Teaching Thinking: Controversies and Questions

There is a widespread view that we need to teach for general thinking and learning skills but little consensus as to what these skills are and where they come from. This chapter explores some of the key debates about the teaching of higher order thinking skills in order to argue that these dilemmas point towards the need for a dialogic approach. This dialogic direction is not a rejection of the ideal of teaching general thinking skills but a reconceptualization of what teaching thinking means in terms of opening, deepening and broadening dialogic spaces.