Improving Student Thinking

Believe it or not, our students-regardless of age or grade level-not only can think but they do. They make decisions, attack problems, pose hypotheses, evaluate information, and even make inferences. Unfortunately, of course, many don't carry out these operations very skillfully or consistently, or at all the appropriate times or places, at least in our classes. Consequently, they often fail to develop the kinds of subject matter understandings, insights, and knowledge that we try so hard to help them develop. Isn't there something we can do in our classrooms to help our students improve the quality of their thinking, so they can think better and learn the subjects they study as well as they really could and as well as we would like them to? The answer, happily, is a resounding yes! Research, exemplary classroom practice, and accumulated teaching experience indicate that there are at least four things you and I can do right now in our classrooms that will improve the abilities and inclinations of our students to think better than they do when left on their own. And, we can do these at the same time that we engage our students in achieving the various subject matter learning objectives called for by our curricula. Specifically, we can