A study was carried out using as research subjects students of Compulsory Secondary Education, with the purpose of comparing the effectiveness of three intervention methods—Infusion method (IM), Instrumental Enrichment Program (IEP), and Conventional Method (CM)—to improve thinking skills, self-regulation of behavior, learning transfer, and academic achievement. There were 176 participants from one public center and two private one. Each one of the centers was randomly assigned to Experimental Group 1 (EG1), Experimental Group 2 (EG2), and Control Group (CG). In all the criteria variables, the best results were obtained with the infusion method. However, the students who received the IEP did not display significant differences in the variables of verbal and numerical reasoning, creativity, and academic achievement. Important scientific and educational implications of the studies are discussed.

Enhancement of Thinking Skills:

Effects of Three Intervention Methods

Mª Luisa Sanz de Acedo Lizarraga

Mª Teresa Sanz de Acedo Baquedano

Public University of Navarre, Pamplona (Spain)

María Cardelle-Elawar

College of Education, Arizona State University West

Theoretical Background

The possibility of enriching the components of thinking—reasoning, creativity, decision making and problem-solving—has been studied intensely in the last three decades and the results achieved have been rigorously appraised by authors of unquestioned recognition such as Nickerson, Perkins, and Smith (1985), and Schwebel and Maher (1986). In this work, we only contemplated the first two components: reasoning and creativity. When talking about improving reasoning, authors almost always refer to the inductive process, the most studied process of cognition. Noteworthy among the identified micro-processes of induction are classification, analysis, synthesis, analogy, discovering rules, and matrix organization.

The creativity component is considered a process of searching for, combining, and evaluating information that produces something novel and useful. Creativity is by nature modifiable, as people can learn to develop many ideas, or different characteristics, new ideas, and with innumerable details.

Intervention Methods

For this purpose, basically, two modalities have been employed: psychopedagogic programs and infusion methods. There is a variety of programs adapted to all the stages of the educational system and to the students’ various needs. Their defenders state that, just as mathematics and history are taught in separate courses, it makes sense to teach thinking processes. The most widely used programs are: Odyssey, Philosophy for Children, and the IEP. These programs have received diverse appraisal, going from a rather pessimistic opinion to a rather optimistic one. One could say, with caution, that administration of these programs causes some improvement in cognitive functioning, measured mainly with some intelligence test, and the positive impact on IQ is approximately one half of a standard deviation.

The second intervention strategy are infusion methods, or direct, explicit, interactive, and parallel teaching of thinking skills along with the curricular contents, using the instruction time for both of these goals. Methods are based on the principle that academic study offers many opportunities to practice mental operations; this way, the curriculum becomes an ideal way to achieve the aforementioned goals.

Research and educational experience with improvement of thinking skills have shown that it is very difficult to achieve this goal if metacognition and transfer are not stimulated at the same time.

Purpose of this study

Purpose of this study is to examine which is the most appropriate intervention method: infusion methods or some programs. We attempt to compare the efficacy the IM (EG1), the IEP (EG2), and the CM (CG) on the performance of tasks that require thinking skills, as well as self-regulation of behavior, learning transfer, and academic achievement. Hypotheses were as follows: (a) Both EG1 and EG2 would achieve significant changes in thinking skills in comparison to the CG; (b) EG1 would achieve better results in creativity, self-regulation, and academic achievement than the EG2.

Method

Participants

Participants were 176 students of Compulsory Secondary Education from one public center and two private ones.

Design

The work plan we followed corresponded to a quasi-experimental design with two measures: pre- and posttest. The independent variable was teaching method divided into three modalities: IM, IEP, and CM. The dependent variables were: comprehension thinking skills; creative thinking skills; self-regulation strategies, and academic achievement.

Instruction Materials

The instruction materials were: A booklet with a definition of each skill and its graphic organizers, the IEP, and evaluation Instruments.

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Procedure

Pretest. All the participants were evaluated.

Intervention.

1. Infusion Method. Thinking skills—comparison, classification, analysis, synthesis, seriation, discovering causes and conclusions, generating ideas, investigating sources, interpreting causes, predicting effects, and analogical reasoning—were taught simultaneously along with the curricular contents.

2. Instrumental Enrichment Program. The following instruments from the IEP were used: organization, comparisons, categorization, analytical perception, instructions, numerical progressions, family relations, temporal relations and pattern design.

3. Conventional Method. The students from the CG received their classes as usual, following the same time schedules and using the same curricular contents as those of the experimental groups.

Posttest. The students were evaluated by administrating the same tests as the pretest.

Results

Multivariate analysis, in which the pretest scores were used as covariates, confirmed significant differences: intelligence, F(1, 175) = 78.92, p < .001; verbal reasoning, F(1, 175) = 22.98, p < .001; numerical reasoning, F(1, 175) = 17.76, p < .001; abstract reasoning, F(1, 175) = 15.56, p < .001; inductive reasoning, F(1, 175) = 48.31, p < .001; deductive reasoning, F(1, 175) = 29.48, p < .001; creativity, F(1, 175) = 33.81, p < .001; self-regulation, F(1, 175) = 37.16, p < .001; and academic achievement, F(1, 175) = 16.71, p < .001.

The post hoc tests showed that: (a) EG1 exceeded EG2 in verbal and numerical reasoning, in creativity and in academic achievement, and it scored higher than the CG in all the variables; (b) EG 2 scored higher than the CG in intelligence, abstract reasoning, inductive and deductive reasoning, and in self-regulation.

Discussion

The IM and the IEP have proven to be more effective intervention strategies than the CM to stimulate thinking skills in second-year students from Compulsory Secondary Education. That is, with these methods, the students improved their performance of tasks that require activating the processes of comparison, classification, analysis, synthesis and discovering rules, reasons, causes and effects.

As can be seen from the results obtained, there is no doubt that metacognition, self-regulation, and transfer played a primary role in the improvements attained by the experimental groups when comparing their pre- and posttest results. The students seem to have internalized the idea that it is important to learn to reflect on the information one receives, to regulate one’s activities, and apply what one has learned.