Keywords

The Story of Three Authentic Snapshots from the Field

Snapshot #1 Lesson Observation

I recently visited an elementary school to observe a lesson, which, according to the teacher, was an example of small-scale, project-based learning. The teacher prepared an outstanding lesson plan: she took a chapter from the textbook, adapted it, added more sources of information, presented a relevant key question, and prepared cards with a separate task for each group of students. In order to answer the question, students worked in small groups, consulting their cards. Each student group was supposed to present their ideas graphically on a poster in preparation for presenting their work to the entire class in the following lesson. The students researched the problem using the information cards for a few (5–8) minutes. Then they spent most of the lesson (more than 25 min) working on the graphic product.

Snapshot #2 Evaluating an Educational Project

A group of educators involved in implementing project-based learning in a school district presented an evaluation study of their work. The study showed that lessons using project-based learning are indeed common in the schools and that both parents and students are pleased with the new learning approach. The study also indicated improvement in attitudes towards the schools and in motivation for learning. The evaluation study completely ignored questions regarding what students had actually learned. Accordingly, the evaluation did not address students’ knowledge, their understanding of the contents, or their thinking skills.

Snapshot # 3 on Anxiety and a Footnote

I was recently asked to read and provide feedback concerning a draft document on educational policy in behalf of an official government agency. When I got to the section addressing the future roles of secondary schools, I was overcome with anxiety. All the supposedly “correct” slogans in terms of the messages currently dominating public educational discourse were there: education for values, developing an independent and self-regulated learner, reducing achievement gaps, developing learning and thinking skills, preparing students for the twenty-first century, educating for lifelong learning, IT skills, etc. At the end of the list, I found an asterisk referring to a footnote: “Please keep in mind that one of the roles of secondary schools is also to provide knowledge”.

These three snapshots reflect recent attempts to implement pedagogical reforms. I have selected them out of dozens of similar anecdotes I have encountered in the course of my diverse work in the school system. What they have in common is the marginalization of the intellectual aspects of school life, which should emphasize knowledge construction while engaging students in deep thinking about the contents under consideration. In the first anecdote, the teacher worked hard to adapt the textbook contents and create innovative task cards. During the lesson, however, students discussed the content for only a few minutes, in other words, the activity of preparing the physical aspects of the graphic product pushed aside, spending most of their time on the graphic product, while engaging in lengthy discussions about the desirable font, colors, and decorations they would use. Conversely, the time and thought devoted to answering the question about the content of the lesson were minimal. Obviously, under these circumstances, students did not learn too much.

In the second snapshot, the project evaluation had nothing to do with knowledge or thinking, but only with the frequency of project-based learning lessons and with attitudes towards them. Given the variables selected for the study, the evaluation findings were highly positive. The project leaders were proud of their work. They felt that the implementation was extremely successful, despite the fact that no information was collected on the breadth and depth of the contents and skills students had acquired in the course of the program.

The third example is obviously the most extreme. I was shocked to discover that one of the most significant roles of school—constructing students’ knowledge and thinking skills—was literally pushed to the margins. Moreover, it was shocking to discover that the ones who marginalized this learning were the leaders in charge of policy-making for a large number of schools. The document was revised after I had commented on this point. Nevertheless, this case demonstrates the confusion and lack of focus that are currently prevalent throughout the school system with regard to the status of knowledge and to the depth of school intellectual life.

Whoever walks around today’s Israeli schools can see that recent reforms have indeed spurred a significant degree of active and relevant learning, including inquiry- and project-based learning. Despite that impression, however, it seems that these reforms also spurred lack of knowledge, superficiality, and the absence of intellectual depth. This view is supported by several studies in Israel and elsewhere. A study of Israeli elementary schools had pointed at a common tendency of engaging with shallow knowledge and avoiding in-depth discussion of issues related to the curricula (Pollak et al., 2015). A more recent study asked how frequently progressive teaching practices are applied in junior high school lessons and what are the most common teaching practices in those lessons. Using a newly developed observation tool and rubrics, the findings from 103 junior-high classroom observations indicate that only 23% of the lessons observed were completely traditional, whereas all other lessons included evidence of using various quantities of progressive practices. Nevertheless, despite this divergence from the traditional teaching approach, these lessons were still characterized by a low cognitive level. In other words, the structure and organization of learning processes, namely, the structural pedagogy, was modified. However, the pedagogical core of learning goals, namely, the substantive pedagogy, remained unchanged (Bogler et al., 2019).

A decline in the status of knowledge in relation to skills in the curriculum, together with confusion about how to balance content knowledge and skills, is apparent from various international recent documents and research papers. For example, Young (2013) describes university colleagues who visit student teachers in schools and report something akin to a “fear of knowledge” in the schools they visit––knowledge is either not mentioned or seen as intimidating. Priestley and Sinnema (2014) assert that since 2000 several new Anglophone national curricula signal a move away from the explicit specification of content towards a more generic, skill-based approach. The empirical part of their study offers an analysis of New Zealand’s Curriculum Framework and Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence. They conclude that, while these curricula continue to accord considerable importance to knowledge in their statements of policy intent, both curricula are characterized by a lack of coherence and mixed messages about the place of knowledge. Discussing recent reforms in Australia and Ireland, Gleeson et al. (2020) compare curricular changes in the two countries. They assert that the strong focus of both reforms on general capabilities (Australia) and key skills (Ireland) is indicative of a shift away from knowledge in the direction of skills. They note, for example, that the Irish junior cycle framework published in 2015 contains more than twice as many references to skills acquisition than to knowledge. This emphasis is explained by considerations such as the changing nature of knowledge, the ease with which students have access to information, and the pace of change in the workplace. Gleeson et al.’s comparison (2020) concludes by asserting that despite considerable differences (the tendency seems to be stronger in Ireland than in Australia), the overall picture emerging in both countries is one where the development of twenty-first-century skills permeates the rhetoric of both policy documents, often at the expense of knowledge and understanding. Addressing the quality of knowledge, Zohar and Hipkins (2018) draw on senior secondary school examples from two national contexts (New Zealand and Israel), demonstrating how the implementation of student-centered pedagogies often results in fragmented, shallow knowledge rather than the deep, connected knowledge envisaged by the actual policies.

