Most university administrators acknowledge the need to engender social responsibility among students. College mission statements feature this goal front and center, and higher education is trying to address this challenge through both ethics courses (theory) and service programs (practice). The author of this paper contends that many of the…

A tenet of the social studies profession is that critical thinking is fundamental to good citizenship. The skills of critical thinking include collecting information from multiple perspectives, evaluating it carefully, and then applying new insight and understanding to answer a question or make a decision. In today's wired society, students of all…

In this article I present some ideas, based on qualitative research into young children's drawing, related to the developing discourse on young children's thinking and meaning making. I question the relationship between perception and conception and the nature of representation, challenging traditional ideas around stage theory and shifting the…

Currently, no research exists that teases apart and compares how pre-service teachers within different national educational settings begin to reorganize, reconstruct and transform their own experiences, knowledge and perspectives on history and history teaching as they negotiate the process of learning to teach history. This comparative case study…

Since Socrates first posed questions to his ga-clad philosophers, teachers have encouraged students to think. This author, a fifth-grade teacher, explains the importance of teaching children to think for themselves rather than merely coaxing them to come up with the instructor's answer. Some of the methods he uses in his classroom include building…

The text from this article, by Jim Gallaghar, is adapted from an address given to Talent Identification Program (TIP) awardees at Duke University May 17, 2004. He discusses being a survivor in public schools. The overall message he is trying to get across, is be a survivor, be a problem finder, it will energize and might find some results that…

Research demonstrates that most college faculty lack a substantive concept of critical thinking, though they mistakenly think otherwise. This chapter spells out the implications of such a robust concept and emphasizes that success in bringing a substantive concept of critical thinking to college faculty requires well-planned, long-term…

Two studies examined age differences in autobiographical reasoning within narratives about personal experiences. In Study 1 (n = 63), people completed brief interviews about turning points and crises in their lives. Older participants were more likely to narrate crises in ways that connected the experience to the speaker's sense of self, that is,…

In this article, the authors discuss how children learn to problem solve from birth to 6 years. At 0 to 2 years, children learn to be very effective problem solvers by encouraging children's explorations and supporting their efforts to resolve difficulties. When they reach 3 years old, children enjoy experimenting with a wide variety of materials,…

There are lots of ways to handle behavior problems in the classroom. Some teachers send difficult children to time out, others tell them what and what not to do, and many explain why. But these techniques have one thing in common: they all do the thinking for the child. In this article, the author discusses how to help children handle conflicts…

Young children are fascinated by how things "work." They are at a stage of development where they want to experiment with the many ways to use an object or take things apart and put them back together. In the process of exploring tools and machines, children use the scientific method and problem-solving skills. They observe how things work, wonder…

We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the ongoing speculations of many theorists. First, quantum effects do not have the temporal properties required for neural information processing. Second, there are substantial physical obstacles to any organic…

The authors of this article value the framework provided by the conceptions and approaches to teaching literature, yet have come to feel it does not fully represent the complexity of the relation between teacher thinking and action. Drawing on a socio-cognitive perspective, they studied lecturer interviews collected over a semester to examine how…

An activity to promote student understanding of the nature of science as a method of inquiry by engaging students in a real-life experience that requires them to utilize their critical thinking skills is designed. The activity links scientific concepts to the real world experiences of students and increase the relevancy of the content.

Capitalizing on students' interest in a local newspaper story, a research and writing project is developed that resulted in ninth-grade students finding their voice and power through writing. Although not being able to see the impact of their writing on their audiences, the students felt the impact of being given the respected distinction of…