chapter_1

PART 1THE DESIGN OF INFUSION LESSONS

Chapter 1: What is Infusion?

Chapter 2: Critical and Creative Thinking in Science

APPROACHES TO TEACHING THINKING

TEACHING OFTHINKING

Direct instructionin thinking in non-curricular contexts

TEACHING FOR THINKING

INFUSION

INFUSION integrates direct instruction in specificthinking skills into content area lessons. Lessons

improve student thinking and enhance content learning.

Restructuringcontent lessons fordirect instruction

in thinking

Use of methodswhich promote

thinking incurricular contexts

© 1998 CRITICAL THINKING BOOKS & SOFTWARE • WWW.CRITICALTHINKING.COM • 800-458-48492

INFUSING THINKING INTO INSTRUCTION—SECONDARY WHAT IS INFUSION?

of school every day. They do not have to betaught to do thinking.

Performing such thinking tasks, however,does not necessarily mean performing themskillfully. For example, sometimes a person feelsinclined to do something and may not thinkmuch about it before doing it. A person maypurchase an automobile just because he likes theway it looks. Such hasty and ill-considered de-cisions may lead to disappointing and unex-pected surprises, such as high repair bills. Incontrast, if we think about many options, searchfor new alternatives, think about the significantfactors in making the choice, consider the con-sequences of our actions, and plan how to carryout our choice, our decision may be a more ef-fective one. It is ordinary thinking done well thatis our goal when we “teach thinking.”

How can we teach students to improve thequality of their thinking? The thinking skillsmovement of the ’80s produced special pro-grams and emphasized instructional methodsto foster thinking. Three principles emergedfrom these efforts:

• The more explicit the teaching of thinking,the greater impact it will have on students.

• The more classroom instruction incorpo-rates an atmosphere of thoughtfulness, themore open students will be to valuing goodthinking.

• The more the teaching of thinking is inte-grated into content instruction, the morestudents will think about what they arelearning.These principles provide the basic rationale

for infusing critical and creative thinking intocontent instruction.

Infusion is a natural way to structure les-sons. The curriculum is not a collection of iso-lated bits of information; rather, it is the mate-rial that informed, literate people use to makejudgments. We expect that information aboutnutrition should influence students’ dietaryhabits. We expect that an understanding ofAmerican political history should affect howcitizens vote. We expect that a deep understand-

Helping Our Students BecomeBetter Thinkers

Improving the quality of student thinkingis an explicit priority of current educational re-form efforts. Recommendations from groupsranging from education commissions to thenation’s governors support this priority and af-firm that good thinking is essential in meetingthe challenge of living in a technologically ori-ented, multicultural world.

Although these recommendations havebeen advanced primarily because of the pro-jected demands of the work force in the 21st cen-tury, they also reflect an awareness that knowl-edgeable thinkers have a better chance of tak-ing charge of their lives and achieving personaladvancement and fulfillment. Our studentsmust be prepared to exercise critical judgmentand creative thinking to gather, evaluate, anduse information for effective problem solvingand decision making in their jobs, in their pro-fessions, and in their lives.

Making good thinking an educational goalaffirms that growth in thinking is obtainable byall students. This goal also reflects confidence thatall teachers can help students to become betterthinkers whatever the learning level, socioeco-nomic background, and culture of the students.

Although textbooks and tests are changingto reflect this aim, it is the classroom teacherwho, through day-to-day instruction, must as-sume the main responsibility for helping ourstudents become better thinkers. The effort thatis required to meet this goal must, therefore, bedirected at effective classroom implementation.This handbook presents a teacher-oriented ap-proach to improving student thinking thatblends sound theory and effective classroompractice and can be used by every teacher.

What does it mean to emphasize goodthinking as a major educational goal? Studentsalready use a variety of types of thinking in theirpersonal lives. They compare and contrast whenchoosing friends. They predict that they willsoon eat when they stand in line in the cafete-ria. They make numerous decisions in and out

CHAPTER 1WHAT IS INFUSION?


© 1998 CRITICAL THINKING BOOKS & SOFTWARE • WWW.CRITICALTHINKING.COM • 800-458-4849 3

ing of a character’s motivation and actions in astory should inform a discerning reader abouthis or her conduct and responsibility.

It is, therefore, essential that we teach stu-dents how to use information and concepts thatthey learn in school to make decisions and solveproblems effectively. Infusion, as an approachto teaching thinking, is based on the natural fu-sion of information that is taught in the contentareas with forms of skillful thinking that weshould use every day to live productively.

