This will serve to bring into view the way a rationalistic conception is emblematic within thinking education today. Having done this, I will then seek to push the analysis further. In particular, I will seek to bring into view what lies behind the conception of thinking that is currently being foregrounded in education, and makes it possible. Here, we shall turn our attention to what is assumed about thinking and the human being who thinks. Having outlined these broader, philosophical assumptions, I shall then outline how the present book will work to challenge and problematise such a view – by articulating an alternative conception of thought that remains faithful to the concrete ways we think.

THE POLICY AND PRACTICE OF THINKING

Thinking in Educational Policy

Let us begin by examining some of the recent ways in which thinking education has been approached in the British curriculum. Now, while there is currently no compulsory element of thinking education in schools, in 2004 the National Curriculum incorporated a new requirement to develop pupils’ thinking in a way that would be ‘embedded’ across the curriculum (QCA, 2004, p. 23). The genesis of such an introduction can be traced back to at least 1997 and the New Labour government’s first White Paper, which declared the improvement of thinking to be ‘strongly associated with positive learning outcomes’ (Blunkett, 1997, pp. 38–39). The teaching of thinking was hereby cast as a key mechanism through which standards might be raised and pupils’ learning in all subjects, regardless of ability levels, might be improved. These aims were further reinforced in 1999 when a report by Carol McGuiness into thinking education commissioned by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) concluded that the improvement of thinking ‘supports active cognitive processing which makes for better learning’ (McGuinness, 1999, p. 3). The findings of the McGuiness Report proved to be hugely influential for educational policy on thinking in education in the years to come. The report claimed that encouraging ‘better forms of thinking’ would equip pupils with the abilities ‘to go beyond the information given, to deal systematically yet flexibly with novel problems and situations, to adopt a critical attitude to information and argument as well as to communicate effectively’ (p. 2). In a House of Commons debate later that year, Estelle Morris (the then School Standards Minister) drew upon McGuiness’ research to declare that the development of pupils’ thinking would now be high on the government’s agenda for education. As Morris put it, since improving ‘the quality of thinking’ was a means of ‘raising standards’, pupils would be ‘taught explicitly’ how to think as a key part of their school education (Morris, 1999, as quoted by Johnson, 2001, p. 2).

As we have seen, with the 2004 revisions to the National Curriculum, such aims were transformed into a concrete reality and the development of thinking came to be taken as a key requirement of education at all levels. One year later, the improvement of thinking was also made a key focus of the 2005 White Paper on 14–19 Education and Skills. Yet it is interesting to note that, by this time, teaching thinking was not only conceived as a means for raising standards and levels of pupils learning. The teaching of thinking also came to be situated more broadly, as a foundational part of the government’s ‘Every Child Matters’ campaign (see Kelly, 2005, p. 39). As a result, the improvement of thinking was portrayed as being integral for equipping pupils with a set of wider abilities, including adaptability to ‘a range of circumstances’, skills for ‘employment and dealing with a range of real world problems’, and preparation for successful learning in Higher Education (p. 41).

On the face of it, and conceived in terms of such aims, the improvement of thinking in education certainly appears a worthwhile project. Who could object to raising the standards of pupils’ learning across the curriculum? Furthermore, do we not want our all students to leave school prepared and ready for the world of work or higher education and able to deal with ‘real world problems’? If improving students’ thinking is a way of achieving such goals, should we not view this as a valuable educational practice? Yet it is worth highlighting that what the improvement of students’ thinking has largely translated as within educational policy has been the development of ‘thinking skills’. This is an important move, and not in the least because, through the use of the term ‘skill’, thinking education comes to be conceived in a particular kind of way. Specifically, by utilising the term ‘skill’, thinking education is seen to involve the development of what the 2004 National Curriculum term ‘knowing how’ – that is, procedural knowledge: cognitive competencies or capacities that are methodical, rule-governed, and technical (QCA, 2004, p. 23). Moreover, and by way of this, thinking education is also been taken to involve the development of processes of thought that are useful and applicable in a variety of contexts. This point is itself exemplified by the way thinking education is often related in the policy literature to a wider discourse of ‘general skills’: thinking skills are often discussed alongside notions of ‘personal skills’ that are (controversially and somewhat mistakenly) articulated in terms of generic abilities in areas such as ‘communication’, ‘diligence’, and ‘working with others’ (see, for example, the schema offered by Kelley, 2005, p. 44).2 As a result of this, thinking education is construed as a matter of improving forms of thinking that are generic and transferable – it is concerned with developing cognitive processes that are ‘context free’, which form the basis for our thinking in a number of different disciplines, and therefore have application across a number of domains.

