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AMBITIOUS INSTRUCTION
or examples of attempts to solve a school or community problem in order to compose a solution of one’s own? Synthesis. Analyzing and evaluating several historians’ perspectives in order to determine what caused the Civil War? Synthesis.
While synthesis remains one of the higher-order-thinking skills teachers aspire to address, like evaluation and analysis, it remains nebulous to students, if not to teachers. It’s hard to make accessible in instruction and instructional language. Teachers are further challenged to fit it all in. We want to encourage and enable critical thinking, but we fret over all the things students should know first before they engage in acts of deep thinking. Comprehension before critique, a common saying reminds us. Critical thinking is positioned as a culmination of learning, rather than the process by which students learn. It is rarely addressed in full or directly. Where it is missing, where it is needed most, is in daily instruction. Yes, that’s right. Rather than making the highest-order thinking infrequent and summative—the stuff of projects or end assessments—it should be the whole of instruction. Positioning synthesis as both the process and product of our teaching means not having to choose between comprehension and critical thinking; it prioritizes both. In synthesis, we understand to argue; comprehension supports critical thinking. Our own common core as teachers should be capital-T teaching students how to do it.
Developing High-Quality Problems The two tenets, problem-based learning and synthesis, can feel a little, well, fuzzy at the conceptual level. It really helps to see their practical applications in practice, particularly when planning. Think of problems as your signpost for where you begin and where you’ll end up. You’ll know you’ve achieved your learning outcomes if students can solve the problems you give them. Think of synthesis as telling you about what you need in terms of the depth of students’ responses. It also tells you what the intellectual work should be to reach that depth. You need only build out the curricular products to support it. Problems are all around us, but they don’t just come from anywhere; we derive them, with the specific intention of serving content and skill learning. That means you must be deliberate about creating problems, developing and positioning them
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We associate the concept of inquiry as synonymous with synthesis because, well, synthesis is inquiry. Both refer to solving significant academic problems through exploration of ideas and evidence; both involve proposing and testing hypotheses, considering evidence, and developing understanding and positions through dialogue and writing. When you teach students how to synthesize and give them rigorous tasks that prompt them to apply critical-thinking skills, you’re doing inquirybased instruction.
