My teacher should have ridden with Jesse James,
My teacher should have ridden with Jesse James,

My teacher should have ridden with Jesse James,
For all the things she stole from me.

Poem by a 12 year old
Australian student

One evening, on returning from lecturing to my students, my wife asked me: "And what did you steal from your students today?" The question rocked me, and as I examined my practice under her skilfulquestioning, I realised how much of the processes I kept for myself.

So we sat down and together we wrote the following:

If I am always the one to think of where to go next.
If where we go is always the decision of the curriculum or my curiosity and not theirs.
If motivation is mine.
If I always decide on the topic to be studied, the title of the story, the problem to be worked on
If I am always the one who has reviewed their work and decided what they need.
How will they ever know how to begin?

If I am the one who is always monitoring progress.
If I set the pace of all working discussions.
If I always look ahead, foresee problems and endeavour to eliminate them.
If I swoop in and save them from cognitive conflict.
If I never allow them to feel and use the energy from confusion and frustration.If things are always broken into short working periods.
If myself and others are allowed to break into their concentration.
If bells and I are always in control of the pace and flow of work
How will they learn to continue their own work?

If all the marking and editing is done by me.
If the selection of which work is to be published or evaluated is made by me.
If what is valued and valuable is always decided by external sources or by me.
If there is no forum to discuss what delights them in their task, what is working, what is not working, what they plan to do about it.
If they have not learned a language to discuss their work in ways that are intrinsically growth enhancing.
If they do not have a language of self-assessment.
If ways of communicating their work are always controlled by me.
If our assessments are mainly summative rather than formative.
If they do not plan their way forward to further action.
How will they find ownership, direction and delight in what they do?

If I speak of individuals but present learning as if they are all the same.
If I am never seen to reflect and reflection time is never provided.
If we never speak together about reflection and thinking and never develop a vocabulary for such discussion.
If we do not take opportunities to think about our thinking.
If I constantly set them exercises that do not intellectually challenge them.
If I set up learning environments that interfere with them learning from their own actions.
If I give them recipes to follow.
If I only expect the one right conclusion.
If I signify that there are always right and wrong answers.
If I never openly respect their thoughts.
If I never let them persevere with something really difficult which they cannot master.
If I make all work serious work and discourage playfulness.
If there is no time to explore.
If I lock them into adult time constraints too early.
How will they get to know themselves as a thinker?

If they never get to help anyone else.
If we force them to always work and play with children of the same age.
If I do not teach them the skills of working co-operatively.
If collaboration can be seen as cheating.
If all classroom activities are based in competitiveness.
If everything is seen to be for marks.
How will they learn to work with others?

For if they
have never experienced being challenged in a safe environment.
have had all of their creative thoughts explained away.
are unaware what catches their interest and how then to have confidence in that interest.
have never followed something they are passionate about to a satisfying conclusion.
have not clarified the way they sabotage their own learning.
are afraid to seek help and do not know who or how to ask.
have not experienced overcoming their own inertia.
are paralysed by the need to know everything before writing or acting.
have never got bogged down.
have never failed.
have always played it safe.
How will they ever know who they are?

 

BACKGROUND READINGS
Other reading and experiences in my life since this time have reinforced the importance of this question "what have you stolen from your students?" for anyone working in education. Let me share some of these:

1. The WRAP Project in South Australia, carried out in 1989-1991, revealed that for year 10 students in that state, in respect of their school writing tasks:

"75% of all tasks across the curriculum allowed students no choice in any aspectof the task. A total of 1% of tasks allowed students choice in purpose, audienceor form"
(WRAP Final Report, volume 1, 1992, page 35)

They also found that:
"Nearly 60% of all writing across the curriculum was for the teacher as assessor. Another 31% was for self. Very little writing was addressed to peers,either actual or implied, and almost none to parents." (page 36)
and,

"Approximately 90% of all writing across the curriculum was divided almost equally between the functions of learning tool and demonstration of knowledge, skill or understanding." (page 37)

This again shows how we keep so much of the process to ourselves. Real writers choose their topics and their audiences. Some of the best writers in the world are able to survive without teachers to mark their work. Endless homework and marking are a disaster for family life and for the lives of students and teachers. Yet most of the community seems convinced this is what students shouldbe doing with their lives.

Later in this paper I will use the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition to explore what may be appropriate ways to educate students and to wean them from us.

2. Tizzard and Hughes (1986) did research to look at the language environmentsat home and in nursery school in the UK. They did this by tape recording the conversations of four-year-old girls at morning nursery school and at home with their mothers in the afternoon, and found, for the home environment:

"As we started to study and analyse the transcripts, we became increasingly aware of how rich this environment was for all the children (working-class and middle-class). The conversations between the children and their mothers ranged freely over a variety of topics. The idea that children1s interests were restricted to play and TV was clearly untenable. At home the children discussed topics like work, the family, birth, growing up, and death; they talked with their mothers about things they had done together in the past, and their plans for the future; they puzzled over such diverse topics as the shape of roofs and chairs, the nature of Father Christmas, and whether the Queen wears curlers in bed. Many of these conversations took place during recognizably educational contexts - such as during play or while reading books - but many did not. A large number of the more fruitful conversations simply cropped up as the children and their mothers went about their afternoon1s business at home - having lunch, planning shopping expeditions, feeding the baby and so on." (page 8)