We will come back to discuss precisely why the development of thinking in education has taken such a direction later in this chapter. For now, it is worth pointing out that candidate examples of such generic and transferable thinking skills have been defined in a number of different ways. Perhaps the predominant definition of the kinds of thinking being referred to here (in educational policy at least) has come from the 2004 National Curriculum. Here, the key ‘skills in thinking’ are identified and outlined as follows (p. 22–23):

Information-processing skills:

These enable pupils to locate and collect relevant information, to sort, classify, sequence, compare and contrast, and to analyse part/whole relationships.

Reasoning skills:

These enable pupils to give reasons for opinions and actions, to draw inferences and make deductions, to use precise language to explain what they think, and to make judgements and decisions informed by reasons or evidence.

Enquiry skills:

These enable pupils to ask relevant questions, to pose and define problems, to plan what to do and how to research, to predict outcomes and anticipate consequences, and to test conclusions and improve ideas.

Creative thinking skills:

These enable pupils to generate and extend ideas, to suggest hypotheses, to apply imagination, and to look for alternative innovative outcomes.

Evaluation skills:

These enable pupils to evaluate information; to judge the value of what they read, hear, and do; to develop criteria for judging the value of their own and others’ work or ideas; and to have confidence in their judgements.

As we saw earlier, such skills are all taken to be types of thinking that are generic and that can be applied across various domains and contexts. Yet it is interesting to note that, by and through such definitions, the generic forms of thinking that educators are seeking to develop are all construed in similar terms. More specifically, they all appear to be ways of thinking that are orientated towards ‘resolving’ a problem or matter – whether this be conceived in terms of the ‘reasoning skills’ that enable students to ‘make judgements and decisions’, the ‘enquiry skills’ that enable pupils to ‘test conclusions and improve ideas’, or the ‘creative thinking skills’ that allow pupils to ‘look for alternative innovative outcomes’. Thinking skills, it seems, are generic ways of thinking through which we might bring a matter to a conclusion, reach an end point, and settle a problem. And yet, as we shall come to see, perhaps this orientation towards what we might call a ‘problem solving’ approach to thinking, with, as Saito and Standish (2009, p. 155) put it, its corresponding ‘eagerness for solutions’, itself works to harness our thinking in a particular, and limited, kind of way.

We are not yet in a position to understand such claims fully. Once again, we will come back to this point later in the chapter. For the moment it is worth highlighting that, despite its move to define and elaborate candidate types of thinking skills, the policy literature does, nevertheless, leave the question of how best to develop such thinking widely open. Multifarious approaches to the development of thinking skills are thus acknowledged, and there is the sense that a variety of pedagogical techniques may be and are being used. The only essential feature such approaches must share is, as the McGuiness Report (1999, p. 1) highlights, that ‘the methodology must ensure that learning transfers beyond the context in which it occurs’. In this way, we come to see further what is foregrounded in a thinking education conceived in terms of thinking skills. For the particular methods and specific material that may be used are seen as largely indeterminate. What is important, however, is that we maximise transferability – and teach techniques of thinking that can be used by and across different subject domains.

Thinking in Practice

A similar approach to thinking education is largely exemplified in the practical teaching of thinking today. Indeed, a number of formal provisions for developing thinking in schools now conceive their aims predominantly in terms of the development of transferable, generic skills, rather than imparting any particular subject content. Thus, for example, the regulatory body for examinations in England, The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual), stipulates that students studying for a 14–19 Diploma will develop ‘personal, learning and thinking skills’ which are ‘wider skills you’ll need as you go through life – things like time management, team working and creative thinking’ (2010, p. 4). Similarly the A Level OCR Critical Thinking course states that ‘the aim is to provide candidates with a framework, which can be applied in a practical manner to a range of materials, situations, problems and issues. There is no obvious major body of content to deliver, but rather a set of skills that candidates should be enabled to acquire’ (OCR, 2013). Meanwhile, the Cambridge International Examination course in Thinking Skills conceives its purpose in terms of developing ‘a specific set of intellectual skills, independent of subject content, reflecting the need voiced by universities and employers for more mature and sophisticated ways of thinking’ (CIE, 2013).

