Keywords

Objective and Target Audience

Dissatisfaction with the school system is a growing global concern. In the age of information and digital technologies, it becomes increasingly clear that instructional methods developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries do not meet the social needs that the twenty-first-century school is supposed to serve. Over the past decades, hundreds of educational projects have been developed in order to cultivate a variety of innovative pedagogies. Despite ample financial and other types of resources invested in those projects, most classrooms worldwide are still characterized by traditional pedagogies focused on transmission and rote learning of information. This description is increasingly less applicable to the education of younger students (Pollak et al. 2015) but still applies significantly to subsequent educational stages: middle and high schools, colleges, and universities. Many educational systems can currently boast multiple “islands” of pedagogical innovation and excellence. Unfortunately, these islands do not connect to form a continent, but sit amidst a dreary ocean of mediocre pedagogies that are no longer suitable to our time. By focusing on the example of teaching students to think, this book examines how such educational innovations can be effectively promoted throughout the school system.

Developing students’ thinking is central to innovative pedagogies. The aspiration to teach students to think is not new. Socrates envisioned developing the thinking of his fellow Athenians. The early twentieth century saw the emergence of the progressive movement informed by John Dewey’s writings, which emphasized the development of children’s thinking and was implemented in many schools. The ambition of teaching students to think is supported by several reasons. Two have already been present in previous periods: developing the human mind and appreciating the central role of critical thinking in educating future citizens for life in a democratic society.Footnote 1 Additional reasons are inspired by more recent ideas:

  1. 1.

    Research findings show that thinking-rich learning supports the construction of deep knowledge and understanding.

  2. 2.

    The growing recognition that in the information age, school graduates must be equipped with the necessary skills for acquiring new knowledge on their own. Many of these skills (such as evaluating or integrating sources of information) are in effect HOT skills.

  3. 3.

    The changing structure of the global labor market, where jobs increasingly involve evolving roles that require problem-solving skills, critical and creative thinking, as well as metacognitive thinking and self-regulated learning (Zohar, 2013).

Policy papers recently published in multiple countries point to the teaching of students’ thinking as one of the key objectives of twenty-first-century education (e.g., Hadar and Zviran, 2018; OECD, 2018; Volansky, 2020). This is true also of Israel, where, in recent decades, several such policy papers have been published and numerous relevant reforms and a variety of projects have been attempted. Consequently, many schools currently engage in teaching HOT in its various forms. Yet, as discussed in detail in what follows, the need to implement pedagogies that highlight the development of students’ thinking and deep understanding on a wide scale, presents a complex challenge both in Israel and elsewhere. This complex challenge is at the core of the present book.

Education for thinking is one of the many aspects of progressive pedagogies. Diane Ravitch (1983) explains that progressive education has never been adequately defined and that educators differ in the ways in which they view it. Nevertheless, its proponents usually emphasize at least one of the following: active learning (including experiential and project-based learning), collaborative learning, recognition of students’ diversity, and recognition of the significance of making the curriculum relevant to individual students’ needs and interests, and to the lives of their communities. This list is also relevant for teaching methods informed by constructivist learning theories. According to Ravitch, the literature describes progressive pedagogies as “democracy in action,” since they have replaced the teacher’s absolute authority with teacher-student collaboration. Summarizing the doctrine promoted by Dewey, she writes that he rejected the rigid practices characterizing the traditional education that had dominated public schools in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These practices included teaching according to a uniform curriculum, excessive reliance on rote learning and on drill and practice, and students as passive learners. Combined, these practices tended to suppress students’ curiosity and interest in their learning. Dewey, on the other hand, called for experiential learning and for carefully selected activities as starting points from which teachers would lead their students toward constructing high levels of cultural, social, and intellectual meanings.

According to Ravitch (1983), Dewey’s ideas were complex and were therefore not always fully understood. His followers excelled in attacking traditional pedagogies more than they did in constructing new pedagogical alternatives. Indeed, the main problem at hand is that attempts to transform traditional learning and instruction on a large-scale often fail, and this is an understatement. Larry Cuban (1990) expressed this frustrating insight in his famous article “Reforming Again, Again, and Again.”

