Balancing Higher-Order/Deeper Thinking Time and Lower-Order/Surface Thinking Time

I am often asked, “What are the ideal percentages of each IPI category for optimum academic success?”

Throughout more than two decades of IPI studies, I have avoided recommending a “must have” percent for each of the six categories.  Each school is unique, each school has a different starting point, and each school will progress toward a school-established goal at a different pace, often in different ways, based upon school leadership, culture, climate, faculty expertise, and resources.  Though one definitive answer may not exist, we do have insights about both the direction and amount of movement we should consider, at least for the broader categories of higher-order/deeper thinking time, lower-order/surface thinking time, and disengagement time.    

In the first decade of IPI work (1996 to 2005), the general answer to the question was “move the percentages of the higher-order/deeper (HO/D) categories of 5 and 6 up as best you can while reducing or eliminating student disengagement and teacher disengagement (categories 1 and 2).”  Then maintain that effort level for a couple of years and then try to determine if and how much those levels of higher-order thinking and disengagement percentages are impacting your students’ academic success.  If your starting point was about 20% higher-order/deeper thinking, then try to move it to 30%, and then 35%, and then 40%, until you feel you have leveled out—whether that be 40 or 50 or 60 percent.  That seemed an adequate and very logical response to the question in the absence of empirical evidence as a guide. 

During those early years and continuing today, with the recommendation of “steady growth” of HO/D percentages, the caveat was added that increasing HO/D time may not increase test scores, though our research studies in subsequent years would offer the evidence that, in all likelihood, it would impact school-wide achievement data.  And I was quick to add that regardless of how much we increased HO/D time, the bottom line was that increasing HO/D thinking time would be an overall valuable, healthy endeavor for all students, not merely a means toward better scores on high-stakes tests.  I believe there is far more to gain from increased HO/D thinking time than solely the likelihood of increasing pass-rate percentages of high stakes test scores.  After all, how could it not be healthy to shift classroom learning time from activities dominated by recall, memorization, fact-finding, and repetitive practice to learning activities replete with the opportunity for analytical, critical, problem-solving, reflective, and creative thinking?  But the more perplexing question of “how much HO/D thinking time is enough” remained.

From the mid to late 2000s, we analyzed longitudinal data of more than 250 IPI schools using two-level and three-level hierarchical linear modeling and structural equation modeling statistical methods.  The results clearly implied that schools with higher percentages of HO/D thinking consistently had higher standardized test scores.  So I was able to state, with much more “evidence-based” confidence than throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, that increasing HO/D thinking time and reducing student and teacher disengagement time as measured and supported in the IPI Process had a strong and positive impact on student academic success, including high-stakes, standardized state examinations.  I could thus encourage schools’ faculties, with more confidence than ever before, to move HO/D thinking time from 20% into the 30% range, then the 40% range, then toward 50% or more; but, I did not know where to stop with that recommendation.  To that end Justin Collins, who was one of my doctoral students who studied IPI implementation impact on high-stakes achievement scores, posited that schools should strive to have 60% or more HO/D thinking time (Collins, 2009).  Though a good attempt to answer the question, Collins’ recommendation was based upon one study, albeit a well-designed study of a large longitudinal data set using highly sophisticated analyses.  Yet more corroborating evidence would be valuable to support the question of how much HO/D was appropriate.  A quality answer surfaced that same year.

Today, in the IPI Workshops, we talk about the goal of achieving a “balance” of higher-order/deeper (HO/D) thinking time and lower-order/surface (LO/S) thinking time.  The concept of balance comes from the work of John Hattie, the exceptional New Zealand educational scholar who has made a tremendously positive impact across the globe through his research and writings on evidence-based factors that influence student academic success.   In his seminal 2009 book entitled Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, he addresses the value of a balance between “deeper” learning and “surface” learning (p. 28).  In his 2012 book entitled Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning, he builds a more forthright argument that we should strive for that balance in our classrooms on a consistent basis.  Hattie argues that there “...needs to be a major shift from an over-reliance on surface information...towards a balance of surface and deeper learning...”  He continues: “...what is needed is a balance between surface knowledge and deeper processes, leading to conceptual understanding” (p. 77).  

As Hattie implies, and as our IPI data analyses confirm, most schools are far from that balance.  The evidence from our IPI data sets indicate that for all grade levels combined, the typical percentages for categories 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 are approximately 15%, 5%, 40%, 30%, 5%, and 5%, respectfully.  That is 20% HO/D, 75% LO/S and 5% disengagement time.  That equates to a ratio of LO/S to HO/D of 75% LO/S to 20% HO/D, a ratio of 3.75 to 1.0; thus a mathematical quotient of 3.75.   That is far from a “balance” of LO/S and HO/D time—if it were balanced, it would be 1:1 for a mathematical ratio calculation of 1.0.  Therefore, in the IPI process, we emphasize understanding and monitoring the LO/S to HO/D ratio as a critical measure of progress.

As our studies evolve of IPI schools that are also “high-tech use” schools, often described as One-to-One because each student is provided by the school with a common computer, the focus on LO/S to HO/D ratios paints a more promising picture.  At the high school and middle school levels, LO/S to HO/D ratios arecommonly in the 4:1 range prior to becoming IPI and One-to-One schools, which experience ratios in the 2:1 and 3:1 ranges.  In elementary schools, the infusion of technology seems to foster more practice but appears to have little impact on increasing higher-order thinking time.  These are short-term, preliminary findings spanning five years of data.  To better understand the relationships among IPI, One-to-One, and thinking time, I am currently analyzing longer-term data with larger sample sizes—I plan to have those findings available in 2019.  

While balance may be the ultimate goal, it should be approached gradually and with purpose.  Long-term development of a “balance” of LO/S and HO/D allows us to internalize the skills and activities we need as teachers to maintain that balance once the emphasis of “getting there” has subsided.  For some schools, achieving and maintaining a 50% to 50% balance is a realistic five year goal; for others, it might be a three-year goal, and, for others, a ten-year goal.  And for some schools, a 60% to 40% ratio is a realistic goal.  Whatever the goal, in the every-changing world of education achieving is easier than sustaining.    

References:

Collins, J.A. (2009). Higher-Order Thinking in the High-Stakes accountability Era: Linking Student Engagement and Test Performance.  Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Missouri

Hattie, J. A. C. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, NY, Routledge.

Hattie, J. A. C. (2012).  Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning, NY, Routledge.

I want to express my thanks to Dr. Karen Gauen for her input in the editing of this document that began as three-plus pages and ended as a succinct two-page read.  Thanks also to Dr. Justin Collins for his tireless efforts during our several years of data analysis about the impact of the IPI Process on student achievement.  Finally, immense gratitude goes to Dr. Bryan Painter for his on-going support of the IPI Process from our collaborative development of the IPI in 1995-96 through the evolution and growth of the IPI Process over the past two-plus decades.

Jerry Valentine

January 10, 2019