Looking to help your students go deeper into any content area? One technique is to teach them to “Think Like A Disciplinarian.” This idea, part of the Depth and Complexity Framework, teaches students to analyze ideas from the point of view of a specific profession or discipline.
I had my class think from the point of view of a psychologist to analyze a character from their reading literature.
I asked them to consider these five main questions:
- What behavior is interesting about this character (good or bad)?
- What is the ⏺️ origin of this behavior? When did it start? Why did it start?
- Which factors most ⏬ contribute to the behavior? What is making the behavior continue? What is making it worse?
- Do the character’s thoughts and actions form a ⏸️ parallel or a ↔️ paradox? Does the character mean to do what he does or does it go against his thoughts?
- What would you recommend this character change or continue doing in their lives?
I’ve embedded prompts from the content imperatives in these questions.