Faculty of Education - Theses

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Type: Masters Research thesis × Subject: Philosophy × Subject: Thought and thinking × Start date: 2000 × End date: 2008 ×

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    Multidimensional thinking
    Prior, Selena ( 2008)
    Thinking permeates our lives. Yet it remains mostly invisible and difficult to describe what we mean by it. This thesis clarifies the main schools of thought on thinking in education and proposes a framework which accurately describes the experience of thinking. As educators, our understanding of thinking influences not only the way we teach it but also how we assess and evaluate it. A disparate definition of thinking means disparate outcomes both in the context of education and the wider society. This thesis provides a clearer way forward by describing thinking as Multidimensional, consisting of three dimensions (critical, creative and positive affective) and one meta-dimension (metacognitive thinking). Extracts from idea centred dialogues will be analysed to illustrate Multidimensional thinking. The Community of Inquiry will be proposed as the ideal environment for the development of Multidimensional thinking because it makes thinking visible. Understanding thinking as Multidimensional is just as complex as conceiving of thinking in a critical thinking framework but it is far more accurate in describing the experience of thinking. The Multidimensional thinking framework encourages changes in teacher pedagogy and the thinking oriented curriculum.
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    Literacy, thinking and engagement in a middle years classroom community of philosophical inquiry: a reflection on practice
    Harvey, Gordon P. ( 2006)
    I present the introduction and concluding chapter in the first person in an ontological acknowledgement of self as one who practised my profession and reformed my practice, and who has reflected on my practice as a teacher, as a researcher, and as teacher-researcher. I wrote the other chapters in the formal language of the third person to assist me in developing some degree of objectivity about my practice; it served as a constant reminder to me that I was writing about something that could be considered, to some degree, as other than myself. I was investigating a teacher's practice, my past practice, and as such I strove for a non-egocentric assessment, yet acknowledge that it was my practice at a unique time in my career, a period through which my practice has now grown. This reflection on- practice was not easy, either intellectually or emotionally, and I needed to constantly remind myself that I could be simultaneously a merciless critic, and an empathic one. I moved from the role of teacher to researcher and into teacher-researcher as the moment required and used the third person to present my experience from these perspectives as seemed most appropriate and for presenting the narrative elements of the lived moment. I concluded by uniting those three perspectives into the one, whole self and so wrote the conclusion in the first person.