Author
Lev
N. Landa (Landamatics International)
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Goals & Preconditions
- The primary
goal of this theory is to teach general methods of thinking (the highest-order
thinking skills), it is intended for aII situations which, though
different in content, have similar general logical stucture (often
hidden) that allow one to mentally handle them in the same way by
employing the same general mental operations.
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Values
- General methods
of thinking (for success in education, industry, and today's information
society)
- Identification
of general logical structures of various subject matters which determine
methods of handling those structures.
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Methods
Strategy 1: Guided
Discovery
1) Guide the students
to discover a system of mental operations underlying a general method
of thinking.
- Give them a
task or problem and have them perform it.
2) Help the student
to become aware of what they did in their minds when performing the
task and then to formulate a method that corresponds to it.
- Ask them to
formulate a detailed set of instructions (a method) so that other
people will be able to follow them to perform the task.
- If they have
d~fflculiy, explain how to formulate the method.
- Identify an
overt or hidden (implicit) logical structure of the task's orproblem
's content and explicitly describe it.
- Show how the
content's logical structure determines the method of handling it.
- Use a flowchart
when it will help the students to graphically represent the method.
3) Help the students
to learn to apply the discovered method.
- Have them practice
using the discovered method (instructions), in a step-by-step manner,
on new cases.
4) Help the students
to internalize the method.
- Have them practice
the method on new cases without looking at instructions and using
only self-instructions.
5) Help the students
to automatize the method.
- Require them
to perform the task on new cases very quickly, without using even
self-instructions.
6) Repeat steps
1-5 to gradually increase the degree of generality of the method the
student have discovered.
- In step 1,
give the students tasks (or problems) that are just outside the subject
matter domain where the method was initially discovered and used,
and that require a modification of the discovered method.
- In step 2, help
the students formulate a single more general method that works in
both domains.
- Steps 3-5 are
unchanged.
Strategy 2: Expository Teaching
- The same six
steps occu, but the first two are provided to the students in ready-made
form (with appropriate demonstrations).
Strategy 3: Combination Approach
- Some steps are
taught through discovery and some through expository methods, depending
on the teacher's objectives.
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Major Contributions
- Lanadmatics
focuses on general methods of thinking--the highest order thinking
skills--as an important kind of teaching objective and learning outcome.
It suggests options for discovery and/or expository instruction
Additional Resources
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