"When we came to analyse the conversations between these same children and theirnursery teachers, we could not avoid being disappointed. The children were certainly happy at school, for much of the time absorbed in play. However, theirconversations with their teachers made a sharp contrast to those with their mothers. The richness, depth and variety which characterised the home conversations was sadly missing. So too was the sense of intellectual struggle, and of the real attempts to communicate being made by both sides. The questioning, puzzling child which we were so taken with at home was gone: in herplace was a child who, when talking to staff, seemed subdued, and whose conversations with adults were mainly restricted to answering questions rather than asking them, or taking part in minimal exchanges about the whereabouts of other children and play materials." (page 9)

Gordon Wells in his book "The meaning makers" (1986) makes similar points:
1. At school, utterances by a child to an adult were 63% less than at home
2. Different types of meaning expressed by children dropped 50% (home to school)3. Conversations initiated by children dropped 64% (home to school)
3. The number of questions raised by children dropped by 70% (home to school)

I often hear teachers complaining about the problems they have with children coming to school from dysfunctional families. I have never heard a teacher talk about the problems families have to deal with from their children coming home from dysfunctional schools. Once again the question of ownership of the learning is central.

4. Alice Miller, the gifted psychoanalyst, in her many books (for example, "The Drama of the Gifted Child") describes the histories of those sensitive people whose natural gifts and talents have been exploited since childhood. She draws on her work with patients, and on the childhood experiences of some of thecentury's most gifted artists, to show how gifted children become estranged fromtheir true selves, their natural vitality. She describes the therapeutic power which emerges when such adult patients come to the emotional insight that they were never loved as a child for what they were, but for their achievements, success and good qualities, and that they sacrificed their childhood for this love.

"In analysis the small and lonely child that is hidden behind his achievements wakes up and asks: What would have happened if I had appeared before you, bad,ugly, angry, jealous, lazy, dirty, smelly? Where would your love have been then?And I was all these things as well. Does this mean that it was not really me whom you loved, but only what I pretended to be? The well-behaved, reliable,empathic, understanding, and convenient child, who in fact was never a child at all? What became of my childhood? Have I not been cheated out of it? I can never return to it. I can never make it up. From the beginning I have been a little adult. My abilities - were they simply misused?"(p.12)

Alice Miller is not easy to read. She makes me question at a deep level my own parenting. She reveals that most children are trained in accordance with their parents' needs. And they learn to conform with these so very well.
"with gifted children this is an easy task; but at what cost?" (p.13)

She argues that a newborn baby is completely dependent on its parents, and sincetheir caring is essential for the child's existence, the child does all that it can to avoid losing them. From the very first day onward the child will muster all of their resources to this end, like a small plant turning toward the sun inorder to survive.

"For the majority of sensitive people, the true self remains deeply and thoroughly hidden. But how can you love something you do not know, something that has never been loved? So it is that many a gifted person lives without any notion of his or her true self. Such people are enamoured of an idealized, conforming, false self. They will shun their hidden and lost true selfs." (p.14)
Miller's quest is:
"I am looking for a way, within the framework of psychoanalysis, by which the patient can regain his long-lost authentic sense of being truly alive."(p.16)

"Probably everybody has a more or less concealed inner chamber that he hides even from himself and in which the props of his childhood drama are to be found.These props may be his secret delusion, a secret perversion, or quite simply the unmastered aspects of his childhood suffering, the only ones who will certainlygain entrance to this hidden chamber are his children. With them new life comes into it, and the drama is continued." (p.42)

"..what do exist are children like this: intelligent, alert, attentive, extremely sensitive, and (because they are completely attuned to her well-being)entirely at mother's disposal and ready for her use. Above all, they are
transparent, clear, reliable and easy to manipulate, sometimes until puberty or until they came to analysis, and very often until they have become parents themselves." (p.45)

The enormous responsibility of adults to children is central to Miller's work and her theories. She particularly points to the sensitivity of the gifted child, which makes such children particularly skilled at doing what is wanted, required, often without being asked. The appropriate balance between worklife and responsibilities, and parental responsibilities to young children, is swept under the carpet by far too many people.

4. D.H. Lawrence, particularly in his provocative book "Fantasia of the Unconscious" (1923) has much to say about schooling and what it does to young minds. Let me share some of his thoughts:

"Our business, at the present, is to prevent at all cost the young mind from shooting. The ideal mind, the brain, has become the vampire of modern life, sucking up the blood and the life. There is hardly an original thought or
original utterance possible to us. All is sickly repetition of stale, stale ideas.
Let all schools be closed at once. Keep only a few technical training establishments, nothing more. Let humanity lie fallow, for two generations at least." (p.65)

"We talk about education - leading forth the natural intelligence of a child. But ours is just the opposite of leading forth. It is a ramming of brain facts through the head, and a consequent distortion, suffocation, and starvation of
the primary centres of consciousness. A nice day of reckoning we1ve got in front of us. Let us lead forth by all means. But let us not have mental knowledge before us as the goal of the leading. Much less let us make of it a vicious circle in which we lead the unhappy child-mind, like a cow in a ring at a fair. We don't want to educate children so that they may understand. Understanding is a fallacy and a vice in most people. I don't even want my child to know, much less to understand. I don't want my child to know that five fives are twenty-five, any
more than I want my child to wear my hat or boots. I don't want my child to know. If he wants five fives let him count them on his fingers. As for his little mind, give it a rest, and let his dynamic self be alert. He will ask
"why" often enough. But he more often asks why the sun shines, or why men have moustaches, or why the grass is green, than anything sensible. Most of a child'squestions are, and should be, unanswerable. They are not questions at all. They are exclamations of wonder, they are remarks half-sceptically addressed. When a child says: Why is the grass green? he half implies: Is it really green, or is it just taking me in? And we solemnly begin to prate about chlorophyll. Oh, imbeciles, idiots, inexcusable owls!" (p.89)

