Should reasoning skills be taught in elementary schools? Reasoning skills is the use of reason, especially to form conclusions, inferences, or judgments. In elementary schools being able to have a sound understanding or training in reasoning skills would improve our abilities to solve problems and help in classes in the future.
Our society that is becoming more complex almost everywhere we look. It requires people to handle huge amounts of information that just goes outdated fast. (Johnson 184-199). Hence, students should not only be taught basic knowledge and skills subjects, but they should be taught general reasoning skills to manage information processing. Letting them connect the information into meaningful representations and distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information for the specific task. (Koning, 2002).
The University of Oxford did a study where they trained a group of children in logical reasoning 13 months before the tests and found that they made more progress in mathematics than a control group who were not given this training. They found a casual connection in the kids between their logical reasoning and their mathematical learning. (Nunes,2007). This study shows that teaching of logical reasoning was highly sucessful and had good lasting effects on the learning of the student even after 13 months from the logical instruction. The effect of this instruction is amazing. Just the fact that young students could be that impacted by instruction is profound.
Lots of people have a lot of different views on the subject, but this is the main concern we will focus on. How can you provide real proof that the instruction of reasoning skills is what is actually improving these skills, and it is a viable concern. The sources have been a research designed or survey in which the same subjects are observed repeatedly over a period of time in an effort to eliminate that concern. I realize that we can’t say that it is an absolute fact, but we can see that there is a connection that definitely exists between reasoning and the effect it has on students. We should not ignore the connection that exists.
Reasoning skills being taught in school would be a benefit for our society. It improves our ability to problem solve and to deal with the complexities that we face. It would have a positive impact on our math ability and possibly on other any subject that requires cognitive problem solving. If nothing else, being able help the teachers in school to shift their attention from determining whether an answer is right or wrong to determining how the answer was found will help them teach children more effective reasoning skills. This will help children enhance the learning of reasoning in their individual and future subjects.
References
Koning, Els, Jo Hamers, Klaas Sijtsma, and Adri Vermeer. "Teaching Inductive Reasoning in Primary Education." Developmental Review . 22.2 (2002): 211-241. Print.
Nunes , Terezinha, Peter Bryant, Deborah Evans, and Daniel Bell. "The Contribution of Logical Reasoning to the Learning of Mathematics in Primary School ." British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 25.1 (2007): 147-166. Print.
Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good For You How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York City, New York : The Berkley Publishing Group, 2005. 184-199. Print.
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