Abstract

Tasks are essential in fostering students’ learning processes, and thinking skills are considered to be of central importance to learning. In order to analyse how tasks promote the development of thinking skills in school geography, we need an instrument that looks beyond a simple distinction between lower and higher order thinking. It should be able to identify types of tasks based on distinctive elements on the way to acquiring powerful knowledge or knowledge of high epistemic quality. In this paper, we describe the development of an instrument based on the adaptation of existing categorisations and the use of Bernstein’s recognition and realisation rules. The instrument distinguishes five levels of thinking: lower order thinking, use of thinking strategies, parts of higher order thinking, higher order thinking, and reflection. The instrument was employed to analyse tasks in geography textbooks used in the Netherlands and the German State North Rhine-Westphalia, with researchers and teacher educators in both states considering its efficacy both plausible and practicable. The results show that the instrument is sufficiently sensitive to identify differences in types of tasks and the extent to which access to powerful knowledge is fostered.

摘要

任务对于培养学生的学习过程至关重要，而思维能力被认为对学习至关重要。为了分析任务如何促进学校地理中思维技能的发展，我们需要一种超越低阶思维和高阶思维的简单区分的工具。在获取强大知识或高认知质量知识的过程中，它应该能够根据独特的元素识别任务类型。在本文中，我们描述了一种基于现有分类的适应以及伯恩斯坦识别和实现规则的工具的开发。该工具区分了五个层次的思维：低阶思维、思维策略的使用、高阶思维的部分、高阶思维和反思。该仪器被用来分析荷兰和德国北莱茵-威斯特法伦州使用的地理教科书中的任务，这两个州的研究人员和教师教育工作者都认为它的有效性既合理又实用。结果表明，该工具足够敏感，可以识别任务类型的差异以及促进获得强大知识的程度。