New Kinds of Smart

Albert Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy,7 and Julian Rotter’s idea of locus of control,8 are related to this idea – they both refer to whether you think that what you do can make a significant difference, or whether you are just the victim of events that are beyond your control.

And reasoning is the vital companion of imagination: being able to think rigorously and clearly; to follow logical chains of thought;

cultivate the pattern-making

Gesturing reflects the close connection between thinking and making – even when the only physical thing you have to make are shapes in the air! (Doodling also helps people attend, think and remember, for the same reason.11)

The more difficult of the two – high road transfer – is a kind of cavalry charge (to go back to the quotation we used on page 134). It is mentally expensive and if we are in the flow of something, such mental interruptions can easily distract us. High road transfer is at the core of strategic intelligence. In

One method, devised by business psychologist Peter Heslin, is called brainwriting.13 Students work in groups of four. Once the original problem or challenge has been set, the first ten-minute period involves everyone in silence writing down some ideas on slips of paper. The group members look at each other’s slips of paper and may add some further

Intelligent people are good at expanding their repertoire of knowledge and skills, so they can meet new situations as well equipped as possible. But they also need to be able to bring the right bits of that knowledge and experience to bear on new situations. It is no use being really well informed if what you know does not come to mind at the appro

The design of an education system has to reflect many assumptions – about the future, about what ‘fulfilment’ means, about family life – many of which are contested. No wonder education is so contentious. Changing views of developing young minds But there is another set of assumptions on which education rests that is not to do with society, but to

And that is why, as Luis Moll says, it is the job of the educator not to make children dependent on digital tools, nor to deprive them of them, but to help them develop their tool-mindedness, and the ability to use tools to expand their own internal capacity, as well as to get interesting things done.