1. Developing Thinking
through Dialogue
Robert Fisher
www.teachingthinking.net

2. What is the purpose of
education?
Education …
‘has for its purpose not the imparting
of particular knowledge but the
strengthening of mental faculties’
(Kant)
… to cultivate the mind and develop character?

3. Key principles
• Cognitive challenge (teacher)

• Social construction (teacher-pupil
of learning pupil-pupil)

• Reflecting on learning (pupil)

4. Levels of learning
• Shallow
Processed experience – ‘being told’
What is remembered in the short term
Easy to define, deliver and assess
• Deep
Specific to individual understanding
Is internalised in long term memory
Hard to define, deliver and assess

5. Why teach for thinking?
‘If thinking is how we make sense of
experience then helping our children
to become better thinkers will help
them to get more out of learning
and more out of life.’
Fisher, R. (2008) Teaching Thinking Continuum

6. What are thinking skills?
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence is not an act, but a habit’ (Aristotle)
A thinking skill is:
• a mental process learnt through practice
• how we apply intelligence to a problem
• our capacity to make judgements
What is good thinking?

7. What intelligences should be developed?
linguistic (verbal)
logico-mathematical (mathematical)
naturalist (scientific)
spatial (visual)
musical (musical)
bodily-kinaesthetic (physical)
interpersonal (social)
intrapersonal (metacognitive)
existential (philosophical)
(Gardner 1999) (Fisher 2005)

8. Defensive teaching
What kinds of teaching limit learning?
• Focusing on behaviour not learning
• Ignoring students
• Individualised work with low demand
• Encouraging pupils to be passive
• Limiting the scope of the teaching
• Controlling knowledge

9. What is good teaching?
‘A good teacher makes you think, even
when you don’t want to’ (Tom, aged 10)
‘A good teacher makes what you think
matters’ (Joel, aged 8)

10. What is a person?
How do you differ from a cabbage?
How do persons differ from things?
Persons are:
• social beings
• emotional beings
• rational beings
• creative beings
• active beings
How then should persons be taught?

11. What is creative is about
personalised learning?
Learning is not only about what we can do
but also about who we are (inner purposes):
• self expression
• self worth
• self-knowledge

12. Models of dialogue
• Exploratory talk (Barnes 1976, Mercer 2000)
• Dialogic talk (Alexander 2004)
• Community of enquiry (Lipman 1980, Fisher)

13. How does dialogue differ
from mere conversation?
Dialogic strategies include:
• Effective listening
• Thinking time
• Questioning
• Probing
• Challenging
• Assessing

14. Socratic questions
Socratic questions
• are open-ended and progressive
• move from concrete to abstract
literal  critical  conceptual
• by asking for information or examples
• probing reasons, evidence, implications
• and seeking the meanings of concepts

15. How do we create an
enquiring classroom?
I keep six honest serving men
They taught me all I knew
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who
Rudyard Kipling

16. Learning through rich tasks
Rich learning tasks involve:
• intellectually challenging teaching
• thinking time - personal study in depth
• learning with others – dialogic pairs/groups
• learning linked to several subjects
• learning shared and displayed
• assessing success of learning

17. Assessment for Learning
Teacher/pupil, peer and self assessment
• Questioning sustaining and challenging
• Dialogue listening and responding
• Feedback focusing on learning
• Planning planning next steps
‘I don’t just want to give an answer I want to talk
about it.’ Child aged 11, (Highland LEA project)

18. Reflecting on learning
Review or plenary sessions are most
successful when there include:
• open (or Socratic) questions
• lengthy responses
• reference to ‘big’ ideas
• connections to other learning and to life