CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Humans, for the most part, are pattern seekers. Sometimes they are playful pattern seekers as when they doodle, work puzzles, or day dream. And sometimes they are purposeful pattern seekers as when they try to get answers to things, plan ahead, or resolve problems. As humans use their pattern seeking capabilities, they come to learn about and understand their surroundings.
Today much of our world is best understood through the sciences. It is natural that this is the case because nature has prepared us to seek patterns in what we see and do, and the patterns we discover enable us to cope with, understand,
appreciate, and predict events in our environment. The scientist, whether she is a biologist, physicist, astronomer, or whatever, is simply a well-practiced pattern seeker. All of us by nature are pattern seekers.
Well-tested research-based programs are designed to prepare children for the scientifically and mathematically complex societies of the 21st century. Such programs are based upon sound, current scientific knowledge about how the brain functions, how humans think and learn, and how this knowledge relates to understandings about our world.
This monograph summarizes that research for educators. First, it explains some of the discoveries science has made about the brain over the last ten years, due in large part to advances in medical technology. Second, it summarizes seven biologically based stages of pattern seeking capabilities that each of us—according to extensive research studies—went through from infancy to adulthood.
CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION
A. The Brain and Thinking
Aside from ourselves, we know of no other organism that can contemplate the outer edges of the universe or the inner workings of the atom. No other creature can imagine the future or reconstruct the past beyond the limits of its own life. How have humans, alone, been able to attain such thinking abilities? What do we, as educators, know about how humans reason? And what is important about that reasoning that must be considered as we look to the future of schooling?
Most people act as though thinking and the brain are synonymous. A fine thinker is often referred to as “brainy.” When people say, “Brains over brawn,” they clearly equate the brain to clever thinking. A “brainless” person is one who lacks intelligence. But in spite of such terminology, the brain and thinking are not synonymous. They are quite distinct. The brain is a physical organ which, at birth, is estimated to contain about 100 billion cells. At birth it is about one-third of its eventual mass. Within two years after birth it will double in size, and over the next 15 years many of its cells will develop up to 600,000 connections between them-selves and other cells (Maranto, 1984). In the past 10 years we have learned much about the physiology of the brain—its electro conductivity, chemistry, and anatomy.
Thinking, however, is the ghost in the machinery. It is something beyond the physiological attributes. Imagine looking at a chess board at midgame. The physical placements of the pieces can be described, but where are the strategies of
offense and defense? Similarly, imagine touring a school and locating the rooms where the teacher and students are. Can you point to the “education” that takes place there? Thinking is to the brain as time is to a watch. The watch has hands and numerals, but where is the time? Time in a watch, strategies in a game, and education in a classroom are processes within physical configurations. And so, too, is thinking within the brain. Neurobiologists may identify one or more factors actively engaged among cells during a thought process, but with the more than 100 billion interactions that are possible within our heads, it is the process of thinking that is of prime importance, not the physiological components.
In the past 10 years, neurobiologists have made significant breakthroughs in seeing what goes on within the brain as it processes information. They are discovering what parts of our brains are used for what kinds of thought through inventive techniques that provide instantaneous, well-localized signals of brain activity. Each technique provides a different view of the brain’s processes.
The EEG (electroencephalogram) and MEG (magneto encephalography) were the earliest techniques developed for observing brain function. They record the brain’s electrical impulses while they are happening.
The EEG produces an image of the brain on a computer screen. An electrode-studded cap is placed on the head of a subject, and the researcher connects a cable from the cap to a computer. The computer records localized brain activity as the subject carries out tasks. The MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) provides detailed views of brain structures.
Recently, EEG and MEG techniques were combined with the MRI technique to construct a computer-generated, three-dimensional picture of the brain from a set of two-dimensional magnetic resonance images. The program is able to describe precisely the boundaries of each cortical area of the brain. This non invasive technique is called functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI).
PET (positron emission tomography) is a brain scan that measures blood flow in the brain. In-creased blood flow indicates increased metabolic activity. Such scans are used to identify which areas of the brain carry out particular tasks. Much of the following information is based upon findings from studies that have used these techniques.
B. Early Brain Development
Soon after conception, brain cells begin to divide and redivide at an astonishing rate. Beginning with just a few cells at the tip of the embryo, as
many as 250,000 are reproduced per minute by the 20th week, and by the time of birth, some 200 billion have been created. The number of brain cells produced is more than any individual needs. Overproduction is nature’s way of ensuring enough cells to handle the development of the numerous complex skills needed for survival. Before birth, the job of the brain cells is to get acquainted with the body that is developing around them. Cells do this by sending out connectors—axons and dendrites—which branch and make connections with other brain cells. About
half of these cells die before birth—many because they fail to connect to some part of the developing body, and others through a pruning process that eliminates flawed neural connections.
During pregnancy, especially around the twentieth week, risk factors such as vitamin deficiency, smoking, alcohol, certain chemicals, or too much heat can prevent proper neural development or cause damage to neurons and their
connections. Brain cells continue to multiply after birth, but the production ceases before the end of the first year of life. After age one, humans never get another brain cell. All the brain cells they will ever need and all they will ever have are in place. The mass of the brain, however, is only about one-third that of the adult brain. The brain becomes bigger after birth because brain cells grow in size and
because the webbing of connections between and among cells increases. New connections increase in number in the brain as a result of experience.
C. The Brain’s Filing System
By birth, the brain has organized itself into more than 40 different functional regions that broadly govern such things as vision, hearing, language, and muscle movement. The brain processes incoming sensory data into and through the functional regions. The processing is done as the sensory data enter through the avenues of the five senses—all that we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. The five senses are the brain’s only way to obtain data about the “outside” world. To enhance the input, the brain constructs motor mechanisms that improve the gathering of information. This enhancement ranges from simple and automatic reflexes to thoughtful and deliberate explorations.
When an event in the environment surprises the viewer, e.g., something is seen that was never seen before or something happens that cannot be explained easily, eyebrows are raised and eyes widen. This simple, automatic facial reflex takes place whenever someone is surprised. Raising the eyebrows is the brain’s way “opening the window” to let more light into the eyes and to increase the range of view. Widening of the eyes allows more visual information to enter the brain.
When something attracts the brain’s attention, the brain may command the arm and hand muscles to reach out and grasp the curious object, to turn it, feel it, and test it in other ways. The reception of these thoughtful and deliberate
exploratory actions is processed into the brain’s mapping systems.
As the perceptual sensory data enter the brain, the data are fragmented and distributed to functional regions according to the general type of data the region records. For example, the non-language, sensory perceptions of the world are categorized in many different places: shapes are stored in one place, color in another; movement, sequence, and emotional state are all stored separately.
The neural processes that record the interaction between the brain and the event constitute a rapid sequence of numerous micro-perceptions input and microphysical actions output that take place almost simultaneously. Each occurs in separate functional regions of the brain and each is comprised of additional subdivisions. Visual input, for example, is segregated within the visual mapping region near the back of the brain into smaller systems that specialize for color, shape, and movement. These subsystems also subdivide. At the molecular level, neurobiologists have found that one set of brain cells recognizes perpendicular lines, another only lines slanted at a one o’clock angle, another at two o’clock, and so on.
As a data storage system, the brain takes countless numbers of images, disassembles them into their parts, and stores the parts in specialized brain
cells. The benefit of this reduction strategy is that one cell can be called upon many times to identify a similar factor, e.g. whether something is horizontal or vertical. This one cell can recognize vertical in diverse objects such as a building, book, or pencil. Each brain cell has the capacity to store fragments of many memories. These memories or characteristics of the world are broken down into their elemental parts—photons of light, molecules of smell, vibrations of sound waves—ready to be called up when a particular network of connections needs to be activated.
As with the storage of non-language information, aspects of language are also stored in various parts of the brain. Auditory, oral, visual reading and writing capacities are stored separately. The names of natural things, such as plants and animals, are recorded in one part of the brain; the names of objects, machines, and other human-made items are stored in another. Nouns are separated from verbs, and phonemes from words.
As the brain files away the perceptual information, it also constructs connections among the cells in the storage areas. The connections provide an organization of the relationships among different storage areas and are activated as systems and subsystems: objects, including their individual characteristics; events, the sequences of movements in time and space; and actions of the learner, what
was done to an object and what happened as a result. An activated system is a construct of a concept, principle, or other idea.
From what neurobiologists have learned, it is evident that there are no pictures stored anywhere in the brain. The brain is not a camera-like device that stores detailed photos of what is seen. There is no such thing as a photographic memory. It is also not a recording device that stores and plays back what it hears. There are only patterns of connections within the brain, as changeable as they are
numerous. When triggered, the connections that have been constructed reassemble the parts into the patterns that make up a memory (a concept, event, etc.)The quality of the reassembly depends upon the quality of the original input.
D. Making Connections
In general, enriched environments increase the number of brain connections. Connections are created when an individual becomes curious about something and is free to explore that curiosity. At such times, brain cells sprout thousands of new connectors—dendritic spines that grow out like tree branches. Any one cell can generate hundreds of thousands of connectors during its lifetime. The brain makes the new connectors available for the processing of sensory data and for incorporating that data into prior knowledge constructions. Enriched environments, varied experiences, and piqued interest around a central topic stimulate the production of connectors, thus allowing for more storage options in response to the experience. Even a slight change for a learner, such as changing to a new seat in the classroom, will cause the brain to generate new dendritic branches and spines as it
attempts to incorporate the new viewpoint and new relationships that the learner experiences among objects and people in the classroom. The brain adapts itself in order to cope with changes it encounters in its environment. New connectors are not necessarily permanent. They gradually become permanent by being revisited—repeating the activity (practice), exploring the activity with some variation (rehearsal), or reflecting on the activity by talking about it. If the connections are not revisited, they may disintegrate and be lost forever. The adage “use it or lose it” applies most certainly to the establishment and retention of connectors within the brain.