Improving Student Thinking inContent Area Instruction

This handbook spells out how we can per-form ordinary thinking activities skillfully. Keyquestions that effective thinkers raise and an-swer when making sound judgments are orga-nized into thinking plans that can be used toguide good thinking.

The curriculum contains a multitude ofnatural contexts to teach skillful thinking. Uti-lizing such contexts, any teacher can designwell-crafted infusion lessons that dramaticallyenhance student content learning.

Kevin O’Reilly, a teacher from theHamilton-Wenham School District in Massachu-setts, introduces a lesson on determining thereliability of sources of information in historyby staging a scuffle in the corridor outside hisclassroom. He then asks student witnesses todescribe what happened. He draws an analogybetween his students’ differing accounts and thevariety of accounts regarding who fired the firstshot at the Battle of Lexington, the first battle ofthe Revolutionary War, in 1775. As O’Reilly’sstudents attempt to determine which of the eye-witnesses gave accurate accounts, they reflecton why some historical accounts may be morereliable than others. This reflection arms themwith critical thinking skills that they draw onagain and again in O’Reilly’s classroom. Theseskills relate to assessing the reliability and ac-curacy of eyewitnesses, of observation, or ofother sources of information—skills of great im-portance in our lives outside of the classroom.

In the immediate context of studying theRevolutionary War, O’Reilly’s students use theskills of assessing the reliability of sources to ex-

amine the context of the battle and the biasesthat people might have had in describing it.They then make informed critical judgmentsabout the accuracy of various textbook accountsof the Lexington incident. Students who are sim-ply directed to read to “get the facts” typicallydo not make such judgments about material intheir texts. O’Reilly’s students gain a deep criti-cal perspective on the role of firsthand reportsin constructing a history and learn that histo-ries can be written from different points of view.

Infusion lessons are similarly effective inthe primary grades. Cathy Skowron, a firstgrade teacher at the Provincetown (Massachu-setts) Elementary School, uses the same tech-nique to teach the tale of Henny Penny. Manyfirst grade teachers use this story to help stu-dents develop listening skills and vocabulary.While fulfilling these language-arts goals,Skowron also uses the story to teach studentsto think skillfully about the reliability of sourcesof information. Prompted by her questions, stu-dents discuss whether the other animals shouldhave accepted what Henny Penny told them.How can they determine whether Henny Pennyis a reliable source of information?

Skowron restructures her lesson by includ-ing questions that students might ask about anysource of information. Raising questions aboutHenny Penny as a source of reliable informa-tion helps them understand the story at a deeperlevel. They then grasp the “moral” of the story:hasty, unquestioning thinking can be dangerous.

Skowron’s lesson differs from O’Reilly’s inthe sophistication of the content, the level of vo-cabulary, and students’ background knowledge.However, both groups of students consider fac-tors that are often overlooked in thinking aboutsources. They develop strategies for asking andresearching the relevant questions about reliabil-ity. Between Skowron’s first grade andO’Reilly’s ninth grade, Skowron’s students haveplenty of time to develop more and more so-phisticated standards for the reliability ofsources. When they get to O’Reilly’s classroom,in fact, they may already have considerable so-phistication in judging the reliability of bothprimary and secondary sources, and in apply-ing these skills to a variety of content areas



across the curriculum. O’Reilly’s job will be tobuild on and reinforce this prior learning. Thiswill take less class time than would be neededif he were introducing students to this skill forthe first time in their educational careers, andmay allow for much more sophistication of hisapproach to the study of American History thanis usually possible with ninth-grade students.

If students have not been exposed to thiskind of instruction before the secondary grades,however, it is incumbent upon secondary schoolteachers to introduce students to these skills assoon as possible. Skillful evaluation of sourcescan be taught, reinforced, and elaborated inmany contexts, subjects, and secondary gradelevels besides O’Reilly’s ninth-grade classroom.When students are asked to do library researchand then write on a topic, for example, teacherscan ask them to compare a variety of books andarticles on the topic in the library, and then todevelop a list of questions they would need toanswer to decide which sources are likely to givethem accurate information on that topic. Thestudents would consider relevant factors, suchas the date of the publication, the expertise ofthe authors, whether the account is primary orsecondary, whether the account is fictional,where the author got his or her information, etc.These questions can then be put in a more orga-nized way and written down so that they serveas a guide to the students’ thinking.

Based on the information they gather to an-swer their questions, students then make criti-cal judgments about which of the book(s) beingconsidered are likely to provide the most accu-rate information. Usually, when students makesuch judgments, their interest in the topic is en-hanced, and better research projects result.Equally important, however, is that, as inO’Reilly’s classroom, such students develop astrategy that they can use again and again tomake informed judgments about the reliabilityof other sources of information.

