“Give the pupil something to do and not something to learn….”

CBC 155

The 2018 International Conference on Thinking (ICOT) provides a thematic exploration of “Education, Learning and, the Brain through one of the salient conference's big questions “How do we foster dispositions that support thoughtful learning and understanding across disciplines?” This presenter will share how he used the experience in an Introduction to the Teaching Profession course (what some see as a foundations of education course) to draw on educational philosopher John Dewey’s advice to “Give the pupil something to do and not something to learn, and the doing is of such nature that demands thinking; learning naturally results,” by using what Jay McTighe, a colleague of the late Grant Wiggins, refers to as a “Performance Task” that elicits dispositions as Habits of Mind for making conduct more intelligent.