The quality of the connections and the extensiveness of the connections within the brain’s systems constitute how well something is understood or how well an individual can perform. Evidence indicates that the more connections you have, the better you are able to solve problems, think clearly, and understand events. The number of connections the brain constructs depends on the individual’s interest in participating in an experience.
Generating the growth of dendrites, the thread-like extensions that grow from neurons (brain cells), is important. When dendrites grow, neurons make more connections to other neurons. When information within a dendritic system is reinforced through practice or rehearsal, the connections gradually become stable, permanent, and usable. Increasing proper connections among the brain’s neurons results in a better functioning brain. These connections result, in part, through inherited growth patterns within the genetic makeup of a person. They also develop in response to stimuli in the environment that the brain encodes as nerve
impulses. The implication here for educators is obvious. Since brains increase dendritic growth as a result of enriching experiences, and since growth is stabilized by practice and rehearsal, the school environment can and should provide such experiences. Doing so will help students retain what they have learned and increase the likelihood of their being able to apply that learning to new situations.
E. Education, Aging, and the Brain
Researchers have found that as people climb the educational ladder, the branching connectors between and among brain cells (dendritic material) dramatically increase. Autopsy studies of brains found that very young children have fewer connectors than school-age children. University graduates who remained mentally active had up to 40 percent more dendritic material than the brains of high school dropouts. The brains of university graduates who led mentally inactive lives had fewer connectors than those of graduates who never stopped being mentally active (Kotulak, 1996, p. 18).
Some studies have shown that whenever the brain is challenged, at any time in life, brain cells sprout new dendrites. If a person is healthy, he or she can learn something new at any age by generating new connectors and integrating them into prior structures. A 70-year-old can learn a new profession if interested in doing so. The ability to learn is possible throughout our lives. A surprise bonus of an active brain that continues to learn is that it may be better protected against some dis-
eases. Scientists have found that educated brains— those with more connectors—better withstand the destructive attacks of Alzheimer’s disease.
The mistaken belief that mental ability declines with age has established an unfortunate stereotype of elderly people. Mental decline is not a fact of aging. Imaging scans show that the cerebral cortex—the thinking part of the brain that controls memory—shrinks by only 10 percent between ages 20 and 70. And the loss of brain cells is modest, occurring only in certain parts of the brain and not throughout. As we age, response time may become slower, but not significantly. It may take longer to remember some things or to solve complex problems, but the power to think remains the same.
However, brain scans show that older people employ different problem solving strategies than do younger ones. Older people more often use the
prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex enables a person to consider numerous aspects of a complex problem at the same time, thus increasing the
likelihood of deriving a satisfactory solution to the problem. It also enables the individual to develop long-term plans and strategies to attain a goal and to adjust the plans to incorporate new contingencies as they arise. These capacities distinguish “older” brains from “younger” brains.
By piecing together research information obtained from anthropologists, biologists, neurobiologists, psychologists, and psychobiologists, we know that learning depends on the use of our physical attributes: how our hands manipulate objects to find out about them, how our head tilts and turns to let our eyes and ears take in information, and how our body shifts and moves through space.
We are not born with our thinking capabilities completely in place; they develop sequentially over time, and through our interactions with objects in the environment. There is a biological foundation for all human thinking.
F. Biological Attributes and Thinking
With a head that swivels and tilts and eyes that perceive color and depth, the human body is built to move about and explore unknown territory. The upright stance frees the forelimbs, and the hands, with their opposable thumbs, can manipulate the environment. These biological attributes enable us to explore our environment, note what happens, and then based on our observations, alter our
understanding of it. There is no separating the intricate relationship of bipedalism, hand manipulation, sensory input, and brain development. L Their interdependency is important to us through-out our lives. In much the same way that young children] observe objects in their environment by looking, touching, listening, tasting, smelling, and throwing them, adults observe objects on the surface of Mars
with remote probes. A TV eye “sees” what it can see. A mechanical hand touches the surface and “feels” the surface. Antennae “listen.” Sensors “smell” the atmosphere. With each of these actions—the youngster’s firsthand, sensory experiences and the adult’s inventive extension of the senses—humans gather knowledge about the universe.
Educators have long praised the hands-on approach to teaching. But in spite of the praise, a visit to most classrooms reveals a different environment in which learning is taking place. Books replace experience very early and are almost the
exclusive way by which students are taught from grades 4 through 12. When not doing assignments in books, children spend time listening to teachers
or responding to their questions. Classrooms are primarily environments in which symbols are manipulated and substituted for experience.
Books are important. We can learn from them. But books can only do this if our experiential foundation is well prepared. To learn geometry, we must have experience in handling geometric forms and comparing them for similarities and differences. To learn about electricity, we must explore relationships among cells, wires, and bulbs. To read a word on a page, we must first have a concept for the word within ourselves.
At one time the particular biological adaptations that enabled humans to generate, hear, and recognize sounds were important for survival. It took a long time for humans to invent ways to convey information using marks as symbols. Humans were not biologically designed for the purpose of reading or writing or for creating art and music. Reading and writing are fortunate extensions of biological attributes that were designed for other purposes (Pinker, 1994).