The same content material can be used toteach other critical thinking skills. For example,Skowron introduces causal reasoning byprompting her students to think about whetherHenny Penny had good evidence that the skywas falling. Could something other than falling

sky have caused the bump on Henny Penny’shead? How could we find out? In general, whatdo we ask in order to find out what causedsomething to happen?

Causal reasoning, a fundamental skill of in-ference, involves considering a cluster of ques-tions different from those involved in thinkingabout reliable sources. These questions promptconsideration of which possible causes are rea-sonable in light of the evidence. Asking and care-fully answering these questions contrasts withhasty and ill-informed judgments that peopleoften make about what caused something.

Skowron’s students engage in causal rea-soning by thinking about what evidence theywould need to tell what really hit Henny Penny.The students then look at the pictures in thebook for clues to determine what the causemight be. They contrast careful thinking aboutcauses with Henny Penny’s quick conclusionthat the sky is falling, identifying her thinkingas hasty thinking. They use the term “HennyPenny thinking” to describe someone whojumps to a conclusion about causes. This re-minds them not to do the same thing but, in-stead, to look for evidence. Helping studentsthink skillfully about causes in the primarygrades can make this kind of thinking secondnature as they progress through upper elemen-tary and secondary school.

Secondary school teachers will find ampleopportunities to introduce causal reasoning inwhat they teach. The causes of the Civil War,the events leading up to the stock market crashin 1929, the extinction of the dinosaurs, the abil-ity of jet aircraft to take off and fly, and the poor(or good) performance of the school’s footballteam are topics that can all generate lessons inwhich students not only gain a deep under-standing of these events, but also learn strate-gies (that they can use repeatedly) for makingwell-informed judgments about causes. The sec-ondary curriculum is replete with such contexts.

Causal explanation lessons can also be usedin secondary school to introduce some of themore challenging themes that students study.For example, causal reasoning also clarifies hu-man motivation and action. Questions like“What was Huckleberry Finn’s motivation in



not turning in Jim?” can generate lessons de-signed to help students learn how to use causalreasoning to answer them. Building on suchactivities, causal reasoning also helps us to de-termine the responsibility for things people do.Cathy Peabody, a high school English teacherin Groton, Massachusetts, asks her studentscausal questions (similar to the type asked byCathy Skowron) as they study Romeo and Juliet.She recognizes in this play that chance, emotion,misunderstanding, and deliberate intent weavea tragic causal web that raises important ques-tions about responsibility.

Specifically, Peabody helps her studentsspell out the causal chain that led to the deathsof Romeo and Juliet by helping students to iden-tify possible causes of the tragedy and then toselect the best explanations based on evidencein the text. Recognizing that various peopleplayed a role in this causal chain, Peabody posesthe question, “Who, if anyone, is responsible forthe deaths of Romeo and Juliet? The feuding par-ents? The Prince? Friar Lawrence? The loversthemselves? On what basis do we hold peopleresponsible for things that happen?”

Through a detailed examination of the play,informed by their conclusions about the causesof the tragedy, Peabody and her students raise,and try to answer, such deep questions aboutresponsibility. They develop an explicit set ofstandards that enables them to make a well-sup-ported judgment about who should be held re-sponsible. Some students, for example, thinkthat Friar Lawrence should be held responsible.They then stage a “trial” of Friar Lawrence todetermine whether he should really be held re-sponsible for this tragedy. When they reach theirconclusion, Peabody helps them extract the stan-dards they used to judge the friar’s responsibil-ity. There is no substitute for careful thinking toanswer questions like these.

When such activities are completed,Peabody usually helps her students see analo-gies between issues in the play and issues intheir own experience in which questions ofblame and responsibility have arisen. Peabodyhelps her students test their ideas about respon-sibility by applying them in these personal cases.Her intention is to expose them to this kind of

thinking and to help them to transfer and use itreflectively in a variety of appropriate contexts.

Thinking carefully about causes is crucialin almost every profession. Effective work in sci-ence, engineering, accounting, journalism, nurs-ing, and law enforcement, for example, involvesthe need for well-founded judgments aboutcauses. This kind of thinking is also cruciallyimportant in our daily lives. We make judg-ments about causes in getting to work on time,preventing or treating illness, preparing a tastymeal, and minimizing stress in our lives. Help-ing students transfer the use of skillful causalexplanation to these contexts enriches any infu-sion lesson on causal explanation.

