The 22nd Century Mind: Dr. Derek Cabrera at TEDxWilliamsport

Derek Cabrera is the co-author of Thinking at Every Desk: Four Simple Skills to Transform Your Classroom (2012), as well as the insanely expensive Systems Thinking: Four Universal Patterns of Thinking (2009).

From his digplanet biography:

In 2007, frustrated with his experiences teaching ivy league students, Cabrera and his academic colleague Laura Colosi, also a Ph.D. from Cornell, founded an movement in education called "Thinking at Every Desk" (or T@ED).[1] They created T@ED to ensure that thinking skills were taught to every student nationwide and eventually worldwide. Since its founding, numerous offshoots have been created internationally, in South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia. Cabrera works with educators from K-12 to college and even with organizations to infuse thinking skills into existing curricula using the Patterns of Thinking method (also known as DSRP), which Cabrera created. In the DSRP method, students are encouraged to explore any given concept by recognizing and explicating the distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives that characterize the concept. They then physically model the concept using a tactile manipulative Cabrera invented called ThinkBlocks,[10] or graphically represent the concept in terms of DSRP using DSRP diagrams.[11]

His Pattern of Thinking Method, DSRP, stands for distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives, which he asserts are foundational patterns to all human thought (cognition).

D, S, R, and P are implicit in all thinking and Cabrera believes that people can improve their thinking skills by learning to explicitly recognize and explicate (e.g., metacognition) the distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives underlying anything they wish to understand more deeply or with greater clarity.[12]

Interesting stuff.


The 22nd Century Mind: Dr. Derek Cabrera at TEDxWilliamsport

Dr. Derek Cabrera holds a PhD from Cornell University, is an author and internationally recognized expert in cognition, systems, and learning, and taught at Cornell University. Derek is currently a senior research scientist at Cabrera Research Labs in Ithaca, New York. He is speaking today about learning with the 22nd Century Mind.