Thinking and Learning

By Martin Odudukudu

Students want to learn and excel as learners. However, a student cannot learn optimally on his or her own especially. If a student had not already learned how to learn, student may be ineffective and/or unproductive in learning independently. Student learns best how to learn from adults that can provide such learning. However, in the name of educating a child an adult may imposed tasks upon student. Here, student learn to pay attention to imposed tasks just enough to get a disciplinarian who imposed tasks off their backs while secretly devoting attention to concerns that are truly of interest to the students. Furthermore, an adult may sugar coat a task in order to shield student from the unpleasant the experience of tasks and in their minds facilitate student learning. Here, student may engage task, but student learns in the task that it is his or her whims that are important; he or she learn to make demands or otherwise fail to do assigned tasks.

In both cases, students do not learn to learn well. We cannot say that a student is learning well when all that a student may be doing is pay just enough attention to imposed task to get a disciplinarian off his or her back while secretly devoting attention to concerns that are truly of interest to the students. Similarly, we cannot say that a student is learning when all that students is doing is practicing and/or becoming increased practiced in making demands and failing to do assigned tasks. Some teachers may be moderate when they commit these mistakes, and they convince themselves that because they are not extreme, they therefore do not harm students. This may be right in so far as human limitations prevent us from having an absolute best learning practice/method. However, in terms of having a best focus that would help students to learn well, many teachers fail because they do not learn what to look for in helping students to learn well.

In Thinking and Learning, we advance the theory that to help students to learn well, teachers must learn to focus upon student interest. Dewey, 1934 point out that without an understanding of student interest, a teacher may not know the direction a student is heading; without an understanding of student interest a teacher may not be able to help students to learn well, and students grope. In Thinking and Learning, we define interest in terms of tendencies that one expresses when in the midst of objects/problems; we point out that in interest one seeks to extricate self from problems, one thinks. We point out that this type of thinking differs from thinking where one is seeking to secure an object/advantage and gratify self.

In the last chapters of Thinking and Learning, we develop an instructional program that focus upon fundamentals of what and how a student does when a student is in the midst of objects or problems and seeking to extricating self from them just as we focus upon fundamentals of what and how a student does in a task situation when a student seeks to accomplish tasks and secure a represented advantage. We point out that the learning that is of significance to student is one in which student learn to generate, develop, and consider their concerns. Accordingly, in the last chapters of Thinking and Learning you will learn about the instructional methods of Goal and Task Thinking and Learning (GTTL); here, Goal Thinking and Teaching refer to student tendencies when a student is determining a direction for self, and Task Thinking and Teaching refer to student tendencies when a student is executing a plan to secure a determined advantage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483624341

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Copyright © 2013 by Martin Odudukudu.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2013906700

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4836-2433-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4836-2432-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4836-2434-1

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Rev. date: 05/28/2013

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter One       Thinking and Learning

Objective, Subjective, and Pure Thinking

Pure and Objective Thinking

Benefits of Pure Thinking

Object-to-Object Interactions

A Result of Objective Interactions

Objective Content of Inner Sense

Subject and Object of Inner-Sense Interactions

Learning and Subjective Determination/Representation

Scientific Learning

Chapter Two       Human Learning

Insider Epistemology

Consciousness

Interest and Pure Thinking

Chapter Three       Digital Thinking Interest

Concept Development

The Function of Thinking

Determination of the Second Level

Thinking and Learning

Chapter Four       Goal and Task Teaching and Learning (GTTL) Defined

Objective and Subjective Task Situations

Task situations

Objective/Subjective Thinking

Objective, Subjective, and Pure Thinking

Interest and Pure Thinking

Objective and Subjective Task Format

Task Thinking

Goal Thinking

Elements of Pure and Objective Thinking

Chapter Five       Interest and Learning

Interest

Chapter Six       Task Thinking

Pure/Goal Thinking

Elements of Pure and Objective Thinking

Pure Thinking

Cognition in Which One Stands Away from Thinking

Interest and Pure Thinking

Chapter Seven       Instructional Practice of Goal and Task Teaching and Learning

Parts of a GTTL Lesson Plan

Parts of a GTTL Lesson Plan with an explanation of purpose, rationale, method, and example

Expert Learners and Technologies

Instructional Technologies

New York State Standard

Questioning

Chapter Eight       Instructional Practice of Goal and Task Teaching and Learning (GTTL)

GTTL Plan Template

Purpose and Methods of Framing Lesson Questions

Components of Goal and Task Teaching and Learning

A Lesson Plan Sample

Chapter Nine       Components of Goal and Task Teaching and Learning Lesson Plan

Data: Materials of Instruction

The Developmental Lesson

Lesson Planning: A Definition of Terms

Common Characteristics of Lesson Plans

Sample Lesson Plan Format

Introduction

1. In many of our schools, students learn with much difficulty; they rarely learn as much as intended during or after school situations. In our schools, we do not help students to understand or address their interests. Students do not learn to address their interest and most students do not address their interest or understand how school learning relates to their interests. Students who graduate from our schools might have learned a thing or two from our schools, but not how school learning relate to or help to understand their experiences and/or concerns. Generally, we expect students to independently figure these things out; we expect students to know, independently of whether they have or not been taught, that learning is in their best interest. We encourage students and sometime preach directly to them about how good education/learning is good for them; otherwise we force, trick or cajole them to keep doing as ordered until such time they can come to their senses and they will realize that they have been doing right all along.

2. Many students do not fall for these devices; especially students who understand how learning tasks that they must engage relate to what they want in life and who are in hurry to get there. Students who want to learn quickly and apply what they learn to their concerns or problems often complain about doing much school work and not focusing upon or addressing their interests. Their complaints are often that school learning do not relate to or help to address their concerns. They think that school learning is about doing tasks just to please the adults who simply want the work done, whether or not the tasks are relevant to their goals. Most students feel they perform learning task to please adults; they do not represent a personal advantage in learning tasks and they often look upon learning tasks as tedious and unpleasant. The result is that students often end up not only unable to discover a subject matter that can occupy them, but they often never are able to find a life-time calling or subject matter that they enjoy to do.

Views of interest

Teachers’ views of interest are as diverse as the numbers of teachers that may attempt to define interest. Some teachers believe that learning is about helping students to develop autonomous actions and/or judgments. They believe that helping student to develop interest is about helping students to develop tasks that require no strain or stress. We refer to educators who focus upon helping student develop autonomy and thus allow student to determine what and how they learn as advocate of false interest. On the other hand, there are other teachers who believe that students cannot have a choice in what they learn or how they learn. To these educators, life is too complex to leave in the hands of children; children know very little or nothing about how life is and how they should be prepared for it. They emphasize a need to develop efforts and impose tasks upon students. We refer to educators who focus upon developing students efforts as advocates of efforts. Between these two philosophies lie most other philosophies of other teaching strategies.

Culture-based instruction/learning, for example, is focused upon student interest; it seeks to expound strategies that help students to learn well. Culture-based instruction/learning seeks to explore tendencies a student develops over time in a cultural/social situation. Culture-based instruction substitute tendencies a student develops in response to specific events and occurrences in a social/cultural environment for factors that influence or even determine new tendencies. Culture-based instruction equates student cultural achievements and/or tendencies to grounds for achieving those tendencies and thus in achieving subsequent tendencies. Accordingly, proponents of culture-based instruction want to help students develop tendencies that student can deploy to address future problems and sustain themselves. However, culture-based teaching seeks to explore tendencies on the bases of tendencies developed in the past and in a situation rather than tendencies a student expresses in a given learning situation.

Advocates of efforts

Advocates of efforts believe that students do not have a choice in what students learn or in how students learn. Advocates of efforts believe that students must be trained to accustom to difficult/unpleasant work. They equate educating children to training the children to become accustom to difficult and unpleasant tasks. They impose tasks upon students or force students to accomplish tasks. Advocates of efforts claim that life is full of unpleasant work; therefore, students must learn to do unpleasant work from the unset. According to Dewey (1934), advocates of efforts believe life is not a continual satisfaction of personal interest; that unless one has had previous training in doing unpleasant work, unless habits have been formed of attending to matters simply because they must be attended to, character will break down when one has to face serious matters of life.

A teacher who adopts instructional methods prescribed by advocates of efforts would operate like a strict disciplinarian or teacher. Such a teacher has little or no time for impulses going on in students’ minds. A strict teacher/disciplinarian has work that must be done as preplanned. A teacher using methods prescribed by advocates of efforts will impose tasks upon students; they will come down upon students who fail to obey. They force students to engage tasks whether students see such tasks as or not advantageous. With methods prescribed by advocates of efforts, students have no say in what they learn; students’ contribution is limited to what a teacher can allow. The result, according to John Dewey (1934), is an adult who is mechanical, one who responds to events with predetermined methods because evens must be responded to, and not because one represents a determined or measured advantage in a task. The view represents one extreme end of the philosophy of interest.

