Critical and Dialectical Thinking for Gifted Students: Means to Creating Communities of Thinkers

Critical and Dialectical Thinking for Gifted Students: Means to Creating Communities of Thinkers

  Both Critical and dialectical thinking are essential to well-designed classes for gifted students. Lesson plans, designed for these students must focus on building student abilities, especially their thinking. Dialectical thinking, using the Hegelian model, offers a worthwhile heuristic to guide thinking that helps students in the classroom as well as in life in general. Through the examination of lesson plans that focus on thinking skills, this article outlines a way for teachers to adapt their teaching strategies in gifted classrooms to foster what their students can do best: think.