مفهوم التفكير والذاكرة

Course Title and Details

• Course Name: Educational Psychology Applications
• Topic: Thinking and its Skills and Abilities
• Academic Year: 2024-2024

Lecture Objectives

• Understand thinking skills
• Compare different thinking patterns and styles
• Link thinking to problem-solving

Defining Thinking

• Costa's view: Mental processing of sensory input to form ideas, perceive and judge sensory stimuli.
• Parekh's view: A series of mental activities the brain performs when exposed to a stimulus.
• Qatami's definition: A mental process where learners develop through interactions, building knowledge structures and generating new predictions/expectations.

Elements and Tools of Thinking

• Symbols and signs: Words, mental images, abstractions.
• Symbolic images: Mental representations of objects when thinking about something (e.g., a mental image of a path).
• Language: Communication and thinking tool. Helps in learning new concepts.

Types of Thinking

• Sensory thinking: Reliant on sensory-motor interaction with stimuli.
• Logical thinking: Understanding reasons and causes behind things.
• Analytical thinking: Breaking down environmental stimuli into separate parts for easier understanding.
• Synthetic thinking: Combining separate parts to form a new unit for thinking.
• Discriminative thinking: Distinguishing conditions to reach appropriate decisions.
• Abstract thinking: Hypothetical thinking using symbols, generalizations and making/testing assumptions.
• Deductive thinking: Deep and objective thinking to establish relationships between things.
• Inductive thinking: Reaching general conclusions based on observed specific instances.
• Deductive thinking: Reaching conclusions based on existing assumptions.
• Insightful thinking: Reaching a solution by analyzing and understanding the whole situation.
• Divergent thinking: Creating multiple solutions without constraints.
• Convergent thinking: Thinking following specific rules to reach a specific result.
• Critical thinking: Evaluating the validity of phenomena and reaching logical conclusions using standards and rules.
• Creative thinking: Unconventional thinking, not following common perceptions.
• Reflective thinking: Examining, analyzing, planning to understand and then forming conclusions.
• Metacognitive thinking: Highest level of thinking. Planning, monitoring and evaluating thinking continuously.
• Higher-order thinking: Rich in concepts, seeking exploration and questioning when dealing with various situations.
• Lateral thinking: Understanding the problem from different angles by gathering available information.
• Vertical thinking: Moving forward through sequential and well-considered steps.

Thinking and Memory

• Close relationship between thinking and memory. Difficult to distinguish within cognitive information processing systems.
• Memory: Stores information temporarily (short-term) or permanently (long-term). Thinking involves mental operations for processing information in the brain.

Sensation

• Simplest mental process. Occurs when a sense organ receives a stimulus indicating something's happening in the environment.

Sensation Processes

• Initiated by stimulation: Energy affecting sensory cells, activating them.
• Nervous impulses generated, different for each sense.
• Nerves transmit impulses from receptor cells to the brain.
• Sensory centers in the brain trigger the sensation.

Attention

• Sternberg's definition: Handling limited amounts of selected information from vast data sensed or stored in memory.
• Al-Ziyat's definition: Involves choice, focus, purpose and interest

Types of Attention

• Voluntary/Intentional attention: Focusing on one stimulus from many. Requires effort and focus.
• Involuntary/Compulsory attention: Focusing on a stimulus forcing itself on the individual.
• Selective/Intentional attention: Focus on a stimulus meeting personal needs/motivations.

Factors influencing Attention

• External factors
  • Stimulus intensity
  • Stimulus novelty
  • Stimulus change
  • Conditioned stimuli
• Internal factors
  • Interests, values
  • Psychological/physical deprivation (stress, fatigue, hunger)
  • Motivation level
  • Personality traits (extroversion, calmness, intelligence)

Perception

• Understanding the world by interpreting sensory information.

Factors behind Individual Differences in Perception

• Familiarity with the stimulus.
• Clarity/ambiguity of the stimuli
• Expectations
• Motivation
• Emotional state
• Tendencies/attitudes
• Past Experiences
• Specialization/profession
• Value system
• Attention level

Perception and Learning

• Effective learning requires perceiving stimuli to facilitate future retrieval.

Relationship between Sensation, Attention, and Perception

• Interrelated and sequential processes. Sensation -> Attention -> Perception

Creative Thinking

• Samson's definition: Initiative from the ability of the individual to escape from the ordinary context of thought and follow a new pattern.
• Ellen Pears: Avoiding routine and conventional thinking to produce novel and uncommon results.
• Guilford: A mental characteristic encompassing fluency, originality, and flexibility.
• Mednick: Combines elements into a new structure to meet specific needs.
• Torrance: A mental process with phases, beginning with problem sensing & culminating in solution.
• Stein: Creating an acceptable and useful product pleasing to a large group in a specific time frame.

Components of Creative Thinking

• Fluency: Generating many appropriate ideas within a set time for a particular problem.
• Verbal fluency: Producing many words with given specifications within a given time.
• Flexibility: Not following routines, generating varied and unpatterned ideas relevant to a situation.
• Originality: Producing unique and uncommon ideas.
• Detailing: Adding new elements or details to a particular idea or situation.
• Sensitivity to problems: Recognizing weaknesses or strengths in a situation.

Stages in the Creative Process

• Graham and Wallace's stages:
  • Preparation: Defining the problem, understanding related aspects and comparing with similar problems
  • Incubation: Letting the problem sit, allowing for unconscious work
  • Illumination: The sudden appearance of an idea/solution
  • Verification: Checking solution's validity

Critical Thinking

• Various definitions highlight: Accurate understanding of the situation, recognizing relationships, evaluating evidence, making judgments & decisions without emotionality.

Critical Thinking Characteristics

• Adaptable to changing circumstances
• Deeper understanding of challenges and connecting experiences for appropriate decisions
• Distinguishing between opinions and facts
• Addressing destructive thoughts and habits
• Enhancing ability to handle situations demanding abstract thinking skills

Steps/stages of Critical Thinking

• Identifying assumptions
• Interpretation/understanding
• Deriving conclusions
• Conclusions about the validity of conclusions in relation to relevant facts.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Emotional factors (tolerance of others' ideas, avoiding personal bias)
• Cognitive processes (deductive, inferential thinking, understanding, analyzing & evaluating processes)
• Behavioral aspects (adjusting judgments based on new information)

Problem-Solving Thinking

• Addressing a problem needing a suitable solution
• A quest to achieve a goal facing an obstacle

Problem-solving Steps

• Recognizing the problem
• Defining the problem
• Hypothesizing possible solutions
• Testing the hypotheses
• Taking action
• Evaluating the results

Methods for Developing Problem-solving Skills

• Presenting lessons as problems.
• Motivating learners.
• Creating a suitable learning environment (physical).
• Training learners in solving problems
• Encouraging collaboration amongst learners.
• Using role-playing in teaching.

References

• Provides authors' names, publication details and years for various sources and research papers.