Twelve cognitive processes that underlie all learning

In his latest book [Shank] Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools he focuses on cognitive processes as the basis for learning interventions.

Conscious Processes

1. Prediction: determining what will happen next
2. Modeling: figuring out how things work
3. Experimentation: coming to conclusions after trying things out
4. Values: deciding between things you care about

Analytic Processes

1. Diagnosis: determining what happened from the evidence
2. Planning: determining a course of action
3. Causation: understanding why something happened
4. Judgment: deciding between choices

Social Processes

1. Influence: figuring out how to get someone else to do something that you want them to do
2. Teamwork: getting along with others when working towards a common goal
3. Negotiation: trading with others and completing successful deals
4. Description: communicating one's thoughts and what has just happened to others

These are the skills one needs to master. By allowing users to fail in controlled environments, he saw that instruction is not about telling, it's about real or fictionally constructed experience, involvement and practice, including the experience of failure.

One's intelligence is typically judged by others in relation to one's proficiency at five of these cognitive skills:

• Prediction
• Diagnosis
• Causation
• Describing
• Planning