Mind Matters: Teaching for Thinking

Mind Matters seeks to help teachers sort through a burgeoning body of research into, and speculation about, the workings of the mind and apply these insights in the thinking and learning that goes on, or should go on, in their classrooms.

Based on the premise that real problems-to-be-pondered rather than information-to-be-stored bring growth in thinking potential, the book urges teachers to nurture their own minds as well as those of their students. Believing it a contradiction in terms to suggest that canned, artificial lessons develop thinking, the authors offer instead an abundance of illustrations and models of curriculum practices that compel thinking. The attempt is to go beyond all the trendy "thinking-skills" rhetoric to make critical and creative thinking an everyday reality in classrooms.

A unique feature of the book is that teachers are invited to try out a variety of thinking behaviors that seem closest to the kinds of academic inquiry that schools expect students to deal with. Teachers think of themselves as thinkers, but they don't often put themselves in the student's position as learner rather than knower. The invitations offered here encourage teachers to explore a variety of ways of thinking and learning that they can introduce into their classrooms.

Mind Matters is directed primarily to teachers, both preservice and inservice. It has strong potential as a textbook or supplementary source in university methods courses, both beginning and advanced. It will also appeal to administrators and curriculum developers.