What students are actually required to do in such courses is, perhaps unsurprisingly, also strongly driven by the language of context-free skills and techniques. To select one example from many, in the OCR A Level Critical Thinking course, students are required to learn a stipulated set of criteria for ‘judging credibility’ that they are then asked to apply to a range of sources on different topics. Hence, in the June 2012 examination series, to achieve ten out of a total of seventy-four marks, candidates were asked to select one claim from a previously unseen speech by the government Health Minister and ‘apply three credibility criteria to explain how these might strengthen or weaken the credibility of the selected claim’ (OCR, 2012, p. 6). A little later in the same paper, candidates were asked to ‘write a reasoned case which comes to a judgement’ on the question of whether ‘a compulsory nursing degree is likely to improve the quality of patient care’, by assessing the ‘plausibility’ and ‘credibility’ of the claims made in two relevant (and also unseen) articles (p. 8).

Informal practices for teaching thinking follow a largely similar format. Currently, a wide number of projects dedicated to the teaching of thinking skills are in existence, some of which, as McGuiness points out, are ‘highly developed, with commercially produced curriculum materials’, while others are more ‘small scale’ (1999, p. 2). Some examples, also cited by McGuiness, include Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment Programme (developed in the 1980s), The Somerset Thinking Skills Course (a United Kingdom-based modification of Feuerstein’s original programme), the ACTS (Activating Children’s Thinking Skills) project (led by McGuiness herself), and the CASE (Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education) and CAME (Cognitive Acceleration through Mathematics Education) projects, which target ‘scientific’ and ‘mathematical’ thinking, respectively (1999, pp. 2–3). However, perhaps one of the fastest growing informal approaches for the development of thinking comes from the field of philosophy for children. This movement (with its factions), the theoretical background of which we shall discuss later, seeks to make a case for the inclusion of philosophy in the school curriculum often by way of drawing a connection between doing philosophy and the development of thinking. Nevertheless, it is evident that, even in this sphere, the types of thinking in focus are generic, context-free ‘skills’. Indeed, as one of the leading educational providers, the Society for the Advancement of Philosophical Enquiry and Reflection in Education (SAPERE) states, a key aim of their programme is to develop ‘skills in logical thinking’; hence, philosophy for children may be understood as an efficient and useful ‘thinking skills intervention’ (SAPERE, 2010).

Some Initial Questions

Why has thinking education moved in this direction? Why is the improvement of thinking in education predominantly being conceived in terms of thinking skills, and what view of thinking hereby gets produced? On one level, an answer to these questions may be given by appealing to certain ideologies of education that have arisen in recent years. Indeed, it is not too hard to see how the language of thinking skills goes hand in glove with the ‘marketisation’ and ‘instrumentalisation’ of education in the age of the ‘knowledge economy’. A similar claim is made by Michael Peters (2007, p. 352):

To talk of ‘thinking skills’… is already to adopt a particular view of thinking, that is, thinking as a kind of technology. This view of thinking is a reductive concept of thinking as a means-ends instrumentality, a series of techniques that can move us from one space to another. In the so-called knowledge economy emphasis in the curriculum has passed from the knowledge and understanding of traditional subjects and disciplines to generic, transferable skills … these are often described in psychological language as metacognitive skills, that is, learning how to learn, and are now squared off against information-processing skills, knowledge management skills, entrepreneurial skills, and social skills like team-building.

As Peters points out, by tying thinking to the notion of thinking skills, thinking comes to be construed in terms of the means-end instrumentality that is symptomatic of much educational discourse today. Furthermore, we might say that what is going on here is not only an instrumentalisation of thinking but also one of skills themselves. For, indeed, by and through its exclusive focus on cognitive competencies, the concept of thinking skills foregrounds only a certain and limited range of procedures. What we get, as a result, is a reductive conception of a skill in contrast to the richer sense that is invoked when we ordinarily talk about skills in the context of, for example, one’s hockey-playing skills or cooking skills.

