Teaching Thinking: Issues and Approaches

This US resource looks at the importance of thinking skills, why thinking skills should be taught in the classroom and outlines practical instructional strategies for integrating thinking skills into the curriculum. This resource is aimed at staff developers, teacher educators, teachers and curriculum developers. It is intended that the resource be used by teaching staff for reflecting on their own knowledge and professional practice. This is 1 in a series of resources on the practical aspects of integrating thinking skills into teaching. Table of contents: * Promise and possibilities (What is meant by thinking and better thinking, why is the teaching of thinking popular today, do schools and teachers already develop thinking, is there any evidence that people can learn to think better, are most learners functioning at IQ or developmental ceiling?) * Thinking and its improvement (What is a thinking skills, what improves when thinking gets better, applications of other kinds of thinking, helps and hazards to improving thinking) * Kinds of thinking (Some broad categories of thinking, some more specialised kinds of thinking, metacognition: a superordinate kind of thinking to encourage, two problematic frameworks of kinds of thinking, helps and hazards about what kind of thinking to teach) * Infusing teaching thinking into regular subject-area instruction (Restructuring curriculum materials to teach thinking skills, how to construct lessons that infuse teaching thinking skills into subject area instruction through restructuring tradition content, additional components of infused thinking skills lessons, infusing thinking skills across the curriculum) * Choosing and using separate instructional programs designed to teach thinking (Features of stand-alone programs that teach thinking, the role of content in stand-alone programs, the kind of thinking taught in stand-alone programs, critical thinking courses, bridging thinking skill instruction from stand-alone programs into the standard curriculum) * Constructing a program for teaching thinking in classroom or school: Choices about thinking goals (Setting goals in the classroom for teaching thinking, strategies for establishing the goals of a thinking program, an example of good thinking, developing an organised set of thinking skills goals, thoughtful decision making and problem solving goals, stressing other thinking activities, using thinking skills in complex thinking, embedding thinking skills instruction in decision making / problem solving frameworks) * How teachers relate to teaching thinking: Lesson design and instructional strategies (Promoting active thinking in the classroom, teaching for thinking and the teaching of thinking, directed structured thinking in the classroom - two approaches, teaching for transfer - the use of varied practice, the use of metacognition in teaching thinking, three levels of metacognitive instruction, pointers about lesson design and instructional strategies in teaching thinking) * Support systems for teachers and schools to teach thinking effectively (Teacher's manual as guides to teaching thinking, in-service teacher training and staff development support systems, using consultants as support staff for teachers in teaching thinking, peer coaching as a support system for teachers) * Approaches to evaluation (Dimensions of evaluation, evaluation of approaches to teaching thinking - design evaluation approaches, formative assessment and summative assessment) * Types of tests (Objective tests - testing for knowledge, testing objective problem solving, critical thinking tests, objective tests of open-ended thinking, tests of intelligence. Interpretive tests - getting out numbers, reliability in interpretive scoring, the efficiency of interpretive scoring, teaching to an interpretive test. How to proceed).