Expert teachers never forget that it is only by using the senses that students come to learn about the world around them.
BIOLOGICAL STAGES AND THINKING
Compared to other living organisms, humans enter this world quite empty-headed in terms of content. Many species of birds, fish, and other animals are born with brains preprogrammed with information that enables them to survive, gather food, and reproduce their own kind. For example, some migrating birds can travel to locations where they have never been before, which improves their chances for survival. Other animals also behave in instinctual ways that are independent of learning. But the human baby is quite helpless. It must construct its knowledge of the world for itself.
From a biological perspective, not being born with prior knowledge is superb. It strengthens a species’ ability to survive. Humans can reproduce their kind in virtually any environment, and the off spring will learn that environment through observations and interactions with it. Instead of coming into life “prepared” with prior knowledge, we have been endowed with a powerful genetic gift—a set of thinking capabilities that are programmed to appear at intervals, and that are spaced well enough apart so the current capability has time to establish itself. The power of these capabilities is that they allow us to learn how to survive in practically any environment.
These capabilities are like a series of transparent maps superimposed one on another to depict an increasing complexity of surfaces, streets, cities, terrain, and continents. But they are maps without content: the names, terms, and qualities do not come with the maps. The individual’s interactions with the environment gradually fill in the content— first with one map, and then with other
The nature of thinking capabilities and the sequence in which they appear have been well established on two research fronts. The biological basis underlying their appearance is established by periodic increases in brain size (Epstein, 1974), brain weight (Epstein, 1974), cellular growth within the brain (Winick and Ross, 1969), electrical functioning within the brain (Monnier, 1960), head circumference (Eichorn and Bayley, 1962), general brain development (Restak, 1980; Scientific American, September 1992), and evidence of brain reorganizations in roughly two-year cycles (Wright, 1997).
The psychological basis is established through evidence of the individual’s capacity to deal with independent ideas and to relate them in increasing combinations in two- or three-year spurts from about age 3 through 17 (Pascual-Leone, 1970; Case, 1974). It is also established through the individual’s tendency to exhibit the same kinds of behaviors as other individuals within two- to three-year ranges and, as they grow older, to replace each view by a more sophisticated view (Piaget, 1969). Although researchers have provided various descriptions of the unfolding of the thinking phenomenon (Bruner, 1966; Erikson, 1950; Gagne, 1970; Vygotsky, 1974), the sequence in this monograph is de-scribed in terms of classroom usefulness.
Pattern-Seeking Stages of Development
The processes of pattern seeking lie at the very heart of human learning and set humans apart from most primates and other animals. Scientists use the processes whenever they define scientific concepts or develop taxonomies. Each of us uses them frequently, since every word we speak, hear, read, write, or think denotes a group or class of objects or ideas. In an attempt to understand our world, humans have become proficient in these processes, making them the most powerful tools we have for producing and arranging information about our world.
In its behavioral form, pattern seeking is exemplified by the ways through which we make sense of our environment by realizing “what things go together.” In its cognitive form, it is the ways through which we mentally structure the sensory input from our environment. Many psychologists believe that the behavioral and cognitive forms are tightly interwoven because early organizational abilities, such as sorting and grouping, appear to be required before effective conceptualization can take place
It is known that in the early stages of development, children tend to be perceptually oriented and seem to be able to sort objects on the basis of certain predominant characteristics, but not others. For example, in our culture the ability to sort objects on the basis of color is the earliest to appear. By age seven, the ability to sort by shape is (Goldman1963). Sorting by such characteristics as pattern is next, and then size (Johnson 1969). The sorting of objects by the materials of which they are made or by other abstract characteristics, such as molecular structures, develops much later.
It is also known that at early stages, children group objects on the basis of single characteristics. The ability to use two or more discrete characteristics simultaneously as a basis for classifying is a higher level process that most children are not able to perform until about the fourth grade. Thus the ability to group objects by single perceptual characteristics develops early, and then becomes less important in the child’s organizational repertoire. The ability to group by more than one characteristic simultaneously, or to group by abstract characteristics that are relatively autonomous of personal experience, develops later. It should be noted, however, that although early abilities recede into the background, they never disappear completely. They become incorporated with more advanced levels and are not independent of those levels. Some become less useful to the individual as more effective forms of organizing take their place. They are never lost, however, and an individual may sometimes return to basic organizational abilities in order to grapple with a new situation.
Some disagreement still exists about the placement of specific, identified abilities in the developmental sequence of our pattern-seeking abilities. The following ideas represent only the identified abilities for which there is a broad agreement in findings among independent researchers as to the order of development (Piaget, 1964; Kofsky, 1966; Allen, 1967; Hooper and Sipple, 1974; Kroes, 1974; Lowery, 1981a).
Inability to Impose Patterns
Stage 1: Accidental Representation
The way thoughts are structured during the first stage of cognitive development is best revealed through observing what children do. When given objects to play with, the child will explore them one at a time, attracted by their perceptual features. When the child has finished exploring an object, it will be discarded.
