Chapter 14 page 309
troops in South Korea since the end of the Korean War,
and there hasn’t been a war between South Korea and
North Korea since then. It seems to me that having
50,000 American troops in Korea might be helping to
preserve peace there. So her argument is only partly
right.....”
elaborates on that. She concludes that this is a
good counterexample.Notice that the teacher is modeling a realistic thinking process. She is demonstrating how she really
thinks, the actual stream of thoughts through which she uses the strategy. She demonstrates how she asks
herself questions to see if she can generate a good counterexample. She demonstrates how she struggles to
try to find a counterexample, thus modeling for students that it is effortful to try to think of
counterexamples. She demonstrates how she searches through memory for a counterexample (South
America, Panama, Africa, and then Asia) before thinking of one. She shows herself coming up with one
possible counterexample and then rejecting it. These are the processes that are needed to think of
counterexamples, and students should learn that thinking of counterexamples takes some time, and it
requires searching memory in this way. The teacher thus models the stream of thoughts that people really
engage in when they are using cognitive strategies effectively.
Modeling actual thought processes during strategy use is important so that students can understand
how to really use the strategies (Chinn, 2008a; A. Collins et al., 1989). If teachers do not demonstrate the
real steps that real self-regulated learners and thinkers use when using strategies, students will not learn
how to actually use the strategies. Effective teacher models show not just the final products of thinking but
the actual processes of thinking. For example, a good model of summarization does not just present the
final summary (the final product of summarization). It shows the cognitive processes by which the teacher
generated the summary (the actual process of producing the summary). Students learn how to use a
strategy when they see the actual cognitive processes of using the strategy.
Below are examples of two teachers modeling summarization. The first teacher’s model is
unsuccessful because she shows just the final product of summarizing. The second teacher’s model is
successful because she models the actual cognitive processes she uses to summarize. Both teachers are
summarizing the following textbook passage from a social studies textbook:
The people of Illinois live in many different kinds of places. There are people who live in the large city of
Chicago, which has a population of almost 3 million people. Another 6 million people live in the many
Chicago suburbs. Over 9 million people live in the Chicago area. Smaller cities are found in the southern and
western parts of the state. And in these areas, there are rural areas with many farms and smaller towns.
Teacher #1 says, “I’m going to summarize this paragraph now. I’ve read the paragraph, and I think
that a good summary is: The people of Illinois live in many different kinds of places—Chicago, its
suburbs, smaller cities, and rural areas.” This teacher has shown students the final product of her
thinking—her final summary. She does not actually show students how to develop a summary. A student
who does not already know how to generate a summary would not be able to learn how to generate one
from what the teacher said. For these reasons, the model is not effective at helping students learn to
summarize.
In contrast, Teacher #2’s model, shown below, explains much more about the process of generating a
summary.
Teacher #2’s Model Analysis
Teacher #2: Let me try to summarize this paragraph.
Let’s start with the first sentence. “The people of
Illinois live in many different kinds of places.” Hmmm.
We’ve talked about how the first sentence in a
paragraph sometimes tells us what the paragraph is
about. Is that true in this paragraph? Let’s keep reading
and see. Let’s see if each of the sentences in this
The teacher reminds students that the first
sentence sometimes tells what the paragraph is
about, but she doesn’t stop there. She points out
that she will keep reading and see if this is true
for this paragraph.