iou – April 12, this section – imported from the short-HomePage – will have a brief introduction.

Part 2B:

my Model for Design Process is...

a Model with models

Design Process is a Model containing many models.  Each model is an Actions-Diagram that is accurate in different ways – because each model selects different Actions to include & exclude – and is educationally useful in different ways.  Having a variety of models gives teachers flexibility in their instruction.  And it's practical for students, encouraging them to “think in different ways” for different problems, because their problem-solving process varies from one life-situation to another.

a family of related models ➞ a Model:  Each model is a simplified representation of problem-solving process (it's a simplification of the complex actions that are used by people during our process of solving a problem), so each is a model for problem-solving process.  They are part of “a family of related models” that combine to form my overall Model, as explained later.  All of my models are "related" because they all describe the same process;  but each model emphasizes different aspects of the overall process, and this makes the models educationally useful in different ways.

complexity and simplicity:  Although your actual process of thinking is complex — as in the blending of conscious with subconscious when you're Generating-and-Evaluating Ideas or Coordinating Your Process — constructing simplified models is useful for thinking about thinking, for learning (in education) and doing (in problem solving).

models and stages

By creatively using different models (in the family of models for Design Process) a teacher can design a logical progression of instruction that begins with simplicity and gradually makes complexity easy to understand.  For example,

Above you studied two complex models that visually-and-verbally (in diagrams for Stage 3) show the Actions a person does while they are Evaluating an Option, during their process of Solving a Problem.  Of course, Stage 1 and Stage 2 use models that are simpler.

Below, while you're increasing your own understanding of the Stages (1,2,3,4) you can be thinking about how to design activities that will help students understand Problem Solving, and improve their Problem-Solving Skills.  An effective way to help students understand is by providing Experiences (in Solving Problems) plus Reflections (on their Experiences) and gently guided Discussions, to help them discover Principles (of Design Process, and thus Problem-Solving Process), with Experiences + Reflections ➞ Principles.  In a progression of instruction, during each stage you “keep it simple” (by focusing on Functional Actions) to help students understand that stage.  Moving from one stage to the next, you gradually increase the levels-of-complexity they can understand.  The overall result is that eventually students will be able to “cope with complexity” at higher levels, and the complex process-of-solving will seem simple because they understand it.  When this happens, the complex process has become (in their thinking) a “simplicity” because all parts are fitting together in ways that make sense for them, so their view of Problem-Solving Process is logically simple, psychologically intuitive.

the educational benefits of logically organized knowledge:  When principles for process (it's procedural knowledge) are verbally-and-visually organized – as in my Model for Design Process – this produces many kinds of educational benefits.

In the sections below (for Stages 1,2,3,4) you can learn – with your discoveries and my explanations – the Principles of Design Process.  My own favorite is the elegant beauty of Symmetry – for the Experiments we do Mentally & Physically – in Stage 2.

iou – Soon, probably April 12, I'll write introductions for each section below (imported from the Detailed Overview-Page) that will include a link to "different kinds of understandings" in the short-HomePage.

This section – to define Problem Solving and explain its Wide Scope – is imported from the Detailed Overview-Page.  Most links (those with gray background) open in the left frame and keep you inside the Overview-Page so they work better if that page is "put into right frame".     { the light blue links take you to other pages }

 ▓  Problem Solving — What is it?      (put into right frame)

The scope of design thinking is wide (it includes almost everything we do in life) because its objective is to solve problems, and...

  • a problem is any opportunity — in any area of life — to make things better. *

  • you do problem solving whenever you convert an actual current situation (the NOW-state) into a better future situation (a GOAL-state you want to achieve).

You define a problem by understanding “what is” in the NOW-State, and imagining “how it could be better” in a GOAL-State.

In a problem-solving project, during a process of design you Define a Problem and try to Solve the Problem by using creative-and-critical thinking to achieve the GOAL-State you have defined.     (problem solvers are solution seekers)

* Increase Quality or Maintain Quality:  You can solve a problem by “making things better” when you increase quality for any aspect of life, or maintain quality by minimizing a potential decrease of quality.   /   i.e. you can make things better than they otherwise would be (without your problem-solving actions) by making a helpful change or resisting a harmful change.

Many Opportunities:  You can make things better by increasing quality of life or maintaining it, for yourself and/or others, in ways that are small or large, are quickly achieved or require a long-term commitment, for all aspects of life.  You have a wide variety of problem-solving opportunities, and this variety produces...

 ▓  The Wide Scope of Problem Solving      (put into right frame)

Almost everything we do is problem solving, because a problem (when defined broadly) is "any opportunity – in any area of life – to make things better," and our efforts to do this include almost everything we do.

Objectives for Problem Solving:  You define an objective when you see a problem and you decide to "make it better."  People solve problems (by using creative-and-critical productive thinking) in a wide range of design fields — such as engineering, architecture, mathematics, music, art, fashion, literature, education, philosophy, history, science (physical, biological, social), law, business, athletics, and medicine — when their objective is to design (to find, invent, or improve) a better product, activity, relationship, and/or strategy (in General Design) and/or (in Science-Design) an explanatory theory.*  These objectives extend far beyond traditional “design fields” to include almost everything we do in life.

Of course, my five categories – product, activity, relationship, strategy, theory – are not the only ways to classify-and-label "almost everything we do" in our efforts to make things better, in our problem-solving objectives.  You may find it more useful to creatively define another set of categories.  Your set can be customized to fit your educational situation.  You want your objective-labels to make a close match with the life-experiences of your students, so they will recognize the personal relevance of school activities.  You want to motivate students by showing them why they should think “what I'm learning in School-Life will help me improve my Whole-Life (= School-Life + NonSchool-Life) and I want a better Whole-Life, so I want to pursue my own Personal Education.”

* What are the similarities & differences in General Design and Science-Design?

Why do I claim that problem solving – and thus the process of productive creative-and-critical design thinking we use to solve problems – has a very wide scope that includes "almost everything we do"?  Because...

    • Decision Making is Problem Solving:  One reason for the wide scope of Problem-Solving Activities is because our strategies include the many strategic decisions (small & large) we continually make in everyday life.  These often begin by asking yourself “what is the best use of my time right now”* and deciding what to do now.  You can improve your quality of life (now & later) in many ways, including your decisions to be personally proactive by designing strategies to improve your performing and learning.  And you can develop-and-do strategies for helping other people improve their quality of life.     {* this is Lakein's Question }
    • My definition of strategy spans a wide range so it includes all strategies, in personal & professional contexts, that are involved in all of the decisions (small and large) you continually make in everyday life, which often begin by asking yourself “what is the best use of my time right now” and deciding what to do now.  For example, you use a strategy when you decide... [continued in the Detailed Overview-Page]

iou – Tonight this will have an introduction, to connect The Wide Scope of Design (above) that Improves Transfers (in short-HomePage, and re-described with more detail in first subsection below) with (below) Metacognitve Strategies for Improving Transfers.

 ▓  Transfers of Learning    (into right frame`)

Part 1 — Two Principles for Increasing Transfer

Transfer is important.  How People Learn` says "the ultimate goal of learning" is transfer, so it's "a major goal of schooling," and they recommend (based on research about learning) that to increase transfer, we should:  A) teach knowledge in multiple contexts;   B) teach knowledge in a form that can be easily generalized.   Will using Design Process help us do these two things?  Yes.  We logically predict that transfer will improve when we do A-and-B, and both happen when we use Design Process:

A) teach knowledge in multiple contexts, and...  People use a problem-solving process of design thinking for almost everything in life so students can do a wide range of design activities in a wide-spiral curriculum that builds educational bridges (to promote transfers-of-learning & transitions-of-attitudes) from life into school — in all subjects (in arts, humanities, sciences, engineering, business) — and back into life.   /   Transfers-of-learning increase when teachers give students opportunities for design-experiences across a wide range, in the second of 4 stages in learning-from-inquiry.  But transfers should increase even more when we also use the next 2 stages by supplementing design-experiences with reflections-on-experience and design-principles, when we also...

B) teach knowledge in a form that can be easily generalized, and...  This occurs with Design Process, for two related reasons.*  When its general principles are taught in multiple contexts we can show students how all of their problem-solving strategies (used in different contexts) are related to Design Process (because it's used in each context) and thus are related to each other.     {analogy with transitive math: if A=B and B=C, then A=C}

* First, the focus of Design Process is the general short-term sequences — as in 4 Ways to Use Experiences — that we use in all design thinking (in a wide range of design fields) for all problem solving,  so the generalized principles of Design Process can be taught in multiple contexts.  We can show students how they use a similar process of design-thinking in many different contexts, in life and school, to build educational bridges that increase confidence and motivation for more students (with wider diversity) to improve educational equity.

* Second, the generalizable principles of Design Process can be taught using a family of closely related models (with possibilities for combining Design Process with other models-for-process) in a step-by-step progression for learning.  One kind of progression uses the Simplicity and Symmetry of Design Process:

    • A teacher begins with simplicity — showing students how they Define a Problem, and Solve the Problem by using cycles of Generation-and-Evaluation in which creative Generation is guided by critical Evaluation — that is easily generalized to solving problems in all areas of life.

    • Then the progression continues — maybe with students reflecting on their own experiences while solving problems, so they can use a process of inquiry to learn principles for inquiry — to help students develop a deeper understanding of the process they use for solving problems.  A central feature in the framework of Design Process is the mental-physical symmetry of mental experiences & physical experiences that occur in functionally integrated short-term sequences (so we can get information and use information) while we're solving problems.     /     One possibility for instruction is whole-part-whole teaching that (with a "part") lets a student temporarily focus on a particular skill — like one of the 10 modes of thinking-and-action in 4 categories [when they Define, Generate, Evaluate, Coordinate] — and then (with "whole") helps them learn to master the coherent integration of individual thinking skills (in these 10 modes) to form productive whole-process skills.     /     For students, two benefits of the logical organization in Design Process are:  increased problem-solving skills in each of the multiple contexts;  and, with improved understanding of process, increased transfers of skills (including conditional knowledge) from one context to another.

more - analogy with transitive math (if A=D and B=D and C=D, then A=B=C) but why A≈B≈C (with ≈ instead of =) for transfers-between-areas(A,B,C) plus reasons for humility when evaluating all claims for transfer

table of contents:  In the rest of this section about Transfers of Learning, you'll find...

    Metacognitive Strategies for increasing transfers between contexts (in different areas of life) and between times (from past to present, and from present to future),

    improving transfers of ideas-and-skills by developing Conditional Knowledge (for functional understandings) and organizing Procedural Knowledge (for conceptual understandings),

    Teaching for Transfer – producing Education to Prepare for Life.

Part 2 — Metacognitive Strategies for Increasing Transfer  (into right frame`)

Teaching for Transfer:  Teachers should develop improved Teaching Strategies to promote transfer.   {And, of course, to also achieve other objectives, or multiple objectives;  for example, Transitions of Attitudes and Transfers of Learning (in time & between areas) are related, and together they form the foundation for a strategy of building bridges to achieve educational equity.}

Learning for Transfer:  Teachers should motivate students to develop-and-use their own Thinking Strategies and help them do this more effectively.

These cognitive-and-metacognitive Strategies for Transfer overlap, so Part 2 includes both perspectives, teaching & learning, for teachers and students.  Transfer Strategies are important because all learning involves transfer when we build new knowledge on the foundation of existing knowledge, as described in Constructivist Theories of Learning.

Remembering-and-Transfering are closely related, so strategies that improve a remembering of knowledge — by storing/retaining (in the past) and recalling (in the present) — also improve a transfering of knowledge.     {but... some Strategies-for-Remembering are especially effective for Strategies-for-Transfering}

The paragraphs below examine two factors — change in time, and change of context — that are involved in a “transfer” of ideas-and-skills.

What is transfer?  In our usual definition of transfer, remembering is necessary for transfer, but is not sufficient.  For transfering to occur, remembering is necessary (so all transfering requires remembering), but remembering isn't sufficient because “transfer” also requires a change of context – i.e., transfering is remembering that occurs in a different context.

Transfer to Different Contexts:  What we consider to be “just remembering” occurs when the context-of-storing (in the past) and context-of-recalling (in the present) are extremely similar.  As the similarity-in-context decreases (so the difference-in-context increases), the amount of transfering increases.  Therefore, it's useful to think about “transfer” ranging along a continuum from “remembering with a small amount of transfer” to “remembering with a large amount of transfer”.

Transfer to Different Times:  A transfer of learning requires that you “remember” something (idea[s] and/or skill[s]) from your past so it can be used in your present.  Or you can remember it in your future because you learned it in your present.*  These two kinds of transfer — past-to-present (to improve your performing now) and present-to-future (because you are learning now, to improve your performing later) — require different Thinking Strategies in the present, as described in Performing and/or Learning.     {* thinking about time-perspectives:  Of course, all remembering occurs in your present, so all transfers are from past to present, when something (idea and/or skill) you learned in your past helps you perform better now, in your present.  A transfer from present to future will occur whenever something you are learning now will help you perform better later, in your future – i.e., in a "present" time (the only time when transfer-by-remembering can occur) sometime in your future.}

Past - Present - Future

You can develop a wide variety of Thinking Strategies for increasing transfers to different times so you can improve your performance now (by reaching backward into the past) and (by looking forward) in the future.     { One theory of transfer includes two dimensions, backward/forward and low/high. }

Learning from the Past:  In the present, you often can improve your current performance by intentionally recalling for transfer — by asking “what have I learned in the past that might be useful now?” — to help you recall ideas-and-skills knowledge you learned in the past, so you can use this knowledge.

Learning for the Future:  In the present, you often can improve your future performance by intentionally learning for transfer, in ways that will make your ideas-and-skills knowledge more easily available for personal use in the future, by asking “what can I learn now that will help me later?”

Both strategies are useful "often" but not always, because sometimes conscious metacognition is a distraction that should be avoided.  Therefore, it's important to regulate your metacognition by deciding when to avoid it, and when (and how) to use it.

Interactions between timings and priorities — is your main objective to improve your performance now, or later? — are examined in Performing and/or Learning.

Here are four related strategies for guiding — with the stimulus for metacognitive action located externally or internally — that can increase transfers of learning between past, present, and future.

External Reminding and Self-Reminding, for transfers from Past to Now:  When teachers use guiding, one function is reminding students to think about what they already know.  Students who want to be self-reliant, not dependent on external guiding, can do proactive self-reminding with a metacognitive Transfer Strategy of trying to intentionally recall ideas or skills that have been useful in similar situations in the past, and thus might be useful now.

Externally-Guided Awareness and Self-Guided Awareness, for transfers from Now to Future:  In a related kind of guiding, with a reflection request (reflection question) a teacher increases a student's awareness of what is happening, or did happen;  then the student's cognitive-and-metacognitive reflection puts knowledge into their memory-storage so this knowledge will be available for recalling in their future.  Of course, a student can self-promote their own awareness and reflection, with or without a conscious intention to learn, although...

During a learning of knowledge, storage-in-memory usually is improved by awareness, and even more by awareness with intention to store-in-memory, by intention to remember.  Later, retrieving this knowledge can occur by spontaneous recall (without conscious effort) or intentional recall (with self-reminding).

