LEARNING TO THINK

Thinking is so natural that we never stop to think about it.

Learning to think focuses on the development of students’ critical thinking skills and
habits of mind, although the idea that all students should learn how to think critically is
a relatively new one.

Aptitudes, styles and skills.

An aptitudes is an innate inborn ability or capacity to learn to do a certain kind of work.
Aptitudes may be physical or mental. Many of them have been identified and are
testable.
Skills, abilities, and aptitudes are similarly related but distinct, descriptions of what a
person can do. Skills are a backward looking description. Skills describe what a person
has learned to do in the past. Abilities are a present description. Abilities describe what
a person can do now. Aptitudes are a forward looking description. Aptitudes describe
what a person has the ability to do in the future. They describe what a person can learn
to do.
Aptitude is the potential ability to do something. It is what we are naturally good at.
Besides, Sternberg introduced thinking styles as a preference in the use of one’s
abilities; Styles of thinking concerns the use of intelligence.
Just as there are three functions of government, legislature, executive and judiciary,
there are three functions of mental self-government.:
The legislative function of the mind is concerned with creating, formulating, imagining,
and planning.
The executive function is concerned with implementing and with doing.
The judicial function is concerned with judging, evaluating, and comparing

Just as there are four forms of government, monarchic, hierarchic, oligarchic and
anarchic, there are four parallel forms of mental self-government.

- The monarchic form is characterized by a preference for tasks and situations

that allows focusing on one thing or aspect at a time and staying with that
aspect until it is completed.

- The hierarchic form involves setting multiple goals, each of which have a
different priority.

- The oligarchic form allows for multiple goals, all of which are equally
important.

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 - The anarchic form is characterized by a preference for activities that lend
themselves to great (sometimes too great) flexibility of approaches and to
trying almost anything.

The scope of mental self-government can be either internal or external. On the one
hand, the internal style refers to a preference for projects, tasks, or events that allow one
to work independently from others. On the other hand, the external style refers to a
preference for activities that allow working and interacting with others at different
stages of progress.

So there are three thinking styles and it is necessary to become aware of which style or
styles and it is necessary to become aware of which style or styles you prefer although
they can change in the time.

Legislative: is that involving people that like to do things on their own way, º
making their own rules.
Executive: we can find it in implementers people that like to have a guide
how to do. They prefer problems that are given to them.
Judicial: it characterizyse people that like to evaluate rules and judge things.
They like problems in order to analyze strucutre and contents. They are good workers in
team.

Aptitudes + training in choosing the styles = abilities

Our challenge is to develop abilities that can increase our potential for success not only
in our duties but in our life in general.

Thinking
Thinking means some mental operations:
- Cognition: recognizing and identifying.
- Memory
- Convergent Production
- Divergent Production
- Evaluation

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 Thinking is a process that creates knowledge from existing knowledge.

Covergent and Divergent Productions.

Convergent and divergent production are the two types of human response to a set
problem and most individuals display a preference for either convergent or divergent
thinking.

Convergent thinking

Convergent thinking is oriented towards deriving the single best (or correct) answer to a
clearly defined question. It emphasizes speed, accuracy, logic, and the like, and focuses
on accumulating information, recognizing the familiar, reapplying set techniques, and
preserving the already known. It is based on familiarity with what is already known
(i.e., knowledge), and is most effective in situations where a ready-made answer exists
and needs simply to be recalled from stored information, or worked out from what is
already known by applying conventional and logical search, recognition and decision-
making strategies.

It is analytical,
usually
deductive,

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thinking in which ideas are examined for their logical validity or in which a set of rules
is followed.

.- One is called “convergent” thinking, when is good at bringing material from a

variety of sources to bear on a problem, in such a way as to produce the “correct”
answer. This kind of thinking is particularly appropriate in science, maths and
technology.

Conventional measures of intelligence do not always do justice to abilities. The tests

give credit for problem-solving which produce the “right” answer, but under-estimate
creativity and unconventional approaches to problems.

Convergent thinking involves different kind of ontelligences:

- linguistic

- logical mathematical

- spatial

- kinaesthetic

- musical

- interpersonal

- intrapersonal

The last two terms have to do with what is kown as emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) describes the ability, capacity, skill or, in the case of the
trait EI model, a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of
one’s self, of others, and of groups. Different models have been proposed for the
definition of EI and disagreement exists as to how the term should be used. Despite

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these disagreements, which are often highly technical, the ability EI and trait EI models
enjoy support in the literature and have successful applications in different domains.