"By the age of twenty-one our young people are helpless, selfless, floundering mental entities, with nothing in front of them, because they have been starved from the roots systematically, for twenty-one years, and fed through the head. They have had all their mental excitements, sex and everything, all through the head, and when it comes to the actual thing, why, there's nothing in it. Blas‚. Before the age of fourteen, children should be taught only to move, to act, to do. And they should be taught as little as possible even of this. Adults simply cannot and do not know any more of what the mode of childish intelligence is. Adults always interfere.They always force the adult mental mode. Therefore children must be preserved from adult instructions." (p.90)

"The final aim is not to know but to be. There never was a more risky motto thanthat: Know thyself. You've got to know yourself as far as possible. But not for the sake of knowing. You've got to know yourself so that you can at least be yourself. "be yourself" is the last motto." (p.64)

This sounds so similar to what Alice Miller asks.

Anyone who has taught using student-centred methods knows the humbling power of what children can do if you give them the wherewithal and basically get out of their way. This seems to me to tap into some of what Lawrence is talking about. I get the same feeling when I read A.S.Neill's delicious book "A Dominie's Log".The disarming openness of his log entries, his clear respect for children, reminds me that to set something free first requires respect. Neill focusses on what it takes to be decent and kind and human.

What all of these people seem to have in common, and it was shared by Piaget andby Montessori, is that they pay close attention to children and respect them. Piaget's major message for me was: if you want to understand children pay very close attention to them. This seems to have been lost amongst the emphasis on stage theory.

I learned from sitting on the end of my children's bed at night-time, when saying our goodnights, that they function at a very different pace to adults. They taught me to slow down, to pace myself to them. It was like a form of
meditation for me.

Montessori's design for learning: freedom within a richly prepared structure, has been a basis for most of my work in schools, universities and companies. If people are given the skills and tools to use, and presented with a range of
potentially powerful educative experiences, then given freedom, they will almost invariably choose one and get on with it. Once learners get in touch with their own sense of personal power, get out of their road and watch in awe. I have seen this so often with workers in companies, many of whom left school believing they were "dumb". Workers come to learning at their own pace, and in their own idiosyncratic ways, so it takes patience and confidence to stand with them while they sort things out for themselves. Most students are the same.

5. Chris Argyris from Harvard has much to offer about teaching smart people how to learn (Argyris: 1991). Let me share some of his findings:

"Those members of the organization that many assume to be the best at learning are, in fact, not very good at it. I am talking about the well-educated, highly-powered, high-commitment professionals who occupy key leadership
positions in the modern corporation." (p.99)
May of these people were the top achievers in school and participated in gifted programs and "top streams".

Argyris sees two major mistakes that corporations make in relation to organisational learning. Firstly, their definition of learning is too narrow:

"if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. They need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization's problems, and then change how
they act." (p.100)

This requires the willingness and ability to reflect on one's practice. From my experience in business and industry, few people have both. Argyris found that these smart people quickly go into defensive reasoning when their problem solving strategies do not work. Few of them have rich experience with failure and do not know how to learn from failure. They become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the blame on anyone and everyone but themselves.

"In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it most." (p.100)

This leads to the second mistake, and that is that companies assume that gettingpeople to learn is largely a matter of motivation. But, for Argyris, effective learning

"is a reflection of how they think - that is, the cognitive rules or reasoning they use to design and implement their actions. Think of these rules as a kind of "master program" stored in the brain, governing all behaviors. Teaching people how to reason about their behavior in new and more effective ways breaks down the defences that block learning." (p.100)

For 15 years Argyris has conducted in-depth studies of management consultants, because they are "the epitome of the highly educated professional" and, since their job is to teach others how to learn, they should be good at learning. Almost all of the people he studied had MBAs from the top three or four business schools in the U.S.
He found that, as long as the work focussed on others or organizational factors, these people were very involved in the process. However, the moment the quest for continuous improvement turned to their own performance, something went wrong.

"The professionals began to feel embarrassed. They were threatened by the prospect of critically examining their own role in the organization. Indeed, because they were so well paid (and generally believed that their employers were supportive and fair), the idea that their performance might not be at its best made them feel guilty.
Far from being a catalyst for real change, such feelings caused most to react defensively. They projected the blame for any problems away from themselves and onto what they said were unclear goals, insensitive and unfair leaders, and stupid clients." (p.101)

Argyris talks about the difference between our "espoused theory" - what we say we do, and our "theory-in-use" - what we really do. He argues that there is coherence in the ways we act. It is not just that we do not "walk our talk", but we consistently do not walk our talk, we are consistently inconsistent. The problem is that we are not aware of the mismatch and no one will tell us. Many people are afraid to give feedback- I might hurt the person, they might give me some in return, or I might go into their little black book. So we do not tell others about their inconsistencies, we do however tell everyone else. Most people live in a feedback vacuum and are starved of the very feedback they need to be able to look clearly at their theories-in-use, and it is these that drive behaviour. Much of my current research and consulting work in organisations involves teaching people how to skilfully give and receive feedback, both positive and negative, and how to act on it. The results are profound.