Improving Understandings to Improve Transfers

Design Process can help students improve their transfers of ideas-and-skills (to improve their performance and/or learning) by helping them develop Conditional Knowledge (to improve their functional understandings of their ideas-and-skills) and organize Procedural Knowledge (to improve their conceptual understandings of their problem-solving process).

• develop Conditional Knowledge

A very useful kind of metacognitive knowledge is the Conditional Knowledge that is knowing WHAT you can accomplish with each skill (WHY to use it) plus WHEN to use it (the Conditions of Application) during a process of design.  Each skill is a mode of thinking that is an option for “what to do next.”  A better understanding of your skills, with conditional knowledge, will help you find a “WHAT-and-WHAT match” between WHAT will help you make progress (you know this with metacognitive awareness of “where you are now” and “where you want to go” in your process) and (by using Conditional Knowledge) WHAT you can do to make progress, so you can decide “WHAT to do next” in coordinating your process of design.

When you decide to intentionally learn for the future by improving your Conditional Knowledge for a variety of skills (that are useful in a variety of situations), this knowledge will help you remember/transfer your problem-solving skills, which will improve your problem-solving performance.

The structure of Design Process can help students develop Conditional Knowledge and also...

• organize Procedural Knowledge

Educational Benefits of Organizing:  Research shows that logically organizing Conceptual Knowledge leads to better understanding, remembering-transfering, and applying.  A logical organization of Procedural Knowledge, as in Design Process, should be similarly helpful for improving Conditional Knowledge (and thus Action-Coordinating Strategies) and in other ways.    {some cognitive benefits of organization are illustrated by three quizzes, in which memory improves when 22 meaningless letters are organized into 6 meaningful words and then 1 interesting story}   {instruction with verbal-and-visual integration}

Organizing to improve Transfer & Expertise:  According to How People Learn, organization of knowledge improves transfer and expertise, including adaptive expertise that "is flexible and more adaptable to external demands," that uses metacognitive thinking strategies to cope with new situations, and pursues lifelong learning to continually improve ideas-and-skills.  Regarding education, the authors wonder "whether some ways of organizing knowledge [and some kinds of learning experiences] are better at helping people remain flexible and adaptive to new situations."  Maybe adaptive expertise can be promoted by teaching Design Process, which has a logically organized structure* and also (due to its options for “what to do next”) is flexible so it encourages structured improvisation.

* Organizing Knowledge with Design Process:  The logically organized framework of Design Process — as in Diagram 3b` that shows, with spatial patterns and colors, the “parallels” of mental-and-physical experimenting used in Cycles of Generation-and-Evaluation (in two Design Cycles, one Science Cycle) — will help students understand the functional integration of problem-solving skills within each design experience, and also between design experiences in different subject areas to increase transfer between areas.  Instruction that uses inquiry to teach inquiry probably will be very effective for learning and transfer.   {more - other descriptions of verbal/visual integration in Design Process have more colorizing and more details}

a bonus:  organizing most kinds of knowledge (not just Procedural Knowledge)* will help you improve your understandings and your transfers.     {

Education to Prepare for Life:

Improving 21^st Century Skills

Schools cannot prepare students for every challenge they will face.  But we can help them cope with challenges by improving their problem-solving skills (including adaptive expertise) and their ability to learn new ideas-and-skills when necessary.    { Instead of just giving fish to students, we teach them how to fish, and why. }

Transfers of Design-Skills into Life:  Schools can use design thinking (which includes scientific reasoning and is used for almost everything we do in life) to build educational bridges — from life into school (in all subjects in a wide-spiral curriculum) and back into life — to increase motivations for learning and transfers of learning.

Transfers of Science-Skills into Life:  In all of life, not just in science, students use their theories about “how the world works” to understand “what is happening, how, why” and to imagine “what will happen.”  When their theories about the world are more thorough & accurate, this improved understanding will increase the accuracy of their theory-based predictions that, along with their values & priorities, will help them make wise decisions, personally and professionally, while pursuing their goals in life.

Transfers of Evaluative Thinking into Life:  All of us, including students, use a process of design thinking (by Generating-and-Evaluating Ideas) to "make it better" in almost everything we do, to design better strategies, relationships, activities, or products (in General Design), or theories about the world (in Science-Design).  We use Evaluative Thinking often in life, whenever we hear a claim, or make a claim, and ask “what is the evidence-and-logic supporting this claim?”  When it's done well, Evaluative Thinking should promote logically appropriate humility, with a confidence that is not too little, not too much.  {Bertrand Russell, re: three kinds of error – being incorrect and/or having “confidence in being correct” that is too much or too little}  {Accurate Understanding - and thus appropriate humility? - with Respectful Attitudes}   /   Because evaluation is argumentation we can develop stimulating “argument activities” (with thinking + listening/talking or reading/writing) to help students improve the evaluative thinking they use in all design thinking, for reasoning that includes scientific thinking and general critical thinking.

And for even more, you can read the full page for Transfers of Learning.

4A — you COORDINATE your Process of Design  (into right frame`)

What?  In this mode you make action-decisions by deciding “what to do next.”

Why?  A coordination of Action-Decisions is necessary because you always have many options for Design Actions.  For example, after Evaluation (with a Quality Check or Reality Check) your next Action can occur in any of the 10 modes of mental & physical action which are the actions in Diagram 3b.     { And if you're using a hybrid model that combines Design Process with another model-for-process, you also can think about long-term phases (of another model) as options for “what to do next.” }

How?  Part 1, a quick overview:  To coordinate a problem-solving process of design (whether it's individual or collaborative), you observe your process, then generate-and-evaluate options for actions so you can make an action-decision by asking “what is the best use of my time right now?” (considering both urgency & importance) and choosing an action.    { Sometimes your next action is a coordinating-of-actions in Mode 4A. }

Why?

benefits for Performing:  The direct short-term benefits of effective coordination — which converts individual creative-and-critical thinking skills into productive whole-process skills — are using time more effectively and/or designing a better solution.

Coordination Decisions can help you now (for better current performing) and/or later (when current learning produces better future performing).   Performing and/or Learning

benefits for Learning:  The long-term benefits include learning how to improve your Strategies for Coordinating, which is one kind of cognitive-and-metacognitive Strategy for Thinking that is part of your Cognitive/Metacognitive Knowledge.

How?  Part 2, with more detail:  You coordinate a process of design by combining Process-Awareness (by aware observing of your process-situation, of “where you are” in your process, and comparing this with “where you want to go” for a solution) and Conditional Knowledge that helps you find a match between a recognized need (it's WHAT you want to do, in an effort to move from your now-situation toward your goal-situation, to make problem-solving progress) and a known capability (for WHAT you can do):

    You decide "WHAT you want to do" with metacognitive awareness-of-process (by aware observing of where you are in your current situation) plus cognition (by comparing where you are with where you want to go, with your goal-situation for process, when you can celebrate because you have designed a satisfactory solution that achieves the solution-goals you defined in Modes 1A-1B).
    You'll know "WHAT you can do" by developing, for each of your skills, a Conditional Knowledge about its functional capabilities (WHAT it lets you do, and thus WHY it's useful) and its conditions-of-application (for WHEN it will be useful).*
    When you find an option-for-Action that is a WHAT-and-WHAT match (between the WHAT-need for your process, and the Action's WHAT-capabilities), this is a productive Action that you may want to choose and do.
    {an effective coordinating will wisely use the contrasting virtues of perseverance and flexibility as illustrated by How I Didn't Learn to Ski - and then did learn}

a summary:  Conditional Knowledge helps you choose an action that is productive because it helps you make progress in moving from “where you are now” toward “where you want to go” for a satisfactory solution.

* Above, the focus is Performing, by Using Conditional Knowledge.  Now we'll look at Learning, in a process of...

