Transforming the Mind

Robert Reich, former secretary of labor for Bill Clinton

Reich identifies four components of the kind of thinking that highly paid workers will increasingly need to master:

1. Command of abstractions

2. Ability to think within systems

3. Ability to evaluate ideas

4. Ability to communicate effectively

Donald Kennedy, Past President of Stanford, in a letter sent to 3000

college and university presidents.

It simply will not do for our schools to produce a small elite to power our scientific establishment and a larger cadre of workers with basic skills to do routine work. Millions of people around the world now have these same basic skills and are willing to work twice as long for as little as 1/10th our basic wages…We must develop a leading-edge economy based on workers who can think for a living. If skills are equal, in the long run wages will be too. This means we have to educate a vast mass of people capable of thinking critically, creatively, and imaginatively.

To Transform the Mind

we need to understand how ideas are constructed in the mind by the mind.

• The only way we can learn anything is to actively construct it in the mind.

• All ideas – good and bad – are constructed by the mind.

• We need to figure out how we want our students’ minds to be transformed.

• What do we want our students to be able to do with their thinking as a result of our instruction?

Activity

• Make a list of the things you want your students to be able to do with their thinking when they leave your courses and/or academic programs.

Activity

• What are you currently doing in your classes to foster these skills of thinking?

• What can you do to better foster the development of these skills?

To Transform the Mind

Students need to actively:

• Read

• Write

• Talk

• Hear

• Think

ideas into their thinking.

Memorizing Information

Does not transform the mind

Engaging the Mind in Constructing Knowledge

Is the key the learning.

If You Can’t Teach it to Someone Else

You don’t know it.

Activity

Discuss the concept of Transforming the mind

• What does it mean to you? How can this concept transform your concept of instruction?

• To transform the minds of your students, do you need to transform your own minds?