Tag Archives: professional development

Term of Art: Higher Order Thinking

“Advanced intellectual abilities that go beyond basic information processing. Higher order thinking involves such abilities as concept formation, understanding rules, problem-solving skills, and the ability to look at information from multiple perspectives.

Students exercise their higher order thinking when they analyze, synthesize, and evaluate materials to which they have been exposed, The construction or creation of new material also requires higher order thinking.

In general, abilities in the area of higher order thinking are closely linked to intellectual capacity. However, individuals with learning disabilities who have underlying information processing deficits may appear to have difficulties with higher order activities. This may be especially true with higher order tasks involving a verbal component for students with language-based learning problems.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Hittites

“Hittite: A member of an ancient people of Asia Minor who gained control of central Anatolia c. 1800-1200 BC. The Hittite empire reached its zenith under the totalitarian rule of Suppiluliuma I (c. 1380 BC). Whose political influence extended from the capital, Hattusas, situated at Bogazkoy (about 22 miles east of Ankara in modern Turkey) west to the Mediterranean coast and southeast into northern Syria. In their struggle for power over Syria and Palestine the Hittites clashed with the troops of Ramses II of Egypt in a battle (1285 BC) at Kadesh on the River Orontes which seems to have ended indecisively. The subsequent decline and demise of Hittite power by 700 BC resulted from internal and external dissension, probably following an outbreak of famine.”

Excerpted from: Wright, Edmund, Ed. The Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

“Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) Japanese novelist. Tanizaki’s works are characterized by skillful storytelling and by a deep concern with the psychic forces rooted in human sexuality. This is especially evident in his last two novels, Kagi (1957; tr The Key, 1960) and Futen rojin nikki (1961; tr Diary of a Mad Old Man, 1965), but is also true of his earliest stories, such as Shisei (1910; tr Tattoo, 1961). The works of his middle period, notably Tade kuu mushi (1928; tr Some Prefer Nettles, 1955). Shunkin sho (1933; tr A Portrait of Shunkin, 1965), and Sasame yuki (1943-48; tr The Makioka Sisters, 1957), reveal Tanizaki’s fascination with classical Japanese culture and its unique code of sensuous, feminized bearuty. His admiration for traditional aesthetics is expounded in a famous essay, In’ei raisan (1933; tr In Praise of Shadows, 1977). Many critics consider Tanizaki to be Japan’s greatest modern author.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Matsuo Basho

“Matsuo Basho (1644-1694): Japanese haiku poet. Basho is generally acknowledged as the developer and greatest master of this form. His haiku went through many phases, evolving from the pedantic verse of his early youth to his lighthearted poetry of his last years. The work of his peak period is characterized by evocations of man’s ultimate harmony with nature. A wanderer for much of his life, Basho also wrote travel sketches interspersed with haiku. Oi no kobumi (1688; tr The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel, 1966) is famous for its opening passages, which reveal his basic beliefs, but the best work in this genre is Oku no hosomichi (1689; tr The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1966), which, outwardly describing his journey to rural areas of northeastern Japan, inwardly traces his spiritual quest for a beauty and lyricism all but lost in urban life.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

John Dewey Dissects Teaching “Content”

“From the standpoint of the educator…the various studies represent working resources, available capital. Their remoteness from the experience of the young…is real. The subject matter of the learner…cannot be identical with the formulated, crystallized knowledge of the adult…. Failure to bear in mind the difference…is responsible for most of the mistakes made in the use of texts and other expressions of preexisting knowledge.”

John Dewey

Democracy and Education

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Jerome Bruner on Understanding and Interpretation

I. “Understanding unlike explaining, is not preemptive; for example, one way of construing the fall of Rome narratively does not rule out other interpretations. For narratives and their interpretations traffic in meaning, and meanings are intransigently multiple…. Since no one narrative construal rules out alternatives, narratives pose a very special issue of criteria.”

II. “In a word, narrative accounts can be principled or not but do not rest on stark verification alone, as with scientific explanations. Any constitutional lawyer worth his salt can tell you how Justice Taney’s way of construing history in the Dred Scott decision was excruciatingly tunnel-visioned, unmindful of competing perspective, and therefore lethal in its consequences.”

Jerome Bruner

The Culture of Education

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

John Dewey on Instructional Planning

“No experience is educative that does not tend both to knowledge of more facts and entertaining of more ideas and to a better, a more orderly arrangement of them…. Experiences in order to be educative, must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter…. This condition is satisfied only as long as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.”

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe on Coverage and Uncoverage

“We thus uncover for students what is interesting and vital by revealing it for what it is: a shorthand phrase for the result of inquiries, problems, and arguments, not a self-evident fact. A course design based on textbook coverage only will likely leave students with inert phrases and an erroneous view of how arguable or hard-won knowledge has been. Rather, students need to experience what scholars know if they are to understand their work: how key facts and principles are the revealing and powerful fruit of pondering, testing, shaping, and rethinking of experience….”

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

The “Exit Ticket”

[The “exit ticket” was all the rage in the last school in which I served in New York City. The peculiarity of the term notwithstanding, the concept is pedagogically sound—particularly when questions are both broad and focused, like these two, which are apparently in common use in classrooms at Harvard.]

  1. What is the big point you learned in class today?
  2. What is the main unanswered question you leave class with today?

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Howard Gardner on Assessing for Understanding

“Whereas short-answer tests and oral responses in classes can provide clues to student understanding, it is generally necessary to look more deeply…. For these purposes, new and unfamiliar problems, followed by open-ended clinical interviews or careful observations, provide the best way of establishing the degree of understanding obtained.”

Howard Gardner

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.