Developing Conditional Knowledge

To master a skill (or sequence of skills) you should know HOW to use it, and also WHY to use it (WHAT it lets you accomplish) and WHEN to use it.  To develop the understanding of WHY/WHAT-and-WHEN that is your Conditional Knowledge for this skill, you ask WHY (WHAT are the skill's functional capabilities?  i.e., WHAT can I accomplish by using it? WHY might it be useful?) and WHEN (in which conditions-of-use will the skill be useful? which situation-cues will help me recognize these application-conditions?).

You can ask these WHAT/WHY-and-WHEN questions for individual skills, and also combinations of functionally related skills plus ideas and skills-with-ideas.

To help you remember WHEN, so you will use the skill when it will be useful, you can intentionally learn for transfer (for remembering-and-using the skill in new situations in your future) with vivid concrete imagery, by creatively imagining that “if the situation is     or     or     , then I can use    ”, so in the future each of your situation-cues will be a reminder to use this skill.

A teacher should encourage & guide this “WHY/WHAT and WHEN” questioning, to help students improve their Conditional Knowledge for the skills (and ideas) they are learning, so in the future they will be able to use each skill (or idea) in all appropriate situations.

 ▓  Productive Thinking    (into left frame`)

When you effectively combine creative thinking and critical thinking with relevant knowledge, the result is productive thinking.

color symbolism:  In my diagrams for our process of problem solving,  creative thinking + critical thinking ➞ productive thinking,  with red + blue ➞ purple,  as in color-combining with pigments.

Process of Productive Thinking

You can think productively — with high quality creative-and-critical thinking based on useful ideas-knowledge — throughout a process of design thinking (used for almost everything in life) when you are Defining a Problem (by learning more so you understand more accurately-and-thoroughly, choosing an objective, and defining goals for a satisfactory solution) and while you are trying to Solve the Problem (by creatively Generating Ideas and critically Evaluating Ideas in Cycles of Design).

To convert your productive thinking into a productive process-of-thinking, you use process-knowledge (especially conditional knowledge) to coordinate your process of design by making action-decisions about “what to do next.”

* More generally, the process-results you want are productive actions, which are not limited to just productive thinking because actions are mental and/or physical.

Wise Actions:  In most of this page-summary of Productive Thinking, the focus is creative Idea-Generation because it's important, fascinating, and challenging.  But usually critical Idea-Evaluation is more important.  Why?  Because if creative ideas are converted into action too quickly — without sufficiently wise evaluation — the result can be unwise action.  Evaluation is essential for each part of a problem-solving Design Project, when you Define a Problem (so you'll have worthy Objectives & Goals) and Solve the Problem (so you'll design a satisfactory Solution).

Five Ways to Generate Ideas

During a process of problem-solving design, you Generate Options (for a problem-solution) by finding-and-selecting an old Option or inventing a new Option, as described in Mode 2A ("A Wide Variety of Knowledge") and "Old plus New" and Mode 2B.  You can generate ideas by Research, Revision, Analysis, Guided Generation, and/or Free Generation.  It's "and/or" because all of these ways-to-generate are compatible, and they can be combined during a Design Cycle or Science Cycle.

• RESEARCH:  Find old Options, and select one of them.   /   Learning more (so you understand more accurately-and-thoroughly) is valuable for improving productivity in all 10 modes of design-thinking action (mental and/or physical), not just to Generate Solution-Options.

• REVISION:  To invent a new Option, you can revise an old Option to improve it.  When revising, often a useful strategy is...

• ANALYSIS:  To invent a new Option using Revision-by-Analysis (i.e. Analysis-and-Revision) you analyze an old Option into its features, and think about ways to revise each feature,* trying to achieve a closer match with your Goals;  or you can do this with two (or more) options, looking for ways to combine the best of both.   {* usually revision-of-features is guided by critical evaluation-of-features, by how you think each feature affects the overall quality of an Option (with quality defined by your goals for a satisfactory solution) so usually there are close connections between Revision, Analysis, and Guided Generation}   {more about Revision using Analysis}

• GUIDED GENERATION:  You can use critical Evaluation of Ideas to stimulate-and-guide your creative Generation of Ideas.   {more about Guided Generation}

• FREE GENERATION:  You can try to reduce restrictions on your thinking, to allow a freely creative Generation of Ideas.   {more about Free Generation}

Empathy:  While you're generating ideas in any of these ways (or others), thinking with empathy leads to useful new perspectives & insights, helping you understand-and-think more productively.

Strategies for Productive Thinking:  You can try to develop Strategies for Productive Thinking (to improve your Knowledge-of-Ideas and your uses of Generative Thinking and Evaluative Thinking and your Coordination of Process).

Principles for Productive Thinking:  Letting students discover principles of Design Process and other models (through experience + reflection) can help them understand Guided Generation and improve their skill in using it.  These principles also can help students develop other Thinking Strategies that include improving their Conditional Knowledge which is useful for Coordinating their Process of Design.

Combining Models:  In many other models-for-process (such as d.school of Stanford) the main objective is to help students think more productively, to improve their skills in high-quality Design Thinking.  Our effectiveness in teaching actions-and-process can improve when we combine principles from Design Process and other models-for-process, and work collaboratively to develop strategies for creatively combining models during instruction.

Interactions:  You can improve the productivity of interactions between creative thinking and critical thinking — as in Guided Generation and Free Generation — by understanding the difference between two meanings of "critical" thinking.

Strategies for Thinking   (put into right frame`)

WHY — The goal of a Thinking Strategy is to more effectively use cognition and metacognition (by regulating them) so you will improve the quality of your performing-enjoying-learning and “make your life better” with Personal Education.

WHO — Any person, including students & teachers, can be the "you" who is developing and using Strategies for Thinking.

What and How?  As explained earlier,

WHAT — Due to the wide variety of Situations and Objectives in life, we develop-and-use a wide variety of Thinking Strategies for skills that are mental and/or physical.

HOW — A combination of metacognitive Awareness + metacognitive Knowledge helps you learn from experience when you use a process of design (in Self-Regulated Learning) so you can develop-and-apply-and-improve Thinking Strategies by learning more from experience.

Now we'll examine "How" and "What" more closely.

HOW ? — with metacognitive Reflection + Knowledge + Regulation

• Metacognitive Reflection can help you learn more from your experiences, in all areas of life;  reflection is defined (in edutech-wiki) as "a metacognitive strategy, ... an active exploration of experiences to gain new or greater understanding."

Reflection = Awareness + Processing:  Sometimes raw unprocessed metacognitive awareness — to simply observe the situation (now or in the past) and your thinking (now or in the past) — is useful, by itself, without a conscious intention to learn.  But these situation-specific metacognitive observations usually are more valuable when you think about them, when metacognitive awareness plus cognitive processing produces metacognitive reflection that you use in cycles of "Plan and Do/Observe" to continually learn from your experiences, in a process of design when you use metacognition-plus-cognition to develop & apply & improve Strategies for Thinking.

Reflection in Instruction:  Reflection is part of a teaching sequence — experience, reflection, principles with teachers using reflection activities to help students learn more from their experiences — that can help students learn design-thinking principles from Design Process or from other models.

Flexibility of Timings:  In this teaching sequence, reflection by students can occur before, during, or after an activity-experience.

    Usually, students reflect on “what they did” AFTER their activity-experience.
    They also can reflect on “what are doing” DURING the activity.  But when they do this, their reflections interact with their experience in ways that can be either negative (that decrease their flow-and-fun or performance) or positive (with beneficial effects), or some of each.  Therefore it's wise to aim for effective regulation of students' metacognitive reflection by them (directly) or by a teacher (in using reflection activities).
    Students also can reflect BEFORE this experience, when they are asked to look back and think about their prior experiences that are similar to what they will be doing.  Or they can look ahead and think about their future experience, to reflect on “what they will do.”
    All 3 timings can be educationally useful.  Students can use metacognitive reflection to "learn more from their experiences," to "gain new or greater understanding" — with "an active exploration of experiences" { edutech-wiki}, with "serious and careful thought" {Cambridge Dictionary} — by reflecting before an experience, or after it, or (hopefully using "effective regulation of... reflection") during it, or at all of these times.