We have found, like Argyris, that "the master program that most people use is profoundly defensive. Defensive
reasoning encourages individuals to keep private the premises, inferences, and conclusions that shape their behavior and to avoid testing them in a truly independent, objective fashion. Because the attributions that go into defensive reasoning are never really tested, it is a closed loop, remarkably impervious to conflicting points of view." (p.103)

In relation to the thinking of "smart people" Argyris argues that "They must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right." (p.100)

Argyris concludes:
"To the extent that these consultants have experienced success in their lives, they have not had to be concerned about failure and the attendant feelings of shame and guilt. But to exactly the same extent, they also have never developed the tolerance for feelings of failure or the skills to deal with these feelings.This in turn has led them not only to fear failure but also to fear the fear of failure itself.
As a result, many professionals have extremely "brittle" personalities. When suddenly faced with a situation they cannot immediately handle, they tend to fall apart. They cover up their distress in front of the client. They talk about it constantly with their fellow case team members. Interestingly, these conversations commonly take the form of bad-mouthing clients" (p104)

This is strongly reminiscent of the statement attributed W. Edwards Deming, the "father" of the quality movement:
"98% of engineering problems are psychological."

I see great value for the teachers of academically gifted students to read the papers of Chris Argyris and to project back to what they could do to help appropriately enrich the lives of such children in their care.

I want to draw on the research and ideas of these five sources, blend them with my own thirty years of research, practice and consulting in education, and with two powerful models that have changed the way I see growth and learning.

I make no claims to having specialised in gifted education. I have worked with gifted adults, I have taught gifted students as a high school teacher and as a university lecturer, in my research on teaching thinking some of the students were of very high ability, and for four months I taught a gifted and talented group of six- to twelve-year-olds in an American primary school, for one hour once per week. So I am a 12 hour expert. Beware!

Let me now look at the two models and share how I see them linking to what is written above.

A MODEL OF PERSONAL ACTION
Jim Butler (in Edwards et al: 1997) has developed a powerful new model of personal action which we have used successfully for many years in education, business and industry. Below is a diagrammatic representation of the model.

PUBLIC
PERSONAL
INFORMATION
PRACTICAL

KNOWLEDGE

REFLECTION
AND
GENERATION

 

CURRENT
WORLD
PRACTICE
VIEW

Let me first explain the six components of the model.
Public information is information which is available in the public domain through listening to teachers and lecturers, reading, training programs, the Internet, and the media in general. It is what most people have learned to expect to receive in most educational settings. Public information is external to the self.

Current practice is what you do now. It is visible and external to the self. And despite what anyone may say, most education and learning is based on the naive belief that if you give people new public information they will change
their current practice. So you sit down and read this paper, you say; "Oh yes, John Edwards is correct, my whole past life is invalid", you then change everything you do, and you see this reading as being the most valuable you have
ever done. You know, and I know, that this is not how people change, grow and learn, and yet it is the model that underlies most formal learning.

So, if the naive model of dumping public information into current practice does not work, what is missing? Butler and I argue that at least four key elements are missing:

Personal practical knowledge (PPK) is the knowledge you own. It comes from your lived experience and your reflections on that experience. This knowledge is internal to the self. Some key characteristics of PPK are:
o Your PPK is unique to you.
You are the only person to have done the things you have done and thought the thoughts you have thought. This makes each person, teacher and student, a uniqueresource for any group or classroom they are in. It also makes you the most valuable resource for your own development. The critical resources for your growth lie inside you, not outside.

o Your PPK is largely implicit and difficult to articulate.
While most people carry an enormous store of PPK, it is seldom in an explicit useable form. If I asked you to stand in front of a group and explain what it takes to do your job successfully, you would probably find it difficult to do.
It is not that you do not know, but seldom are you asked to articulate what you know. Giving time for this articulation process, and helping students learn to do this, are critical for learning.

o Your PPK is resistant to change.
Your PPK is the store of experiential knowledge that has got you to where you are today. So obviously you will not be inclined to change it easily, nor should you be. This goes for every student in your classrooms. Their life has taught them! Respect for the lived experience of each child is a fundamental starting point for learning. Roger Osborne and his team at the University of Waikato in New Zealand in the 1970's did wonderful research on the PPK of children through their Learning in Science Project (LISP). They suggested that children construct their own knowledge, and they described the characteristics of the "conceptual change classroom". Over twenty years later constructivist philosophy is the current flavour in the U.S. and in many academic disciplines in our part of the
world.

There is a great undervaluing of the PPK of Australian workers and Australian students. From my experience it is the single greatest underutilised resource inAustralian business and industry, and Australian classrooms (Edwards: 1996a). Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, (in Belasco: 1990, p.6) expressed it well:

"We have found what we believe to be the distilled essence of competitiveness, it is the reservoir of talent, creativity and energy that can be found in each of our people."

This applies equally well to our schools and classrooms. Classrooms, schools and business workplaces are all impoverished when the skills of all are not used to the maximum. The results we have had in industry from setting free the PPK and creativity of workers has surprised experienced managers ( Edwards: 1996b, 1997,Hill: 1994).

For Butler, world view is derived from tradition and our experiences and consists of beliefs, assumptions and 'a tablet of values and rules that the self holds as true at this stage of its development'. Our world views wash through
everything we do. They are the foundation for human behaviour, take many years to form, and are largely sub-conscious. They usually contain a mixture of rational and irrational beliefs. While it is a difficult area to work in,
because many people regard it as totally private, it is important to encourage people to become more aware of their world views at an explicit level and to explore their influence on thinking and actions. Our experience has been that if trust is developed through the careful forming of the group, and if the activities are at the right level of openness, most people are willing to look at some of their world views. Senge (1992) refers to the mental models that
people have, and to the value of bringing these to the surface.

Looking at how your world views have formed, and understanding the processes andexperiences involved, enables you to identify the assumptions and beliefs that are driving your behaviour. If you see some of these as inappropriate you can then work on changing them. This is particularly important for teachers since their world views are constantly transmitted to the students. I believe that no one should enter the profession without a reasonable level of self-awareness. Children should not have to deal with the "personal baggage" of under-developed teachers. Teacher training institutions, and their supervising teachers, have a strong responsibility to make the profession self-regulating, and not to let through people unless we would be comfortable with them teaching our children, and being our colleagues.