A similar fear regarding the quality of the knowledge taught in schools doomed previous reforms that promoted progressive pedagogies. Indeed, a significant reason for abandoning past progressive reforms was their opponents’ claim that they seemed to raise a generation of ignorant students (Zohar, 2013b). Since this issue is liable to thwart every effort to implement thinking and inquiry processes on a system-wide level, it is important to discuss it thoroughly. The present chapter addresses the role of knowledge and thinking in twenty-first-century schools. It discusses various aspects of the widespread confusion in today’s schools regarding the status of teaching knowledge and regarding what we should expect from students in this context.

The Subjective Knowledge Confusion: Does “Anything Go?”

Visits to classrooms that apply active learning, inquiry, and project-based learning often make the visitor feel that “anything goes.” In many classes (although certainly not all), there are no real quality standards or criteria for evaluation of students’ answers, and therefore, any answer may be considered correct. Since this state of affairs may legitimize shallow learning, it is important to understand it.

Part of the traditional model of instruction, which centered on transmission of information, included the delivery of an organized body of “objective” facts and procedures that students needed to absorb passively. The criteria for good learning were crystal clear: the better students were in retrieving the facts and procedures from their memory, and the closer they were to the source (teacher’s lecture or textbook), the higher their test score. The transition to a new model of learning and instruction involves a transformation of teachers’ role. According to the new model, teachers’ main role is to initiate processes of meaningful learning among students and to guide them as they engage in active knowledge construction. Consequently, the old criteria for good learning are no longer valid. While this in itself is a welcome result, we need to ask, what new criteria have replaced the old ones? As reflected by the first two snapshots described earlier, it appears that there is great confusion in the field with regard to that question. I have witnessed that confusion in numerous school visits intended to observe inquiry- and project-based learning. It was enough for students to find some relevant information and to include it in their final paper or project in order to be appreciated by their teacher and peers. The evaluation they received was often higher when the final product was presented in a creative way, particularly if it combined technology and/or some kind of artistic expression (visual, or musical). All too often, however, these evaluations lacked any criteria for the intellectual robustness of the knowledge and thinking involved in the learning process. It appears that the rejection of the previous evaluation criteria is often accompanied by a lack of any criteria whatsoever. Namely, any student’s manifestation of knowledge and thinking is considered equally good. Educators I talk to often explain this view in terms of the alleged characteristics of knowledge in the twenty-first century: when knowledge is changing and being updated so quickly, it is impossible to know what is true, because what is considered “true” keeps changing. Since this view is reminiscent of the multiplist stage in epistemic thinking, let us examine the various dimensions of this thinking in order to understand what they can teach us about the issue at hand.

Epistemic Thinking

Personal epistemology is the study of individuals’ thinking about knowledge and about how people know (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; Kuhn, 2001; Hofer & Bendixen, 2012). Note that the term “knowledge” is used in that context in the psychological sense of representations stored in the knowing person’s mind (Southerland et al., 2001), rather than in the traditional philosophical sense of right and true beliefs (Pollock & Cruz, 1999). Some personal epistemology scholars use the term “epistemic thinking” or “epistemic cognition” and ask questions such as how people acquire and justify knowledge and how they understand the nature of the knowledge acquired.

Research in this field has produced several models that describe different dimensions of epistemic thinking. In the following paragraphs, I will use concepts borrowed from one of these models to present an analogy between developmental stages in epistemic thinking and pedagogical development. Despite the criticism directed at developmental models of epistemic thinking, I have chosen to use a developmental model here, because I believe it is the most appropriate for clarifying the analogy outlined below between epistemic thinking and pedagogy (Barzilai & Zohar, 2014; Brownlee et al., 2017; Barzilai & Chinn, 2018).

Kuhn (2001; Kuhn & Weinstock, 2002) identified three main stages of epistemic thinking. In the absolutist stage, people treat knowledge as a certain, objective entity originating outside the individual. Knowledge of this kind is made up of “objective” facts that are certain and that rely on an external source of authority (textbook, professional expert, God, etc.). According to developmental theories, this perception of knowledge is transformed in adolescence and replaced by a multiplist view, often also referred to as relativist. According to this view, since everyone is entitled to an opinion, all opinions are equally valid.

The third, evaluationist, stage is the most advanced. Here, knowledge consists of judgments that may be evaluated and compared using evidence-based claims. An individual who has reached that stage reintegrates the objective dimension of knowing with the recognition of uncertainty and the need for evaluation. At this stage, it is legitimate for two people to have different views on a certain matter. Both can be “true,” but one can be “more true” (or “truer”) if it is better supported by evidence and arguments. Knowledge in the evaluativist stage requires use of higher-order thinking (HOT), which includes (among other types of thinking) evaluation, comparison, and intensive argumentation, with a constant focus on supportive evidence.

Comparing the Stages of Epistemic Thinking to the Reality of School Instruction: Are We in an Era of Multiplist Pedagogies?

Careful examination of these stages of epistemic thinking from a pedagogical point of view indicates a similarity to the reality in our schools. The traditional model of learning and instruction is based on the transmission of “real” and “objective” pieces of information from an external authoritative source (such as the teacher or textbook) to a passive student. This model is in many ways parallel to the first, absolutist stage: both teachers and students do not ask questions about the knowledge addressed during instruction and do not challenge or examine it critically.

The model focusing on teaching HOT, aiming at a deep understanding of the content is largely parallel to the evaluative stage. It refers to knowledge construction by applying active thinking, which includes critical thinking, assessment of arguments, searching for evidence, making comparisons, etc. Likewise, the evaluative stage is also characterized by clear criteria for the quality of knowledge, related to the reliability and robustness of the intellectual processes leading to knowledge construction. Thinking is seen as valuable because it produces well-justified arguments and high-quality knowledge.