Thinking-Situation and Thinking-Actions:  With your metacognitive awareness you can observe your thinking-Situation (now or in the past) and your thinking-Actions (now or in the past).

What is a thinking-situation?

    A situation can involve only you, or (as in a context that is social and/or collaborative) you plus other people, or (in empathetic observation) only others.  Your context also can affect the process of reflection;  you can reflect by yourself, or in discussions with others that can be especially useful while coordinating a collaborative process.
    The situation you're observing can be small or large, narrow or wide.  You can reflect on a small-scale situation when your temporary focus is narrow because you want to achieve a specific short-term objective, such as a creatively divergent Generation of Ideas-for-Options.  But your awareness-of-situation has a wider scope when you observe the process-situation that is “where you are” in your overall process of design, which is a series of smaller-scale situations.  You can more effectively coordinate your process of design by combining awareness-of-process with Conditional Knowledge.

• Metacognitive Knowledge (about metacognition plus cognition, and their interactions) is used for metacognitive reflection while you are cognitively processing your metacognitive observations.  It includes general Metacognitive Knowledge — about persons (how we think, learn, perform) and tasks (situations, requirements, outcomes)* and strategies (each with its pros & cons) — plus personal Metacognitive Knowledge by “knowing yourself” based on observations of yourself (as the person) in the context of various tasks using different strategies.

* For example, a Thinking Strategy to improve your task-skill in learning from lectures is based on a foundation of knowledge about this skill, including knowledge you've learned from others (by searching for the Strategies they recommend, and why) and yourself (by remembering Strategies you've used in the past, along with your Actions in applying each strategy, and the Results of each application).     {metacognitive knowledge about many "skills for learning & performing"}

Conditional Knowledge will — when it's combined with process-awareness — help you coordinate a process of design so it's a very useful kind of Metacognitive Knowledge.   {can conditional knowledge be improved by knowing principles of Design Process?}

• Metacognitive Regulation (by making “what, how, when” decisions about the types, amounts, techniques, and timings of metacognition) can be viewed, when you develop & apply & improve Thinking Strategies, as a tool to use and a goal to achieve.   Regulating Metacognition

These interactive metacognitive-and-cognitive tools* for learning more from experience — when you do Reflection, gain & use Knowledge, do Regulation — can be done with or without a model of Design Process, but often they are more effective with it.   /   * functional interactions between components of cognition/metacognition

WHAT ?

• Strategies for Everything:  An extremely wide range of strategies — which includes strategies for thinking productively and for much more — is the main reason I claim that we use a process of design for doing almost everything in life.

You can use a process of design to develop Thinking Strategies for most aspects of life, in a wide range of situations, to improve your learning (when you read, listen, watch, do) and/or performing (of skills that are mental and physical), for...

Learning by Performing - Transfers of Learning - Teaching - Physical Skills - Productive Creative-and-Critical Thinking & Process-Coordinating - Meta-Strategies - and the basic “how to do it” Thinking Strategy of Regulating Metacognition by deciding when-and-how to use (or not use) cognition/metacognition of various kinds.

Here are some common types of aspects-and-situations:

• Strategies for Learning are actually Strategies for Learning-by-Performing.  To illustrate, imagine that one of your objectives is to learn more from lectures.  To improve this Learning Skill, you develop a Thinking Strategy by using a process of design that includes Quality Control to improve the quality of your performing-actions when you actualize the Strategy/Skill by converting it from idea into action, when you are actually learning from a lecture by performing during the lecture.    {Learning and/or Performing}

• Strategies for Transfers of Learning:  In many situations but not all,* you can get better performance — now or later — with metacognitive Strategies for Transfer by "Learning from the Past" to improve present performance, or "Learning for the Future" by using present learning to improve future performance.   /   * Sometimes turning metacognition off will improve present performance.

• Strategies for Teaching:  Teachers design/apply/improve Teaching Strategies that includes the “external metacognition”* they empathetically provide by observing students while asking “what are they thinking? how? why?” and “how can I design instruction to help them perform-enjoy-learn more effectively?” and “how should I guide students?” by asking or answering questions, giving tips, and providing formative feedback.

Teachers also help students learn how to generate-and-use their own formative feedback.  With guiding a teacher can promote metacognitive reflections by students, to help them perform better now and also learn how to guide themselves so they can perform better in the future.  And teachers can motivate students to proactively pursue their Personal Education with Thinking Strategies for “learning how to learn and/or perform more effectively” in school and in life, with transfer-bridges between school and life.

* If internal self-metacognition is thinking about what-and-how you are thinking, does analogous external empathetic metacognition occur when you think with empathy by trying to understand, based on observations & interpretations, what-and-how others are thinking & feeling, and why?  A similar shifting of perspective about internal/external, in our use of terms, is metacognitive self-empathy to be aware of your own thinking & feeling.   /   I've “answered” these questions by making decisions about terms;  I avoid empathetic metacognition because it's actually empathetic understanding, but I use external metacognition to describe the feedback that is produced by a filtering of understanding;  and I use self-empathy.   These choices are consistent with the choices made by other educators, re: their avoiding and using of terms.

A Wide Range of Contexts for Empathy:  Trying to think with empathy is useful in education and in other contexts.  It's useful for teachers & coaches and also for community leaders, business managers, and others.  Basically, accurate understanding (of self & others) is useful for everyone, in a very wide range of life-situations.

• Strategies for Physical Skills

Mental and/or Physical:  You use a process of design to develop-and-apply a wide variety of strategies to improve skills that are mental and/or physical because physical skills usually are mental-and-physical skills, and sometimes mainly-Mental Skills also have a physical component.

Regulation of Cognition/Metacognition:  For improving physical skills, coaches have a wide range of views about effective regulation of cognition-and-metacognition.  At one end of the spectrum, an inner game strategy emphasizes the value of raw metacognitive awareness of “what is” with minimal cognitive processing during an activity.

Learning More from Experience:  A general strategy for mental-and-physical skill is using a process of design to learn more from experience in a very wide range of activities, as illustrated by speaking and singing or how a friend became an expert welder or How I Didn't Learn to Ski (and then did learn, with perseverance + flexibility).

• Strategies for Productive Thinking:  You can use Thinking Strategies that usually include cognitive/metacognitive reflection (plus metacognitive knowledge) to improve the quality of productive thinking that occurs during short-term sequences of problem-solving actions.  For example, 5 ways to creatively generate ideas include Guided Generation (by using critical evaluation for stimulation-and-guiding) and Free Generation by turning critical evaluation off-and-on with Brainstorm-and-Evaluate and by reducing restrictive assumptions.  Most models for a process-of-design are educationally useful because they provide a structure (for instruction) and strategies (for thinking).  To promote productive thinking in schools — by helping students learn more from their experiences (will “principles for productive thinking” help us do this?) — a useful teaching strategy is to help students use-and-learn one or more models-for-process, including Design Process. 

