Reasoning

(During the summer months, I like to take the A-Z Challenge and come up with words alphabetically and see how they apply to education. I think it’s a great exercise for teachers and students to give this a try.)

Reasoning means the action of thinking about something in a logical and sensible way.

I don’t believe that students are born knowing how to reason.

Reasoning is a very difficult skill and I believe even some adults have difficulties with this. The big problem is that seeing something as logical and sensible is very subjective. What I believe to be logical and sensible might not seem that way to someone else.

Many times my husband and I have disagreed on how something is done in our home. I think I’m doing it in a logical way and he thinks it is totally illogical. His way of doing things seems illogical to me sometimes. It all depends on the person’s perspective.

My students with special needs don’t always see things in the same way as other people see them. So, their reasoning doesn’t always match what others think it should be. Yet, too many times, they are told that their way is the wrong way and I disagree with that.

I try to explain to my students that achieving a goal can happen in different ways. It is like driving to a specific city and people may use different routes to get there. No route is the wrong way if it gets them to where they want to go. Some routes may take longer to get there or have construction on the way but if they reach their destination, each route was the right way.

When I make learning too rigid, I meet resistance from the students. I need to be open to the different ways that my students may show their reasoning skills. When I’m not sure about their reasoning, I have them explain to me how they got to their end result. By understanding how they arrived at this result, I may be able to find out where they may have gone wrong in their reasoning.

How do you help your students develop reasoning skills? Please share.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash