1. How would you define or characterize thinking dispositions?

When I first read through the thinking dispositions, I thought to myself: this is a picture of the Think Tank in action! Discovery learning as practiced in the lab, involves active use of thinking disposition attitudes such as, boldness, risk taking, open-mindedness, wondering, problem-finding, exploration of ideas, strategizing, alertness, questioning, and reflection.

For me, the dispositions are a group of productive thinking orientations that can be nurtured, and that can make significant contributions to real life thinking needs. Thinking dispositions have become a tool added to my repertoire for the development of concrete thinking and habits of mind. I use them to help students identify and put a name on parts of productive thinking, or to discuss various elements of challenges that are encountered.

2. As a teacher, what appeals to you about the idea of thinking dispositions?

The objective of the lab has been to identify a series of essential skills, and then design projects and methodologies to develop these skills for students. Lab skills include building and engineering, transfer of learning skills, perception and direct observation, math fact fluency, and fine motor skills. Dispositions support our focus on general thinking skills, including perseverance, critical and creative thinking, or strategic and analytical skills. Dispositions have become a valuable unifying, communication tool for parent educators who work in the lab, allowing them to help students more consistently by putting everyone "on the same page." Dispositions have also helped make connections between the lab and grade level classrooms in the form of Throughlines, as well as becoming prompts for classroom writing assignments.

3. How have your students responded to your inquiry-based approach to cultivating thinking dispositions?

Thinking dispositions have added a new dimension to the inquiry process by structuring more reflective dialog with students while they work on projects. Questioning has helped kids examine where else, other than in the lab, they may have employed or developed a particular disposition. Clip boards in the room record eager responses to target questions such as "What are the action steps you took when things got tough with the project? Where else do things get tough for you, what steps do you take then?"

Students want to put a name on their thinking, they want to understand its abstract and sometimes elusive nature. I love the moments in the lab when a child has said, "I did it!" (for all to hear). They have taken on a challenge, displayed perseverance, and in the process of sorting things out, are getting a picture of what it took to get results.

4. What is the biggest challenge to cultivating students' thinking dispositions in the classroom? In what ways do you address those challenges?

Gaining more time with students in order to better employ the pedagogy, remains a challenge. Students currently visit the lab every other week for forty-five minutes. Optimal would be three times that amount. Working through this issue has set us thinking beyond the lab, resulting in the development of a cart program, and the establishment of the lab as a school resource center and center for parental involvement. Overall, the challenge is bringing new ideas for growth. But also, as the Think Tank is being designed and refined, more lab time seems to surface for students as we go along.

The Think Tank has built-in freedom to pursue different strategies for teaching thinking, which is perhaps why it has been so successful. I feel concerned for grade level classroom teachers and the challenges they face in implementing new teaching strategies such as the thinking dispositions. A significant time demand for them is to manage vast content coverage and fact-oriented standards. I get heated up about this issue, and have strong feelings as to where things might need to go politically to provide teachers the latitude to pursue progressive directions. But classroom teachers will always be jugglers, integrating objectives creatively, finding ways to include and cover everything.

At our school it has helped to first establish a clear focus towards the goals, and then create cluster groupings of faculty to share and explore ideas and concerns. Administration has supported teachers to condense and collapse content areas and pursue thematic instruction. These and other whole school directions have helped teachers better integrate knowledge and understandings, and include more strategies for developing critical and creative thinking. A focus on rubrics has also been helpful.

5. What kind of learning environments foster students' thinking dispositions?

Environments which present problems and situations that inspire a high process rather than product orientation. Kids can then latch on and identify parts of the process while defining elements of dispositions. Also, I think students (especially K-6) think best with a hands-on approach that acts as a medium and catalyst for both their learning and their discussions with educators. Dispositions can be laced throughout experiences via questioning. Students, after visiting the lab and then writing about their challenges, have a rich sense of tangible experiences for pulling abstract thinking into focus. Using disposition-based Throughlines have made terrific prompts for writing about lab experiences.

6. What big questions or puzzles remain for you in regard to cultivating thinking dispositions in the classroom?

The list of questions keeps growing, which is good. Here are a few questions that I'm still working through: What kind of learning is really being established? How can that learning be more consistently achieved through design and implementation? Which disposition questions are most effective? How do children better retain and transfer information, including "testable facts," while integrating dispositions? What dialog helps students most in making connections to the dispositions? What sorts of interactions best encourage growth while remaining open to unknown possibilities? What lab policies and project designs inherently embody dispositions, and processes them, as student works independently and without dialog from the educator?

Read the Think Tank action guide ...

© Jean Sausele Knodt, Kent Gardens Elementary School, Fairfax County Public Schools, Area III Administrative District, 1998.

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