Senge et al (1994) use "the ladder of inference" to help people see how they develop their own selected version of an event based on their beliefs, values and assumptions. This determines how they make meaning of the event, which in turn leads to conclusions which drive behaviour. These conclusions then act to reinforce the person's beliefs, values and assumptions, which feed back into howthe person forms their selected version of future events.

Reflection is a critical process. While many people are reluctant to make the time for it, few deny its power. Bruner (1986, p.132) provides one such view: If one fails to develop any sense of reflective intervention in the knowledge
one encounters, one operates continually from the outside in - knowledge controls and guides you. If you develop a sense of self premised on your ability to penetrate knowledge for your own uses, and you share and negotiate the results, then you become a member of the culture-creating community.

We provide periods of reflection in our work and encourage the keeping of learning journals. This is not a typical narrative journal; it is a journal of thoughts, action strategies, perceived outcomes, reflections, and designs. We often refer to them as Think Books. Reflection is not just a formal academic process. "Chewing or mulling things over" is common for most people. Becoming more aware of such processes and how to use them effectively strongly
facilitates learning. Bruner (1986) sees reflection and distancing as crucial toopening up possibilities: 'a metacognitive step of huge import'. Keeping a diary or journal is a wonderful educative tool for anyone.

Each person makes decisions about whether to "switch on" reflection at any time or for any topic. If you switch it on, you generate PPK, if you leave it switched off and work mindlessly you do not develop PPK. One of the challenges for teachers and parents is to facilitate the switching on of reflection by the children in their care. Think for a moment about areas of your life where you switch on your reflection, and areas where you show no interest and leave it switched off.

Generation, or design, of new ideas is also critical for learning, growth and change. Most people are locked into familiar thinking patterns and strategies for problem identification and problem solution. These may work well for them. However, my many years of research on the direct teaching of thinking (Edwards: 1991a, 1991b, 1994b&c, 1995) have shown me the powerful effects of teaching people a broader repertoire of thinking strategies. The strategies of de Bono (1987, 1993, 1994a,b) provide a very practical basis for teaching generative thinking.

We commonly draw on central elements from de Bono's (1987) Cognitive Research Trust (CoRT) Thinking Skills Program and the Six Thinking Hats Program (in de Bono: 1994b). We have found the most valuable elements of CoRT to be CoRT -I, IV& VI. CoRT-I teaches divergent thinking strategies, CoRT-IV teaches lateral thinking strategies, and CoRT-VI teaches strategies for action generated by thinking, such as the PISCO (Purpose-Input-Solutions-Choice-Operation) process. The Six Thinking Hats teaches parallel thinking - these are strategies for identifying and focussing on particular modes or directions for thinking, and for getting groups thinking in the same direction at the same time.

If all students were helped to develop a richer repertoire of thinking skills, which they learned to apply flexibly and creatively, it would help to avoid the later problems of narrow problem definition and limited thinking strategies
observed by Argyris.

The de Bono strategies are well suited to operationalising Revans' (1982) concept of action learning. In action learning you learn by studying yourself, what you do and think. You become self-aware, and then you work on improving. This is very different to traditional learning where you sit and listen or read how to do things and then try to use them in your work. It is based on the idea that nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced. Knowledge from direct experience of the world is different to academic knowledge. It is more singular,unique, and specific to the particular context. This is its power. It has the flavour of reality that is very convincing to people. We argue strongly for an "act to learn" approach.

Learning takes place through continuing cycles of: act - gather data - reflect - design new action...and then into another cycle. Knowing how to spin oneself through successive iterative cycles is central to professional growth and learning. Many of the people we work with left school as failures in their early 'teens. It is a rewarding experience to see them blossom through action learning projects based on their own PPK, world views and practice, and the use of powerful new thinking strategies. (Edwards: 1996a, 1996b, 1997, Hill: 1994).

De Bono's thinking strategies provide a very practical basis for studying your own thinking and for trying new ways to think. Books such as Serious Creativity (de Bono 1992a), Parallel Thinking (de Bono 1994b) and Teach Your Child How To Think (de Bono: 1993) contain a wide range of strategies and examples of where they have produced great benefits for companies using them. My research confirms similar benefits for companies, schools and universities.

So, according to the Butler model, when new public information is presented, it is matched against PPK, world views and current practices. Through reflection and generation: the public information could be incorporated into PPK; it could influence world views or practice; it could be totally rejected; or left as "inert" public information, which is held in parallel with the PPK on which the person acts, and will slowly fade away (particularly after the exams).

The work of Peter Senge and his colleagues (Senge et al :1994) at the Center forOrganisational Learning at M.I.T. has focussed business attention on companies as learning organisations. Their models and research results closely match our results (Edwards 1996b, 1997). Knowledge is now seen as the major resource in companies. Knowing powerful ways to generate new knowledge through improved thinking skills should be one central focus for the education of our most able students.

A MODEL OF SKILL ACQUISITION
The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition (Dreyfus and Dreyfus: 1986) provides a valuable framework for understanding learning. Benner (1984 and 1995) has used the Dreyfus model to describe growth to excellence in clinical nursing practice in a way yet to be done in other professions. Benner and the Dreyfus brothers argue that we have focussed in education too much on detached deliberation, to the downplaying of everyday know how and involved deliberation, which is what skilled practitioners use. Their work reveals what nurses have known about their practice for years but have found it difficult to articulate. Just as for nurses, the practice of the expert teacher goes well beyond rational theory. Both nurses and teachers work in an unstructured world where there are very
complex interactions of multiple factors. Such a world can never be captured by precise rules. Theoretical language can never adequately describe the concrete manifestations and qualitative distinctions that are central to true teaching expertise. It is important that we start to teach about teaching as a practice which has a different structure and set of concerns than any other career choice. To do this we first need to help teachers map the profession as it is lived. We also need to look at how technology will be changing our workplaces (see, for example, Melchior et al: 1996 and Papert: 1993)).