These examples demonstrate how the in-fusion of key critical thinking skills into contentlearning adds richness and depth to the curricu-lum. These examples are representative of amultitude of other lessons that are designed tohelp students develop a wide range of addi-tional thinking skills and processes. This hand-book provides the basic tools for such lessons.

Thinking Skills and ProcessesFeatured in this Handbook

The types of skillful thinking we discuss inthis handbook form a core of important think-ing skills that cut across the various content ar-eas. They fall into the three main categories:skills at generating ideas, skills at clarifyingideas, and skills at assessing the reasonablenessof ideas. Generative skills are creative thinkingskills: they stretch our thinking and develop ourimaginations. Skills of clarification involveanalysis: they enhance our understanding andthe ability to use information. Skills at assess-ing the reasonableness of ideas are critical think-ing skills: they lead to good judgment. Both ex-amples discussed so far fall into the category ofskills at assessing the reasonableness of ideas.

When we engage in natural thinking tasks,these skills of good thinking are rarely used inisolation. Many thinking tasks that we face inour lives or professional work involve decisionmaking and/or problem solving. Thinking skillsfrom each of the three categories blend togetherfor thoughtful decision making and problemsolving. We should try to generate original so-



lutions to problems; we should base our deci-sions on relevant information; and we shouldassess the reasonableness of each option to se-lect the best one.

These broader thinking processes are alsodiscussed in this handbook. The strategies wepresent for skillful decision making and prob-lem solving provide the link between the morecircumscribed thinking skills that appear in eachof the three categories and the authentic think-ing tasks students must engage in both in andout of school.

The outline in figure 1.1 shows the think-ing skills and processes featured in this book.

In figure 1.2 (page 7), these thinking skillsand processes are shown within the more com-prehensive context of the thinking domain.

Figure 1.3 (page 8) shows how variousthinking skills from each of these categories arecombined in decision making.

Teaching the thinking skills of clarification,creative thinking, and critical thinking withouthelping students learn how to use them in deci-sion making and problem solving accomplishesonly part of the task of teaching thinking. Teach-ing strategies for problem solving and decisionmaking, without teaching students the skillsneeded to use these strategies effectively, is simi-larly limited. If we teach lessons on individualthinking skills and lessons on decision making andproblem solving, we can show how these think-ing skills are connected with good decision mak-ing and problem solving. Students will then havethe thinking tools they need to face their most chal-lenging tasks in using information and ideas.

The Structure of Infusion Lessons

Infusing critical and creative thinking intocontent instruction blends features of two con-trasting instructional approaches to teachingthinking that educators have taken: (1) direct in-struction of thinking in noncurricular contextsand (2) the use of methods that promote think-ing in content lessons.

Infusion lessons are similar to, but contrastwith, both of these types of instruction. The dia-gram in figure 1.4 (page 8) represents this triad.

The teaching of thinking by direct instruc-tion means that, in a time period designated for

thinking instruction, students learn how to useexplicit thinking strategies, commonly guidedby the teacher. Such lessons employ the lan-guage of the thinking task and procedures fordoing it skillfully. Usually the teaching of think-ing occurs in separate, self-contained courses orprograms with specially designed materials andis taught outside the standard curriculum. Forexample, students are guided in using the termsand procedures of classification to classify but-

Figure 1.1

Thinking Skills and ProcessesFeatured in Infusion Lessons in

This Handbook

THINKING SKILLS

I. Skills at Generating Ideas1. Generating Possibilities

• Multiplicity of Ideas• Varied Ideas• New Ideas• Detailed Ideas

2. Creating MetaphorsA. Analogy/Metaphor

II. Skills at Clarifying Ideas1. Analyzing Ideas

A. Compare/Contrast

B. Classification/Definition

C. Parts/Whole

D. Sequencing

2. Analyzing ArgumentsA. Finding Reasons/Conclusions

B. Uncovering Assumptions

III. Skills at Assessing the Reasonableness of Ideas1. Assessing Basic Information

A. Accuracy of Observation

B. Reliability of Sources

2. InferenceA. Use of Evidence

a. Causal Explanation

b. Prediction

c. Generalization

d. Reasoning by Analogy

B. Deduction

a. Conditional Reasoning(if ... then)

THINKING PROCESSES

I. Goal Oriented Processes

A. Decision MakinB. Problem Solving



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Figure 1.4

APPROACHES TO TEACHING THINKING

TEACHING OFTHINKING

Direct instructionin thinking in non-curricular contexts

TEACHING FOR THINKING

INFUSION

INFUSION integrates direct instruction in specificthinking skills into content area lessons. Lessons

improve student thinking and enhance content learning.