The similarity described in the previous paragraph relates to a desirable theoretical model of thinking-rich instruction. It appears, however, that in terms of what actually happens in schools, this desirable model is usually not implemented. What I described earlier, based on my acquaintance with the reality of schools, corresponds more closely to the multiplist model. Accordingly, when students are engaged in active learning, in inquiry, or in project-based learning, the feeling that “anything goes” often reins. This feeling seems to be tightly related to the lack of clear criteria for assessing the quality of learning (for further support of this claim, see Tabak and Weinstock, 2011). It also seems that the knowledge itself is always tentative and subjective. Therefore, the pedagogy actually applied in schools often corresponds to the multiplist stage of epistemic thinking that is neither the most advanced nor the most desirable.

The analysis in the previous paragraphs compares stages of the development of personal epistemic thinking to stages in pedagogical change processes of educational systems. The analysis explains the actual pedagogical practices prevalent in the field using terms borrowed from the field of personal epistemology. The transition from a pedagogy based on transmission of information to one based on HOT and deep understanding is parallel to the transition from an absolutist to an evaluative epistemic approach. In practice, however, learning and instruction processes often become stuck in the intermediate, multiplist stage—hence the feeling that “anything goes.” The third stage, which corresponds to evaluative thinking, is missing from many of the system-wide implementation processes of progressive pedagogies. This deficiency is the main reason for the feeling that the implementation of progressive pedagogies leads to superficiality or even to ignorance.

This point is critical. First, this state of affairs flattens the goal of teaching for thinking, overlooking its profound objectives. Thinking-rich instruction should help students develop robust intellectual abilities around knowledge construction, rather than have them acquire “mechanical” thinking skills. Second, as explained above, the superficiality and ignorance that appear to be the outcome of inadequate processes of knowledge construction might lead to widespread opposition to the reform. Such opposition might therefore produce backlash, pushing the educational pendulum once again towards the pole of traditional learning and instruction. Third, the evaluative epistemic stage makes it clear that thinking-rich instruction cannot settle for a “mechanical” and decontextualized application of thinking skills. Instead, it must be inherently integrated into the content students learn as part of the processes of knowledge justification and evaluation. To do so, students must not only master thinking strategies, but also understand the relevant body of knowledge and how to apply advanced epistemic cognition.

To promote students’ epistemic cognition, educators should promote “epistemic education” that is based on two main principles: (1) developing the awareness that knowledge is complex, diverse, developing, constructed out of unique perspectives, and evidence-based and (2) developing the notion that alternative explanations or arguments are not equally correct or valid, that some ways of knowing are better than others, and that knowledge can be subjected to criticism and evaluation (Brownlee et al., 2017; Barzilai & Chinn, 2018). These principles highlight the strong relationship between epistemic education and education for thinking, since reliance on evidence, as well as the criticism and evaluation of knowledge, requires the use of thinking strategies.

It is important to see things as they are. As shown in the following sections, the problem is not with the progressive pedagogies themselves, but with their faulty implementation. In the twenty-first century, education that is based mainly on a pedagogy of transmission of information is no longer an option, as it cannot prepare students for their future life in the world beyond school. From the point of view of the pedagogies used in schools, there is therefore no choice but to move the education system forward. The problem today is not that schools move away from traditional pedagogies, but that they are stuck midway: they have abandoned many of the pedagogical traditions in which a teacher would transmit preconstructed knowledge, but they have yet to reach the promised land of an evaluationist pedagogy. The latter would be characterized by deep learning, profound grounding in contents, and knowledge construction through the use of thinking and evaluation.

Note that the last sentence requires critical examination. Is deep learning of contents still needed? Perhaps in the current information age all schools need to do is to teach the skills that will enable students to access the Internet and study on their own any content they would choose? The following section discusses this issue in its full complexity.

Is Knowledge Still Important Even in Twenty-First-Century Schools?

The information age offers both students and teachers unprecedented easy access to huge and constantly expanding amounts of information. What should be the goal of education when information is so accessible and is “at the tips of students’ fingers”? Should knowledge acquisition remain one of the school system’s main roles?

There are two main approaches with regard to this issue. According to Cookson (2009), some believe that using the likes of Google and Twitter, students can navigate themselves to education. The idea is that unsystematic data may facilitate knowledge construction through some process of random, continuous, and collaborative patching together of pieces of information. This claim relies on the assumption that we learn best by free data collection that does not involve any external guidance and judgment. Bauerlin (2008) is among the opponents of this view, arguing in The Dumbest Generation that being constantly online does not lead to growth but rather to the stifling of intellectual development.

In my view, instruction directed at knowledge construction must remain one of the main goals of schools, even in the information age, for three main reasons. First, the unprecedented availability of information does not interfere with the school’s historical role of teaching a core body of knowledge to be shared by all students. According to this approach, all students need to be introduced to the basic cultural assets society seeks to transfer across generations. This statement does not preclude the need for a constant critical and open-minded reexamination of the desirable components and scope of that shared corpus of knowledge, which may in turn lead to radical updates of the curriculum. In other words, the argument is not that curricula introducing students to disciplines such as literature, history, or culture have become redundant. Instead, the emphasis is on the need to constantly reexamine the goals of the curriculum and of specific school subjects, their organizing frameworks, and their scopes, leading to constant renewal and update. Potential changes in the structure of the curriculum are also needed in order to make room for new school subjects (such as financial education or sustainability), or for interdisciplinary learning. However, the need to revise or even to make radical changes in the corpus of knowledge students need to learn does not cancel their need to learn any corpus of knowledge as such.

