Education for interthinking
We thank Professor Neil Mercer of Cambridge University in providing this most valuable presentation on oracy.
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in two aspects of young people’s development. First, in how schools can help young people develop their ‘thinking skills’ - by which is usually meant their ability to solve problems, think rationally and be constructively creative. Secondly, there has been an increased awareness of the importance of developing young people’s spoken language skills (oracy), because being able to communicate effectively through speech can have an enormous impact on their futures. Many schools and teachers have begun to act on both these concerns, but they are normally seen as separate endeavours. However, research in psychology, neuroscience and linguistics now supports the view that these are not separate aspects of human capability, as linguistic and cognitive development are strongly interrelated. Human intelligence is essentially collective - we have a unique ability to use language to think together - to interthink to get things done - but this ability needs to be developed through education. This is the basis for my ‘vision for the future’, which I will set out and suggest how schools and teachers can respond, in practical ways, to its implications.
Neil Mercer is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, Director of Oracy Cambridge: the Hughes Hall Centre for Effective Spoken Communication, a Life Fellow of the Cambridge college Hughes Hall, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Before he joined Cambridge, he was Professor of Language and Communications at the Open University. He grew up in the Lake District and is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Cumbria. As a psychologist whose research has focused on the development of children’s spoken language and reasoning abilities and teachers’ role in that development, he has worked extensively and internationally with teachers, researchers and educational policy makers.
In 2019 he was given the Oevre Award by the European Association for Research into Learning and Instruction for outstanding contributions to educational research; and in 2021 he was awarded the John Nisbet Fellowship by the British Educational Research Association. His books include Words and Minds, Exploring Talk in School, Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking, Interthinking: putting talk to work and Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge; and he was co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education.
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