Traditionally definitions of intelligence emphasized cognitive aspects such as memory

and problem-solving, but several influential researchers in the intelligence field of study
had begun to recognize the importance of the non-cognitive aspects. In 1920, it was
used by the first time the term social intelligence to describe the skill of understanding
and managing other people.

Later was introduced the idea of Multiple Intelligences which included both
Interpersonal intelligence (the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and
desires of other people) and Intrapersonal intelligence (the capacity to understand
oneself, to appreciate one’s feelings, fears and motivations )

The model introduced by Goleman focuses on EI as a wide array of competencies and

skills that drive leadership performance and outlines four main EI constructs:

1. Self-awareness — the ability to read one’s emotions and recognize their impact
while using gut feelings to guide decisions.
2. Self-management — involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and
adapting to changing circumstances.
3. Social awareness — the ability to sense, understand, and react to others’
emotions while comprehending social networks.
4. Relationship management — the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others
while managing conflict.

Goleman includes a set of emotional competencies within each construct of EI.

Emotional competencies are not innate talents, but rather learned capabilities that must
be worked on and can be developed to achieve outstanding performance . He also states
that individuals are born with a general emotional intelligence that determines their
potential for learning emotional competencies.

Individuals who use one style of thinking typically assumed that all other people use
their own thinking style. In other words, most of the population assume that there is
only one correct or sane method of thinking. This assumption produce a great amount of

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intolerance, impatience, abuse, frustration, and inefficiency in the communication and
relationships which are formed between individuals.

Divergent Thinking

Divergent or synthetic thinking is the ability to draw on ideas from across disciplines
and fields of inquiry to reach a deeper understanding of the world and one’s place in it.

There is a movement in education that maintains divergent thinking might create more
resourceful students. Rather than presenting a series of problems for rote memorization
or resolution, divergent thinking presents open-ended problems and encourages students
to develop their own solutions to problems.

Divergent production is the creative generation of multiple answers to a set problem.

idea= potencial solution

 One is termed “divergent” thinking when has the skill in broadly creative
elaboration of ideas prompted by a stimulus, and is more suited to artistic
pursuits and study in the humanities.

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Creativity

Creativity is a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new
associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the process of either conscious
or unconscious insight.

Creativity has been attributed variously to divine intervention, cognitive processes, the
social environment, personality traits, and chance (“accident”, “serendipity”). It has
been associated with genius, mental illness, humour and REM sleep. Some say it is a
trait we are born with; others say it can be taught with the application of simple
techniques. Creativity has also been viewed as a beneficence of a muse or Muses.

From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to
as divergent thought) are usually considered to have :

- fluidity: a big amount of possible solutions

- flexibility: belonging to different domains

- originality: that are far fromm the usual one

- elaboration: and can be developed.

Creativity has been associated with right or forehead brain activity or even specifically
with lateral thinking.

We can say that lateral thinking is a way of thinking and creativity is the result of this
process.

Creativity is also an “assumptions-breaking process.” Creative ideas are often

generated when one discards preconceived assumptions and attempts a new approach or
method that might seem to others unthinkable.

It has to do with:

- intelligence.

- Knowledge

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 - Thinking style

- Barriers

- Motivation

- Environment

As we see, lateral thinking relates perception from diffrent points of view and
exploration. Because of it, we can state that creativity can be trained.

Even in the earlies of last century, an stage model was presented explaining the
creative process; it consisted 5 stages:

- preparation (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual’s

mind on the problem and explores the problem’s dimensions),
- incubation (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind
and nothing appears externally to be happening)
- intimation (the creative person gets a ‘feeling’ that a solution is on its
way),
- illumination or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its
preconscious processing into conscious awareness); and
- verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then
applied).

Some people consider creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, which

allowed humans to quickly adapt to rapidly changing environments.

Other researchers have occasionally used the terms flexible thinking or fluid
intelligence.

Meta thinking
Finally, we should close our little speech with the last concept we are going to present:
the metathinking. Although is not very usual to speak and think about it, it is the third
vertex of the triangle and without it, it is useless pay attention to the other two:
convergent and divergent thinking.

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Metathinking skills relates the knowledge of oneself regarding thinking process and
results. It means to be conscious in each moment which thinking style one is applying
and why, which points of view one is looking from, is asking questions starting by how,
when, where, why and what but also those ones beginning by “what if....”. It is to be
aware, analyst and critical of your own thinking process in order to change strategies,
styles, to avoid failed ways and to improve the results by using convergent and
divergent thinkinks when necessary.

Conclusion

It is possible and important learning to think, because it is better to know thinking

than have a lot of knowledge