Second, the lack of any basic knowledge stands in the way of acquiring new knowledge. One of the fundamental insights of constructivist learning theories is the importance of previous knowledge in acquiring new knowledge (Bransford et al., 2000). Previous acquaintance with a given area is necessary for asking intelligent questions in that area. A basic conceptual framework is necessary for the construction of high-quality knowledge from new pieces of information acquired by independent searching of digital databases. Having gigabytes of information at the tips of their fingertips does not mean that students have the cognitive structures needed to assimilate and understand the knowledge that can be created by an Internet search. Even if cyberspace offers different conditions for understanding than those offered by schools, the solution is not to abandon the latter, but to find proper ways of merging the two spaces (Varshavsky, 2016). Accordingly, even in the information age children need schools to help them construct new knowledge and conceptual frameworks. Indeed, an examination of the curricula of seven developed countries (Australia, British Columbia, Finland, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, and the United States) indicates that all have formulated goals related to deep knowledge construction in diverse content areas (Hadar & Zviran, 2018). Moreover, the objective of deep learning that may result in constructing “deep knowledge” is also at the center of a major US document that summarizes the goals of education in the twenty-first century—“Education for Life and Work” (National Research Council, 2012, see more below).

Third, in order to develop HOT, it is necessary to study content knowledge in depth. In fact, this means that there is a necessary internal relation between thinking and knowledge, such that one cannot exist without the other. This important point requires further elaboration.

The Relationship Between Content Knowledge and Thinking

The knot tying together content knowledge and thinking has been extensively discussed in my first book (Zohar, 1996). McPeck (1981) argued, based on a philosophical analysis, that knowledge without thinking is impossible. Perkins and Salomon (1989) argued that thinking skills are neither general (that is, completely independent of content) nor content-dependent (that is, completely independent of general aspects of thought), but are a kind of synthesis between general skills and content-specific knowledge. From an educational perspective, my first book reviewed various ways of teaching HOT, assessing their strengths and weaknesses (Zohar, 1996). The review provided an extensive rationale for preferring the infusion approach to teaching students to think. This approach integrates instruction of HOT with ongoing instruction of ordinary school subjects: while the contents are taught in depth, students are required to demonstrate deep thinking with respect to the contents they are studying. At the same time, there is constant discussion of general principles of thinking.

Recently, the strong relation between content knowledge and thinking has been discussed in various official documents. One important example is he “Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge in the 21st Century” (National Research Council (NRC), 2012) noted earlier. The document reviews the extensive literature and policy papers on teaching and learning in the twenty-first century, presenting the state of the literature and updated practical recommendations in this area:

In contrast to a view of 21st century skills as general skills that can be applied to a range of different tasks in various academic, civic, workplace, or family contexts, the committee views 21st century skills as dimensions of expertise that are specific to—and intertwined with—knowledge within a particular domain of content and performance. To reflect our view that skills and knowledge are intertwined, we use the term “competencies” rather than “skills.” (NRC, 2012, 3)

According to the American authors, the twenty-first-century competencies are an inseparable combination of content and skills. These competencies are constructed using what the authors call “deeper learning” (ibid., 5–6): a process that enables learners to apply what they have learned to a new situation (i.e., transfer). Accordingly, the product of deeper learning is transferable knowledge (that the authors also call “deep knowledge,”Footnote 1 see p. 80). This includes content knowledge in a specific discipline as well as the knowledge of how, when, and why to apply that knowledge in order to answer questions and solve new problems. The NRC document argues that these competencies are structured around key principles of the discipline and the relationships among them, rather than around discrete, superficial facts or around procedures. Other types of learning may enable people to retrieve facts, concepts, or procedures from memory, but only deeper learning enables them to transfer what has been learned to solving new problems. Notably, the OECD’s PISA tests follow a similar approach, whereby what is important for an educated person in today’s world is knowledge that can be transferred and applied in new contexts (OECD, 2005; Schleicher, 2010). This approach is also reflected in the more recent “Education 2030” policy document (OECD, 2018).

At this point, I need to elaborate a bit on the meaning of understanding (Harpaz, 2016) as well as on its relationship to the concept of transfer. Perkins and colleagues (Perkins, 1991, 1998; Perkins & Blythe, 1994) chose to explain understanding through the concept of performance: understanding means that the learner is capable of performing a variety of actions that require thinking about the subject she/he has learned. Examples include explaining the subject, finding related evidence and examples, generalizing, applying the related knowledge in new contexts, forming analogies with other topics, drawing conclusions, or representing the topic in new ways. The better a student is able to perform a variety of new tasks requiring new types of thinking about a topic, the more we will be willing to say that she/he has indeed understood it. Therefore, the way to assess understanding is by assessing a learner’s ability to transfer knowledge to new contexts.

Deeper learning that leads to understanding therefore involves thinking and is the only type of learning that can lead to high-quality, transferable, and “deep” knowledge. It is important to note that the statement implying that thinking-rich instruction improves students’ knowledge (in addition to improving the quality of their thinking) is supported by empirical studies. These show that although thinking-rich instruction “covers” less material, it makes a positive contribution to improving students’ knowledge (e.g., Zohar et al., 1994; Lee et al., 1995; Zohar & Nemet, 2002; Zohar, 2004; Darling-Hammond, 2010; NRC, 2012; Reisman, 2012). Deep learning in a specific content area is also essential for developing thinking competencies, as demonstrated in cognitive studies that have aimed to create a model for good learning by examining the knowledge of experts. These studies showed that experts differ from nonexperts not necessarily in their general thinking skills but mainly in the breadth and depth of their knowledge (Chi et al., 1988; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Bransford et al., 2000). Thus, deep disciplinary thinking requires context and deep acquaintance with the knowledge within which the thinking takes place. The authors of these studies concluded that instruction of deep contents is necessary for developing deep instruction of thinking skills or competencies.

To conclude, these considerations support the view that although the definitions of knowledge and how it should be taught do need to change, instruction of content knowledge is still essential even in the schools of the twenty-first century. According to the new definitions, knowledge construction requires students’ active thinking. Coherent planning of how to combine and balance thinking skills and contents to be taught in twenty-first-century schools represents a complex challenge in the attempt to implement HOT throughout the school system.

