•building understanding

•information-gathering

Baron’s model of the good thinker

Description and intended use

Baron’s key interest lies in how psychology can be used to improve thinking through education. He takes the view that a major problem with our thinking and decision-making, is that much of it suffers from ‘intellectual laziness’ (Baron, 1985, p. 108) brought on by a lack of actively open-minded thinking. His work explores the origins and processes of irrationality and poor thinking, and aims to find ways of correcting both.

Baron argues that intelligence and rational thinking are closely related in that rationality is a function of the dispositional components of intelligence. He presents rational decision-making as being dependent upon the rational formation of beliefs about consequences. He believes that the skills involved in rational thinking are teachable, although not without reference to the thinker’s beliefs and goals.

Baron uses the idea of a search–inference framework to argue that thinking begins with doubt and involves a search directed at removing the doubt. In the course of this process, which involves the consideration of goals, possibilities and evidence, inferences are made,

in which each possibility is strengthened or weakened on the basis of evidence. Glatthorn and Baron (1991) outline the model as follows (p. 63):

1.Thinking begins with a state of doubt about what to do or believe.

2.We usually have a goal in mind when the doubt arises, but we may search for new goals, subgoals, or a reformulation of the original goal.

3.We search for possibilities.

4.We search for evidence relative to the possibilities.

5.We use the evidence to revise the strengths of the possibilities.

6.We decide that the goal is reached and conclude the search.

Glatthorn and Baron go on to identify the characteristics of the ‘good thinker’ in contrast to those of the ‘poor thinker’. A good thinker:

•welcomes problematic situations and is tolerant of ambiguity

•is self-critical, searches for alternate possibilities and goals; seeks evidence on both sides

•is reflective and deliberative; searches extensively when appropriate

•believes in the value of rationality and that thinking can be effective

•is deliberative in discovering goals

•revises goals when necessary

•is open to multiple possibilities and considers alternatives

•is deliberative in analysing possibilities

•uses evidence that challenges favoured possibilities

•consciously searches for evidence against possibilities that are initially strong, or in favour of those that are weak.

Baron concentrates upon how information is processed in thinking, in terms of searching for goals, possibilities and evidence to evaluate possibilities. It is important to note that these processes do not go on in any fixed or hierarchical order, but occur in a flow of dynamic interaction. The search processes are relevant in all types of thinking, which we summarise below, using Glatthorn and Baron’s terminology as far as possible:

•diagnosis – trying to find the source of a problem

•hypothesis testing – forming and testing theories

•reflection – controlled searching for general principles

•insight – where only the search for possibilities is controlled

150Frameworks for Thinking

•artistic creation – searching for and evaluating possibilities and goals

•prediction – searching for principles and analogies to explain imagined consequences

•decision-making – choosing between plans on the basis of imagined consequences

•behavioural learning – learning about the effects of one’s conduct in certain situations

•learning from observation – including language learning and culturallytransmitted knowledge, where the search for evidence is not controllable.

Evaluation

Although Baron’s model is broad in scope, he admits that it is not a comprehensive account of thought, as it deals only with thinking as a consciously-controlled purposive activity. It does not deal with the psychological conceptions of attention, memory and intellectual abilities. For Baron, intelligence is a set of characteristics consisting of capacities and dispositions. Capacities are ability parameters that affect success at tasks and may be affected by prior practice but which are not under control at the time a task is done. Dispositions, on the other hand, are seen as being parameters which affect success in tasks but which are subject to learner and teacher control under instruction. Rationality is taken to be an important subset of dispositions, and involves following the rules of a sound prescriptive model of decisionmaking or belief formation.

Baron’s three search processes (for goals, possibilities and evidence) appear to be relatively distinct, apart from the sometimes seamless psychological transition between possibility and goal. They may be accepted as general and comprehensive inasmuch as they characterise goal-directed conscious enquiry. However, Glatthorn and Baron’s lists of dispositions and types of thinking show a considerable amount of overlap and are certainly not comprehensive. When compared with other critical thinking theorists, there are some serious gaps in their enumeration of the qualities of a good thinker. Empathy, humility, respect for other points of view, clarity and integrity are signally absent. It is also surprising that building understanding, justification,

seeking consensus, and formal problem-solving are not included in the list of ‘common’ types of thinking.

It is not clear why Glatthorn and Baron drew up a list of different types of thinking, other than to illustrate aspects of everyday life in which good thinking is important and to suggest that some kind of balance is required in the quantity as well as the quality of thinking that is going on. However, the list of the general characteristics of the good thinker is of limited value in determining what counts as the rational pursuit of goals in a particular situation. It is almost a truism that irrational, impulsive, rigid, restricted, self-satisfied and biased thinking are to be avoided.

Glatthorn and Baron’s linking of information-processing, mental capacities and dispositions may be helpful in providing insight into some of the dynamics between cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of thinking, but their analysis remains at a very general level and they are highly suspicious of intuition, which they place in opposition to rationality. Their treatment of observation as an unproblematic passive process is also highly questionable.

Baron provides clear definitions and examples from diverse domains, including real-life problems. His model is easy for teachers and learners to understand, but the most valuable part of it is the simplest: the idea of thinking and learning as enquiry.

Summary: Baron