Examples of Student Responses Explaining the Concept(s) Common to All Episodes

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Lack of metacognition.

One of the common concepts to all five episodes is the absence of metacognition. In each case the process of thinking stops at a certain point and the individual never makes connections to previous and future information. The building blocks of understanding are there; they are just not connecting with one another. The ability of the characters to identify their own thinking processes and the mistakes or gaps that may be within the process of understanding is important. In each case if the individual stopped and thought about what they were doing, they may have been able to make the connection to ideas or concepts they were missing before. One of the obstacles for these individuals may be the fact that they don't know how to think about their thinking.

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Lack of metacognition.

I think that in all of these problems the students do not have complete understanding of what they are doing.  They cannot connect information they already know to new information they are learning or using.  They are unaware of their own mental activity and are not able to regulate their own thinking.  They need to learn how to generate questions about what they are doing and be able to summarize or clarify into their own words what is happening in their situation.  If they were capable of connecting information, they would be able to apply and use their knowledge in order to perform the tasks in their situations.

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Lack of metacognition.

The concept that applies to all of the problems is that the people involved lack the skill of metacognition.  The persons in the problems do not think about what they are thinking, they simply are going through the motions.  They also lack the understanding of what the problem involves in that they do not relate the new problem to the knowledge that they previously have.

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Lack of metacognition and lack of critical thinking skills.

A common problem in all of these episodes is the blind assumptions that take place.  When a problem is not thought through thoroughly enough errors are made.  In none of the scenarios is the participant thinking about how they think. Critical/analytical thinking skills are not being implemented.  The participants are thinking as they usually do instead of thinking about how to approach the problem from a different angle.   This is made vividly evident in all of these examples.  There is a lack of completeness in all of these situations. For the most part the problem-solvers involved in these episodes are on the right track with their course of action but fail to accomplish the task successfully due to either laziness or lack of problem solving skills.  In any of these cases I think that if the participants took a few minutes to think about how to solve the problem or situation in a new way they would have a higher rate of success.

===========================================================================Lack of understanding.

A common theme I found in all the episodes was the lack in ability to create a knowledge structure that encompassed the fragmented thoughts of the individuals.  Because having the ability to construct a knowledge structure is a facet of understanding, I would generalize and say the individuals did not have an in depth level of understanding.  In each case, the students were unable to fully comprehend the situation, and therefore they were not able to form accurate connections among their fragmented thoughts.   The students were unable to use their information in thought provoking ways and apply it correctly to the situation. 

===========================================================================Lack of thinking dispositions

In each of these episodes, people seem to be overlooking something.  In the math problems, it is not looking at the bigger picture and not understanding how the answers fit in relation to the questions.  In the card game and credit card situations, the "rules" are not fully comprehended  by the individuals.  In the object memory situation, the younger children overlook some objects because they don't know how to handle this situation as well as the older children. The reason for the poor performance in each of these episodes cannot be simply rushing and overlooking something, but I think it goes deeper than that.  In each episode, each group had some sort of previous knowledge and understanding about the subject.  The math students know enough to perform the math problems.  The card players knew enough to fill in the gaps on their own.  The cashier knew enough to check the back credit card and compare signatures.  The younger children knew enough to remember a few objects.  

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Lack of transfer.

Lack of reciprocal teaching skills.

The main concept that applies to all five episodes is reciprocal teaching skills.  There may be different steps that were applied in some and weren't in others, and there were steps missing in some and were practiced in others.  For example, addition episode did not practice the skill of questioning whereas the card game did and looked at it as one piece.  The reason that performance was poor in all five episodes was because there were no connections being made.  One way to help with connecting information together and also understanding it is by practicing the four reciprocal teaching skills.

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The reason for poor performance in all five episodes is that there was not a clear understanding.  All five episodes showed that the understanding process was not fully triggered.  Students were not receiving adequate instruction and were not fully understanding the concepts and were unable to apply them correctly.  The lady and the cashier showed poor performance as well, because the cashier did not understand that the lady just forgot to sign her card, so she tried to make connections with the two signatures.  All episodes show that there is not a clear grasp of understanding and the thinking process.  The episodes show that the thinking and understanding must be done individually without adequate feedback and full grasps of the knowledge and concepts.