One of the disadvantages of thinking-rich instruction is that it requires more time than simply transmitting information. The transmission-of-information approach to instruction (for example, a teacher-centered lecture) is a very efficient way of “covering” a large amount of material in a short time. Therefore, in a school that considers transmission of information to be its major role, this approach may seem more efficient in terms of the ability to “cover” the curriculum. Since the time allocated to instruction is a limited resource, thinking rich instruction requires discarding a considerable part of the curriculum.

Some countries have done so, adopting the slogan “teach less, learn more” (Hadar & Zviran, 2018). They include Singapore, with its national program for thinking-rich instruction (Asia Society, 2017). Similarly, the education system of British Columbia, Canada, has reduced a considerable amount of the contents in two major knowledge areas—mathematics and social sciences. In mathematics, the goal was to expand the time dedicated to experiential learning, to enable students to acquire basic skills and to apply them to a variety of situations relevant to daily life. In the social sciences, the objective was to enable students to delve deeper into the materials they learned and to develop thinking competencies and independent understanding about basic concepts in this area (British Columbia, n.d. a, b). Finally, the OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 project also states the need to eliminate contents from overcrowded curricula in order to facilitate deeper, higher-quality learning (OECD, 2018).

Apparently, however, giving up contents is a painful and highly controversial process. In recent years, both as Director of Pedagogy in the Israeli Ministry of Education and as a teacher in various academic settings, I have lent my ear to voices of practitioners who highlighted the complexity of the dilemmas involved in planning curricula for today’s schools.

Time for teaching and learning in school is a limited and precious resource. In fact, funding teachers’ salaries for the hours they spend in classroom instruction is the largest single expense item of the education system. We do not have enough resources to teach everything we would have liked to teach. Although the literature I described earlier clearly indicates the objectives to be pursued in today’s schools, it is difficult to understand how this is to be done in practice. Usually, it is easier for education experts to propose new goals, but much more difficult to suggest goals that can be discarded. Is it conceivable, ask the skeptics, for students to graduate without having studied about quadratic equations or some particular, important historical event?

In countries, states, districts, or organizations that have a centralized curriculum, the narrowing of contents in the curriculum may be achieved by working in two different directions, which are of course not mutually exclusive: giving up required school subjects and reducing the extent of concepts and ideas studied within subjects. Dozens of discussions in which I have participated as Director of Pedagogy in the Israeli Ministry of Education with professionals of all levels have taught me that both directions are difficult, painful, and complex. A common phrase in the pertinent professional discourse is “it’s inconceivable that.” For example, “it’s inconceivable that high school students shall not study literature or geometry, or even a particular chapter within these subjects”. In effect, over the years in Israel, attempts to do away with some of the required school subjects have repeatedly encountered intense public and political opposition. When the possibility of removing this or that subject as a mandatory subject was raised in the past, the public and political discussion became heated, pressures were applied, and eventually, in practice, nothing changed.

It would appear that an alternative to cancelling entire subjects may involve a reduction of the amount of contents within existing school subjects. Such a reduction may make more time for deeper learning by creating time slots for engaging in HOT and inquiry-based leanring (IBL). This too, however, proves difficult. Time after time, I have witnessed intense debates among education professionals on contents that “must” be included in the curriculum, because they are “important and central and it is simply inconceivable that we would not teach them.” The debates reflect the belief that without the removed contents students would become seriously ignorant with regard to key concepts and issues. Current curricula are thus the product of painful compromises achieved following heated debates. Under such circumstances, as Director of Pedagogy in the Ministry, most of my suggestions for reducing the scope of curricula contents in order to make more room for deeper thinking and IBL ran into strong opposition. I particularly remember such oppositions in the case of accelerated physics, middle school mathematics, and history.

As suggested earlier, the swift changes the world is currently witnessing make it imperative to consider a dramatic transformation in the composition of school subjects. Indeed, this transformation was considered by a Committee for Curricular Planning for 21st Century Schools (Zohar & Busherian, 2020). Selected recommendations of the committee are described towards the end of this chapter.

Some of the reasons used to justify the unwillingness to remove certain contents are related to legitimate disagreements on profound issues regarding the nature of knowledge in general and disciplines in particular. Other parts of the debate have to do with disagreements over the quality of the knowledge produced through various pedagogies. I believe that the choice at this point is not between the acquisition of meaningful and transferable knowledge of an extended versus a narrow curriculum, but between nonmeaningful learning of an extended curriculum and a more meaningful learning of a narrower one. With regard to this issue, American scholars have criticized their mathematics curriculum as being “a mile wide and an inch deep” (NRC, 2012, 128). Accordingly, my argument is that there is little value in transmitting large amounts of information or fixed routines for solving problems if this only means going through the motions (“checking the box” in teachers’ manner of speaking) of covering the curriculum in a mechanical way. Under these circumstances, nothing important is left in students’ minds because most of what they learned is not deep, transferable knowledge. It was very difficult for me to convince my colleagues in the Ministry of Education that it is precisely the reduction in the scope of the content that would facilitate the acquisition of deeper knowledge, which is also better understood and retained over time. It is not easy to accept that eventually, such learning may result in both a larger quantity and in a higher quality of knowledge in students’ minds. My colleagues did not view the quality of knowledge created in the learning process as an important factor. Instead, the discussion tended to center mainly on considerations related to the quantity of knowledge.

