Learning Motivation or Reasoning Disposition Measures
These tools focus on characterological attributes, rather than skills.
Just as a person may have a strong desire to play the piano but not
have piano playing skills, a person may have a positive disposition
to engage his or her reasoning skills, but not have strengths in analysis,
inference, or evaluation. Being willing to think is not the same as
being able to think. Too many programs aimed at building reasoning
skills fail because they neglect to nurture (or may even starve) the
students' motivation, desire, disposition to solve problems by engaging
those skills.
Reasoning,
critical thinking, and learning disposition measures target such things
as one's motivation toward applying or not applying one's reasoning
skills when the occasion for decision-making or problem solving arises.
Some dispositional attributes are positive and others negative, such
as the propensity toward approaching problems systematically or unsystematically.
Instruments are available for use at the advanced elementary school,
middle school, high school, college, graduate and professional levels.
Most
of our disposition or motivation measurement instruments include multiple
scales. Among these scales are measures of creative problem solving,
cognitive integrity, truthseeking, open-mindedness, metal focus /
self-regulation, confidence in one's reasoning, systematicty, cognitive
maturity, etc.
Extensive
technical research supports the validity and reliability these well-established
and widely used measures of dispositions and mental motivation. In
English and in authorized translations they are used nationally and
internationally for a wide variety of assessment and evaluation purposes
in educational and business settings.
Integrate
reasoning dispositions and reasoning skills measures.
