“If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it” This is nothing new as
shown through a few examples. A great book by Ritchhart, Church,
and Morrison was published last December, Making Thinking
Visible. The fusion of Executive Function and Transparent
Thinking probably grew out of Cognitive Theory. Wouldn’t it be
cool to sit in on some of the conversations between Socrates and
Plato? Then there is Bloom’s Taxonomy, later revised by a group
of educators. David Sousa in, How The Brain Learns says,
“encourage students to use their innate thinking abilities to
process learning at higher levels of complexity.” He suggests an
addition to Bloom to make a distinction between Complexity and
Difficulty. He says that, often, “teachers are more likely to
increase difficulty, rather than complexity, when attempting to
raise student thinking.” He posits that the Analyze, Evaluate,
and Create levels can be implemented with success at any level
of ability. All the examples address transparent thinking. I
agree with Sousa. Making T