In an attempt to improve our ability to promote system-wide pedagogical change processes, this book addresses the interface of two related areas: large-scale, system-wide implementation of innovations in learning and instruction, and thinking-rich instruction that fosters deep understanding. The basic assumption is that large-scale implementation of pedagogical innovations has many general aspects, but also many content-specific ones that vary with the particular nature of the innovation involved. I have chosen to focus on the specific case of educational change processes related to the development of student thinking because this is a valuable and important goal in itself. It also serves, however, as a good example for examining more general aspects related to large-scale changes in learning and instruction.

The book is therefore relevant to anyone involved in one way or another in attempts to transform education because they have had enough of the dreariness of so many schools. Even though much of the ensuing discussion will focus on large-scale implementation in the entire school system, the book is also relevant for those dealing with systemic change on smaller scales, such as leading a change process in a school network, district, single school, or even a specific subject or age group within a school. The book is therefore intended for all those who consider themselves leaders of pedagogical changes and of innovation processes in education: leading teachers, subject coordinators in schools, school pedagogical coordinators, principals, teachers’ educators, superintendents, policymakers, senior Ministry of Education officials, and officials in educational institutions and NGOs.

Teaching Higher-Order Thinking (HOT)

Since the change process discussed in this book is focused on teaching HOT, I will briefly explain the concept (for a more detailed discussion, see Zohar, 2013). Schraw et al. (2011) explain that it is not easy to define HOT. Resnick (1987) writes that thinking skills necessarily “resist the precise forms of definition we have come to associate with the setting of specified objectives for schooling” (p. 2). She adds that even though we are unable to define HOT, it is relatively easy for us to identify certain key properties that can help us determine when it occurs. For example, HOT is not algorithmic (i.e., the activities that comprise it are not set in a predesigned order), it tends to be complex, it often involves multiple criteria and solutions, and it frequently involves uncertainty. In general terms, HOT is related to thinking levels such as application, analysis, evaluation, and creativity (Bloom, 1956; Krathwohl, 2002; Leighton, 2011).

Another way of identifying HOT points to a series of thinking strategies that are activated when it occurs. Some key thinking strategies are asking questions, argumentation, making comparisons, identifying components and relations, drawing conclusions, integrating information, hypothesizing, planning, controlling variables, suggesting multiple perspectives, and determining cause-effect relationships (Israeli Ministry of Education, 2009). These thinking strategies can either stand on their own or be used as building blocks for more complex thinking processes, such as scientific thinking, inquiry, problem-solving, and decision-making (Schraw et al., 2011; Zohar, 2004a, 2013). Despite the significant differences among the various thinking strategies and processes listed above, they also share much in common, particularly when we think of them as complex learning objectives that are more complex than retrieving facts from memory or executing algorithmic rules for solving problems.

The working assumption informing this book is that schools should engage in developing students’ HOT according to the infusion approach. This means that thinking is not an isolated learning objective, but is integrated with or infused into the curricula of various school subjects (Abrami et al., 2008; Ritchhart et al., 2011; Swartz et al., 2008; Swartz & Perkins, 2016; Zohar, 2004a). Researchers argue that when the teaching of thinking is integrated with learning contents, it affects students’ thinking abilities as well as their knowledge, because it contributes to a deep understanding of concepts, theories, and processes (National Research Council, 2012a; Perkins, 1991; Perkins & Blythe, 1994; see more in Chap. 2).

Over the last several decades, hundreds of projects have been initiated worldwide in order to cultivate students’ thinking skills during teaching and learning processes that take place under authentic school conditions. By “authentic conditions,” I mean projects that occur in the course of natural classroom instruction, as opposed to ones conducted under “sterile” laboratory conditions. Many of these projects have been studied empirically, showing significant results, often with impressive effect sizes (e.g., Abrami et al., 2015; Adey and Shayer, 1990, 1994; Halpern, 1998; Iordanou et al., 2019; Osborne et al., 2004; Reisman, 2012; Zohar and Nemet, 2002; Zohar, 2004a).

