Evaluating the process of introducing a thinking skills programme into the secondary school curriculum

Abstract

The ® rst stage of a long-term, cyclic evaluation of one secondary school's introduction of a cognitive skills development programme into its mainstream curriculum is described. A traditional research design is rejected in favour of a more open-ended, semi-structured framework for evaluation within which aspects of the setting, the plans, the action and initial results are scrutinized. Important issues are raised about what might be considered positive outcomes of cognitive interventions and how these can be achieved. The broader and more long-term aspects of evaluation are also emphasized.

‘French is the Language of Love and Stuff’: Student perceptions of issues related to motivation in learning a foreign language

“…A result which would appear to warrant further investigation is the apparent lack of use of metacognitive strategies in their language learning by students at every level, despite the fact that they appear to recognise the importance of using such strategies and even the fact that the successful language learners felt signi cantly more able to identify the reasons for their successes and failures than did either of the other two groups. This nding re ects that of other studies which reveal the need to build cognitive re ection into all curriculum subject teaching (Burden & Williams, 1998) and the confusions expressed by students receiving mixed messages in this respect from examination oriented syllabi (Burden & Nichols, 2000).…”

Collaborative philosophical enquiry for school children: Cognitive effects at 10–12 years

“…This is not to say that process factors were overlooked, and cognitive measures were triangulated with observations of interactions (reported elsewhere – Topping & Trickey, in press – and see Discussion below). Burden and Nicholls (2000) have argued that process and qualitative measures should take precedence in studies of thinking skills, but in the current project mixed methods were considered to be more appropriate.…”

‘Philosophy for children’: a systematic review

“…However, such research may involve an unrealistic attempt to replicate controllable conditions in complex real life situations such as classrooms-inevitably simultaneously influenced by large numbers of volatile confounding variables. Burden and Nichols (2000) argue that 'traditional pre-post designs are not the most appropriate means of evaluating the impact of curriculum interventions like cognitive education programmes' (p. 294).…”