The thinking capability at this stage is highly sensory, and actions are imposed on the object one at a time: looking at it and perceiving aspects of color, size, and shape; touching it and sensing texture and firmness; pushing, pulling, or throwing it and noting how it behaves from such actions; tasting it and noting its flavor, firmness, and texture. These experiences provide the fundamental repertoire for future stages.
Biologically, we are given about three years in which to establish the basic repertoire of the environment in which we live. In addition, the brain is designed to encode words easily in our early years. Children will encode, on average, about 10 new words every day between ages two and five (Jackendoff, 1994). Very young children actively and vigorously construct concepts and associate those concepts with words. Even at this early stage, children can be seen deliberately
carrying out inquiry processes that contribute to building the child’s personal repertoire.
From birth until about age three, the child explores objects randomly and indicates no system that suggests an organized, rational plan, although the final arrangement of objects might be a design or might accidentally represent something such as a face or train. For this reason, this stage has been described by researchers as the Stage of Accidental Representations. Children at this stage often create similar arrangements to those shown in Figure 1 and give similar accompanying statements.
Because an arrangement of objects by a child may suggest to an adult a classification on the basis of some attribute (e.g., two yellow objects might be placed next to each other), the child’s verbal justifications must be checked to determine whether or not a classification ability was used (i.e., the two yellow objects may be placed together by accident).
Children at this stage do not arrange objects to represent something. If in the process of arranging the objects, however, the arrangement begins to look like something familiar to the child, the child may name or give an explanation for the arrangement. Thus, this level is distinct from other levels in that the child does not think about imposing patterns upon objects.
Pre-Patterning Abilities
Stage 2: Resemblance Sorting
The second stage of cognitive development begins to unfold at about age three. Now, when the child thinks about objects and acts upon them, she produces pairings on the basis of size, shape, color, or other properties. Her rationale for each pairing is derived from the repertoire she has acquired through previous experiences. From this action, she establishes additional mental constructs about the world and how the objects and events in it are related. All her thinking is characterized by the ability to match two objects together on the basis of one common attribute, or to link two events on the basis of one relationship. This continues to be the dominant way in which she thinks and solves problems until about age six (Kofsky, 1966; Allen, 1967; Lowery, 1981a).
This stage of ability is characterized by the child’s ability to compare one action with another, or to pair objects on the basis of one property such as color, shape, or size. The thought is carried out in advance of doing the pairing.
Without prior instruction, children at this stage can be seen pairing objects in one-to-one correspondences because the objects resemble each other. The pairings appear as groups, piles, or chains of objects that allow the child to make basic comparisons of single attributes.
Fig. 2. EXAMPLES OF THINKING: STAGE 2
Whenever a student places more than two objects in a group, the placement is usually accomplished by a logic that involves a series of successive pairings. The youngster’s explanation usually goes something like this: “I put this round one with this round one (a). Then I put this round one with this set of round ones (b).”
Fig. 3. EXAMPLES OF THINKING: STAGE 2
To accomplish the second step, the child mentally combines the first two into a single concept, then adds the additional piece to it as if making a one-to-one match. This collapsing of quantities (e.g., 2 yellow objects when paired become 1 set) is important, for later it enables the child to deal with larger quantities of objects. The collapsing of quantities into smaller numbers enables the human brain to deal with greater quantities of objects or events within its environment.
Although children can put all matching objects together, they do not do so by conceptualizing the “match” before moving the objects. Instead, they move the objects by trial and error, then afterwards may recognize the concept.
Children at this stage do not put together all the objects that belong together without going through a sequence of steps. And although children can recognize several different properties, they do not yet use them in combinations (i.e., multiple properties) at the same time.
Card games that children enjoy and have success with at this stage are Slap Jack, Concentration, and the newer variations of the traditional Old Maid card game
Stage 3: Consistent and Exhaustive Sorting
The next stage of cognitive development begins at about age six and is established for most children by age eight (Lovell and others, 1962; Smedslund,1964; Bruner and Kenney, 1966).Arrangements made by a child will use up (exhaust) all the pieces in a set. When grouping objects, the child will give a rule that is logical (consistent) for all the objects within the set. For example, if the child puts all the blue objects together from the array of objects, the child will continue to sort the yellows, reds, and other colors into groups and say, “I’ve grouped all of these by their colors.”
The sorting ability at this stage is characterized by the child’s grouping of all objects in a set on the basis of one common attribute.
Fig. 4. EXAMPLES OF THINKING: STAGE 3
If earlier experiences have been rich, children at this stage have acquired a broad repertoire of possible properties that make up objects. They can sort objects to the extent of that repertoire. Each sorting, however, is always on the basis of one property, because children cannot yet men-tally combine more than one property at a time. Evidence of this stage appears in children’s creative writing, where each adjective used to describe something is placed in its own sentence (“It is an old house. It is a brown house. It is an empty house.”) or is chained together with connectors (“It is an old and brown and empty house.”). Children in transition from the previous stage will often mix their logic for groupings as shown below.
