Looking for the Forest and the Trees : Exercises to Provoke Abstract Thinking

Abstract

It is probably hard to find an educator who would hesitate to agree that abstract thinking and comfort in asking questions are pivotal to scientific inquiry and advancement of knowledge. Yet, most of the time the mechanics of fostering these skills is as challenging as photographing dense fog. As biologists we constantly reevaluate what we know, how we think about what we know, and how we communicate our knowledge about the living world. These short engaging exercises challenge students to appreciate the central role of abstract thinking and question asking in scientific inquiry. In the first exercise the classroom is presented with an optical illusion image and challenged to evaluate it using concrete and abstract thinking tools. In a follow up exercise, students are prompted to evaluate the process of making assumptions, asking questions and coming to conclusions using the example of a small popular culture article. Both exercises are used as primers to stimulate discussion emphasizing that abstract thinking and question asking are critical tools in the tool set of 21st century budding biologists.