And yet, as Peters himself goes on to suggest, we can also go further than this. For we can question what it is that has led to such reduction. More specifically, recalling the aims of the present book, we can ask: what is it that has allowed thinking to be cast in such instrumental, technological terms? In answering this question, we are referred to a deeper level at which we may challenge the current conception of thinking education – and one that goes someway further than the claim that the predominant view is the result of a certain educational ideology. For, it can be said that the current conception of thinking receives its impetus from a wider theoretical domain and one that is, in turn, motivated by a certain set of assumptions about (1) the nature of thinking and (2) the human being itself. To be more specific, we might say that the predominant view of thinking has arisen as a result of the foregrounding of a particular type of thinking, which has in turn been made possible on the basis of a certain representation of both thinking and the ‘thinking subject’. Let us now turn to develop these claims more fully, by looking more closely at the theory that underlies conceptions of thinking education today.

THINKING IN THEORY

Introduction

The theory of thinking education is a large field. However, in what follows I will provide some indicative examples from three of the main sources contributing to the theory of thinking education viz. the philosophical literature on critical thinking, thinking skills, and philosophy for children. I will then analyse these sources in order to show how, in each case, a certain conception of thinking can be seen as being foregrounded. This conception is one that I will, following Michael Bonnett (1994), term ‘rationalistic’. We are not yet in a position to see precisely how or why this term will work – the elaboration of what is involved in a rationalistic conception of thinking will only be unfolded through our analysis of the theoretical fields we have just mentioned. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out from the outset that we shall be using this as a term of art, to designate conceptions of thinking that, while not reducible to each other, foreground a certain range of general characteristics. Moreover, and as I shall also work to show, these are characteristics that are themselves made possible on the basis of a certain understanding of both the nature of thinking and the human being who thinks. Let us now turn to examine some specific examples from the theoretical field of thinking education so as exemplify more directly what is at stake in their approaches to thinking, and the family resemblances that lie between them.

Critical Thinking

One of the major areas of theoretical work on thinking education has come from the critical thinking movement. The genesis of the philosophical literature on this topic can be traced back at least as far as the 1960s and Robert Ennis’ landmark article ‘A Concept of Critical Thinking’. Within this article, Ennis defined critical thinking as the ‘correct assessing of statements’ and construed the critical thinker as one who had mastered certain abilities or criteria suitable for statement assessment (Ennis cited in Siegel, 1988, pp. 6–10). The notion of critical thinking was hereby immediately oriented towards the ‘rational’ or ‘logical’ procedures of statement assessing – a focus that was brought out further by Ennis’ later (and somewhat expanded) definition of critical thinking as ‘reasonable, reflective thinking, focused on deciding what to believe or do’ (Ennis, 1989, p. 4). Notably, while perhaps serving as a useful starting point for the conceptualisation of critical thinking in educational theory, many subsequent proponents of critical thinking came to view Ennis’ account as somewhat reductive. Alternative accounts of critical thinking thus emerged such as those offered by Richard Paul (1982) and John McPeck (1981; 1990). However, perhaps the most influential account of critical thinking, and one whose prominence continues to be felt today, comes from Harvey Siegel. Indeed, for nearly three decades Siegel has sought to articulate and defend what he terms the ‘reasons conception’ of critical thinking. Let us consider further what is at stake in such a theory.

Siegel’s ‘reasons conception’ of critical thinking, as the name suggests, construes critical thinking as a matter of being successful at reasoning. This consists, in fuller terms, in being proficient at appraising reasons such that we may be in a position to adequately assess claims, make judgements, evaluate procedures, and so on. This appraisal must be carried out in a way that is, as Siegel puts it, ‘impartial, consistent and non-arbitrary’ (1988, p. 34). To achieve such an impartial stance, and become proficient in our appraisal of reasons, Siegel claims that we must master the ‘principles of reason assessment’ – principles that will govern what count as ‘good reasons’ for holding a belief, making a judgement or assenting to a claim in any given context (p. 34). Importantly, Siegel views such principles as being afforded by two areas: logic and epistemology. Both of these, Siegel claims, offer us principles of reason assessment that are generic and transferable – they are general procedures for assessing reasons, whatever the subject matter.