The Dreyfus model postulates a series of metaphorical stages in growth from novice to expert performance:

o At the novice stage the person has no practical experience, so they rely on rules to help them. This is where most of our students start. They need generalisable rules to help them get by while generating their own PPK.

o At the advanced beginner stage they think that someone, somewhere knows the answer. Here they typically ask for books with definitive answers or expect you to provide them. They are recognising patterns, but have limited experience and still rely on rules.

o At the competent stage, which commonly requires two to three years of relevant experience, the person is analytical and planful. They now take personal and emotional responsibility for the outcomes of their work.

o The proficient person moves beyond analysis to synthesis, begins to trust their intuition, starts to see things as wholes, and develops maxims about theirwork.

o The expert is highly intuitive, they just do what needs to be done. They understand context, they read the context, and do the right thing at the right time. Their practice is not governed by rules. They know the rules well, but they know when to obey them, when to bend them, and when to ignore them. Their actions are contextual and so can be confusing to novices. Unless the expert can remember the generalised rules that help novices, they can make very poor teachers of novices. Often competent people, who are highly analytical, make good teachers of novices and beginners. Since expert knowledge is highly intuitive it is also difficult to adapt to common staff appraisal procedures, and to write into quality standards.

It is important to understand that the model is contextual. One can be an expert in one area and a novice in another, indeed we all are. This can help to remove unrealistic expectations of people, be they a gifted child, a general manager or a leader of any sort. There will be some things they do expertly, some they docompetently, and some where they are a novice.

The Dreyfus model is helpful for understanding the stage of development of a teacher or student and also for identifying their learning needs. Benner's latest book (Benner et al: 1995) is the most moving celebration of a profession, read it! We badly need such research in education and a book to celebrate our profession.

The only way to achieve expertise is through thoughtful lived experience, to move beyond the basic rules. So schools need to provide teachers and students with the basic skills to start, and then the time, freedom and supportive environment to develop their own experience and personal practical knowledge about their own thinking and learning. This is not easy within present secondary school structures and curricula.

Most schools do a good job of providing the rule governed behaviour needed by the novice student. The major error comes when this becomes the whole diet and no provision is made for moving beyond the generalised rules of a discipline to the generation of ideas unique to the learner.

LEARNING AND THE DIRECT TEACHING OF THINKING
It is assumed that students learn to think as a by-product of learning academic disciplines. However research suggests that from such traditional approaches they mainly develop the ability to regurgitate information.

The debates on teaching thinking have been competitive rather than co-operative.So we see strong proponents of higher order thinking, critical thinking, philosophical thinking, lateral thinking, accelerated learning, or brain-compatible learning. Publishers and salespersons push their products to the exclusion of all others. New thinking programs emerge, promising much and seeking disciples. For any person serious in the field, dealing with the oversupply of information and making reasonable decisions is difficult. Many of these decisions are currently based on limited experience or hearsay.

A good place to begin is with each school department listing the thinking skillsand processes they teach in their discipline. A matrix can then be established to reveal the practical degree of generalisability or domain-specificity of any thinking process. Such a matrix provides a valuable structure and highlights thebest areas for infusion of thinking skills into the curriculum (O'Brien et al: 1994).

Infusion of thinking skills, once you have learned them, is crucial to the effective and widespread use of the skills. Without thoughtful, continued and varied experience in use of thinking skills, students will not attain mastery.
Whether schools choose to teach the skills embedded in academic disciplines or teach them separately and then infuse them is a major decision. Powerful contentand powerful process have been taught intertwined for generations. This seems to have produced a dominance of content over process. In this respect schools could well explore the other approach, or at least give explicit focus to the thinking processes being taught within disciplines rather than leaving them implicit, buried in discipline content. This also highlights the value of having a common and widely used language of thinking in a school.

Costa (see, for example, Costa: 1991) argues that teachers should teach for intelligent behaviours and provides broad and sound advice to teachers to facilitate this. He sees the school as "a home for the mind" (Costa: 1994).
Baird's action research PEEL Project (the project for enhancing effective learning) similarly helped Australian teachers develop the metacognitive skills of their students (see Baird: 1994). Over the last ten years the focus on
teaching thinking has increased.

This brings me to my research on teaching thinking in schools. Cognitive processtraining has a long history, dating at least from the Ancient Greeks (Mann: 1979). Despite this, research suggests that even our best students master
little more than the art of regurgitation of knowledge. As Perkins (1992, p.7) recently stated:

The bottom line is that we are not getting the retention, understanding, and active use of knowledge that we want.

Our research (Edwards et al: 1988) shows that the intellectual demand of many senior school programs is very low for any student, let alone the gifted student. I began directly teaching children to think in my classroom in 1977,
using de Bono's (1987) CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) Thinking Skills program in our science curriculum. Practical results in the school were very positive, with strong supporting anecdotal evidence from teachers, parents and students. Research data (reported in Edwards and Baldauf: 1983) also revealed strong benefits from this direct teaching of CoRT thinking.

