Well-known historical accounts of questioning used in the education process trace back to Socrates. One of the best examples of his use of questioning is found in Plato's classic work "The Republic" (2003). Today, teachers still use questions as one way to help students develop productive thinking skills and to understand concepts and topics.…

Research based effectiveness information is given for the following major instructional materials: Purdue Creative Thinking Program, Productive Thinking Program, Creative Problem Solving Program, Creative Studies Project, Imigi/Craft Series, Thinking Creatively, New Directions in Creativity, and the Peabody Language Development Kits. (DB)

The CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) is a five-step program in direct instruction of thinking skills which increase the number and diversity of ideas as well as help the individual establish goals, set priorities, improve interactions with others, and incorporate feeling into thinking. (DB)

Intuitive thinking greatly enhances life and is a valuable supplement to the objective, analytical mode of thinking. Focus throughout the educational process is on the use of analytical thought processes. Often children with exceptional creative abilities have been penalized for their abilities and labelled troublemakers. (PHR)

Learning disabled students need systematic instruction in thinking skills. Both individual clinical studies and group programs have proven such training effective. Some important thinking strategies include goal clarification, previewing, organization, questioning, imagining, predicting, checking results, humor, and self-monitoring techniques. (DB)

If schools are to succeed in teaching critical thinking, educators must have a clear idea of what it is. Critical thinking is skillful, responsible thinking that relies upon criteria, is self-correcting, and is sensitive to context. (TE)

Provides a set of guidelines that has been developed to aid students in meeting various reading, learning, and study needs while internalizing the fundamentals of problem solving. The code words for the steps in the suggested problem-solving process are: count, characterize, consider, collect, and create. (MKM)

Characteristics of the school organization and the miseducation of educational practitioners orient educators toward designing solutions before they have analyzed the target problems. (Author)

The article identifies five modes of thinking--defensive, productive, adaptive, elaborative, and developmental. Case studies of artistic, creative writing illustrate the modes. A writing program designed to identify and develop these thinking modes is described. (Author/DB)

Philosophy and social studies instruction meet in areas of clarification of meaning, examination of beliefs and values, and establishing claims for grounds to knowledge. Suggests ways to use philosophical and critical thinking to foster cognitive growth in students. Presents a sample lesson which integrates critical skills, philosophical thinking,…

Identifies some aspects of teacher-student interaction during inquiry learning. These include treatment of students as investigators, inductive use of evidence, awareness of the incomplete nature of individual bits of data, internalization of facts, and the facilitating role of the teacher. (Author/AV)

The authors present a model to teach about conflict, classification of levels of conflict, interpretation of meanings, evaluation of consequences, and making of inferences about what could happen if everyone practiced cooperation, coalescence, and shared decision making. (Author/AV)

This review shows that mentally retarded children can produce problem-solving strategies if they comprehend the task requirements, share the experimenter's goal, and construct an optimal problem-solving representation. Instruction with multiple exemplars of a task can induce generalized strategy use, and nonvolitional mechanisms play a role in use…

Computers should be used to educate students in thinking skills, not rote memorization. Provides examples of uses of computers and videos to promote thinking skills. (MD)

In this interview, Edward de Bono says critical or logical thinking in lockstep fashion is necessary but not sufficient because we need not only the ability to critique ideas, but to create them. Creative or lateral thinking arrives at solutions by attacking problems "laterally" or "sideways." (DCS)