Logic, Siegel claims, furnishes us with principles of reason assessment in two ways. Firstly, he claims, informal logic gives us subject-neutral laws to which good reasoning must abide (indeed, Siegel states, ‘it is hard to imagine a more compelling reason for accepting ‘q’ than the proposition pvq.-p’ [p. 26]). Secondly, he adds, formal logic is invaluable since it provides us with the ideal argument-structure we should seek to emulate in all our reasoning processes (for, as he puts it, ‘a deductively valid formal argument is as strong an argument as it is possible to have’ [p. 26]). Epistemology, on the other hand, is taken to be crucial to reason assessment because it provides us with ‘a theoretical grasp of the nature of reasons, warrant and justification’ (p. 35). It gives us answers, as Siegel puts it, to questions such as: What is a reason? How do we know that some consideration constitutes a reason for believing or doing something? How do we evaluate the strength or merit of reasons? What is it for a belief to be justified? What is the relation between justification and truth? Notably, Siegel also claims that a particular kind of epistemology underpins the act of critical thinking. This is one that takes truth to be objectively real (Siegel is emphatically against the idea that truth is ‘subjective’) and views justification as what points us toward or indicates the truth.

A key thematic within Siegel’s ‘reasons conception’ is that the kind of thinking we utilise in critical thinking is not merely one important way of thinking amongst others. Rather, critical thinking is taken to be the principal type of thinking that education should be seeking to develop: it is, as Siegel puts it, ‘the ultimate educational ideal’ (p. 137). This aim for education is justified by Siegel through his equation of critical thinking with rationality. For Siegel, rationality is a matter of doing or believing something because we have good reasons for doing so. Hence, Siegel is able to argue that critical thinking is not simply a particular type of rational thinking but is rather ‘co-extensive’ with rationality itself, or the ‘educational cognate’ of rationality (p. 30).

Siegel’s account is based upon a self-confessed assimilation of the values of what he terms ‘enlightened rationalism’: the ‘Western liberal ideals of reason, criticism and reflection’ (pp. 74–75). As a direct result of this, he takes as the primary aims of education the enlightenment-inspired ideals of ‘respect for persons’ (translated as allowing students the ‘right to exercise independent judgement and powers of evaluation’), ‘self-sufficiency and preparation for adulthood’ (defined in terms of ‘liberating’ young people by giving them the power to ‘control their own destinies’ and ‘take charge’ of their own lives), and preparation for ‘democratic living’ (defined in terms of producing students who are able to ‘assess reasons fairly and impartially’) (1988, pp. 55–61). For Siegel, all such ideals are upheld, and indeed are principally upheld, through the development of critical thinking in education. Siegel rejects the challenge that such ideals are only the result of a certain ideology and argues instead that his account of critical thinking, which takes its cue from ‘key epistemic notions of rationality and rational justification, according to the dominant Western, Enlightenment epistemological tradition’, are in fact ‘universally applicable’ (1997, p. 147).

We perhaps do not need to go too much further into the detail of Siegel’s account to see that a certain conception of thinking is here being foregrounded. On a basic level, what we are being presented with is, as Michael Bonnett puts it, ‘a way of thinking that values the seeking and giving of reasons’ (1994, p. 31). Yet, more than this, we also have a particular conception of what such reasoning consists in, namely, operating in accordance with the ‘generic’ procedures of logical analysis and epistemology. As a result, thinking (and reasoning) is construed in a quasi-technical manner as a matter of constructing arguments, demonstrations, proofs, syllogisms, and so on – indeed Siegel, alongside other theorists of critical thinking, often refers to the notion of ‘critical thinking skills’, thereby reinforcing the technical, formal, and schematic characteristics of such thinking. On the other hand, that which we are thinking about also comes to be construed in a particular way. For exercising this kind of quasi-technical thinking requires that we stand back from things, disengage ourselves from them, and view them in terms of ‘propositions’, ‘statements’, or ‘claims’. In this way, we come to see things in the world as material that can be subject to our scrutiny and control; what we think about is ‘data’ that can be, and indeed will be, quantified and conceptualised by us. As such, we are able to manipulate what we think about; we ‘judge’ it by way of set a priori concepts, rules, standards, and criteria. Our thinking is hereby directed by a conception of truth as correctness. What we are trying to do in thinking is square candidate beliefs, claims, and propositions with some objective criteria (a reality that exists outside of ourselves). The ultimate aim is to fit what we experience into a watertight calculation, of the kind generated by a deductive proof – the ideal type of argument – and hence to reach definitive solutions, conclusions, and agreements.