These ideas clearly contradict some of the ideas in other parts of this chapter implying that many educators believe knowledge is no longer an important educational goal for twenty-first-century schools. This contradiction reflects the extent of the confusion and disagreements that currently exist with regards to the desired place and role of knowledge in today’s schools. In addition, educators are concerned about the quality of innovative learning and instruction methods. The development of such methods has been slow. Even if we believe in the long-term benefit of such methods, in the short term we lack the knowledge and tools for sustaining their high quality in large-scale implementation processes. Here is where the present discussion connects to the overall theme of this book and to the ideas raised at the beginning of this chapter. The severe difficulties involved in trying to reform traditional instruction in favor of more progressive methods and the empirical evidence coming from the field are worrying. They suggest that current reforms may flatten the knowledge acquired in school, making it more superficial compared to earlier times. These difficulties therefore raise the poignant issue of quality assurance: How can we guarantee, ask the sceptics, that thinking-rich instruction will indeed lead to the deepening rather than to flattening knowledge? How can we avoid a situation where the students would know little about little, rather than much about little? For example, some educators would have agreed to reduce the literature curriculum from 50 to 30 pieces, had they been persuaded that those 30 pieces would be studied in depth. They fear, however—a fear that is well grounded in the reality of the school system—that we will eliminate 20 pieces, but instruction of the remaining 30 pieces would still be superficial, since innovative instructional methods are not implemented in a satisfactory manner. It is not difficult to see that this view contradicts the view presented in the previous sections of this chapter, indicating that many educators believe that knowledge is no longer important in twenty-first-century schools. This contradiction will be revisited in the Summary and Conclusions section of this chapter.

According to my own view, schools will clearly be unable to progress towards twenty-first-century learning and instruction unless they give up on large chunks of the contents they are currently teaching. Doing so is important in order to make time for thinking-rich instruction, to engage in deep learning, and to be able to teach the new contents and skills that are becoming increasingly important in this era. As noted earlier, this view is currently supported by several countries and international policy documents. Yet, the move of giving up on contents that has been taught in schools for years has many opponents. It is therefore essential to ask who should be making the decisions on that controversial issue and how the various contradictory points of view may affect the decisions regarding the scope of the needed change, its pace, and the best strategies for its implementation.

The Pitfall in Striving for Relevant Instruction

One of the reasons for the difficulty in discussing the goals of learning in the twenty-first century has to do with the conflation of learning goals and methods, or in other words between the “what” and the “how.” The teaching method, or pedagogy, is supposed to be a means for achieving the goals of the curriculum, rather than an end in itself.

A common pitfall in addressing this point is related to the issue of relevance and to the belief, misguided in my view, that in order for learning to be relevant, its content must derive from the students and from the topics that interest them. One of the principles of the “meaningful learning” reform (Israeli Ministry of Education, 2014; see also Chap. 7) is for learning to be relevant for the students (see also Chap. 5). Children have a rich and dynamic inner world. All too often, however, school learning is alienated from the child’s inner world and fails to connect to it. Relevant learning occurs, conversly, when the learning process manages to connect to students’ inner world rather than remain alienated from it.

In order to connect to children’s world, however, learning does not have to focus on topics derived from their own areas of interest. Given the recent developments characterizing the information age, some of the topics in the curriculum have clearly become obsolete and require thorough changes. But this does not necessarily mean that in order for learning to be relevant, it is the child who has to set the agenda in terms of deciding what she is going to learn.

It is important for schools to allocate time slots for studying contents suggested by the students themselves. In these slots, students can investigate and develop areas and contents that stimulate their interest and curiosity. Such learning offers special value increasing students’ motivation for learning. However, other areas, which the child has probably not heard of before encountering them at school, can also elicit interest and curiosity, if they are taught well. If children study only what has interested them in the first place, how will the cultural assets of humanity be transmitted across generations? Good teaching means having students come to grips with an unfamiliar subject, one they could not even conceive of wanting to learn in the first place and make it relevant. This can be done by presenting the topic in an attractive, thought-provoking manner, by making the child ask questions and seek answers through active learning, by connecting the topic to the child’s initial conceptual framework and by showing how the new topic can connect to her inner world.

Relevant instruction needs to take the child and her inner world into account. As an ideal, child-centered considerations should influence the way students are taught, but this does not mean that the child and the subjects that interest her at the moment are the main factors that should dictate the curriculum; namely, what schools teach. Note that this insight is not new: Dewey (1938) already wrote about it in Experience and Education. In my view, the confusion between these two meanings of relevant teaching (i.e., the “what” and the “how” we teach) is one of the causes behind the increasing flattening of the curricula and the knowledge taught at school. The issue here is the view—which I think is misguided—that if our aim is meaningful learning, it is illegitimate to teach topics that are not initiated by students.

Uniform or Individualized Content?

Another important discussion concerns the degree of uniformity versus individualized content of the curricula. How uniform should the contents studied at school be? Alternatively, to what extent should the local levels of individual schools, teachers, or even the children themselves be allowed to determine the contents of the curriculum? This is a fundamental question regarding the content children should learn in school, and it has a huge effect on the curricula and the very structure of schooling. It is important, however, to separate the discussion of this question from the issue of relevance. When thinking about what is worthy of teaching, it is important to consider relevance, but relevance is only one consideration in determining the goals of education. Another important consideration is the school’s role in bequeathing cultural treasures across the generations.

Previous researchers (Van-Leer Group of Education, 2007; Yair, 2007) discussed the interaction between the degree of uniformity or individualized content of the curriculum and the instructional methods that are used and formulated a theoretical approach informed by four “pure” models of educational policy (see Fig. 2.1). The first is the uniformity and memorization model, which prioritizes both the traditional approach to learning and instruction and the concept of social uniformity. The curriculum informed by this model is nationwide, with a central examination system that focuses on contents determined by a central Ministry of Education. The instructional methods emphasize transmission of information and memorization. This model enables centralized regulation, encourages excellence in a narrow range of skills, and is relatively cost-effective. The most common criticisms voiced against it are that it narrows the autonomy of principals, teachers, and students, that it narrows the choice of instructional methods, and that it produces superficial, low-motivation learning.

Fig. 2.1
An infographic on the 4 models of educational policy reads, individualized and memorization model, individualized with deep, thinking-rich learning model, uniformity and memorization model, and uniformity with deep, thinking-rich model.

