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Fiona Beddoes-Jones, as the author of Thinking Styles, has
recently spoken at three major conferences:
10th International Conference on
Thinking
Harrogate 15 – 19 June 2002
We were very pleased and honoured to present a symposium
at this Conference on Monday 18th June, the first of its kind
to be held in Europe. Speakers included Howard Gardner, Robert
Sternberg, Jack Lockhead, and Edward De Bono. The theme of
the Conference was the sharing of international expertise and
research on how we think and how we can create more effective
thinking and learning organisations.
If you would like to download the paper please click here.
The Cognitive Fitness Consultancy Ltd and Thinking Styles are involved in two major
research projects with Coventry University, the first with
undergraduate engineers to explore the development of personal
and team working skills in the curriculum, and the second
with sixth form students, profiling 60 female sixth form students
and their approaches to studying AS and A Levels.
Coventry
University Engineering students
Developing the thinking skills of engineering undergraduates.
Thinking Styles is being used as part of a pilot research
project with the School of Engineering at Coventry University
to measure students’ progress in thinking skills during
the academic year. Designed to support students’ meta-cognitive
awareness and team working skills, Thinking Styles was used
to provide personal profiles to 80 undergraduate engineering
students. Throughout the year it is planned to evaluate student
feedback and progress in thinking skills qualitatively through
the use of the students’ regular tutorials.
The symposium to be given at the 10th International Conference
on Thinking at Harrogate reported on the advantages
and disadvantages of using the tool from the student perspective
and proposes ways of modifying the approach for future years.
Thinking Styles
in the Sixth Form
Psychometric tools are increasingly used in schools in Years
10 and 11 as a basis for careers counselling but there are
few reported uses of psychometric tools in the context of
encouraging young people to reflect on their own thinking
processes.
In a context of life long learning such a tool may be pivotal
in providing support to students to acquire self-awareness
and self-directed learning ability. Although there are a number
of ways to stimulate thinking skills amongst sixth formers,
in this particular study, the recently developed Thinking
Styles questionnaire was used. This instrument provided individual
profiles to 60 female sixth form students engaged in science,
business and arts courses. The objective of the research was
to identify benefits to the girls participating, to identify
if there are differences of thinking styles between the disciplines
and to understand how the styles might affect their approach
to study.
The girls produced pieces of work representing their
understanding of their thinking styles and outcomes of
the project were presented at Harrogate
in June 2002.
4th International
Conference on Education
Athens, Greece 24 – 26 May 2002
Thinking Styles were invited to speak at this International
Conference on the use of the psychometric in learning and
education. The Conference was a forum for sharing research
on the experiences of teaching and learning throughout Europe.
If you would like to download the paper please click here.
CIPD Professional Standards
Conference 2003
In
July 2003, Fiona Beddoes-Jones presented a paper at the CIPD
Professional Standards Conference, on “The value and benefits of metacognitive awareness in the
workplace: developing the ‘thinking performer’.
Our research explored ways in which the CIPD’s
concept of ‘the thinking performer’ could be developed in
the work place and provided qualitative evidence regarding the
short and longer-term effectiveness of one-off training
interventions.
If you would like to download the paper please click here.
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