Acts of thought

While the Community of Inquiry centres on a form of discussion that is meant to improve the ability of students to think, only a fraction of the thinking that occurs in a discussion makes its appearance in speech. We therefore need to consider students’ mental acts in addition to their speech acts to understand how the Community of Inquiry is meant to function. This paper explores the connections between speech acts and mental acts in the Community of Inquiry and the broader classifications of these acts of thought. It also considers the role of teacherly interventions in promoting appropriate acts of thought and the ways in which teachers can improve students’ metacognitive awareness of them.