Four models of educational policy

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The second model is the individualized and memorization model. This model prioritizes the uniqueness and autonomy of the learners, but its concept of learning still relies on predetermined contents and traditional methods of learning and instruction. The most common criticisms against it are that it undermines the creation of a common foundation of knowledge and social values and that, like the first model, it narrows the choice of instructional methods and produces superficial, low-motivation learning.

The third model is uniformity with deep, thinking-rich learning. This model also prioritizes social uniformity, but the curriculum dictated by the state is taught using thinking-rich instruction. This model highlights deep knowledge and HOT, but uses standardized tests that allow nationwide comparisons of individual learners, schools, and municipalities.

Finally, the fourth model—individualized with deep, thinking-rich learning—conceptualizes individualism as the top priority, along with thinking-rich learning and instruction methods. Standardized curricula and tests have no place in this model: schools and teachers have the professional responsibility to adapt instruction to students’ needs and to evaluate their unique capabilities. According to this model, students’ achievements are evaluated using school-based, alternative modes of assessments.

The researchers (Van-Leer Group of Education, 2007) believed that the Israeli education system was located too close to the first model. Whereas the researchers left it to the policymakers to determine the more desirable model, they made it clear that they did not recommend shifting from one pole to the opposite one but to move along a continuum that exists between poles.

During my teaching in recent years, I have had the opportunity of talking with hundreds of university students about this issue. I have presented the four models, asking students for their opinion regarding the desirable application of these models. This request triggered hot debates in my university classroom. Yet, the opinions expressed by many of them—all members of Israel’s educational and academic elite—were surprisingly conservative. The majority did believe that the education system needed a push towards more individualized curriculum, but only slightly, enough to introduce a bit more autonomy in choosing what should be taught in school. Only a few students believed that the system had to be pushed all the way to the individualistic pole by providing considerable autonomy to the school, the teachers, the students, and their parents in determining what students should learn. The university students spoke mainly about the need to allow teachers to address topics that interest them and offer inquiry projects on topics that interest their public school students. At the same time, my higher education students emphasized that uniform contents had to remain central even in the twenty-first-century curricula, for two main reasons. First, the basic and “classical” bodies of knowledge in every school subject are important for creating a common knowledge base of general education and that abandoning these bodies of knowledge might result in an “ignorant generation.” The second reason concerns the need to provide students with a broad cultural knowledge base that will serve as a basis for constructing students’ national identity and values. Once again, these models and the ways higher education students reacted to them demonstrate: (a) the challenges involved in determining the right amount of fixed, common knowledge in future curricula, (b) the diversity of opinions around this issue in today’s educational arena, and (c) the interdependency between “what” should be taught in schools and which instructional methods would be used to teach it.

Principles for a New Curriculum

Many of the ideas discussed in the previous section are expressed in a proposition for reforming the state curriculum, as offered by a committee of experts commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Education (Zohar and Busherian, 2020;Footnote 2 Zohar and Colleagues, submitted). The report offered by the committee makes a case for the claim that knowledge is indeed still important in twenty-first-century schools, but also justifies the need to develop students’ HOT, to increase pedagogical autonomy throughout the school system, and to foster more progressive ways of instruction. The report acknowledges that the Israeli education system must confront a challenging local reality: On the one hand, despite considerable beginnings of implementation efforts, thinking skills have not yet been adequately integrated into the mainstream of learning and instruction; on the other hand, the status of knowledge may have been impaired. This state of affairs may lead to intellectually shallow learning. It weakens the ability of school graduates to cope with the accelerated pace of change and thus requires creative and extensive remedial measures. The question then arises of how to support processes of knowledge construction as well as the development of thinking skills within the schools. In response to these challenges, some of the committee’s recommendations are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Even in the twenty-first century, the study of knowledge should remain an important educational goal. Any new curriculum should therefore aim to highlight processes of knowledge construction.

  2. 2.

    Efforts should be made to organize knowledge around big questions, central ideas, and core principles within and across the disciplines.

  3. 3.

    A transition should be made from learning fragmented facts to knowledge that can be connected to other facts, conceptual frameworks and topics (in the same discipline or in other disciplines).

  4. 4.

    Curricula must devote a central place to developing diverse thinking skills and types of thinking such as argumentation, critical thinking, creative thinking, quantitative thinking, system thinking, metacognitive thinking, epistemic thinking, thinking dispositions, and self-regulated learning skills.

  5. 5.

    Knowledge and thinking skills should be integrated into the curricula in a cohesive and productive manner. Thinking skills must be learned as part of knowledge domains and not as general techniques in a content-free environment. Thinking skills must also be adapted to the epistemic structure of the various knowledge domains.

  6. 6.

    The development of students’ thinking should be integrated in teacher professional development and learning. This requires developing instructional materials that will help preservice and in-service teachers foster students’ thinking in their disciplinary areas.

  7. 7.

    The evaluation of students’ thinking should be integrated in assessment frameworks at all ages, including in the high school matriculation exams in all study areas. This should be achieved not just through written tests, but rather through innovative assessment methods such as inquiry learning, project-based learning, portfolios, computerized simulations, digital analysis of students’ open-ended writing, and more.

In light of these recommendations, the committee was persuaded that a closed, fixed curriculum could not be the answer. The search for a suitable solution led to suggest a model consisting of the following five flexible components:

  1. 1.

    Crosscutting dimensions: Cross-cutting dimensions are study areas that need to be addressed in each area taught in school, across the curriculum. Instruction of HOT is an example of a crosscutting dimension. Accordingly, the study of HOT should span all of the different components and subjects in the curriculum. It is suggested that HOT should be promoted in all of the curriculum components and in all subjects of study according to each subject’s specific characteristics. Among other things, part of developing the crosscutting dimensions should create conditions for coherent development of students’ thinking in diverse age groups, populations, and diverse content domains. HOT should also be taught as a crosscutting dimension because it is essential for facilitating students’ ability to deal with changes in their out of school reality by providing them with necessary skills and knowledge.

  2. 2.