Edwards: 1991a, 1991b, 1994b and 1995 review most of my research on CoRT. This series of studies indicates that student thinking can be improved in a range of respects through the direct teaching of the CoRT program. Improvements in scholastic aptitude scores, scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, scores on self-perceptions of use of CoRT thinking approaches, and often improvements on heavily content-based school exams, were found for students taught the ten lessons of the CoRT-1 program when compared with control groups.
However the effects were often short-term. The effects were the same irrespective of IQ. Indeed some of the top students initially objected to CoRT as it threatened their position of dominance in the class.

A major study begun in 1987 looked at teaching a group of 12 year olds, in their last year of primary school, all sixty lessons of the CoRT program - two lessons a week for thirty weeks. The teacher was helped to infuse the CoRT thinking skills, once learned by the students, through all disciplines of the curriculum.Once again the students showed improved scores on a range of quantitative measures. In addition, the teacher showed growth on a range of measures (Claytonand Edwards: 1989). Both the teacher and the headmaster, who also regularly took the class, reported impressive benefits. The teacher noted that her teaching style had become much more interactive; she now used group work more; she knew her students and their thinking at a much deeper level than ever before in
thirteen years of teaching; the students had achieved outstanding and unexpected results on standardised national tests; and the students now contributed many more ideas of a far higher quality than they had done before CoRT instruction.

The teacher who taught them the year before reported: "there are a couple of good workers, the rest you have to really push hard ...to get anything out of them." The headmaster agreed they had been like this, but now they were more responsive and more confident in their thinking than any group he had taught. He referred to 9 lower ability students in the class who had seldom contributed in class during their six years in the school: It's marvellous. Not just a minor miracle to change that sort of behaviour, sixy ears or more of habit forming and then in the eight months to change it to 'I have something to contribute'.

When asked to compare this class with other grade 7 classes, he replied: If I look back over eight years of Grade 7s there would be two other classes that I would have rated far, far better than any other class that we have had and if I was to rate these out of eight on a number line they would probably be four or five.

When the results on the standardised national test arrived near the end of the school year he reported: "I was thrilled ... they were certainly startling and outstanding". The test (ACER-TOLA) consisted of five sub-tests; each designed to produce a standard distribution. This meant that 31% of the students tested would normally fall one or two standard deviations above the mean. The results for the CoRT trained group, and for the mean scores from the previous 6 years of grade 7's at this school were, in relation to proportion of students above the mean, as follows:

Proportion of Students Above the Mean

Group	National Norm	School Mean	CoRT
Test of learning abilities	31%	39.5%	52%
Study skills	31%	31.2%	48%
Mathematics skills	31%	24.8%	52%
Language vocabulary	31%	42.8%	62.4%
Language comprehension	31%	35.8%	50%

Feedback from the children themselves was also positive, with the majority reporting big improvements in their thinking and self-confidence, and many reporting wide use of the CoRT skills across the curriculum and in their
everyday life. These students completed their secondary schooling in 1992. In the state of Queensland all students are given an overall level of achievement, based on school ratings moderated through a statewide set of standardised tests.The scores allocated to students range from a high of 1 to a low of 25. The CoRTtrained group had a few hours of CoRT reinforcement outside of school hours in their second and third years of secondary school, but nothing in the other three years, and no reinforcement from their teachers in secondary school. Their
scores had a mean of 10, compared with a mean of 15 for the other students in the school. A score of 15 would not get you into university; a 12 would get you into education. Most parents in the state would kill for a one-point jump in Overall Performance score. These results reinforce the obvious potential of programs such as CoRT for improving the thinking of students, particularly if the skills are infused broadly through the curriculum and reinforced once learned.

Adey (1994), Feuerstein et al (1985) and Lipman (1994) report similar long-term benefits from their thinking programs. Collections of research can be found in references such as Segal et al (1985), Nickerson et al (1985), Perkins et al (1987), Maclure and Davies (1991), and Edwards (1994a), and in journals such as Cognition and Instruction and Educational Leadership. Despite such results theseprograms, in total, probably influence less than 5% of schools across the U.K., U.S., and Australia.

We have recently been involved in a major study to infuse the CoRT program through the curriculum of a large secondary school in Brisbane. (see O'Brien, Stapledon, Edwards and Diamond: 1994). It is studies such as these that are needed to convince educational authorities that the teaching of thinking should be one major focus for the curriculum. The results being achieved by the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) project in the U.K. (seeAdey: 1994) are another promising start.

Matching this research is an extensive body of research on teacher thinking and teachers' implicit theories or craft knowledge. This has been well reviewed by Marland (1994). These researchers are pushing towards a theory of teaching which grows out of the lived experience of teachers rather than out of theoretical or philosophical models. While most teachers would support this, neither educational policy, teaching practice nor teacher training appear to have been significantly influenced.

Principals, experienced and beginning teachers, and teachers-in-training complain that much teacher training is out-dated. Teaching, particularly in secondary schools, has largely become force-feeding ever-growing chunks of
prescribed curricula into young heads. This has produced a level of dissatisfaction in the profession that robs many schools of an atmosphere of creativity and love of learning, and of joy in teaching.

Teachers do not need new expectations in their already over-filled lives. Few people take the time to analyse the lived lives of teachers (see Edwards 1994b),and so the myths and unrealistic expectations live on. A conscientious teacher has on average ten minutes to prepare each lesson, and nine minutes per month per child they teach to do all marking and planning at home for that child. This equates to twelve hours per week work at home on top of school hours. To put in more time than this leads to potential damage to the personal and professional growth of the teacher and to their family life.

It is time for a rethink, for some restructuring of schools. There is such a store of knowledge amongst teachers and parents on how to best educate gifted children, but no-one wants to listen. How to have a systemic influence on
schools is beyond every researcher I have met. The best results seem to come from programs where you focus on the education of the teacher, for themselves. This then seems to flow on to their students. So, maybe we should develop the "gifts" in our teachers and thereby enable them to develop the gifts in their students.