In addition, HOT is more central than ever to current educational discourse and policy papers in many countries. A review of recent curricula in seven countries and territories (Australia, British Columbia, Finland, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, and the USA) indicates a strong emphasis on the development of thinking skills (Hadar & Zviran, 2018). Similarly, Volansky (2020) described three waves of educational reforms and noted that the third, which started with the third millennium, is characterized among other things by aiming for critical and creative thinking. Volansky demonstrated this direction in the curricula of Alberta, Australia, Finland, Hong Kong, Ontario, Singapore, and the USA. This tendency is also salient in position papers and policy documents recommending education policies at the multinational level, such as various EU documents (e.g., European Union, 2006; National Research Council, 2012a, b; Osborne and Dillon, 2008; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2011). Moreover, an OECD (2018) document that charts future directions for education systems throughout the developed world toward 2030 suggests that students will need a broad range of skills, including cognitive and metacognitive skills such as critical and creative thinking and self-regulated learning. This trend is also emphasized in the master documents of major international tests such as the PISA and TIMSS tests (Mullis et al., 2009; OECD, 2012, 2016). For example, 35% of the 2009 TIMSS test was devoted to applying and 30% to evaluating scientific thinking (Mullis et al., 2009). These data are important mainly because the specific contents of international tests have a considerable impact on the curricula of many countries (Zohar, 2013). The sources cited here attest that developing students’ thinking is indeed a central goal in the contemporary educational arena. Accordingly, it is important to understand the challenges involved in attaining this objective on a large-scale.

Large-Scale Implementation of Thinking-Rich Instruction

As mentioned, there are currently multiple endeavors for developing students’ thinking and multiple policy papers calling to turn the development of HOT into one of the key educational objectives of twenty-first-century schools. Yet, most classes worldwide are still dominated by transmission-of-information pedagogies, focusing on low cognitive levels. For example, a survey of science and math classes in the USA found that only 14% of the classes consisted of an intellectually demanding learning climate, characterized by critical thinking and dealing with challenging ideas (Weiss et al., 2003). Similarly, Osborne (2013) quoted a comment by Martin et al. (2012) on the international TIMSS of 2011, according to which students in most countries did better on items requiring scientific knowledge (such as recall, definition, and description) than on items requiring application of scientific knowledge and scientific thinking. Resnick (2010) also argues that large-scale implementation of a thinking-based curriculum in a way that would advance the thinking abilities of all students, including those with low academic achievements, is currently one of our most important educational challenges:

Today we are aiming for something new in the world: An elite standard for everyone […]. That is what the term 21st-century skills really means. […] the aspiration to successfully teach knowledge-grounded reasoning competencies to everyone is still just that – an aspiration. […] the transformation of the institution of schooling that will be needed to come close to making the aspirational goal a real achievement is huge. (p. 184; italics in original)

A troubling question that begs to be asked is whether pedagogical reforms seeking to foster HOT for all students across the entire school system have any chance to succeed. Such reforms touch upon the core of learning and instruction, which, as shown in detail throughout the book, is extremely difficult to change on a large-scale. The following sections of this chapter, will explore the reasons for this difficulty and the conditions for overcoming it.

Can Educational Reforms in the Core of Learning and Instruction Be Successful?

As mentioned, the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first have seen recurring waves of educational reforms attempting to improve schools worldwide. These have made many changes in various aspects of school systems, but despite this, learning and instruction have remained surprisingly constant and unchanged. Salomon addressed this phenomenon from the point of view of the school principal:

Had my grandfather, who was a school principal in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, entered the office of a principal of…[our]… generation [in the early 2000s], he would have been completely disoriented. But had he entered the classroom, he would have immediately identified the pedagogy and the climate, the procedures and activities, as if he were in his own classroom, back in Berlin of the early 20th century. (Salomon, 2005, 9)

The statement that a principal of a school from a century ago would have felt at home in a present-day classroom expresses the pedagogical conservatism of educational systems worldwide. I believe that if we had access to surveillance cameras monitoring a thousand classrooms in Israel and in many other countries, particularly in junior high and high schools, we would find that, in most, the lesson proceeds quite traditionally in terms of its instructional methods: we would see a teacher-centered lesson with an emphasis on transmission of information, where students who sit passively in rows, are required to absorb and memorize numerous facts comprising the learning the material.

