Should Tutors Develop a Higher Order of Thinking?

Private tutors have huge influence in terms of helping their students develop, shape and cultivate their thought processes – an enviable position indeed.

Tutors have the latitude to encourage their learners to explore various solutions and to explore their learning in creative ways, options which are not always afforded to their counterparts in the employ of the Department of Basic Education (DBE), who follow its prescribed curriculum.

These teachers, who operate within the bounds of the public-school system and, possibly, tutor after school hours and over weekends, will experience growing frustration at the demands placed on them by a heavily-loaded curriculum, which doesn’t allow much time for critical-thinking approaches. Teachers very often find themselves teaching to the test, which leaves very little scope for them to assess higher order thinking skills.

Thus, the encouragement of critical thinking is left for a time spent outside of the classroom.

There’s not a lot wrong with that, because human beings activate their thought processes long before they enter the public-school system.

Nevertheless, there is a disconnect between the learner acquiring knowledge and, then, spending time thinking about it. This may lead to learners not attaining the academic heights that they could, if they had been granted the opportunity to make connections between subjects and various topics.

At this point, enter the private tutor!

Tutors fill the gap between the acquisition of knowledge and the understanding of concepts.

Where the link between academic subjects is missing, say between science and maths, tutors are the individuals who will point out the corresponding nature of these subjects or disciplines.

The question arises: how far should the tutor go when he or she wishes to assess higher order thinking skills which would lead a learner to understand, summarise and classify what he or she has been taught?

Alternatively, would the student be in a better position if the tutor were to restate school lessons, as opposed to making use of open-ended questions and instructional strategies which will invite the student to think?

How far does a tutor go, in terms of assessing higher order thinking skills, without stepping beyond the boundaries of what he or she has been employed to do?

This can be a prickly issue. Let’s have a look at all the aspects that make up higher-order thinking skills before we present our thoughts on the matter.

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Teaching Victor: The Back Story

Victor of Aveyron (c. 1788 – 1828) was a feral child found, around the age of 9, in the woods of the Aveyron region after living in the wild for a good many years. The news that a wild child had been taken captive in France rocked the academic and medical communities.

At first, no-one considered the child as someone who needed to be fostered; their focus was to validate the Noble Savage theory which relates to an "outsider" who has not been influenced by civilisation, and who should therefore symbolise humanity’s innate goodness.

The young child, Victor, who has entirely missed out on parental nurturing and early childhood education and whose existence had revolved around keeping fed and safe, failed to perform and or co-operate as expected.

The clinical specialists – who did not employ the best instructional design – had placed all hopes of proving their Noble Savage theory on this ‘wild child’.

When the hypothesis was not proven, they shipped Victor off to Paris to be placed in an institution. However, a clinician, Dr Itard, accepted the challenge to work with the child everyone else considered incapable of learning.

He first spent quite a great deal of time teaching the boy social norms. It did take quite a long time to impart the concept of empathy. Once Vincent had mastered these concepts, Dr Itard decided to teach him how to speak, since the boy’s behaviour was close to conforming with what was expected of him.

When all his pedagogical skill and best efforts were unsuccessful, he turned his back on the child, once again, abandoning him.

The one thing that the above events show is: how much is too much!

Although Victor may have desired to please his mentor – not so much to learn – he simply did not possess the psychomotor development needed to be able to speak after having been non-verbal for such an extended period of time.

Dr Itard’s critics claim that, had he made use of alternative methods of student engagement – for instance, if he had sought to teach the child sign language – he may have succeeded in getting him to communicate.

The use of music may also have been successful, since Victor presented a solid affective leaning.

Victor’s story, not only makes a strong case for differentiation in education, but also powerfully supports the validity of Bloom's Taxonomy: that there exist three very distinct domains educational staff need to address to ensure that students can achieve.

It, further, underlines the significance of staff development at schools, so that educators can recognise and meet learners’ needs.