• Strategies for Coordinating:  During a process of design, you coordinate your thinking-and-actions by making action decisions about “what to do next.”  How?  During skillful coordination you combine cognitive/metacognitive awareness (of your problem-solving process) with Conditional Knowledge (by knowing, for each skill, what it lets you accomplish, and the conditions in which it will be useful).   /   i.o.u. - also, you can coordinate collaboration (for effective work individually-and-cooperatively, to increase overall productivity by group, with optimal perform+learn+enjoy)

Educational Value:  Teaching principles of Design Process can help students improve their Coordination Strategies (improve their Conditional Knowledge and — so they can skillfully coordinate their thinking skills into whole-process skills when they are solving problems (in design-inquiry) and answering questions (in science-inquiry).   {two kinds of inquiry}

• Meta-Strategies are used to coordinate other strategies by making action-decisions about strategies (which ones to use, when, and how) more effectively and wisely, for pursuing short-term objectives, and maybe also the long-term objectives that help you achieve your whole-life goals for ideas-and-skills & more.   /   Two valuable meta-strategies are the personal disciplines of quality control (for all people) or mindful meditation, and (for some people & some educational situations) using prayer.

• Strategies for Regulation of Metacognition:  In most Thinking Strategies the main “strategy” is deciding when-and-how to use cognition/metacognition of various kinds, as explained below.  And an important Teaching Strategy is deciding when-and-how you do (or don't) want to ask metacognitive reflection questions.

Regulating Metacognition

Sometimes you'll want to stimulate performing/learning by using metacognition of a particular type, used in a particular way (re: amount, timing,...).*  At other times you will “go with the flow” by just thinking-and-doing (instead of thinking about thinking) to allow performing/learning by avoiding metacognition.  You can make better regulation decisions about turning metacognition on and off — deciding whether to use it or avoid it — if you increase your general & personal Metacognitive Knowledge.

* You design a Thinking Strategy by making decisions about the types/amounts & timings of cognition and metacognition you want.     { And even though "turning metacognition on and off" oversimplifies the complex blending of cognition-and-metacognition (plus sub-conscious processing & feedback) you want, these binary concepts ("on and off", "use it or avoid it") can be useful if they're not interpreted literally. }

The full-length section describes...

    Opportunities for Metacognition (during interludes when you're not deeply engaged in productive thinking-and-action (e.g. to learn from lectures what timings for metacognition are best? using what types & amounts?),
    Timings of Preparation-and-Production (illustrated by action-decisions while writing a paper),
    Using Intuition Wisely (should you trust it?  maybe, sometimes),
    Avoiding Procrastination (are you avoiding a high-priority task because it's unpleasant? or it seems overwhelming?), (although deciding “what to do” by finding a problem and deciding to solve it can be difficult, sometimes “what you should do” is obvious unless you ignore it so you can avoid it by procrastinating)   {use a "swiss cheese" strategy to “poke holes” in a task so it seems less overwhelming and/or unpleasant}
    Knowing Yourself (in your personal Metacognitive Knowledge),
    Learning and/or Performing (you should decide whether you want to improve one of these, or a combination of both, because metacognition often is productive for Learning, but less often is productive for Performing,* so your answers when asking “on or off?” may differ when your goal-emphasis shifts between Learning and Performing)     /     [and if, like me, you are a person who prays, you will want to distinguish between praying for everything (yes) and praying constantly (no) so you can regulate how you do (and don't) “think about God” and “talk with God” before-during-after your actions]
    and Skillful Metacognition because...

In situations where metacognition is unproductive — if there is too much introspection of the wrong kind or with the wrong timing, so it's a distraction — the difficulty is not metacognition, it's unskillful metacognition, due to a deficiency in skillfully regulating metacognition.

* Skillful Performance:  Sometimes, but not other times, metacognition is useful for performance.  When?

IF  Actual Performance = Potential Performance – Distracting Interference ,

or, simplifying,  PERFORMANCE = POTENTIAL – INTERFERENCE ,*

THEN (quoting from the full-length section) "you want to increase Potential Performance — which depends on Abilities (inherited & developed) and Preparation (for a particular Performance-Situation) — and decrease Distracting Interference (mental, emotional, or physical).  To maximize Actual Performance, an effective regulation of metacognition optimizes it by... turning it on (when it will improve Potential Performance) and off (when it would be a Distracting Interference)."

* This formula-for-performance is a principle of "inner game" approaches to performing-enjoying-learning that (along with other ideas, and links to other authors) are examined in Regulating Cognition-and-Metacognition for Optimal Performance and Learning.

A Process for Evaluating Metacognition:  In a variation of the formula above, we can evaluate the effects of metacognition more accurately-and-precisely by recognizing that...

    INTERFERENCE includes metacognitive distractions plus other kinds of distractions;
    and the effects of metacognition can be productive (when it's a part of your "Abilities + Preparation" that is being actualized in higher-quality performing) or distracting (when it's part of your "Interference");
    and your total metacognition includes particular types of metacognition (mc1, mc2, ...) used in specific ways (re: amount, timings,...), so  total metacognition = mc1 + mc2 + ...

You can estimate the effects caused by one type of metacognition, such as mc2, in a two-step process:   first, in a Mental Experiment you imagine what your Actual Performances would be without mc2 and with mc2, and/or in a Physical Experiment you observe what your Actual Performances are without mc2 and with mc2;   second, you compare these Performances (without mc2 versus with mc2) to estimate the overall effect of mc2.  Typically your Actual Performance will be affected by mc2 in ways that are beneficial (due to productive mc2, with positive effects, +) and are detrimental (due to distracting mc2, with negative effects, –).   This method of estimating the overall effect of mc2 is summarized here:

Value for Performing:  The overall effect-on-Performance due to this type of metacognition (mc2) can be beneficial, if the beneficial effects of mc2 (+ productive mc2) are larger than the detrimental effects of mc2 (– distracting mc2).  Or the overall effects of mc2 can be detrimental.  If the overall effects are detrimental, you can decide to avoid using mc2, or to use mc2 in a different way, re: its amount, timing,...   If the overall effects are beneficial, you can try to make mc2 more effective (and make your Performance better) by experimenting, by using mc2 in different ways and observing the effects, searching for ways to increase the productive mc2 and/or to decrease the distracting mc2.  For example, you might observe that mc2 is beneficial when you use it before a Performance (to prepare, to improve your quality-of-performance now) and also after the Performance (to review, to learn from the experience so you can improve your quality-of-performance later), but not during the Performance.     { But you might find that mc1 (another kind of metacognition) is beneficial when you use it, in specific ways that may depend on the Performance-Situation, during a Performance. }

Value for Learning:  In some situations – as in a typical practice session – you may want to use mc2 during your Performances even though this decreases your quality-of-Performing now, if using mc2 will help you learn more from your experiences now, so you can increase your quality-of-Performing later because you think this is more important.     {a non-metacognitive personal example from tennis in high school, when temporarily decreasing my performance (during practice) produced a future increasing of my performance (during competitions)}

Value for Enjoying:  Does using mc2 (before, during, or after) help you improve your quality-of-enjoying now and/or later?

Total Value:  Metacognition can affect performing plus learning and enjoying so we can ask “how does metacognitive reflection affect the total value of an experience?”  {optimizing flow-and-fun}

Intuition:  This page summary about cognition-and-metacognition doesn't examine the functions of non-cognitive (and semi-cognitive) intuition and its interactions with cognition & metacognition.   (iou - Eventually I will say more about this here.)

MORE about Metacognition – my full page and ideas from other authors.

