Introduction: Teaching Thinking Skills in Social Studies and History
But many—too many, it often seems—do not think as well as they could or should in many school subjects, including social studies and history. This adversely impacts the quality of their learning in our classrooms as well as in their lives outside our classrooms. There are, of course, many reasons for this problem, some of them in society at large. However, a major source of this problem may be that many students lack the degree of proficiency in applying many of the cognitive operations— or thinking skills—required to complete the sometimes complex learning tasks we assign them. Interestingly, researchers tell us these thinking skills are one of the most important tools, if not the most important tool, of good thinking—and, as such, shape much of what is learned by thinking. This skill deficiency thus may be what is in large part responsible for subverting the quality of our students’ thinking and learning. What can we as educators do about this problem? Clearly, ignoring it is not acceptable. Neither is sidestepping it by simply dealing with its symptoms. Doing more of what is already commonly done or generally recommended to improve student thinking rarely, if ever, addresses this problem effectively. Instead, a more productive response is one that focuses directly on teaching students how to improve their thinkingskill performances. Such instruction does not mean simply engaging students in exercising these skills. Conventional teaching techniques such as asking higher-order questions or giving students written or oral questions that prompt which skill to use may give students an opportunity to exercise the application of a designated skill as best they can, if they already know how and choose to do so. But few if any of these techniques provide any instruction in how to improve or even “do” a skill for those who do not already know how to apply it. Indeed, if students have no idea how to apply a given thinking skill effectively or try but do so ineffectively, these and other similar exercising prompts are usually an invitation to frustration, guessing, sloppy thinking, or hasty judgment. Sidney Harris’s cartoon (see next page) not only dramatizes the basic problem with these and other similar approaches to teaching thinking but also identifies its solution. We can improve student thinking by providing them instruction explicitly in how to apply more expertly than they do now the thinking skills in which they need to be proficient but are not. And we can do this by using the strategies and techniques of direct instruction in teaching these skills. Direct instruction in thinking skills consists of telling, explaining to, and showing students—with their active reflection and participation—how to apply, in expert fashion, each specific thinking skill to be mastered, by making explicit appropriate, authentic, stepby-step mental procedures to use; skill rules and heuristics to follow; and criteria or other skill knowledge to apply in executing those skills. This includes providing introductions focused directly on these skill procedures and the related skill information. It also includes continued, teacher-supported, and guided practice in applying these skill components at increasing levels of expertise thereafter. This is the kind of teaching on which we focus in this special issue of The Social Studies. Many techniques and materials for providing direct, explicit thinkingskill instruction exist. The articles that Introduction