Fig. 5. EXAMPLES OF THINKING: STAGE 3
A card game that children readily learn and play successfully at this stage is Fish, a game where sets are collected (all four Aces, all four 7s, etc.). A child at this stage is often frustrated when playing with a child at the previous level who only saves two cards in each set.
True Patterning Abilities
Stage 4: Multiple Membership Classifying
When children exhibit thinking that indicates they can mentally combine more than one idea at a time, they have entered Stage 4 of cognitive develop-ment. For most children, this takes place at about age eight and continues to be the dominant way the child thinks until about age eleven (Inhelder and Piaget, 1964; Vernon, 1965).At this stage, the student can classify an object into more than one category at the same time or into one category based on two or more simultaneous properties.
Fig. 6. EXAMPLES OF THINKING: STAGE 4
The student realizes the simultaneity of proper-ties inherent in objects, that is, an object is both brown and square at the same time rather than being brown and then being square. Arrangements of objects and ideas at this stage of thinking are complex.
Although younger children can produce results that appear to exemplify this stage, the manner by which they attain them is quite different. For example, the younger child might first sort objects by their colors, then by a desired shape. The older child will mentally select the “correct” object by both properties before moving it.
A card game that students begin to play well at this stage is Gin Rummy, a game in which sets (all the 3s, all the Jacks, etc.) or runs (three or more cards in sequence in a suit) can be saved simultaneously. A student at this stage will consistently win over a student at the previous stage who can save only one possibility at a time—either the run or the set, but not both.
Stage 5: Inclusive Classifying
Thinking about the relationships among groups of objects and a superordinate conception of them are indicators of this stage of development. It appears at about age 11. Such thinking realizes that if one collection of objects is included in another, then all the objects in the smaller grouping are but a
part of the larger. Conversely, a part of the larger class contains all of the smaller. There is recognition that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts
and that an example to represent the whole does not exist.
One characteristic of this stage of thinking is the emergence of deductive reasoning, which allows students to logically make inferences between the more general and the less general:
All women are mortal.
All queens are women.
Thus, all queens are mortal.
Given the opportunity, the student can learn to recognize logical relationships between larger and smaller classes.
The patterning ability of the student at this stage is characterized by the inclusion of one or more classes of objects within a superordinate class of objects. The student recognizes that the whole (larger class) is equal to the sum of its parts (the subclasses) and that there is a logical relationship between the larger and smaller classes. For example, the student realizes that all whales are mammals but that not all mammals are whales.
It is at this stage that students can fully understand that they live in a particular city and a particular state at the same time, and that one is superordinate to the other.
Flexibility in Patterning Abilities
Stage 6: Horizontal Repatterning
As the next stage unfolds, at about age 14 (Lawson and Renner, 1975; Lowery, 1981b), the student becomes more flexible in her thinking. An individual at this stage can classify objects by one or more attributes, then reclassify them in numerous different ways, realizing that each way is possible at the same time and that the choice for an arrangement depends upon one’s purpose.
For example, if an individual is given a set of books with the identifying characteristics of size (number of pages), shape, color, and content, the individual realizes that the books can be organized on the basis of:
1. Size; shape; color; content;
2. Size and shape; size and color; size and content;
shape and color; shape and content; color and content;
3. Size, shape, and color; size, shape, and content;
shape, color, and content; and
4. Size, shape, color, and content.
Given the goal of locating information, the individual selects only the content as the organizing attribute because the other attributes are not useful in achieving the goal. Given a different goal, such as the determination of the ratio of books with fewer than 100 pages to those with more than 100 pages, the individual reclassifies the books for a different attribute to achieve that goal.
Stage 7: Hierarchical Repatterning
When the seventh stage appears at about age 16 (Karplus and Karplus, 1972; Lowery, 1981a; Lowery, 1981b), the student is able to develop a framework based on a logical rationale about the relationships among the objects or ideas, while at the same time realizing that the arrangement is one of many possible ones that eventually may be changed based on fresh insights.
This stage is characterized by an individual’s ability to classify and reclassify objects or ideas into hierarchies of increasingly related or inclusive classes. At this stage of ability, a content expertise is necessary. An individual can develop a theoretical framework based upon a logical rationale concerning the relationships among the objects or ideas comprising the framework. At the same time, the student realizes that the arrangement is tentative, one of many possible arrangements that may be hanged upon fresh insights. The patterning that the human mind is capable of doing at this stage is complex and is expressed in many different ways. The patterns created exemplify the highest order of
flexible thinking.
Educational Implications
The notion of stages is more than the sequential progression of thinking development. It includes the patterning of responses throughout the sequence and the time periods necessary for consolidating each capability. Researchers have found that all humans progress through the seven biologically based stages described here (Inhelder and Piaget, 1964; Kofsky, 1966; Allen, 1967; Hooper and Sipple, 1974; Kroes, 1974; Cowan, 1978). This developmental learning sequence is common to all cultures (Bruner and others, 1956; Price Williams, 1962; Lovell and others, 1962; Schmidt and Nzimande, 1970; Wei and others, 1971; Lowery and Allen, 1978; Cowan, 1978). As learners move through the stages, they integrate all learnings acquired during prior stages, including behaviors, concepts, and skills. It also involves the gradual integration of all the prior levels, and the gradual unification of behaviors, concepts, and skills.