I take it that the picture of thinking I have just illustrated would be relatively uncontentious from the perspective of the critical thinking theorist. It is certainly implicit in the account of critical thinking we have just outlined by way of Siegel. Perhaps one reason for leaving it so implicit is that critical thinking theorists tend to view it as somewhat self-evident that thinking education should aim to improve precisely this kind of thinking. We are not yet in a position to challenge such an assumption: such a task is itself one of the key aims of this book. Nevertheless, by bringing out the features of thinking foregrounded by the critical thinking movement more directly, we take the first step on this journey. For we hereby highlight that learning to think ‘critically’ (taking this term in the way defined by critical thinking theorists) does in fact require us to think about and approach the world in a certain way. As I stated earlier, I will be using the term ‘rationalistic’ to identify such an approach. Given Siegel’s own adoption of the term ‘enlightened rationalism’ to depict the values in thinking he seeks to foreground, such a term may indeed be highly appropriate. Let us now turn to consider whether we can see such a rationalistic approach evidenced anywhere else in the current theory of thinking education.

Thinking Skills

In recent years, and presumably as a result of the aforementioned vogues within educational policy and practice, theorists of thinking education have started to make use of, and discuss, the notion of thinking skills. In many ways, literature in this field builds upon the foundations of the critical thinking movement. Notably, however, many proponents of thinking skills also seek to offer a broader description of the kinds of thinking that education should be seeking to develop than is offered by critical thinking theorists – viewing these, as they do, as being overly focused on reason-based conceptions (see, for example, Gerald Smith, 2002). As a result, the thinking skills literature seeks to defend the importance of a host of cognitive activities – hence, we find processes of reasoning emphasised alongside those of ‘problem-solving’, ‘inquiry’, ‘decision-making’, and ‘creative thinking’. Whether theorists of thinking skills thereby work to misrepresent the critical thinking movement is itself a moot point. Indeed, Siegel has argued that problem solving, decision making, and inquiry are not, in fact, separable kinds of thinking from critical thinking but rather are contexts within which critical thinking is itself exercised. Hence, it could be claimed that critical thinking theorists do recognise wider acts of thinking; it is just that they also take these wider acts to constitutively involve the exercise of critical reasoning.

This is not the place to enter into a full discussion of the debates between critical thinking and thinking skills theorists. Nevertheless, it is worth noting for the present purposes that large numbers of thinking skills theorists have themselves urged a note of caution when it comes to identifying candidate thinking skills. Specifically, many have argued that the concept has become ‘overinflated’ and that certain cognitive acts have been ill defined as thinking skills and are better viewed as good ‘mental habits’ or ‘collections of mental activities’ (see, for example, Perkins, 1985, and Johnson, 2001). As such, most theorists of thinking skills now seek to defend a ‘narrower’ conception, by being attentive to the kinds of thinking that may be meaningfully implied by such a term.

Gerald Smith is a representative example of such an approach. He argues that the term thinking skills should apply to a much narrower set of cognitive acts than is usually suggested. Smith offers his analysis by firstly considering the nature of skills, which he defines as ‘a capacity acquired through training and experience, to do something well, to perform competently certain tasks’ (2002, p. 661). Here, Smith echoes the approach of a number of other proponents of thinking skills, who take a conceptual analysis of what is involved in a physical skill to be illuminating for the question of what is at stake in the idea of a thinking skill (for another illustration of this approach, see Griffiths, 1987). Smith’s definition of a skill, uncontroversial amongst many thinking skills theorists, is of ‘knowing how’ – that is, procedural rather than propositional knowledge. Hence, he claims, skills refer to sets of activities that are ‘exercised by choice’ and whose operation is ‘largely subject to conscious control’ (p. 661). For this reason, Smith goes on to state, we should view as thinking skills only those mental acts that have ‘procedural content’ or a ‘procedural structure’ (pp. 663–664). Put otherwise, the term thinking skills should be applied only to cognitive activities that are ‘schematised or purposively sequenced’ (Smith, 1984, p. 227, as cited in Smith, 2002, p. 661). Such activities are, he claims, also rightfully understood as generic and transferable. In this way, Smith resolves to ‘strongly support the practice of teaching thinking apart from the domain-specific content’ (p. 676). Yet he also ends his analysis with a word of warning to both theorists and educators:

