Facilitating the Development of Thinking Skills, Strategies, and Habits of Mind

Facilitating the Development of Thinking Skills, Strategies, and Habits of Mind

Developing student thinking skills, strategies, and habits of mind is an important goal for educators all over the world, and most educators agree that student thinking skills can be improved. However, thinking skills instruction is often implicit, development of thinking skills incidental. For best results, thinking skills instructtion requires a systematic design and an explicit instructional focus. The purpose of this paper is to describe a conceptual model for the design, delivery, and assessment of explicit instruction in thinking skills, strategies, and habits of mind─the CRT A Model. The paper describes implementation of the CRT A Model in a senior-level general methods course for pre-service teachers and classroom assessment data regarding student outcomes.