Please note that I do not argue that there is absolutely no room for traditional pedagogies in twenty-first-century schools. Dewey (1902, 1938) has already taught us that the tendency to classify our pedagogical approaches as mutually exclusive is unproductive. He opens his book on The Child and the Curriculum by stating that it is easier for us to see how educational theories contradict and rule each other out than to come to terms with the complex reality whereby each theory can make a significant contribution. In practical terms, this serious problem prevents potential synergies between theories (Dewey, 1902). Dewey repeats this idea in the very first lines of Experience and Education:

Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Or, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities. [However,] when it comes to practical matters circumstances compel us to compromise. […] At present, the opposition, so far as practical affairs of the school are concerned, tends to take the form of contrast between traditional and progressive education. (Dewey, 1938: 1)

In the following lines, Dewey explains that educational problems are not miraculously solved when traditional education is abandoned for the opposite extreme of progressive education that completely denies the traditional one. It is not exaggerated to state—continues Dewey—that an educational philosophy that declares itself to be founded on the concept of freedom might turn out to be as dogmatic as the very traditional education it rails against. He goes on to elaborate on how education based on complete denial of the advantages of either approach is flawed, whereas their synthesis enhances the advantages of each.

Like Dewey and subsequent scholars who have rejected the dichotomy he had criticized (see Harpaz, 2009, for a review), I too believe that the school system does not need to view traditional and thinking-based instruction as two mutually exclusive educational approaches. Although the book presents them as contradictory, this is only designed to highlight the theoretical differences between them, and does not reflect the desirable reality. The reality of the educational act, I believe, should be comprised of a continuum of approaches to learning and instruction. The two ends of the continuum are represented by traditional and thinking-rich teaching. Quality traditional teaching—such as a fascinating lecture that raises and answers important and interesting questions, reading a superb source of information, or even rote learning certain facts—can play a major role in learning. There is also much value in a clear summary of a subject as the background for an inquiry-based paper, or in rote learning the principles of a certain procedure to reduce cognitive overload while working on a challenging task. The problem is not that traditional teaching is used in schools, but rather that it is overused, too often as the sole or main method, even when it obviously cannot achieve the desired learning goals of meaningful learning. In other words, we need to strike the right balance rather than eradicate any form of traditional teaching.

Yet, along the continuum of teaching and learning approaches, many school systems are much too close to the traditional end of the continuum and much too far from the thinking-based learning end. The reforms discussed throughout this book are designed to “push” the system along that continuum, away from the end of traditional learning and closer to the end of thinking-based learning. Educators at all levels need to carefully choose where they would like to locate their teaching along the continuum. Making this choice is an important part of pedagogical autonomy. One of the objectives of this book is to shed light on various considerations that can help make such choices in a reasoned and informed way.

Our discussion is based on the assumption that learning and instruction are the essential core of education. Elmore (2004) explains this in his discussion of educational reforms. He argues that the core of educational practice is shaped by teachers’ perceptions of the nature of knowledge, of how knowledge should be addressed in class, and of student’s role in learning. He acknowledges that education includes multiple valuable aspects apart from the core of educational practice, but states that if an educational change does not involve the components noted in the previous sentence, he is not interested in it. Subsequently Elmore argues that educational reforms that do not involve any interactions taking place between a teacher and her students in the presence of content, usually do not change anything substantial.

Despite numerous efforts to reform processes of school-based learning and instruction, educational researchers have found that classroom learning interactions between teachers and their students, in the presence of content, remain surprisingly constant over the years. Very few changes in the essence of teaching and learning processes actually succeed in entering through the closed classroom door. Reforms touch upon many things surrounding the classroom, but pedagogy, which is at the very core of schooling, tends to remain constant. This disappointment is not new. Fullan (2007a) describes several classical examples of studies from the 1970s (e.g., Goodlad and Klein, 1970; Sarason, 1971) expressing a similar sentiment.

