{"id":4523,"date":"2021-03-12T13:55:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T18:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/?p=4523"},"modified":"2021-03-12T13:56:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T18:56:08","slug":"making-thinking-visible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/making-thinking-visible\/","title":{"rendered":"Making thinking visible"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Making thinking visible<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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When considering active learning, I find the work of Ron Ritchhart and his colleagues at Harvard\u2019s <\/span>Project Zero<\/span><\/a> most helpful. Richhart et al. (2011) designed simple, active learning strategies to be woven into classroom practice to scaffold thinking and make it visible.<\/span><\/p>

What I appreciate about framing active learning as <\/span>making thinking visible<\/span><\/i>, is that it assumes competence\u2014we start from the premise that students are thinking. From this premise we invite participation in active learning strategies (or \u201cthinking routines\u201d) to make thinking visible to oneself and others. Encouraging students to make thinking visible is inherently an active process, rather than a passive one of absorbing content.<\/span><\/p>

In many classroom settings, the focus is on completion of work and assignments rather than a true development of understanding. The opposite is also true in some classrooms termed \u201cexperiential or inquiry-based\u201d where students are provided with lots of activities; often the activity is simply a more palatable form of practice (such as playing <\/span>Jeopardy<\/span><\/i> for test review). In active learning, the educator must be intentional about the types of thinking she wishes to make visible so that an accurate assessment of how students understand becomes clear, providing evidence of insight as well as misconception.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Making thinking visible provides us with the information we need to plan opportunities to extend thinking and engage with new ideas and concepts. Ritchhart et al. (2011) share twenty-one active learning strategies to support three types of thinking:<\/span><\/p>