A perspective on thinking.

Research on general thinking abilities-productive, higher order, critical and creative thinking-has progressed slowly compared with the rapid progress that has been made in the study of cognitive structures and procedures. As alternatives to currently prevailing assumptions, three framing assumptions for the study o f thinking are proposed, involving situated cognition, personal and social epistemologies, and conceptual competence. Evidence consistent with these assumptions is outlined, and topics in the psychology of thinking are discussed in relation to the assumptions. The psychological study of thinking has two parts. One part is concerned with performance on specific tasks. The other part is concerned with broader capabilities of productive thinking, higher order thinking skills, critical thinking, and creativity. In the past 20 years, there has been major scientific progress in the psychology of thinking concerned with performance on specific tasks, and much less in the psychology of critical, productive, higher order, and creative thinking. The study of complex information processing, pioneered by Newell and Simon (1972), has provided a progressive framework for analyzing the cognitive structures and processes in many tasks, including tasks used in Piagetian research (Siegler, 1976), puzzles such as cryptarithmetic and the Towers of Hanoi (Anzai & Simon, 1979), items used in intelligence tests (Pellcgrino & Glaser, 1982; Simon & Kotovsky, 1963; Sternberg, 1977), various kinds of syllogisms (Johnson-Laird, 1983), concept identification (Gregg & Simon, 1967), and tasks used in school instruction, especially in science and mathematics (Anderson, 1982; Greeno, 1978; Resnick, in this issue; Riley & Greeno, 1988). Research on the topics of productive, higher order, critical, and creative thinking has not been an integral part of the major success of cognitive and developmental psychology during the past 20 years or so. In contrast to the remarkable progress achieved in analyses of specific tasks, research on general thinking capabilities has not led to significant advances in theoretical understanding or a systematic body of empirical knowledge. Many efforts to enhance children's thinking abilities have been made, and some of these have been evaluated in research studies. Excellent reviews are available by Chipman, Segal, and Glaser (1985); Nickerson, Perkins, and Smith (1985); Resnick (1987); and Segal, Chipman, and Glaser (1985). The dominant psychological idea in these development efforts is that thinking can be viewed as a skill. Successful thinking in specific subj~-'t-matter domains uses knowledge that is specific to the domains, as much research has shown. At the same time, it is reasonable to expect that there are aspects of thinking skill that are common across domains, and this possibility has motivated the development of many programs in the attempt to enhance general thinking skills. Evaluations of several of these programs have shown positive results, which encourage the idea that there are teachable components of general thinking ability. At the same time, there has been no perceptible progress toward a coherent account of what makes some of the programs succeed; nor has the research contributed significantly toward a set of principles that would constitute an articulate theory of the characteristics of thinking abilities. Nickerson, Perkins, and Smith (1985) summed up the situation, at least regarding programs emphasizing cognitive operations, as follows: Reviewing the various programs discussed, we are impressed by how easy it is to make up a list of fundamental operations, and also by the fact that the lists produced by different programs differ considerably from one another. Each of these lists can be seen as a theory of the components of intelligence or at least of determinants of intellectual performance. And this is the problem. There are too many of these theories for comfort. To be sure, some themes recur frequently but the differences are substantial. (p. 188) Some of the causes of this relatively slow progress may be implicit in the theories and framing assumptions that have dominated our scientific inquiry. There are three framing assumptions about thinking and learning that may be responsible for our apparent inability to develop a more adequate theory of thinking. First, the locus of thinking is assumed to be in an individual's mind, rather than in interaction between an agent and a physical and social situation. Second, processes of thinking and learning are assumed to be uniform across persons and situations. Different individuals are more or less capable of critical or creative thinking, and different situations are more or less conducive to learning and thinking, but the activities of thinking and learning are assumed to have approximately the same character wherever and in whomever they occur. Third, resources for thinking are assumed to be knowledge and skills that are built up from simple components, especially through instruction in school, rather than general conceptual capabilities that children may have as a result of their everyday experience or native endowment. 134 February 1989 • American Psychologist Copyright 1989 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/89/$00.75 Vol. 44, No, 2, 134-141 These framing assumptions are reflected in the research and discussions of thinking, including discussions of creative thinking, where Kogan (1983) has summarized a large body of research about whether individuals think divergently or convergenfly and where Weisberg (1986) recently debunked several accounts in terms of genius, divergent thinking, mysterious insight, and inspiration and proposed replacing these with an account in terms of information-processing, problem-solving capabilities; motivation; and concentration. Resnick's (1987) discussion characterized higher order thinking as nonalgorithmic, complex, self-regulative, meaningful, effortful, and providing multiple solutions, nuanced judgments, multiple criteria, and uncertainty, all defined in terms of cognitive traits and processes of individuals. Chipman (1986) characterized a consensus among cognitive scientists that successful thinking depends on organization of cognitive activity with a hierarchy of goals and operations. Alternative Framing Assumptions A different set of framing assumptions may be needed if we are to make significant headway toward an adequate understanding of thinking and creativity. The three assumptions that I propose are the following. 1. Situated cognition. Thinking is situated in physical and social contexts. Cognition, including thinking, knowing, and learning, can be considered as a relation involving an agent in a situation, rather than as an activity in an individual's mind. 2. Personal and social epistemologies. Thinking and learning are situated in contexts of beliefs and understandings about cognition that differ between individuals and social groups, and fundamental properties of thinking and learning are determined by these contexts. 3. Conceptual competence. Children have strong potential capabilities for cognitive growth that enable complex and subtle processes of construction of knowledge and thinking skills. Thinking~ learning, and cognitive growth are activities in which children elaborate and reorganize their knowledge and understanding, rather than simply applying and acquiring cognitive structures and procedures. These assumptions are too general to allow direct empirical tests. Their acceptance will depend on the theoretical analyses and systematic empirical work that result from their use. At the same time, there are at least three kinds of empirical evidence that are consistent with the assumptions and encourage their further use and development. This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research, Contract N00014-88-K-0152, Project 1142CS, and the Institute for Research on Learning. I am grateful for conversations with John Seely Brown, Andy diSessa, Brigitte Jordan, Jean Lave, George Fake, Alan Sehoenfeid, and Susan Stucky in the development of these ideas. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James G. Greeno, School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. Situated Cognition We have thought of thinking as a process within an individual's mind, perhaps influenced by a context provided by the situation. Recent ethnographic research suggests a different view, in which thinking is an interaction between an individual and a physical and social situation. One example is in observations by Seribner (1984) of young men whose job is to fill drivers' orders in a dairy. The task involves different products that come in different-sized containers. Containers are packed in cases; the number of containers per case is different for the different container sizes. The worker gets a form failed out for each driver, in a special notation that shows, for each product, a number of cases and a number of containers that should be added or subtracted. The task could be done algorithmically; for example, the loader could locate the number of full cases that are specified and either remove the number of containers specified with a negative integer or add a partial case with the number of containers specified with a positive integer. The loaders did better, using partial cases to obtain more efficient solutions. The workers used optimal solutions in more than 90% of the cases that were observed. These workers' performance was not based on mathematical knowledge of the kind that we might expect individuals to obtain in school. We can imagine giving a word problem in arithmetic about the situation, involving the number of cases and containers needed for the order, the number of containers in a partially filled case, and the question "How many more containers are needed for the order to be filled correctly? " We would expect some pencil-an