Elmore (2004) reiterates that system-wide practices related to the definition of knowledge, to teacher-student interactions around knowledge-related issues, to the division of students into learning groups, to the allocation of time to various teaching goals, and to the evaluation of student work–all remain surprisingly stable across time. He therefore suggests that although it is possible to dramatically transform school organization and educational practices, such a reform has never been successful on a large scale. According to Elmore, “the closer an innovation gets to the core of schooling, the less likely it is that it will influence teaching and learning on a large-scale” (Elmore, 2004, p. 11). Although schools are constantly changing, he stresses, those changes are irrelevant to the issues that matter most, namely, to long-term transformation of the traditional patterns of teaching. Elmore’s fundamental question is how is it possible that despite the constant change in schools, teaching practices hardly change and, when they do, it happens only on a very small scale? Elmore (2004, p. 212) states this point unequivocally by writing that “Educational policy in the United States has arguably not been much about education, at least the sort of education that occurs among teachers and students in classrooms.” He concludes by saying that educational policy and practice have been engaged in “parallel play” (ibid, p. 212).

As noted, researchers and practitioners know very well how to reform classroom learning and teaching processes in small-scale projects. However, they are often unable to scale-up such reforms, that is, expand them in a sustainable way to include entire systems. This ongoing failure has several reasons. First, the small-scale projects usually lack the political and financial support required for scaling them up. Second, those leading the projects are often academics who are unrelated to the practitioners who actually work in classrooms and run schools. Finally, it is difficult to reliably convey the pedagogical messages of these projects to widening circles of educators. These three factors result in the “ripple effect” inherent to implementation. The ripple effect leads to a significant difference between the potential results of attempts to change teaching and learning in small-scale projects and those of attempts to do so on a large-scale. The difference between the two educational contexts—small-scale projects versus whole systems—has not yet been studied systematically and extensively. Therefore, we still lack an authoritative, evidence-based model of how to make progress in this area (Fullan, 2007a; Maass et al., 2019; Zohar, 2013).

In summary, it appears that bridging the gap between educational policies directed toward learning and instruction and the learning and instruction that actually occur in classrooms is an important and complex issue that has yet to be properly addressed (Elmore, 2004, 8–11). The failure of educational reforms to transform the instructional core of teaching and learning leads to recurring waves of reform, in many places around the world (Volansky, 2020; Zohar, 2013).

Global Waves of Educational Reforms

Cuban’s (2010) explanation for the recurrent waves of educational reforms is that they keep coming because they fail to produce real change. Indeed, researchers of the American education system have reviewed several major waves of pedagogical reforms that have swept the country during the twentieth century, and reached fascinating insights (Zohar, 2013). Elmore (2004), for example, reviews the progressive movement that was most active in the USA in the first half of the twentieth century, under Dewey’s influence. The most interesting point regarding the progressive reform compared to many other reforms is that one of its stated goals was to transform pedagogy. Another interesting point is that it had a relatively strong foundation at both the intellectual and practical levels. Leading intellectuals, primarily Dewey, thought about how schools could be different than they were, and their ideas found their way into classrooms and schools. The progressive movement had a broad agenda, but one of its most important emphases was an explicit attempt to transform the core of the school from a teacher-centered, fact-oriented, and rote learning-based pedagogy to one based on an understanding of children’s thinking processes and their ability to acquire and use ideas in the context of real-world problems. Other emphases included active inquiry learning that involves questions raised by the children and group work. The progressive movement was responsible for multiple changes in the field, evident in both select schools that modeled progressive pedagogies and in the adoption of select aspects of these models by mainstream public schools. According to Elmore, this was the longest and most intensive reform in the history of the American education system.

The fate of the progressive movement has been well studied and documented (e.g., Cremin, 1961). According to Elmore (2004), who summarized the relevant literature, when the language that was formulated with the expansion of the movement began entering educational discourse (albeit not practice) on a wide scale, the movement’s principles were diluted, and turned into a series of clichés. Opposition to the movement emerged in the 1920s and peaked in the 1940s. The public and press were skeptical about the reform and attacked it mainly for the supposed damage it caused to the learning of contents. Critics argued that schools were engaged with sparse contents, emphasizing children’s psychological adjustment at the expense of their learning, and that the reform valued self-expression more than learning. As described in detail in the next chapter, despite the significant differences between the progressive movement and present-day pedagogical reforms, there is reason to worry that the latter will fail for similar reasons.

