• Thinking Task Framework
• Jonina
• Teacher Education

For more than two years I have been interested in the Thinking Approach (TA). I was trying to implement it in my own teaching and to understand what actually the TA is. This task is difficult to perform if you stay within your own classroom and have no possibility to look at the teaching-learning process objectively, as an outside observer. Luckily, I had the chance to spend almost a year in observing various TA classrooms and trying to figure out what a TA lesson is and what a TA teacher is like.

Even though TA teachers differ in many respects (for instance, in terms of the subject they teach, age group of students they work with and even type of education they provide – formal or non formal) they all rely on the Thinking Task Framework when building the teaching-learning process with their classes. Since they share the framework, my assumption was that we must observe some typical similar patterns in the process of how their lessons unfold. The Framework must unite the teachers in what they do and how they do it. And the big question I asked myself whether it does.

In order to find an answer to this question, I was observing the lessons of various TA teachers (either by being present physically or watching videos from the lessons). And I discovered that there are similar patterns in how expert (or experienced) teachers transform the steps of the framework into learning situations and manage them in comparison to non expert (non-experienced) teachers. So this short article will present you the main findings I made, namely, those similarities that make expert TA teachers different from less experienced teachers in how they apply the framework. The main purpose of this article is to uncover essential instruction and interaction components that stand behind the Thinking Task Framework, thus helping non expert teachers have a broader view on the process of constructing and conducting a TA lesson.

 

Follow the links below to read the following parts of the article:

1. DATA USED IN THE STUDY
2. SEQUENCE OF INSTRUCTION
3. QUALITY OF THE DIALOGUE
4. LEARNING THE WAYS OF DOING (from Russian, “освоение способов учебной работы”)
5. CONCLUSION