The result is a broad structural network of interrelated capabilities appearing, not all at once, but within a fairly narrowly defined period followed by plateau of several years. For thinking to develop properly; a very long childhood is necessary-one in which the youngster is free from having to carry out survival activities until all the stages are in place. This is why humans have a longer, biologically determined childhood than any other animal on earth. Pierce (1977) said it this way:
Although at any stage of development, nature is preparing us for the next stage, the beauty of the system is that we are conscious of none of this. Ideally, we must fully accept and exist within our developmental stage and respond fully to its content and possibilities. This means that every stage is complete and perfect within itself. The three-year-old is not an incomplete five-year-old; the child is not an incomplete adult. Never are we simply on our way; always we have arrived. Everything is preparatory to something else that is in formation.
The importance of this biological basis for the development of thinking is too often overlooked by educators. The periodic rapid increases in brain growth (perhaps the establishment of cellular networking) coupled with the appearance of new, content-free thinking capabilities (that overlay earlier capabilities containing content) are followed by plateaus (time periods) that allow new capabilities to become integrated, used, and made functional. Unfortunately, the organization of curriculum and teaching in most American schools and the design of commercial textbooks do not match the thinking capabilities of learners. Many topics are introduced at a stage before students can comprehend them. Content is not arranged so it can be learned and built upon over a period of years.
Most teachers are familiar with and trained in the vertical sequencing of content. Skills and concepts constantly increase in complexity as student move through the grades. Curriculum expectations for a student’s performance are based on the indices of school grade, chronological age, or achievement scores rather than upon cognitive development.
In the competitive social context of schools, educators try to accelerate the stages of development through school intervention by moving advanced topics and skills into earlier grades (Furth, 1977). They act as if the distance from childhood to intellectual adulthood is measured only in terms of quantity-as students grow older, they acquire more experience, greater information, and broader knowledge. This is an incomplete view of intellectual growth. The most significant differences between youngsters and adults rest in the nature and quality of their understanding. As youngsters develop, they pass through ways of thinking, each representing a different organization of experience, information, and knowledge, and each leading to a very different view of the world.
In an educational system that matches content inappropriately to student capabilities, many students progressively lose confidence in their ability to learn what has been taught, and eventually resort to memorizing what is expected of them rather than comprehending what is to be learned(Collins, 1974; Covington and Berry, 1976). The reasons for this are highly complex, but two aspects related to the biology of thinking seem clear and proven:
1. The potential for success diminishes in relation to the degree of mismatch between content and thinking capability during a plateau period.
2. As personal evaluation becomes official evaluation in formal schooling, the mistakes and errors that are a natural part of learning become misinterpreted as failures. As a consequence, students become motivated to work for extrinsic, symbolic rewards such as gold stars and grades, or to please adults, rather than for the intrinsic excitement of exploration and learning.
When cognitively mismatched content is accompanied by external expectations and rewards, teachers and schools unwittingly set unrealistic standards for many students. Over time, students are likely to lose confidence and develop a sense of failure. The result may contribute to students experiencing developmental dysfunction, in which case their movement through the learning stages either slows down or stops entirely. Often such students’ academic work is good in some areas and extremely poor in others. This is referred to by psychologists as asynchrony (Cowan, 1978).
It is important that curriculum and instruction reflect what is known about the biological basis for thinking. Students perform best in a horizontal curriculum, which challenges them to use a particular stage of thinking with different materials at various levels of abstraction. This model allows students at an identified stage of development to explore many experiences within that stage. Teachers do not compare a student’s progress with that of other students. Rather, they select worthwhile experiences appropriate to each child’s developmental stage, organize them for meaningful interpretation, and orchestrate them to provoke the student’s thinking. Numerous researchers have helped to validate this model in the sciences (Askham, 1972; Loggins, 1972; Lowery and Allen, 1978) and in mathematics (Ginsburg, 1977; Langbort, 1982; Rupley, 1981).
The essence of this approach is derived from the biological basis for thinking and learning, which shows that the thinking capabilities are independent of the objects involved in a given task. Students experience small, sequential steps of understanding through an inexhaustible set of possible experiences. For example, a teacher might design sorting task to challenge a student who is at or beyond Thinking Stage 2 (resemblance sorting). The teacher could ask the student to find from an array of marbles. The activity can be repeated using size as the feature for pairing two marbles. The activity can also be done with other objects using colors or other physical properties. In each variation, the thinking capability required remains the same-pairing two objects on the basis of a single property. Studies show that when instructed in this way, students’ thinking capabilities become more proficient and transfer more easily to new tasks.