[E]ducators and scholars must be far more restrained in their use of the term ‘thinking skill(s)’. Over-application of this concept has led to confusion, controversy and the misdirection of educational efforts. Legitimate thinking skills that are identified must be fully specified and developed. For instance, the skill should be defined, positioned within an overall repertoire of mental activities, and its component activities identified. A review of relevant literature should disclose how the skill is employed by expert practitioners and the ways in which it is typically taught. Domain-specific applications of the skill should be analysed, looking for differences and similarities that suggest general aspects of the skill. Recommendations for general and domain-specific teaching of the skill should be proposed, along with suggestions for research to develop skill-related knowledge. By setting higher standards for ‘skill-talk’, educators will eliminate current excesses and insure that future contributions have more practical and intellectual value. (p. 676)

It is interesting to note that, in his concern to eliminate ‘current excesses’ and jettison certain types of thinking from the arena of thinking skills, Smith comes to emphasise very similar kinds of thinking to those emphasised by the critical thinking movement. Thus, as Smith (p. 665) puts it, the kinds of thinking activities that could legitimately pass as thinking skills include ‘deductive reasoning, causal diagnosis, argument construction and conceptual analysis’. Is this an incidental convergence?

I would suggest not. In fact, I would argue that it comes about as a result of the fact that, despite some notable differences, proponents of both thinking skills and critical thinking actually foreground very similar types of thinking in their accounts. For one, just as critical thinking theorists stressed thinking that operates in accordance with the processes of logical analysis and epistemology, so, too, do thinking skills theorists emphasise thinking that operates by way of generic procedures (and ones that, following Smith’s analysis at least, themselves take their cue from the realms of logic and epistemology). Furthermore, and as is perhaps made even more apparent by the thinking skills label, thinking is hereby similarly construed in a quasi-technical manner – as following formalised and schematised processes. Of course, it might be objected here that the thinking skills literature does not have the same exclusive focus on reasoning that is evidenced by critical thinking literature. Thinking skills theorists, as the name suggests, seek to foreground lots of different types of procedures or skills of thought. Yet I would suggest that, while it might be true that it does not share the stress on reasoning in the narrow sense of giving and seeking reasons, the literature on thinking skills shares a wider territory with the critical thinking literature. This is because the field of thinking skills similarly emphasises a kind of thinking that stands back from the particular objects of what is being thought about, that takes it as ‘data’ that can be quantified and conceptualised, and that can hence be manipulated by means of the application of a set of rules or criteria (or, if you prefer with Smith, a ‘schematised sequence’) that is defined a priori.

This point is further exemplified by the fact that the elaboration of what is involved in utilising candidate thinking skills, like the elaboration of ‘reasoning’ in the critical thinking movement, is strongly orientated towards the language of arguments. Hence, as we noted earlier when we examined some candidate thinking skills from education policy, in utilising skills in ‘enquiry’ we are seen to be performing such activities as ‘predicting outcomes’ or ‘testing conclusions’; when we use ‘information-processing skills’, we are taken to be doing things such as ‘locating and collecting relevant information’; and even when we are using our ‘creative thinking skills’, we are seen to be engaged in processes such as ‘generating ideas’, ‘suggesting hypothesis’ or ‘looking for alternative innovative outcomes’. In this way, it seems that much of what is said about thinking in the thinking skills literature takes its cue from the rationalistic conception of thought we previously articulated by way of critical thinking. The emphasis here is thus still very much on a particular kind of thinking that requires us to think about and approach the world in a certain way.

Richer than Rationalism?

It is perhaps worth entertaining an objection here. For it might be said that, at times, both thinking skills and critical thinking theorists have in fact emphasised the need to include dispositions as well as skills-based proficiencies into their accounts of what thinking education should seek to foster. As Smith puts it: