Increasingly, national stakeholders express concern that U.S. college graduates cannot adequately solve problems and think critically. As a set of cognitive abilities, critical thinking skills provide students with tangible academic, personal, and professional benefits that may ultimately address these concerns. As an instructional method, writing…

Plato wrote that higher order thinking could not start until the student had mastered conventional wisdom. The American educational establishment has turned Plato on his head with the help of a dubious approach to teaching developed by one Benjamin Bloom. Bloom's taxonomy was intended for higher education, but its misappropriation has resulted in…

"Middle College High Schools" are alternative high schools located on college campuses that aim to help at-risk students complete high school and encourage them to attend college. The schools offer a project-centered, interdisciplinary curriculum, with an emphasis on team teaching, individualized attention, and development of critical…

Looking back at the debates about public schooling in the 1820s can be especially important today when Congress seeks to reinscribe the same definitions of schooling that the working class leaders tried to resist in the 19th century. On the platform for the New York Working Man's Party in 1829 was "equal education," a term that meant…

"Schools of Hope" seeks to resurrect the historic, liberally educating vision of arete, or all-around human excellence, as the only proper and realistic goal for preparing today's students for their future. It is based on the assertion that only students who can think creatively will grow, mature mentally, and adapt. From this perspective, schools…

Focusing on issues that define the multicultural society and intended to help students become alert readers, more purposeful and effective writers, and thinking members of the larger community, this book is built around selections by committed writers who demonstrate the power of the written word to record, interpret, and change today's social and…

This paper presents findings of a case study that examined the reflective process in an educational-administration preparation program. Data were gathered from interviews with students enrolled in the program and analysis of their journals and classroom discussions. The Administrator Development Academy (ADA) is a 6-week preservice program…

This report describes a social studies skills enhancement program developed and implemented to improve social studies performance in a public middle school (grades 6-8) in the southeastern United States. The targeted group consisted of four males and four females of mixed performance ability in a sixth grade class. The 12-week study focused on on…

A panel of 46 experts from philosophy and education defines critical thinking as "purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is…

The goal of this practicum was to increase the opportunities of secondary African American and Latino students to critically read, think, and write about literature that was diverse both in terms of culture and gender. Although the students (61 students in grade 11) had completed 2 years of high school English classes, the overwhelming majority of…

Science process skills such as observing, classifying, inferring, interpreting, predicting, and hypothesizing can all be classified as a sub category of thinking skills. This book is part of the series "Strategies for Learning" that focuses on the step-by-step development and application of thinking skills as a vehicle for learning science. The…

Designed to provide students with an applied, portable, and transferable framework for integrating academic and career/occupational studies, this books uses a "whole learning" perspective to teach students to think, read, write, listen, speak, and problem-solve within the context of their academic and career subject matter. The book…

Third in a three volume set, this book is concerned primarily with assisting teachers in broadening their cultural and ethnic horizons through providing an interdisciplinary curriculum guide, statement of purpose, and lesson plans. Five units, each comprised of two to four lesson plans, are designed to require in-depth cooperation among several…

Pointing out that influential movements in psychology, reading instruction, and curriculum development have greatly altered the terrain formerly occupied by the "teaching of literature," this literature review outlines the different ways education researchers have examined the following questions about literature instruction: (1) What…

When one instructor teaches a course called "Communication and Critical Thinking," he uses Josina Makau's book "Reasoning and Communication: Thinking Critically about Arguments" (1990), which maintains that critical thinking requires training. Case methodology can be used for training, not exclusively but as an alternative to…