    Foundational fields of study: Foundational fields are compulsory study subjects (language, math, science, humanities, social studies, arts, etc.) for which curricula will be prepared by the Israeli Ministry of Education. It is recommended that curricular development will include the planning and reorganization of existing curricula in traditional school subjects, as well as adjusting the scope of learning, its subjects, and its character according to contemporary goals of teaching. It is also suggested to significantly narrow the scope of existing curricula so that more time could be devoted to in-depth study of knowledge and thinking skills. Doing so requires critically examining existing curricula, defining key concepts in each subject that will remain in the new curricula, organizing knowledge around “big questions,” and promoting subjects that can integrate content and thinking skills in an authentic way. Curricula will also express ethical deliberations, social-emotional learning, and the epistemic structure of each discipline. The inclusion of foundational fields of study was also intended to contribute to bridging some rifts in the fragmented Israeli society by providing at least some common ground to all students.

  3. 3.

    Interdisciplinary studies: It is suggested that a number of school hours will be devoted to the creation of integrative knowledge based on a combination of different disciplines. This type of learning will take place through engaging with “big” cross-disciplinary issues, such as immigration, leadership, or freedom. The introduction of interdisciplinary studies is meant to respond to the changing structure of knowledge and thinking in the twenty-first-century that emphasizes the need to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to navigate the complexity of our changing world.

  4. 4.

    New subjects of study: To better deal with a changing world it is essential to introduce new fields that were not previously taught systematically in schools, such as sustainability, ethics, or financial education. The new subjects should be selected in a judicious and dynamic process based on changing local and global needs. This was viewed as a crucial ingredient for enabling the education system to deal with the rapid changes taking place around it.

  5. 5.

    Encouraging initiatives and autonomy of schools and teachers: A portion of school hours will be designated to encouraging initiatives and free choice of local authorities, school networks, school principals, teachers, parents, and students. As explained earlier, autonomy is seen as essential both for dealing with global change and adapting to local demands.

The school study hours are therefore viewed as a mosaic of these five components that changes over time. Accordingly, the proposed model is flexible, since the relative size of the components and the decisions regarding their internal composition are to be dynamic. Changes should follow the gradual improvement in the ability of schools and teaching staff to use progressive teaching and assessment methods, as well as changes in ecological, social, and technological conditions. To assist educators at all levels to reach judicious decisions over the years, the committee proposed detailed criteria that can support educators in making decisions regarding future changes in the components of the curriculum (see Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 List of criteria for supporting educators in making decisions regarding future changes in the components of the curriculum
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Summary: Tying It All Together

This chapter highlights current challenges related to the status of knowledge in today’s schools. It shows how—in addition to philosophical and normative considerations—bad pedagogy may influence people’s beliefs about what schools should be teaching. It also demonstrates educators’ contradicting views regarding this issue and explains the interrelationships that exist between “how” to teach (i.e., instructional methods, or pedagogy) and “what” to teach (knowledge goals). If educators assume good implementation of progressive instructional methods that can bring about deep knowledge, they may adopt a positive answer to the question of whether knowledge is still important. However, assuming traditional methods that often bring about rote learning and superficial knowledge may lead to a feeling that knowledge is no longer an important educational goal.

Integrating the teaching of HOT into the mainstream activities of learning and instruction is therefore of utmost importance because, among other reasons (see Chap. 1), it may support construction of knowledge that will be worth teaching: knowledge that students will be able to understand, explain, justify, and use in new contexts. The ideas in this chapter expresses a concern lest, just like in previous progressive reforms, current system-wide pedagogical changes may impair learning and push content knowledge aside. The chapter opened with an analysis showing how the intellectual aspects of school life, which include knowledge construction and deep thinking about that knowledge, have been marginalized. In many classrooms that have undergone pedagogical reform, there is too often a sense of no criteria for the quality of knowledge. Consequently, there is a feeling that “anything goes.”

Using a conceptual framework borrowed from the field of personal epistemology, I argued that stages of pedagogical changes are parallel to those of epistemic thinking. I argued that the school system has grown beyond the stage of absolutist pedagogy but has not yet reached the stage of evaluative pedagogy. It seems that only too often, the system is “stuck” in the stage of multiplist pedagogy.

Teachers have abandoned much of the traditional “transmission of information” pedagogy, but have yet to reach a prevalent state of deeper learning that supports meaningful knowledge construction, thinking, and evaluation. To achieve that purpose, both teachers and students need an advanced epistemic conception of evaluative knowledge and the appropriate pedagogies for operating according to this conception. HOT is crucial for this endeavor.

Next, the chapter addressed the question of the appropriate role of knowledge and skills in twenty-first-century curricula and argued that although knowledge remains a key educational goal, the definition, scope, and nature of the required knowledge must change. The chapter also showed that the cultivation of thinking is central to the goals of future education. It is important both as an end to itself and because it is a condition for deep knowledge, as defined, for example, in the National Research Council’s (2012) “Education for Life and Work” document. Without thinking about the body of knowledge one learns—whatever it may be—it will be impossible to construct deep knowledge. This thinking, however, must be part of the evaluative epistemic conception mentioned earlier, rather than a collection of isolated thinking skills. Finally, the chapter addressed two further related issues: the difficulty of reducing the scope of contents in the curriculum and the myth of relevant learning. This chapter refined the view that the goal of thinking-rich instruction is not to focus on skills that are detached from content nor make the instruction of content areas redundant. The argument is that only the integration of content areas and thinking strategies, combined with pedagogies that promote advanced epistemic conceptions, can realize the present goals of learning. As difficult as it is to put those goals into words, implementing them in actual teaching practices is far more difficult. This difficulty lies in the extreme complexity involved in achieving goals that have to do with the quality of instruction (or, with substantive pedagogy, as will be explained in the next chapter).

These conclusions are fundamental to the discussion in the following chapters. In what follows, I will touch upon deep processes of learning and instruction and issues related to their quality assurance when implementing system-wide change processes. Only success in those implementation processes can save current reforms from the grim fate of previous progressive reforms in education.