Education at its best is an "aptitude development program" that promotes development of learning abilities and effective personal styles needed for future learning in school and throughout life. Much of this development involves adapting and expanding the symbol systems used in teaching and learning to convey essential meanings. Adaptive…

Presents examples of how students can create drawings of sets of lines whose envelopes are parabolas, cardioids, epicycloids, or hypocycloids. Provides students with experience in problem solving, reasoning, communication, and connections between numbers and geometry, between mathematics and art, and between mathematics and other applications.…

Addresses the rhetoric of performance assessment with research on important claims about science performance assessments. Discusses findings related to concepts and terminology, sensitivity to task and method, higher-order thinking skills, cost, impact on teaching and understanding, and professional development. Presents a conceptual framework to…

Controversy rages over whole-language/phonics approaches to reading instruction, giving critics great school-bashing opportunities. Districts that have successfully incorporated whole language generally have planned for change, involved parents, proceeded slowly, built in ongoing professional development, provided adequate resources, reassured…

Teachers at Mililani Mauka Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii are using technology to encourage higher-order thinking with a model of effective thinking developed at Harvard University (Massachusetts): being broad and adventurous, sustaining intellectual curiosity, clarifying and seeking understanding, planning strategically, being…

Suggests that the curriculum must be evaluated objectively and learning objectives must be reviewed constructively and honestly to meet the realities of the workplace. Describes a program that develops students' cognitive skills and team-oriented learning experiences that will prepare them for any career. (JOW)

HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) is a creative program (combining the use of computers, drama, Socratic dialog, and a detailed curriculum) to build thinking skills of educationally disadvantaged students in grades four through seven. HOTS learning activities help students realize what thinking and persevering can accomplish. Principals can help…

Describes experience using a new approach to teaching induction that was developed by the Mathematical Methods in High School Project. The basic idea behind the new approach is to use induction to prove that two formulas, one in recursive form and the other in a closed or explicit form, will always agree for whole numbers. (KHR)

Describes experience of teaching truth tables and problems that exercise students' critical reasoning. (KHR)

Discusses various ways of representing arrangements of tightly packed circles and poses questions concerning related functions and problems. (KHR)

A study examined the transcript of a group enquiry conducted according to the practice of philosophical enquiry with eight gifted children (ages 8-12). Use of a central metaphor was seen to play the role of a "conceptual playground," permitting the children to exercise both their imagination and their reasoning abilities. (Contains references.)…

Emphasizes the importance of children exploring hands-on and minds-on mathematics. Presents a midpoint shape activity for students to explore the midpoint shape of familiar quadrilaterals, such as squares and rectangles. (KHR)

Describes the design of an exercise to foster critical thinking skills in a freshman chemistry course. Emphasizes practical issues involved in the use and implementation of the rubric to promote critical thinking. The intellectual standards that define critical thinking skills are embedded in the rubric. (Author/NB)

Discusses use of the World Wide Web in education and its possibilities for developing higher order critical thinking skills to successfully deal with the demands of the future information society. Suggests that teachers need to provide learning environments that are learner-centered, authentic, problem-based, and collaborative. (Contains 61…

Explains how high-level play is an instructional strategy that builds language, vocabulary, and underlying cognitive skills necessary for children to become successful readers and writers. Notes that high-level play in the classroom occurs in two major areas, manipulative materials play and dramatic play. Explains that in dramatic play the teacher…