Restructuringcontent lessons fordirect instruction

in thinking

Use of methodswhich promote

thinking incurricular contexts

Figure 1.3

What could I do? Consequencesof each option?

Valueof consequence?

What arethe facts?

What’s responsiblefor the problem?

WHAT MAKES A DECISIONNECESSARY?

WHAT ARE MY OPTIONS? WHICH OPTIONS ARE BEST? HOW CAN I DO IT?

Decision(Best

option)

Planninghow todo it

(Mini decisionsabout means)

SKILLS SKILLS SKILLS SKILLSSKILLSSKILLS

Comparing/contrasting

Deduction

Reliableinformation

Reliablesources

Accurateobservation

Recall

Causalinference(use of

evidence)

Reliableinformation

Many,varied,

detailed,originalideas

Predictionof

consequences(evidence)

Reliableinformation

Reliableinformation

Ranking/prioritizing

Valuing

THINKING SKILLS INVOLVED IN THEDECISION MAKING PROCESS



tons, to demonstrate and practice the thinkingskill, or they are asked to assess arguments fromtext books on critical thinking, to practice skillsin logic. Since the skills are taught using ex-amples that are not curriculum-related, theymust then be bridged into the curriculum if stu-dents are to apply them to content learning.

In contrast to this approach, infusion les-sons are not taught in separate courses or pro-grams outside the regular curriculum. They do,however, employ direct instruction in the think-ing skills and processes that they are designedto improve. In infusion lessons, direct instruc-tion in thinking is blended into content lessons.

Teaching for thinking involves employingmethods to promote students’ deep understand-ing of the content. Such methods include usingcooperative learning, graphic organizers, higherorder questioning, Socratic dialog, manipula-tives, and inquiry learning. While students mayrespond thoughtfully to the content, no think-ing strategy is taught explicitly. In contrast, al-though infusion lessons also feature such meth-ods, infusion lessons are characterized by directinstruction in thinking skills and processes.

Educators often confuse infusion with us-ing methods that promote thinking. For ex-ample, many teachers employ “higher orderquestioning” or “Socratic dialogue” to stimu-late more thinking about the content than ask-ing standard recall-oriented questions. Theytypically ask “Why,” “What if,” and “How”questions. For example, a question like “Whydid the plague spread so rapidly in medievalEurope?” is a challenging question and unlikethe question “What were the dates of the plaguein medieval Europe?” provides an opportunityfor higher order thinking.

This kind of questioning, however, remainscontent-oriented. Its goal is usually to yield adeeper understanding of what is being taught.When students respond by mentioning factorslike lack of sanitation or lack of medical knowl-edge, teachers usually ask students to elaborateso that the class can develop a rich understand-ing of conditions that could cause such an epi-demic. The product (student answers), ratherthan the process (student thinking), is the focusin these lessons.

Typically, when using such methods ashigher order questioning, teachers spend little orno classroom time discussing the thinking stu-dents engage in when they respond to such ques-tions. How students arrive at their responses re-mains implicit. Some students may respondthoughtfully; others may respond hastily andunsystematically. Some students may not respondat all. In order to yield more thoughtful responsesfrom more students, teachers must take time toclarify the skillful thinking needed to developthoughtful responses to the questions asked.

Infusion lessons are crafted to bring intocontent instruction an explicit emphasis on skill-ful thinking so that students can improve the waythey think. Classroom time is spent on the think-ing skill or process, as well as on the content. In-fusion lessons feature a variety of effective teach-ing practices that characterize the way thinkingis explicitly emphasized in these lessons:

• The teacher introduces students to thethinking skill or process by demonstratingthe importance of doing such thinking well.

• The teacher uses explicit prompts to guidestudents through the skillful practice of thethinking as they learn concepts, facts, andskills in the content areas.

• The teacher asks reflective questions thathelp students distance themselves fromwhat they are thinking about, so they canbecome aware of how they are thinking anddevelop a plan for doing it skillfully.

• The teacher reinforces the thinking strate-gies by providing additional opportunitiesfor students to engage in the same kind ofthinking independently.Conducting a lesson using this four-step

strategy to teach thinking is time well spent andwill maximize our chances for real improvementin student thinking.

To summarize: Although some people use theword “infusion” only to describe the techniquesused to promote higher-order thinking about thecontent material, what we have been calling “in-fusion” lessons are also crafted to bring into con-tent instruction an explicit emphasis on skillful think-ing, together with the use of such thought-pro-voking methods, so that such lessons maximize

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