IMPLICATIONS FOR GIFTED EDUCATION
Let me finish by sharing with you the implications I see from all of this for gifted education:

1. Adults who interact with gifted children need to be aware that they have particular sensitivities, that they may anticipate adult desires and needs, and manage their young lives to meet adult needs rather than their own needs. Alice Miller's advice is to pay much more attention to self-awareness. Parents and teachers need self-awareness so that they do not use the child for their own development purposes at the expense of the child. Children need to be loved and respected for who they are, who they can be, they should be allowed the freedom to develop the potential within them. Adults need to show reverence for children, take the child-rearing responsibility seriously, and help them to know their true self, and to be comfortable with who they are. This is particularly so for the gifted child. A special friend of mine from Adelaide, recently had a discussion with her eight-year-old gifted daughter about difficulties she was experiencing at school. She asked the daughter if she could see ways she was different to the other children. No response. Ways she thought differently? No response. Aren't there things you want to talk about that the other children may not be interested in? "Oh, you mean if I want to talk about the fruits of oblivion? "
What Miller is asking for is a focus on helping gifted children feel that "authentic sense of being truly alive."

2. Pedagogy needs to be rethought, not just for gifted children but for all children and teachers. The WRAP data and cognitive demand research are a sad commentary on the diet we feed to students. Students need the opportunity to be intellectually challenged and to taste ownership of learning. They need to feel their own personal power in learning. Think back, how many times in your school career were you allowed to pursue something in which you had a burning interest to its satisfying conclusion? (Russell: 1996). For a gifted child, prescriptive
schools and curricula must be like being in gaol.

3. Schools and curricula need to be redesigned so that teachers and their students can genuinely rediscover the joy of learning. Teachers could do this, if only politicians and bureaucrats would respect them to do so. Lawrence's call for stopping the madness of force feeding endless chunks of curriculum into students was ignored. It is time to pay attention to such calls. We need a forward to basics movement, not a back to basics movement. The curriculum as
transmitter of what is best in our academic disciplines needs to be about one third of a school program. The second third could be the new basics: thinking skills, the new numeracy, the new literacy, interpersonal skills, and education
of the body. The final third could be freedom to explore what fascinates students and what fascinates teachers.

4. Schools need to stop interfering with families. There should be much more respect for what families can do. Compulsory homework should be abolished, so that families can get on with passing on their special PPK to their children and so that children can develop their own passions and interests. The time for treating families as if they need the school to manage their home lives shouldend. Rich family life allows an individual approach to learning about life that few teachers can possibly provide. Listen to children who have been homeschooled, they will explain how so much time is wasted in schools and how frustrating schools are after home learning. More energy could be put into helping parents discover each other and share their experiences about raising children.

5. As Argyris suggests, gifted children should be taught how to reflect, how to skilfully give and receive feedback, and how to act on it. There should be an emphasis on their emotional intelligence as well as their academic life.
Learning to keep journals can be very powerful, as can learning other forms of reflection. They need to understand their world views, their beliefs, values andassumptions about the world. Parents, teachers and fellow students can use facilitative questioning techniques to help with this. These techniques can be found in the work of many researchers: Carl Rogers, Art Costa, Peter Senge, and in the work of Jim Butler and myself. They are based on a deep respect for the individual, and questioning in a way that respects that the person can find their own answers to their own problems without the benefit of your towering intellect to "fix them up". We have found that such questioning is difficult to learn for most people. Knowing how to question and be questioned are crucial skills. Understanding frameworks such as Argyris' ladder of inference can provide a helpful explanatory structure for bright minds trying to understand human behaviour. Introduction to a rich range of such frameworks for looking at
behaviour, creativity and invention, empowers young gifted people. It also givesthem a useful language with which to discuss their experiences of the world. Much of our mainstream language is limited and dichotomous in a way that makes deep discussion of work done very woolly and imprecise.

6. The Dreyfus model reminds one of the need to have realistic expectations of gifted children. Their skills are contextual. They need the resources and freedom to explore the areas of their gifts, and to develop the other areas as well where they may be novice and need rule-governed behaviour. The problem in many schools is that while children are given the rule-governed behaviour they need at the start this becomes the constant diet.

7. Gifted children can be helped to see learning as an iterative rather than as a linear process. Acting to learn is a key understanding. Many gifted people getlocked into "analysis paralysis", feeling they need perfect knowledge before deciding or acting. Knowing how to spin oneself through action learning loops is a powerful aid to lifelong learning.

8. Argyris calls for teaching people new and more effective ways of thinking. Programs such as those of Edward de Bono can help to broaden the repertoire of thinking tools available to any child. They can provide increased generative power to the thinking of a young gifted person. In a short time the child in this area will move beyond those basics to develop generative strategies of their own.

 

The overall point I wanted to make in this paper is the need to be acutely awareof the things we steal from the gifted child. The adults around these sensitive young people have a profound influence on them, the world views they form, and the way they see themselves. These things are at the core of who they become as a person. We should tread gently.

Sidney Jourard (cited in Kerwin: 1986) provides a powerful insight, with which Iwould like to finish this paper:

"We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone, our parents, our teachers, our analysts, hypnotises us to see the world and construe it in the right way. These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it so that thereafter we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell so that we become undeaf, unblind, and multi-lingual. Therebletting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists."

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Reproduced with permission of:

Dr. John Edwards
Edwards Explorations
P.O.Box 1934
Brisbane 4001