Teachers can also use the horizontal curriculum approach to extend students’ thinking into higher levels of abstraction without requiring a higher stage of thinking. For example, if a student who is at or beyond Thinking Stage 3 (consistent and exhaustive sorting) can group all objects within a set so that they logically belong together, the action is considered to be firsthand or concrete (a). The action involves manipulations of real objects and not abstractions of reality. One cannot say enough about the value of firsthand experiences. A multiplicity of our five senses, the only avenues into the brain, are activated through firsthand experiences. The brain receives and stores, in effect, a record of the neural activity in the sensory and motor systems from each sense when an individual interacts with the environment. Each record is a pattern of connections among neurons that store the sensory data, patterns that can be reactivated to recreate the component parts of the experience at a later time.
The same student is also be able to impose the same thinking (consistent and exhaustive sorting) on pictorial representation of reality without having to be at a more advanced stage. Pictorial representations are considered to be one step removed from reality because they substitute for the reality (b). Fewer of our five senses are utilized in the study of representations. The use of representations in teaching has great value. A representation of planets in motion provides a way to look at the relationships among the objects within our solar system. Running water through earth materials in a stream table exemplifies the cause and effect relationships that create landforms.
The power of representational instruction is that it can simplify complex ideas (as with illustrations) and truncate space and time (as with simulations). Sometimes representational instruction is important to precede firsthand experiences. Experience with a stream table enables students to better interpret certain landforms in the area where they live. Experiences with modeling circuitry provides prior knowledge for working with electrical circuits. Experiences with building a model of a human skeleton enables the learner to better construct the collection of bones in owl pellets or interpret the arrangement of bones found in an archaeological dig.
Sometimes firsthand experiences are important to precede representational experiences. Various direct studies of plants and animals, rocks and minerals, and balance and motion enhance understandings of videotapes and simulations, and other representations encountered after the studies. Some examples include the showing of plants and animals in more distant natural habitats, simulations of how earth materials are transformed into different forms, and animations of how objects move and fall.
Again, without having to be at a more advanced stage, this same student has the potential to successfully carry out the same thinking on symbols or abstractions that are several steps away from reality (c). For symbols to carry meaning, the brain must be able to interpret the symbol in terms of prior knowledge. If there is no match between the brain’s storage and the symbol, then the symbol cannot be interpreted. The great value to reading books, whether narrative, technical, or expository, is that the words (symbols) are used to take a reader’s prior knowledge and rearrange it in fresh ways. What is learned from books is, essentially, rearrangements of stored knowledge. The arrangements establish new insights, fresh ideas, and conceptual frames through analogies and metaphors that the reader had not thought about previously.
Experiences designed to make use of thinking capabilities may provide significant cognitive and affective benefits by allowing students to perform progressively challenging tasks that are within the realm of potential success. On the other hand, the accelerated and other mismatched vertical schemes may be inviting failure and eroding self-worth.
Our biological heritage provides us with a sequence of thinking capabilities. Originally designed to enhance our chances for survival, the interplay between thinking and actions has brought about understandings about the world that transcend the immediacy of survival. As humans, we have the leisure to fantasize and contemplate. We create through art, music, and architecture; we imagine and communicate through books. We explore frontiers that are beyond the tangible and experiential. Educators must understand the heritage in order to appropriately select and sequence worthwhile experiences for students and to enhance their ability to think well. An understanding of the biological basis for thinking can lead to the conceptualization and implementation of a school curriculum that is far more responsive to the realities of how humans learn and to the intellectual differences among students at all grade levels, from early childhood through adolescence.
CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION
Humans, for the most part, are pattern seekers. As humans use their pattern seeking capabilities, they come to learn about and understand their surroundings. People think and learn something by using the brain in their head. Most people act as though thinking and the brain are synonymous. But in spite of such terminology, the brain and thinking are not synonymous. They are quite distinct. The brain is a physical organ which, at birth, is estimated to contain about 100 billion cells. Thinking is something beyond the physiological attributes. By piecing together research information obtained from researchers, we know that learning depends on the use of our physical attributes through the five senses – all that we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. We are not born with our thinking capabilities completely in place; they develop sequentially over time, and through our interactions with objects in the environment. There is a biological foundation for all human thinking.
There are seven biologically based stages of pattern seeking capabilities that each of us – according to extensive research studies – went through from infancy to adulthood: (1) accidental representation, (2) resemblance sorting, (3) consistent and exhaustive sorting, (4) multiple membership classifying, (5) inclusive classifying, (6) horizontal repatterning, (7) hierarchical repatterning.
It is important that curriculum and instruction reflect what is known about the biological basis for thinking. Students perform best in a horizontal curriculum, which challenges them to use a particular stage of thinking with different materials at various levels of abstraction. The essence of this approach is derived from the biological basis for thinking and learning, which shows that the thinking capabilities are independent of the objects involved in a given task.
REFERENCES
Lowery, Lawrence F. The Biological Basis for Thinking in Costa, Arthur L., 1985, Developing Minds A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, Virginia.
Lowery, Lawrence F., 1998, The Biological Basis of Thinking and Learning, The Regents of the University of California, Berkeley.
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