Lesson 2 - Teaching and Coaching Thinking Dispositions
ACCELERATING LEARNING FOR UNDER-PERFORMING STUDENTS
TIMING/TASKS: Video Length 13 minutes. To complete this lesson: 1) Watch video to end; 2) Read additional text below; 3) Download & complete exercise(s) in right column
TIMING/TASKS: Video Length 5 minutes. To complete this lesson: 1) Watch video to end; 2) Read additional text below; 3) Download & complete exercise(s) in right column
Teaching and Coaching Thinking Dispositions
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I understand the role that thinking dispositions play in helping dependent learners start their information processing cycle when presented with a new task.
I know the difference between thinking skills, thinking routines, and thinking dispositions.
I know the beginning moves for coaching a dependent learner to use dispositions to rewire their brain’s starting point for information processing of new content.
The idea of thinking dispositions isn’t very popular in education — even with the increase in brain science that is entering the mainstream of education. But it has to be something that educators interested in equity embrace. Why? If we cannot help dependent learners level up their learning, in particular their information processing skills, then change won’t happen. The learner only improves their learning by consciously changing their learning moves.
We saw this point with Dustin’s experience with the backwards bike. To do something new, that challenges the automatic way we’ve done things in the past, it requires us to rewire our brains. Now you just can’t tell students – “Rewire your brain!” Nor can you just tell them about how the brain works. Dustin said – “Knowledge isn’t understanding”. And you know my motto: Information isn’t transformation.
Instead, you have to create space in your instructional practice to help dependent learners change their first learning moves with the continued use of the four thinking dispositions. Students need to use the dispositions deliberately and consciously. That means you have to support students to use them at the start of their own information processing cycle.
Remember what Dustin said as he practiced to ride the backwards bike – it took 8 months of short, intense (conscious and deliberate) sessions in his driveway to rewire his brain and overcome his cognitive bias. Even more importantly, he said he “reassigned it” rather than got rid of his brain’s wiring for riding a normal bike.
This is our task with our dependent learners. Teaching and coaching them to rewire their brains so their cognitive bias makes them inclined to view and sort content along the four dispositions.
ACTION ITEMS

- How will you integrate this into your instructional conversations?
- What prompts will you use to trigger students’ use, like a “cognitive reminder”?
- How will you know students are internalizing them? How will you check for internalization over time?
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