Monday, July 12, 2010

Should reasoning skills be taught in primary school?

I do believe that reasoning skills should be taught in primary school. And I have a few reasons why that will be explained toward the end. Let me start by describing reasoning skills. There are four categories of basic reasoning skills: (1) storage skills, (2) retrieval skills, (3) matching skills, and (4) execution skills according to http://education.calumet.purdue.edu/vockell/edPsybook/Edpsy7/edpsy7_reasoning.htm .

Storage and retrieval skills make the thinker able to transfer information to and from long-term memory. To practice this, the learner does something on purpose to focus on the information being studied or to relate it to information that is already in long term memory. An example is visual imagery. Like the test that was talked about in class, it shows a picture and it is linked with emotions. Your emotions will make you decide if it is a good or bad picture

Matching skills make the learner be able to figure out how information being received is similar to, or different from information already stored in long-term memory. There are five types of matching skills, which include categorization, extrapolation, analogical reasoning. Evaluation of logic, and evaluation of value.

The executive procedures are the last set of reasoning skills. This means that they coordinate a set of other skills to help learners build new structures or restructure old ones. There are three different executive skills which include elaboration, problem solving, and composing.

Now, do I think that this should be taught in elementary schools? In this article, it describes why critical thinking is important. http://cals-cf.calsnet.arizona.edu/fcs/bpy/content.cfm?content=decision_making Most definitely, though I do not think that explaining it this way would be the best way to get the kids to understand. But things could be done like simple tests to see why kids match certain things, and do tests where they must get past the frontal lobe. I think if this was taught at an earlier age, we could have a better understanding of the way people think.