The making (and agreement) of definitions necessarily involves the process of transforming specific mental representations into understandable, and externally recordable verbal representations. Thus, the quality and quantity of any given definition will be largely affected by one’s degree of organization skill and verbal intelligence.
Think Impact assists students in their learning ‘how’ to think more effectively and productively, aiming for higher grades and fun learning.
The good use of logic (in and of itself) may not help us to see beyond one’s own opinions unless all of the relevant facts and auxiliary assumption be examined also. Indeed, logic will rarely ‘teach’ one any new facts. The reason for us to improve our logical thinking is not so that we can thereby come to know more, but rather that we can learn to better believe, express, and more convincingly convey to others, the truth and usefulness of knowledge that we have gained from elsewhere, both more accurately and clearly.
The learning objective of this module is to enhance each student’s ability to raise relevant questions concerning the pre-exiting assumptions underlying the consistency of arguments, and truths of statements, as expressed by others. Over time, they will come to efficiently recognize (even seek out) novel ideas, concepts and events, whilst also learning to generate targeted questions which will help them to avoid errors based upon the drawing of unnecessary (often false) assumptions and reflexive responses.
Numbers form the basic quantitative value elements of mathematical calculations, but more importantly, perhaps, reflect the symbolic representations of the numerical system, created by the human mind to give count to identifiable objects and events in a variety of combinations.
The learning objective of this module is to enhance each student’s ability to generate and appropriately use a shared, conventional symbolic system, which in this case represents number (numerical quantity), in order to prevent them from guessing answers. Students will learn to think and represent their thinking in a quantitatively principled way, through the use of interesting and challenging mathematical calculation activities and problem sets that have been specifically designed to enrich their sensitivity to numbers, differential valuation, visual (perceptual) awareness of quantities, and sequential order processing.
Students with relatively high verbal intelligence will come to be better able to think both independently and constructively, rather than function only at the level of simple fluency or vocabulary generation and recognition.
The learning objective of this module is to enhance students’ ability to verbalise their thoughts/ideas and to be better able to both understand and generate their verbal reasoning by using concepts that have been framed in words. So doing will lead to enhanced articulation of each student’s thoughts and ideas in coherent ways, whilst also being able to form multiple representations of the ideas and thoughts of others, as expressed to them (by others) through both written and oral presentations.As students advance, they will also likely transfer their new skills of verbalizing, understanding, reasoning and generating thoughts to other core areas of their cognitive developments, including the manipulation of numbers and other concepts that have been framed in words, so enhancing their verbal reasoning, logical and lateral thinking abilities.
Brain researches find repeatedly that ‘smart thinking’ will occur independent of a person’s IQ, with even very high IQ people often demonstrating quite ‘sloppy thinking’ and acts of plan stupidity at times.
The learning objective for this module is to enhance students’ critical and creative thinking ability, opening each thinker to the faster, and more appropriate, generation and evaluation of both new and existing ideas, novel recombination of perceptions, thoughts and feelings, and extensions of lateral thinking preparedness. Together with their repeated exposure to novel structures, multiple re-representations and exploration of alternative explanations (rather than mere descriptions) of both familiar and unfamiliar data sets and life-relevant scenarios, students will be afforded the opportunity to explore a wide variety of task domains which will enhance their ability to avoid slipping into poor (though possibly acceptable!) ‘habits of mind’.
Creative processes often also involve a certain disposition of attitude: the ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities without certainty of material reward, a flexibility of outlook, or the habit of enjoying the ‘good’ (what ‘feels right’), whilst also looking for ways to improve upon them.
The learning objective for this module is to enhance students’ creative ability, broaden attitudes towards a greater openness to new ideas, novel combinations of objects and events, and lateral thinking processes. Through their exposure to different forms of representation and expression, students are able to let their imagination roam free, and to explore ideas and images previously unexplored. Through practice, and with disciplined use of time and resources, students will develop the skill of decomposing familiar object or event components, and their subsequent reconstruction to form/create wholly new objects and event interpretations well beyond the boundaries of their pre-existing imaginative capabilities.
