of making sense...of making sense...

Making sense...Making sense...

of making sense...of making sense...

Making sense of making sense of making sense - delving beneath cognitive behaviour

Work in progress byA D McKenzie

Faculty of Rural ManagementUniversity of Sydney

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In education literature we often read that some individuals show an aptitude for deep learning, while others engage in surface learning (see, for example, Ramsden 1988: 19). This slide presentation attempts to consider how we might make sense of the difference between deep thought and shallow thought. This is part of an effort to test the possibility that deep learners engage in qualitatively different thinking from surface learners - that the depth at which one learns may be more than a question of one’s repertoire of learning strategies.

The presentation explores some ideas for designing educational programs that foster individual development into deeper and richer learning and thought.

We are now going to try some analysis of our own experience as thinkers!

Look! Shapes! What are they?

Look! Shapes! What are they?

I can step outside myself, observe and interpret my thinking behaviour.

Look! Shapes! What are they?

I step outside myself, observe and interpret my thinking behaviour.

I become critically aware of my mental gear shifts through any number of context-reframing adjustments.

Look! Shapes! What are they?

I step outside myself, observe and interpret my thinking behaviour.

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I become critically aware of my mental gear shifts through any number of context-reframing adjustments.

1. I try to make sense of things.2. I try to make sense of making sense.3. I try to make sense of making sense of making sense.

I become critically aware of my mental gear shifts through any number of context-reframing adjustments…

Within an analysis of the relation between systems thinking and critique, Fuenmayor 1990 offers a helpful way of viewing these gear shifts. In the following three-tiered model, critique is understood as ‘the progressive process of gaining awareness about our own state of mind which is necessarily hidden in our judging’ (p.530).

Everyday dogmatic discovery

Critique is the attempt to perceive how we look at something.

At the level of basic everyday discovery, our view of something is unchallenged.

Immanent reflection/critique

Once doubt arises, we take a first step backward from our naïve, dogmatic position.

We start to reflect on the matter (immanent reflection), and maybe articulate that thought (immanent critique).

Levels oftranscendentalreflection/critique

On a higher plane again we don’t simply consider the matter at hand; we reflect on how the matter is experienced. Fuenmayor calls this transcendental reflection or transcendental critique.

Once I am reflecting on this plane, each step backward is one of ever-more comprehensive contextual-isation, not a substantive change in the nature of my questioning.

Along similar lines, Kitchener (1983) proposed three kinds of cognitive activity. They can be explained this way...

Cognition (basic information processing) –such as perceiving, reading, speaking, computing, memorising

Metacognition –the ability to reflexively conceive, evaluate and correct the way we process information

Epistemic cognition –being cognitively reflexive from a vantage point beyond the metacognitive frame of reference, as when I reflect on the epistemic nature of a problem, questioning the adequacy not only of my root definitions but of the very purpose and methodology of the analysis, acknowledging the subjectivity of all knowing at the heart of the construct

As individuals develop their capacity for reflexive depth of field perception, so this more abstract, critiquing style of thought becomes habitual.

We wonder what will happen if we side with the constructivists, for whom there is no final, unchallengeable frame of reference.

We learn to live with the uncertainty that takes hold as we entertain that possibility.

Is this what it takes to be cognitively autonomous?

Shifting mental gears between different contexts or worlds of thought can be compared to the operations of a microscope, first focussing on one plane of the subject of inquiry, then moving to a different plane. This requires depth of field sensitivity (McKenzie 1999a: 15)

The road to epistemic knowing is by doing reflection.

You may record a comment or participate in discussion on these matters by visiting the forum page. Go to

[Note: the discussion site is not yet available; email the author for advice when the forum will commence – tmckenzi@orange.usyd.edu.au].

References

Fuenmayor, R. (1990). Systems thinking and critique. I. What is critique? In Systems Practice 3 (6), pp. 525-544.

Kitchener, K. S. (1983). Cognition, metacognition and epistemic cognition: a three-level model of cognitive processing. In Human Development, 26, pp. 222-232.

McKenzie, A. D. (1999a). A ferret tail-chase – the perpetual closed loop of open system reflecting theorising. Paper presented at the Issues of Rigour in Qualitative Research Conference, Melbourne, July 1999.

Ramsden, P. (ed.) (1988). Improving Learning – New Perspectives. Kogan Page: London

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