Sternberg’s model of abilities as developing expertise

Description and intended use

Well known for his ‘triarchic’ theory of critical, creative and practical intelligence and to a lesser extent for his model of thinking styles (1997), Sternberg has also written about abilities as forms of developing expertise (Sternberg, 2001; Sternberg and Grigorenko, 2002). He claims that the development of expertise involves the interaction of at least the following elements:

1.Metacognitive skills: these refer to people’s understanding and control of their thought processes. For example, such skills would encompass what an individual knows about writing an essay or solving arithmetic problems, both with regard to the steps involved and with how these steps can be executed effectively. Seven particularly important metacognitive skills are: problem recognition; problem definition; problem representation; strategy formulation; resource allocation; monitoring of problem-solving; and evaluation of problem-solving. All of these skills are deemed to be modifiable, yet Sternberg (2001) notes that students are often resistant to metacognitive training.

2.Learning skills: these are seen as sometimes explicit, when we make an effort to learn, or implicit when we pick up information incidentally, without any systematic effort. Examples of learning skills are: selective encoding, which involves distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information; selective combination, which involves putting together the relevant information; and selective comparison, which involves relating new information to information already stored in memory.

3.Thinking skills: there are three main kinds of thinking skill that individuals need to master –

•critical (analytical) thinking skills, including: analysing, critiquing, judging, evaluating, comparing and contrasting, and assessing;

•creative thinking skills, including: creating, discovering, inventing, imagining, supposing, and hypothesising;

•practical thinking skills, which are ‘involved when intelligence is applied to real world contexts’ (Sternberg at al, 2000, p. 31) and depend heavily on ‘tacit knowledge, namely the procedural knowledge one learns in everyday life that usually is not taught and

often is not even verbalized’ (Sternberg et al., 2000, p. xi). These three aspects are viewed as comprising ‘successful intelli-

gence’, which Sternberg et al. (2000, p. 93) define as ‘the ability to achieve success in life, given one’s personal standards, within one’s sociocultural context. Ability to achieve success depends on capitalizing on one’s strengths and correcting or compensating for one’s weaknesses through a balance of analytical, creative, and practical abilities in order to adapt to, shape, and select environments.’

4.Knowledge: declarative knowledge is knowledge of facts, concepts, principles, laws etc. – ‘knowing that’. Procedural knowledge is knowledge of procedures and strategies – ‘knowing how’. Sternberg does not devalue teaching for knowledge outcomes, as without this foundation students cannot think critically about what they know.

5.Motivation: while noting that it is indispensable for school success, Sternberg has tended not to consider motivation to the same extent as the cognitive elements. In setting out his model, he briefly refers to McClelland’s (1961) theory of achievement motivation and Bandura’s self-efficacy (1997), but makes no reference to more contemporary work. He gives the following examples of desirable attitudes:

a.combating the tendency to procrastinate,

b.organising oneself to get work done,

c.figuring out how one learns best,

d.avoiding the tendency to use self-pity as an excuse for working hard, and

e.avoiding blaming others for one’s own failings (Sternberg, 2002, p. 389).

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6.Context: all the elements above are seen as characteristics of the learner, but Sternberg notes that all these processes are affected by, and can in turn affect, the context in which they operate. In a recent review (Sternberg, 2002a) provides illustrations from a variety of cultures to support his argument that while processes underpinning intelligence are universal, the ways in which these are manifested are not. Criticising the common tendency of psychologists to apply Western measures to other cultures, he argues that while it is currently impossible to create culture-free or culture-fair tests, ‘we can create culture-relevant tests, and that should be our goal’ (p. 336).

Sternberg emphasises the interactive nature of the above six elements:

At the centre, driving the elements, is motivation. Without it, the elements remain inert . . . Motivation drives metacognitive skills, which in turn activate learning and thinking skills, which then provide feedback to the metacognitive skills, enabling one’s level of expertise to increase. The declarative and procedural knowledge acquired through the extension of the thinking and learning skills also results in these skills being used more effectively in the future (Sternberg and Grigorenko, 2002, pp. 8–9).

For more than twenty years Sternberg has sought to demonstrate the validity and practical utility of his triarchic theory. He argues that:

a.Western educational systems have placed undue emphasis upon analytical reasoning (which is highly valued in academic contexts) and have neglected creative and practical reasoning;

b.Triarchic teaching approaches (that utilise all three aspects) will result in superior learning outcomes to those using traditional methods;

c.Focusing teaching and learning approaches to the particular strengths of students will maximise learning.

Evaluation

Unlike some of the authors studied by our group, Sternberg does not seek, at least in his more recent publications, to list exhaustively all the various components of, for example, metacognition. Rather, he provides broad-brush strokes that yield key factors which contribute to

expertise, and for each of these he offers examples. He incorporates his triarchic theory of intelligence within this broader theory and divides thinking skills into three main areas.

Sternberg and his colleagues have sought to apply their triarchic model to the practice of education at both school and university level. Sternberg et al. (1999) and Grigorenko et al. (2002) found that teaching triarchically tends to result in superior performance, even when traditional memory-based measures were employed as tests of achievement. Williams et al. (2002) report on the Practical Intelligence for School (PIFS) intervention in which emphasis was given to analytical, creative and practical ways of using and developing intelligence (according to Sternberg’s triarchic theory), within each of Gardner’s seven multiple intelligence domains. Large effect sizes on outcome measures of practical intelligence (but much less impressive academic gains) were found in one area where class sizes were small and where 90% of the PIFS lessons were delivered. However, in another area, despite receiving weekly support, teachers became more selective in their use of the programme in the second year, with the result that the differences in outcome between experimental and control groups were negligible.

Sternberg’s triarchic theory has been challenged, especially by those who defend the concept of general intelligence (g). Quite recently, his conception of ‘practical intelligence’ and the research programme to validate it were meticulously and comprehensively critiqued (Brody, 2003a; 2003b, Gottfredson, 2003a; 2003b). While Sternberg has countered their arguments (Sternberg, 2003b; 2003c), pointing out, for example, that Brody’s critique was of an outdated test, he does accept that, as yet, there is no published test of triarchic abilities and existing research-based measures require further development (Sternberg, 2004b).

As noted above, Sternberg sees motivation as being central to learning, yet he provides little systematic examination of related theoretical or conceptual issues. In a similar way, he creates his model of abilities as developing expertise by aggregating elements, rather than by providing a detailed theoretical rationale or empirical evidence base.

Nonetheless, the greater part of Sternberg’s model of developing expertise is uncontroversial and is easily communicated to others so as

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to inform practice. As noted above, Sternberg’s team have produced, and are continuing to produce, curricular interventions based upon the triarchic model with encouraging results. As a result of their particular emphasis upon the creative and the practical, their focus may be seen as different to, and potentially more powerful than, many thinking skills programmes which seek to draw upon cognitive approaches to analytical reasoning.

Summary: Sternberg