You can get different kinds of understanding...

in the community of educators:  [[ iou – This will be written soon, April 12. ]]

in this website:  Compared with printed material – in articles, magazines, books,... – in my web-pages (and other pages) a major benefit is the flexibility of clicking links that let you explore topics to gain different kinds of understanding (e.g. with different depths of examining, or different perspectives on a topic, or with other differences) by clicking a link when you want understanding that is deeper-and-wider, or is just different.  In my website, for example, you can gain different kinds of understanding for all important topics, including these:   [[ iou – I'll continue writing this section soon, probably April 12. ]]   [[ @#phil, this page is intentionally incomplete to make it shorter so you can get a "big picture overview" more quickly & easily. ]]

• Building Bridges in this short-HomePage & the long-HomePage & Details-Page & another page/eTalk/eTalk-Page/eltalk-Page. (e is elevator not electronic - its usual modern meaning)

• Transfers of Learning in this page & long HomePage & Details-Page &

• Metacognition & Thinking Strategies in

• Learning More from Experiences in

• my Model-for-Process in

  and other models in

• Designing C&I in

• and many other topics.  [[ iou – I'll link to a page with some topics that aren't covered in this short-HomePage. ]]

[[ iou – and I'll describe/link-to an "appendix page" with selected sections from the Detailed Overview-Page. ]]

helping students learn more from

their problem-solving experiences

by combining Design Process and

metacognitive Thinking Strategies:

getting more and learning more:  A useful definition of education is learning from experience.  Students will learn more when they get more experiences (of the kinds that are educationally useful) and learn more from their experiences.  Well-designed uses of Design Process can be especially useful for helping students learn more from their problem-solving experiences.  How ?  With...

skillful regulation of metacognition:  A teacher can promote educationally useful cognition-and-metacognition with reflection activities by asking students to reflect on (to remember or observe, and think about) their experiences while solving a problem — by asking “what did I think, and do?” (or “what am I now thinking and doing?”) and “then what happened,” and also “with different thinking & actions, could the results have been better?” — so they can learn more from the experience and do things better the next time, to improve their performing and/or learning and enjoying.  When a teacher wants to help students learn Principles for Problem Solving (that are accurately described in a model for Design Process), this Reflection is the central part of Experience + Reflection ➞ Principles that uses a process-of-inquiry to help students learn principles-for-inquiry.  Usually students will learn more, and will think more effectively, when they develop-and-use Strategies for Thinking to effectively regulate their metacognition by deciding when to avoid it or use it, and how.  A main goal of Thinking Strategies is to help students become expert learners.     { getting more experiences by adventuring }    { a common Thinking Strategy is Self-Regulated Learning }

Education with Metacognition,

including Problem-Solving Activities

plus Metacognitive Thinking Strategies

[[ iou – Below are ideas that will be developed soon, April 12-15. ]]

As described throughout this page, we can help students ----

[get more] - provide a variety of Problem-Solving Activities that are fun and useful so students can get more educationally-valuable experiences,

and metacognitive Thinking Strategies that will help a student learn more from their experiences (in their present & future, in their Whole Life inside & outside school)

Whole-Person Education for Multiple Intelligences, including Social-Emotional Intelligence

with a complete/comprehensive set of tools, an Ideas-and-Skills Curriculum that [includes] Ideas & Skills and Skills-with-Ideas @ws#cm---

WSpCm for mcive WHole-P Edu

put #brerp-summary into this page

in #eq - same goals (and solution-principles) in UDL

improving Emotional Intelligences:  In two of the most important ways we can help students improve their lives, we can help them learn how to use self-aware metacognition for intrapersonal intelligence and use other-aware empathy for interpersonal intelligence.  We can motivate students to use a growth mindset for improving both, so we'll develop better metacognition (to understand self) and better empathy (to understand others).

Understanding Self and Others:  To understand yourself, metacognition is useful.  To understand other people, empathy is useful.  There are interesting relationships between metacognition (can it be self-empathy?) and empathy.   /   Why?  Because in order to develop our whole-person capabilities, we need both understandings.  Each person can use self-aware metacognition for intrapersonal intelligence and use other-aware empathy for interpersonal intelligence – and use a growth mindset to improve both, so they will develop better metacognition (to understand self) and better empathy (to understand others).

Thinking-Situation and Thinking-Actions:  With your metacognitive awareness you can observe your thinking-Situation (now or in the past) and your thinking-Actions (now or in the past).

What is a thinking-situation?

A situation can involve only you, or (as in a context that is social and/or collaborative) you plus other people, or (in empathetic observation) only others.  Your context also can affect the process of reflection;  you can reflect by yourself, or in discussions with others that can be especially useful while coordinating a collaborative process.

* If internal self-metacognition is thinking about what-and-how you are thinking, does analogous external empathetic metacognition occur when you think with empathy by trying to understand, based on observations & interpretations, what-and-how others are thinking & feeling, and why?  A similar shifting of perspective about internal/external, in our use of terms, is metacognitive self-empathy to be aware of your own thinking & feeling.   /   I've “answered” these questions by making decisions about terms;  I avoid empathetic metacognition because it's actually empathetic understanding, but I use external metacognition to describe the feedback that is produced by a filtering of understanding;  and I use self-empathy.   These choices are consistent with the choices made by other educators, re: their avoiding and using of terms.

A Wide Range of Contexts for Empathy:  Trying to think with empathy is useful in education and in other contexts.  It's useful for teachers & coaches and also for community leaders, business managers, and others.  Basically, accurate understanding (of self & others) is useful for everyone, in a very wide range of life-situations.

Empathy and Metacognition

These related ways of thinking – helping you understand others, and understand yourself – are very useful in all areas of life, including education.  This section — first in Goals & Perspectives, then in RESULTS and PROCESS, and Using Empathetic Feedback in a Classroom — will examine ideas & strategies that can help a teacher and students develop better empathy-ecology in their classroom.

Goals & Perspectives

Empathy and Metacognition have similar goals (to understand thinking & feeling) but different orientation-perspectives, re: external and internal.

    • With empathy you try to understand the thinking & feeling of others, who are external to you.     { two empathies and a result: cognitive empathy (used "to understand" thinking & feeling) plus emotional empathy (to feel) can produce empathic concern. }
    • With metacognition (self-empathy) you try to understand your own internal thinking (& feeling).     { In its basic definition, with metacognition you "think about your thinking."  But in practice, thinking and feeling are related, often with strong mutual influences.  Therefore, typically it's useful to “think about your thinking AND feeling.” }

External & Internal, for You and Others:

    everyone – you and others – thinks with externally-oriented empathy, to understand the thinking & feeling of other people;
    everyone – you and others – thinks with internally-oriented metacognition, to understand your own thinking & feeling.

The external & internal understandings constructed by you are summarized in the 1st & 2nd rows-of-cells in this table.

The 3rd & 4th cell-rows describe the external & internal understandings constructed by another person.

Metacognition and Self-Empathy:  These terms have the same meaning, in this page.  More generally, when these terms are used by others, typically with metacognition the emphasis is more heavily on thinking, and with self-empathy it's on feeling (but also thinking).

other terms:  a metacognitive understanding is aka personal metacognitive knowledge that is one aspect of a person's overall general-and-personal metacognitive knowledge.  By analogy, empathetic understanding also can be called empathetic knowledge, although the term metacognitive knowledge is used much more often.

RESULTS  —  Perspectives and Understandings

By comparing understandings of YOU in the 2nd & 3rd cell-rows, or of THEM in the 1st & 4th rows, you can see how understandings (of YOU, or of THEM) depend on point-of-view perspectives (on whether the constructing is done by you, or by them).

two pov-perspectives on YOU, in rows 2 & 3:  You use internal metacognition (self-empathy) to construct your understanding of YOUR thinking & feeling.  And another person uses external empathy to construct their understanding of YOUR thinking & feeling.  It can be interesting to compare these two understandings, asking “How do I view me? How do they view me?” and “What are the similarities? and differences?” and “Why do the differences occur?” and “Which understanding is more accurate? and in what ways?”

three pov-perspectives on ANOTHER PERSON, in rows 1 & 4 & _:  You also can make comparisons and ask questions (about similarities & differences, and accuracy), re: understandings of ANOTHER PERSON – “How do I view THEM? How does this person view THEMSELF?  And, not shown in the table, how do other people view THEM?”

When we compare empathy (to understand others) with metacognition (to understand self), we see many similarities and analogous relationships in the PROCESS used (below) and (above) the RESULT produced.

