Thinking Foundation Blog

Here is an opening statement from a master’s thesis I just received from student Sanaa Abd El Azeem Elsayed Abd El Rahman…in Egypt:

“The third millennium is characterized by wonderful scientific and technological developments. These advances create challenges for us as well. In order to meet these challenges we need to encourage education approaches that emphasize critical thinking and problem-solving skills. One of the ways to address this educational need is through the use of learning tools called Thinking Maps.”

Sanaan and I have been communicating over the past 18 months via email as she moved through her research at Zagazig University in Egypt, and I was held in anticipation up here in the woods of New Hampshire! She sent me student work. She sent me video clips of her work with colleagues in classrooms, and now we have her pre-post analysis of scientific problem-solving with significant effects using Thinking Maps. Go to the Minds of Egypt webpage on the Thinking Foundation website.

In a previous note I highlighted the work Bob Price is doing with colleagues there in Ethiopia. He returns this week to deepen the work. You may want to revisit the Case Study Bob has put together as you check out the new research results from Egypt.

Take a look at the video from Egyptian classrooms... and take a step into another culture. Climb a pyramid in your mind! Watch the video below, and more video clips in the Minds of Egypt webpage.

If the above video does not play, download the free Quicktime Player for Windows and Macintosh.

So I wondered back to this last Monday when I was leaving a meeting with an educator in New York City and we were discussing the common human processes of thinking. She said, in a matter of fact tone, as we stepped into the elevator: “A brain is a brain.” In any New York City district you may have up to 150 DIFFERENT languages and dialects spoken by children and in their homes!

It is through languages and cultures that the mind-brain-body connection is continually adapting. But underlying this there is stability found in common human qualities of emotions and cognition. We all feel emotions such as sadness, love, and fear around the whole world though expressed somewhat differently in different places and individually, just as we all compare things and sequence time and see causes and effects and create analogies and metaphor.... somewhat differently across cultures and individuals.

(For an opposing view to mine, read a provocative book … “The Geography of Thought” by Richard Nesbitt)

As cultures come together and at times clash, we find common emotions that are simply FRAMED differently around the world.

And there are common, organic, dynamic processes of thinking among us through which we can communicate.

Is this an opening to a new form of dialogue?

David