Making Student Thinking Visible

Visible Thinking:

It is very difficult to know what's going on inside a student's mind unless pains are taken to promote "visible thinking." (See this topic in How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School.) Visible thinking plays an important role in physics teaching, and is the focus of the white boarding and Socratic questioning involved in the Modeling Method of Instruction. Having students demonstrate via performance what they know is also the foundation of constructivism. Students don't come to class as a "tabula rasa", a blank slate. They bring with them preconceptions. As a result of our teaching, sometimes students develop misconceptions. Discussions, especially student responses to well-prepared teacher questions, can help shed light on what students understand (knowledge and beliefs) and feel (dispositions). Questioning, when properly done, can promote the thought processes most closely associated with inquiry.

By making students' thinking visible (e.g., having them articulate steps during a thought process), it provides the teacher an opportunity to:

• determine what students know, believe, feel
• identify preconceptions and misconceptions
• assess the quality of conceptual understanding
• assess the relationships between key concepts and interaction skills
• identify factual errors
• refine student thinking
• help students reflect on their own thought processes
• provide students opportunities for metacognition and self regulation
• evaluate and improve instruction
• assess the ability of students to transfer learning to new situations

Procedures for Making Student Thinking Visible

There are any number of inquiry-related procedures that can be used to make student thinking visible:

graphic organizers (see right) concept maps discussions inquiry-oriented demonstrations formal/summative assessment: inquiry lab reports papers video productions computer programs group presentations projects essay tests specialized multiple-choice questions informal/formative assessment questioning (as part of formative assessment) computer-assisted intentional learning environments (CSILE) problem-based learning white boarding with Socratic questioning (from the Modeling Method)

Here are fifteen effective techniques for questioning that all teachers should hone and perfect, that are central to the questioning process.

Bloom's Taxonomy and Rhodes' Typology are good sources of question types that can be used to elicit visible thinking. In addition, the intellectual tasks inspired by physics education research (TIPERs, a 60-kB PDF) (also available at http://www.tycphysics.org/TIPERs/tipersdefn.htm) also can be used to promote visible thinking.