Cognition and Learning
There always seems to be a lot of public discussion about how to improve people’s “thinking” skills – and recently, “21st Century Skills” has become a popular term to contrast them to a bunch of facts to be memorized (presumably back in the “old” 20th Century). However, different people seem to have different ideas about what thinking skills are important.
Draw thinking skills from topics on Reasoning, Problem Solving, Comprehension, Reasoning in Different Cultures, Cognitive Development, Successful Intelligence and Motivation and Emotion. Draw general ideas on learning from Learning, (Skill Acquisition, and Grounded Embodied (in addition to specific learning approaches for the different skills).
Based on the material attached to this assignment, propose at least six different kinds of thinking skills (you will find them under several material sections) that you think are important. Specifically:
1. Describe the six different kinds of thinking skills
2. Give at least two examples illustrating each type of thinking skill
3. For each type of thinking skill, describe why you think it is particularly important to master
4. Reference at least two different studies from the course about each
thinking skill
5. Describe how you think people would best learn to master each type
of thinking skill, citing material from the course as support
Your write-up should include an introduction that gives an overview of what you are going to do. The idea is to articulate the thinking skills and integrate with skill learning research to say how you would learn them.
