MODELS OF THINKING EDUCATION AND QUADRUPLE THINKING (original) (raw)

Many researches have been carried out into thinking education. In the basis of these studies lie two basic ideas. One of them is to prepare a special program for thinking education and the other one is to embed thinking education into a certain curriculum. Examples for such programs are CoRT (Cognitive Research and Trust), H.O.T.S. (Higher-Order Thinking Skills), Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment (F.I.E.), Philosopy for the Children, Tactics for Thinking, Structure of the Intellect (SOI), The Thinking/Learning (T/L) System and Odyssey of the Mind etc. however, almost none of these models present a proposal for concerning general educational system. In the current study, the similarities and differences between Quadruple Thinking and that other thinking models are discussed. What thinking really means has been a point of discussion for centuries. Transformation of education into an independent science, together with other sciences, made thinking the subject of education. Thinking, as the subject of education, is in the core of the essential topics of pedagogy such as the approaches, theories and philosophy of education, being in the first place, as well as teaching and learning, development, curriculum development, and assessment and evaluation. One of the reasons why education is rather sensitive about thhinking is implicitly related with what John Searle holds " If you cannot say a thought clearly, it means you do not understand it yourself". Therefore, the aims of thinking education is both to say a thought precisely and to understand the thoughts of others, starting with our own thoughts. To understand our own thoughts and the thoughts of others requires the effective application of thinking automatically. Finding out what thinking really means is a mental activity which could solely be grasped by the person himself. For such a mental activity to take place, the person must be ready, and indeed this is also a special effort (Heiddeger, 2004). This mental activity, a special effort, is not perceived by others, it is just special to the person. Also the awareness of one's own mental state and mental processes belong to the person himself. The person lives of two personal historical processes, the first of which is in his and is about what is happening to his body, and the second is the mind and concerns what is going on in the mind. The first one is obvious, while the second is rather private (Ryle, 1963). As can be understood from the statements of Heiddeger and Rylee, thinking is an individual activity. Therefore, any education and training activity on thinking should not only be general so as to teach the individual the act of thinking but also private to make personal awareness visible. It is possible to adopt three different approaches to models of thinking education which have been designed to meet these expectations; put forward thinking training models; specially designed ones, those associated with curricula, and the ones that are linked to a specific topic (Wilson, 2000). It is possible to evaluate the models associated with curricula together with the ones that are linked with a specific topic. These models are discussed in the context of a course or a subject. The specially designed models