Advocates of interest

On the opposite extreme end of the spectrum, we have those who claim to advocate for students interest. Advocates for interest believe that if children do not have choice in the matter about tasks and experiences, they would not be exercising their judgment; they would instead be losing their autonomy. One who engages an uninteresting task does not give full attention to such task. Even when faced with a disciplinarian that could make all students do all assigned tasks, a student who is uninterested in a task may do just enough of the task to keep a disciplinarian away while he secretly devotes his rest attention to matters that are truly important to him/her. Advocate for students interest believe that those on the opposite end of the spectrum intimidate students in order to get students to accomplish tasks. They also believe that with the training of efforts, a student gets self-discipline but in divided attention.

To advocate of interest, efforts to secure student interest in learning may be interpreted as efforts to shield students from unpleasant or difficult tasks. This may include shielding students from facing difficulties and unpleasantness of task. They may sugarcoat unpleasant task to make it agreeable and they attract student attention to such agreeable fringes and prevent student from experiencing the true natures of tasks. Teachers who sugarcoat unpleasant task to make it agreeable to students distract students from experiencing the true meaning of attending to unpleasant work. They prevent students from developing consistent understanding of task; student might be thinking of a task to be one way, only to find that it is another. Dewey (1934) explains that in this view, everything is made amusement; students’ wills are never called into action. The result is an adult who want to do whatever he or she wants. This theory is intellectually as well as morally harmful. Between this and the other philosophy of interest, the truth lies somewhere else.

Interest

These extreme views of interest present interesting objects as external to an interested subject. Educators who hold these extreme views of interest may be referred to as advocates of interest and/or advocates of efforts. Fundamentally, for educators who hold these extreme views of interest, tendencies that one expresses in response to an object of interest are due to natures of external objects. In other words, external object is independent of a subject who may have an interest in it. These extreme views of interest do not lead to ideal content development or instructional delivery methods. The result of holding these extreme views of interest is that in talks about interest, we do not consider what and how much a student who has an interest may be responsible for/in the development of an object of interest. Therefore, we can hardly see or understand how one who chooses to respond to an object also determines a level of attention that he/she may pay to such an object.

Interest is not about allowing students to do what they like; interest is about encouraging students to see advantage in tasks that matter. The theory of interest is that everyone already has a certain level of interest; that, otherwise, one does not respond to any stimulation. Everyone represents instinctive connection between self and others, and one seeks to apprehend or respond to such connection when they arise. One responds to an occurrence and one is said to express an interest in that extent of the attention one pays to an occurrence. If we leave interest at this primitive level, interest or our object of interest does not change itself. The theory of interest therefore asks what must be done in order to help students develop increased tendencies to attend to learning tasks. When properly stated this question becomes how does one help a students to see increased advantage in a learning task. In other words, one expresses interest in a task by paying attention to the object because one sees an advantage in doing so.

Student Interest

John Dewey defines interest as influence of objects upon personal advantage. In analyzing this definition, we find that one who is influenced by an object may manifest one type of two tendencies. When influenced by an object, one seeks personal advantage by clarifying a seen advantage, and one is said to determine such advantage/object. Here, one generates attributes of an object and one is said to express an interest. Also, when influenced by an object, one seeks to secure an advantage determined in an object; one fixes attention upon such an advantage, and one is said to express a desire for such an advantage. In both cases tendencies that one expresses may appear as the same. For example, in both interest and desire one readily displays a readiness to perform related tasks. Both when interest or a desire is in place, and one seeks to clarify or secure an advantage in an object, one display tendencies that help to accomplish tasks. Therefore, one can easily mistake a readiness to perform, when one is seeking to determine an advantage for a readiness to perform when one engages in a process secure an advantage.

In interest, one engages in determining an advantage; here, one’s determined advantage reveals another or leads to a more clarified advantage, and interest is said to be in place. On the other hand, with a readiness to perform, when one has a predetermined advantage, one does not seek to define or determine an advantage; rather, one seeks to secure an advantage and one is said to have a desire. Here, one seeks exclusively to secure a determined advantage; however, a determined advantage is a fixed advantage, and it remains fixed even when other things continue to change. Thus, in a desire, an advantage that one seeks is fixed, beyond further examination. For example, one who wants to solve a Mathematical problem or become a Mathematics teacher will have such a fixed object. One may see one’s effort helping to successfully solve a particular Mathematical problem or in becoming a particular teacher,