Moving from understanding to productive thinking	317

grading of assessment tasks. In tables 7.1 and 7.2 we give two examples to illustrate how our broad categories are able to accommodate aspects of education for different age groups such as prompts and questions to support a range of thinking aimed at younger learners from 7–11 years old (table 7.1) and all of the key skills objectives appropriate for 14–19 year olds (table 7.2).

Summary

In this chapter we have reviewed the relative benefits of the different frameworks and models and their potential contribution to aspects of learning and teaching. We identified both the strengths and weaknesses of some of the general approaches which we have organised into family groups and the specific advantages and disadvantages of particular taxonomies and how they relate to what is currently known

Table 7.1. Problem solving with young children

Area of thinking	Prompts and questions
Information gathering	Think about what you know already.
	Have you done anything like this before?
	What information has been given to you?
Building understanding	Put the problem into your own words.
	What do you have to do?
	What will the final outcome look like?
Productive thinking	Think of ways to tackle the problem.
	What can you work out?
	What other approaches might work?
	Can you think of other possibilities?
Strategic management	Is this approach going to get you there?
of thinking	Have you overcome difficulties like this before?
	How good an answer will this be?
	What ideas of thinking might you be able to
	use in the future?
Reflective thinking	Keep track of what you are doing.
	How is it going?
	Did guessing the answers help at all?

318	Frameworks for Thinking

Table 7.2. Meeting key skills objectives

Area of thinking	Tasks
Information gathering	Identify the person you will see to review
	your progress and where and when this
	will take place.
Building understanding	Make changes suggested by your supervisor.
Productive thinking	Seek and actively use feedback and support
	from relevant sources to help you to
	meet targets.
Strategic management	Adapt your strategy to overcome difficulties
of thinking	and produce the quality of outcomes
	required.
Reflective thinking	Monitor and critically reflect on what you
	are learning and how you are learning,
	noting the choices you make and judging
	their effectiveness

about teaching and learning. Although our review did not identify one complete framework for general use, we recommended three complementary frameworks which provide comprehensive coverage. These are Pintrich’s framework of self-regulated learning (see page 235) which covers the meaning of strategic and reflective thinking; Halpern (1997) who details a practical productive-thinking framework (see page 140); and Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) revision of Bloom’s taxonomy (see page 49), which can be used with any age and ability group and provides a valuable vocabulary for describing specific knowledge and skill objectives. The integrated model which we propose offers a practical tool to map these different models, frameworks and taxonomies in a way which should support those who wish to use the analysis and evaluation we offer in the earlier chapters of this handbook.