"Thinking dispositions"

A New Look at What it Means to be a Good Thinker

Shari Tishman
Critical thinking. Higher order thinking. Thinking skills. Do you ever
feel lost in a forest of buzzwords? Terms such as these are popular
nowadays, as a growing number of educational initiatives include the
teaching of thinking as part of their educational goals. It is easy to be
confused about definitions. But broadly, all these terms refer to the same
thing: reflective, high-level thinking processes such as careful decision
making, reasoning, artistic creation, and problem solving.
What does it mean to be competent in these areas of thinking?
Traditionally, good thinking has been defined as a matter of cognitive
ability, or skill. Hence the term, "thinking skills." Certainly, good thinkers
have skills. But they also have more: Motivation, attitude, values, and
habits of mind all play key roles in thinking, and, in large part, it is these
elements that determine whether learners use their thinking skills when it
counts - in diverse areas of their school studies, and in meaningful
contexts in their personal lives.
Researchers in the Cognitive Skills Group at Project Zero have proposed
a new view of what it means to be a good thinker: Good thinkers, we
believe, have the right "thinking dispositions." A thinking disposition a felt
tendency, or leaning, towards a particular pattern of intellectual behavior.
For example, good thinkers tend to be disposed to find and investigate
problems, to probe assumptions, to seek reasons, to be reflective.
Funded by the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur foundation, Patterns of Thinking is a multi-year research project at Project Zero to
investigate such thinking dispositions. At the heart of the investigation is a
conception of seven broad patterns of thinking that are especially central to
high-level thinking and learning (see Table 1). The claim of the project is
bold: In our culture, at this particular moment in history, these thinking
dispositions provide the best leverage on the kinds of thinking and
learning challenges young people face. Efforts to teach thinking ought to
cultivate them.

Research Reveals "the Disposition Effect"

Can you play poker? Do you

play poker regularly? If your
7 Dispositions for Good
answer is yes to the first question
Thinking
and no to the second, you may
have experienced what we call "the
1. The disposition to be broad and
disposition effect" - a gap between
adventurous.
what you have the ability to do
2. The disposition to wonder, to
(play poker) and what you are disidentify problems, to investigate.
posed to do (play poker
frequently). There are countless
3. The
disposition
to
build
explanations and understandings.
abilities we possess but don't use,
and much of the time it presents
4. The disposition to make plans and
no problem. But having an ability
be strategic.
without the disposition to use it
5. The disposition to be intellectually
can be a problem when it interferes
careful and precise.
with learning.
For example, in a recent study
6. The disposition to ask for and
evaluate reasons.
at the Atlantic Middle School in
Quincy,
Massachusetts,
we
7. The disposition to be metacognitive.
investigated 6th graders' causal
reasoning skills, by asking
students to reason about the causes
of complex issues like homelessness. Most students pointed to a single
cause: "People are homeless because they don't have a job," they said, or
"the homeless don't pay their bills so they have to leave home." Yet when
gently pressed to think further about causes, many 6th graders' thinking
deepened considerably. For example, reconsidering the problem, one
student reasoned: "There could be a lot of reasons they're homeless, not
just jobs: like how they feel emotionally, and if they have people in their
family who care for them". In short, many students showed the ability to
engage in high-level reasoning, but not the disposition to do so.
We conducted a similar study at Rochester Memorial Elementary
School, in Rochester, Massachusetts. One aspect of the study probed

different aspects of 5th-graders' creativity, such as their ability to think

imaginatively about decision-making options, and their ability to be
inventive about truth-testing strategies. Again, we discovered a
"disposition effect:" Many students had a good deal of creative ability, but
weren't disposed to fully use their ability unless pressed.
How Thinking Dispositions Work
What causes the "disposition effect" - the gap between what people are
able to do and what they are disposed to do? To answer this question, our
first step has been to try to better understand the basic psychology behind
thinking dispositions. We have identified three psychological components
of dispositions, all of which must be present in order to spark, or activate,
dispositional behavior. They are: (1) sensitivity - the perception of the
appropriateness of a particular behavior; (2) inclination - the felt urge
towards a behavior; and (3) ability - the basic capacity to follow through
with the behavior.
Consider the student who is disposed to look for many causes of a
complex phenomenon such as homelessness. Such a student is sensitive to
opportunities to do so (she recognizes homelessness as a situation that may
have many contributing causes); she feels pulled to explore the various
causes (motivated either by intrinsic or extrinsic factors); and she has
abilities that support her reasoning, for instance the ability to discriminate
between different kinds of causes.
This trio of dispositional components - sensitivity, inclination, and
ability - is present in any kind of dispositional behavior, not just high-level
thinking dispositions. To see how this is so, think about someone you
know who has the disposition to tell jokes. Good joke-tellers are sensitive
to opportunities to tell jokes (pregnant pauses, embarrassing moments),
they feel inclined to tell jokes (just try to suppress them), and they have
well-developed joke-telling skills - great timing, for instance, or colorful
delivery.
Ongoing Research
Of course, identifying the psychological components of thinking
dispositions is only the beginning of understanding them, and the concept
of thinking dispositions raises many difficult questions: Can thinking

dispositions really be taught? If they can, who decides which ones should
be taught? Can thinking dispositions be reliably identified and assessed?
In what ways are they influenced by physiological factors? How do they
compare across cultures? Across genders? Across grade- and age-levels?
Difficult as these questions are, they are crucially important, and their
investigation comprises much of the

agenda of the Patterns of

Thinking research over the
next three years. Through a
blend of empirical research,
theoretical analysis, and
liaisons with scholars in
other fields, Patterns of
Thinking researchers will
continue to study thinking
dispositions. Along the
way, our hope is to be able
to contribute some small
piece to the great puzzle of
what it means to be a good
thinker.
Patterns of Thinking Project
Principal
Investigators:
David Perkins and
Shari Tishman
Funding Agency: The John
T. and Catherine D.
MacArthur Foundation

Thinking Dispositions in the Classroom

In addition to basic research, the Patterns of Thinking project has also sought
practical applications of the idea of
thinking dispositions, and the concept
has found its way into a number of other
projects of the Project Zero Cognitive
Skills group. For example:
In collaboration with South African
educators, members of the Cognitive
Skills group helped to develop a 64lesson "thinking skills" course for nonprivileged South African students. The
course takes a dispositional approach
to cultivating thinking, aiming to
create a classroom environment that
cultivates students' sensitivity to
thinking opportunities and their
inclination
to
pursue
those
opportunities, in addition to providing
direct instruction in thinking skills.
In a new public elementary school in
Hawaii, we have helped teachers
develop and implement a philosophy of
curriculum-development
that
emphasizes the teaching of thinking
dispositions, and that attends to the
cultural forces of the classroom that
support
thinking-dispositional
behavior.
In the context of art education, members of the cognitive skills group have
co-authored supplementary materials
to "Behind the Scenes," a Public
Broadcasting
children's
television
series about how artists make art. The
materials are designed to engage
students in hands-on activities that
encourage thinking dispositions especially related to creativity.