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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.