Finally, it also signals a note of caution to any tutors, who may be pushing their students in the direction of independent thought in a way they are not ready for yet.

Academic Learning  and Higher Order Thinking

Higher order thinking is composed of two equal components: problem-solving and critical thinking.

To a certain extent, report writing is one of the activities for higher order thinking skills. It requires that a learner takes in information, analyses it and then draws conclusions from it.

While report writing or essay writing does provide learners with the opportunity to engage in critical thinking and to draw conclusions, the chances to critically consider other school subjects are slight.

Assessing higher order thinking skills is actually quite important, especially since many have the mistaken notion that it is all about being critical about whatever information is being examined.

On the contrary, critical thinking embraces the suspension of your personal biases; it expects an impartial, fair-minded approach to the topic at hand, as well as the capacity to discern fact from fiction.

Developing skills such as these demands a fair amount of mental agility and time.

In South Africa’s crowded classrooms, the latter is rather in short supply and the former is a varied proposition, given the fact that not all learners have the same level of intellectual aptitude.

In terms of problem-solving, teaching strategies also fall short of the mark.

This, again, is not necessarily, the fault of hard-working and dedicated teachers.

The demands of the current curriculum leave very little time for educators to plan activities for higher order thinking skills, including problem-solving.

Tutors often see the results of this. Because learners’ critical skills have not been developed, they battle to apply higher-order thinking outside of the formal educational setting.

How Can Tutors Encourage Higher Level Thinking

Neither teachers nor tutors entered the field of education to become famous or rich. Rather, their motivation was to impart knowledge because they had a love of learning and passing that on to the next generation.

Their paths diverge where the tutor has a greater opportunity to expose learners to activities which demand problem-solving and higher-order thinking, unencumbered by the demands of the curriculum.

To improve learners’ learning capacities and determine their readiness for higher-order thinking, one of the best strategies a private tutor can employ is to conduct a formative assessment.

Your first interview will, no doubt, seek to get an overview of your learners’ overall level of learning skills. In subsequent encounters, your regular evaluation of their cognitive abilities will point to whether they are ready to progress to more complicated concept formation.

When tutors deliver academic support, they will have to apply some educational psychology:

• ‘Learning’ has to be defined: knowledge is not purely acquired via rote learning; making sense of things and understanding concepts are also very important.
• Lessons must be relevant: it is an important step to cultivate an interest in the topic at hand; a master teacher reveals the inter-relatedness of the subject matter and the learner.
• Learning must be reinforced: the tutor should try to find at least three ways to utilise the new information, preferably by using various other learning activities.

What happens when you make use of a number of learning activities and strategies and the learner still doesn’t comprehend?

Pushing for a successful result would be where the real danger lies. As you may have experienced, it is not conducive to push beyond that point, lest you impact negatively on the learner’s confidence and interest in learning.

You would do well to revise your lesson planning so that it includes activities which are more learner-centred ... more examples of problem-solving, as a component of higher-order thinking can be included.

Higher-Level Thinking Questions

It is, of course, expected of a tutor to oversee writing assignments and help them prepare a learner for a maths assessment.

Generally speaking, no parent approaches a tutor and asks them to teach their child to think. Tutors, fundamentally, provide a learning service.

This service will include active learning, project-based learning and activities which will promote metacognition, which is understanding one’s own thinking.

The knowledge of content can only benefit a learner to a certain degree. How he or she interacts and utilises that knowledge is crucial to his or her success. What good is a mechanic who cannot fix an engine or a psychologist/ psychiatrist who cannot appropriately advise a patient?

Thus, the tutor is in an extremely advantageous position to guide his or her students through the area of higher-thinking and problem-solving. The goal should always be to help shape thinking human beings, but not to the point where they are scared away from learning.

For the tutor, it is all-important to know what to push, how far to push and when to push. This is as essential to the professional development of the tutor as it integral to the development of the student!