PROCESS  —  constructing Empathy & Metacognition

Now we'll shift attention from RESULTS to PROCESS.

We construct our understandings (of others & self) in a social context, so it's useful to distinguish between...

Understanding and Feedback:  We construct (i.e. we develop) feedback in a two-step process.  First we use empathy or metacognition to construct understanding that we use, after evaluative filtering, to provide feedback for others, with communication.   {Understanding and Feedback, Part 2}

You construct your external EMPATHY (it's your understanding of ANOTHER PERSON) when you internally interpret all of the evidence you find.   You can use three kinds of evidence:  your observations of the person;  feedback about the person from other people;  feedback about self from the person.

You construct your internal SELF-EMPATHY (to get your understanding of YOURSELF) when you internally interpret all of the evidence you find.   You can use two kinds of evidence:  your observations of yourself;  and feedback about you from others.

{an option: If the table below is too wide for easy reading in your browser window, you can temporarily view this page in a new full-width window.}

The first 4 rows in the tables above (for RESULTS) and below (for PROCESS) are matched, re: who is trying to understand WHO.  Below,

    The 1st and 2nd rows summarize-and-organize the processes you use to construct your understandings of ANOTHER and YOURSELF.
    The 3rd and 4th rows describe how, using the same processes, another person constructs their other-understanding of YOU, and their self-understanding of THEMSELF.  The 5th row shows how they construct their other-understanding of ANOTHER PERSON, of someone who isn't YOU or THEM, and thus is a THIRD PERSON.

Did you notice that the 3rd & 5th rows are analogous but with one difference?   (what is it? the 5th-row process can include one extra evidence that is "feedback-about-third from you")

Understanding and Feedback  —  These are related, but different.  They occur in sequence:

    1. First you use empathy and observations-of-performance, trying to get accurate understandings of another person(s), and of their performance(s).
    2. Then if you want to provide helpful feedback,* you will wisely filter your understandings by not saying everything you are thinking, but only what will be helpful.  You do this by deciding, for each person or group, what to say (and not say), when and how, or whether to say nothing.  The goal is to be helpful by providing formative feedback with an intention, and hopefully a result, of being kind and beneficial.   /   * Unfortunately, sometimes (if a person doesn't want to be kind-and-beneficial) the feedback is intended to be un-helpful.
    1-during-2:  An empathetic understanding (developed in Step 1) is used (in Step 2) during the process of filtering, when you're deciding the details (the what/when/how-and-whether) of providing feedback that will be helpful.

MORE - Other useful strategies for providing helpful feedback are in two places:  Developing a Creative (and critical) Community by trying to minimize any "harshness" in feedback-providing and feedback-receiving;  Evaluation is Argumentation that in a group requires "the social skills of communication" when you combine Evaluative Thinking with a Persuasion Strategy and Communication Skills, along with productive Attitudes while Arguing.

Using Empathetic Feedback in a Classroom

The three *s — above in the table-for-process and below in descriptions of each * — are three kinds of "feedback... from you."  Imagine that you are a teacher, and two of your students are Sue ("a person", aka "them") and John ("a third person", aka "third").

How will you use these 3 kinds of empathy-based feedbacks?  If you're an effective teacher, then (in cell-Rows 4, 5, and 3)...

    * You want to provide feedback that will help Sue construct a better self-understanding of HERSELF.  (This is her SELF-EMPATHY, aka her METACOGNITION, in Row 4.)   /   a new term: Sue's own internal METACOGNITION (by "thinking about Sue's thinking) is being supplemented by your feedback-to-her about her, which is aka external metacognition because it's the "thinking about Sue's thinking" that is externally supplied by you, as an empathetic observer.
    * You want to provide feedback that will help Sue (and other students) construct a better other-understanding of JOHN.  (This is her EMPATHY for A THIRD PERSON in Row 5.)   /  You can provide feedback-to-others about all of your students, individually and collectively, to influence each student's other-understandings of their fellow students, and attitudes toward them.
    * You want to provide feedback that will help Sue construct a better other-understanding of YOU.  (This is her EMPATHY for YOU in Row 3.) 

With a particular feedback, you want to help a student understand themself (Row 4), or another student (Row 5), or you (Row 3).

Building an Ecology of Empathy in a Classroom

All of these *-feedbacks are one part of the complex personal interactions (simplistically symbolized in the diagram) that occur in every classroom.  In this context, "better self-understanding" and "better other-understanding" will help all of you — Teacher, Student (like Sue or John), and students (in the whole class, or in smaller groups) — develop a better ecology of empathy in your classroom.

In the interactions-diagram, arrows indicate a variety of interactions, including communications that are verbal (with *-feedbacks and in other ways) and non-verbal:

    two arrows point away from the Teacher (you) who can communicate with only one Student (like Sue) or with two or more students.
    two arrows point away from the Student (Sue) who can communicate with you, or with one or more other students.
    two arrows point away from students (John & others) who can communicate with you, or with any other Student(s).   {note: A complex diagram that is more-complete would show more kinds of interactions between students, as individuals and in groups.}

A skilled teacher will provide guidance for students in how to "wisely filter" their communications (using feedback and in other ways) with the teacher and each other, so their interactions will be helpful.  A wise evaluating-and-filtering should be based on a foundation of healthy interpersonal motivations, with each student wanting to be kind, wanting to affect others in beneficial ways.

Shared Goals and Individual Goals:  In ideal educational teamwork the teacher and all students will have shared educational goals of “greatest good for the greatest number” with optimal learning-performing-enjoying for everyone in the classroom.  But each student also will have their own personal goals that include wanting to improve their interpersonal relationships and personal education.

Habit 5 of Highly Effective People is "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."  As a teacher, you can use this habit/principle in (at least) two ways:

    When you provide feedback, in Step 1 you try to understand Sue, as a foundation for Step 2 when you help her understand your view of her and what she is doing and how she can improve.   {your feedback is one aspect of stimulating and guiding students}
    In the third *-feedback you try to understand Sue, so (with your *-feedback about yourself) you can help her understand you.

Wide Scope with Spiral Repetitions:

If your school decides “yes” for Metacognitive Education — that includes Problem-Solving Activities and Metacognitive Thinking Strategies — one way to pursue it enthusiastic dedication – with a Big YES – is by designing and using a Wide Spiral for Curriculum & Instruction.

When we're designing C&I that is “wide” the wide scope of problem solving (it includes almost everything students do) is useful because it lets teachers use problem-solving activities in all subject areas – in sciences & engineering, business, humanities, and arts, in STEAM and beyond – to produce an ideas-and-skills curriculum with wide scope, so in every area students can have similar experiences with Problem-Solving Process, using a process of General Design and/or Science-Design that they can adapt to match their problem-solving Objectives.  These experiences can be part of a wide spiral curriculum that spans many grades in K-12, that has wide scope (so related learning experiences are coordinated across different areas) and uses spiral repetitions (so learning experiences are coordinated over time) to help all students (of all ages) improve their problem-solving skills and their basic skills & knowledge.     {more:  Goal-Directed Designing of a Wide-Spiral Curriculum – What, Why, Who, How – using instruction spirals that are short-term narrow, short-term wide, long-term wide.}

We have reasons to expect that using Design Process might be very useful in a Wide Spiral Curriculum, that it's “a good way to bet” for improving students' problem-solving education, and (especially when we build two-way bridges between school & life) their overall education.     { The best way to understand Design Process – it's my model for Problem-Solving Process – is with Learning by Your Discovery & My Explanations. }

my appropriate humility:  [[ iou – Soon, probably April 13-15, here I'll describe relationships between my ideas and UDL — Universal Design for Learning, a system that is much more sophisticated and highly developed, compared with my ideas — plus ways to productively combine the two perspectives on curriculum design, along with Design Process and other models for thinking & learning. ]]