Additional studies on the extent of the pedagogical innovations implemented as part of the progressive movement confirm that they were not common in schools (Cuban, 2010). Even where a deliberate effort was made to adopt them, the results were usually a kind of hybrid between traditional and progressive teaching: the main tenets of traditional teaching remained in place, and teaching remained mainly teacher-centered and based on rote learning. According to Elmore (2004), the progressive movement struggled with the dilemma characterizing every pedagogical reform: we know well how to produce multiple examples of optimal educational practices but can point to only few examples (if any) of teachers who apply these practices on a large-scale, particularly in schools serving diverse student populations (rather than a small number of select schools). This is due, among other things, to the lack of deliberate attention to planning a systematic and comprehensive implementation of the reform’s pedagogical aspects.

Another reform in the spirit of education for thinking took place in the USA in the 1950s, involving programs for inquiry-based teaching of mathematics and science (BSCS, 1965; Cohen & Barnes, 1993a, b; Elmore, 2004; for more on inquiry in education, see Chaps. 5 and 7). The main objective of these programs was not students’ acquisition of facts, but rather the study of the main concepts, methods, and ways of thinking typical of scientific inquiry processes. The main efforts that took place as part of the reform were the development of curricula and learning materials. The program’s designers, however, underestimated teachers’ huge influence on the way their materials were used. Cohen and Barnes (1993a, b) argue that the reform failed because it did not devote enough attention to professional development (PD) that would enable the teachers to properly guide their students. In other words, the notion was that implementing high-quality learning materials could succeed even without teachers’guidance. However, the idea that quality learning materials can somehow bypass the need for good teachers failed miserably. Nevertheless, the pedagogical approach underlying this reform had substantial advantages, and the materials it produced found their way into many schools. Some of them are used even to this day.

Elmore (2004) also reviewed other efforts to implement inquiry-based learning and instruction. He suggested that a quantitative evaluation of the curricula developed in such reforms indicated that their influence was extensive—hundreds of thousands of teachers were trained—but its effect was relatively short-lived and necessarily also shallow. Millions of students were exposed to at least one of the learning materials developed, but only few schools tried to comprehensively transform their learning and teaching programs according to the new ideas. In most cases, the results were similar to those of the progressive movement: a diluted, watered-down, and hybrid model of teaching practices, with the new curriculum harnessed to old, traditional habits. Elmore agreed that the reform enabled many educators to view innovations in teaching and learning practices in a new light, but its concrete effect on the major trends of the American education system was negligible.

Reforms in Israel

Over the past 50 years, the Israeli education system also experienced recurring waves of pedagogical reforms, oriented toward turning learning and instruction into thinking-rich experiences (Nir et al., 2016; Zohar, 2013). During the 1970s, Tamir (2006) led a comprehensive reform in biology education. This move was based on the learning by inquiry reform in the USA (BSCS, 1965; Cohen & Barnes, 1993a, b; Elmore, 2004). It focused on instruction, assessment, development of learning materials, and teachers’ PD. This reform succeeded in making a sustainable change in biology teaching in Israel. One of the reasons for its success was that it combined in-depth work on pedagogical aspects (including teacher PD), with administrative changes.

During the 1990s, Israel implemented “Tomorrow 98”—a comprehensive national reform in teaching mathematics, science, and technology. The reform emphasized progressive approaches to teaching and learning, including the integration of HOT in the teaching of school subjects. The implementation included mainly pedagogical changes but also structural ones considered essential for supporting the former, such as creating regional PD centers for teachers. Nevertheless, 10 years into the reform, it left very little traces in Israeli schools. An interview-based evaluation study found that the main reason for the dissipating effects of the reform was the duration of implementation: the original intent was to complete all activities and recommended revisions within 5 years, in order to reach substantial achievements in these areas by 1998—Israel’s jubilee. However, all interviewees thought that 5 years were simply not enough to produce sustainable outcomes of such a comprehensive plan (Fortus et al., 2009). Yet, many of the reform’s principles somehow survived in the system and found their way into subsequent change processes, in one way or another.

That decade also saw the Ben Peretz Committee Report (“Bagrut 2000,” 1994)—a radical attempt to reform the Israeli matriculation (Bagrut) exams. The report proposed progressive approaches to teaching, learning, and assessment, in order to attain more meaningful learning that emphasizes thinking. The committee’s recommendations were never implemented, but, again, most found their way into subsequent policy documents. One such policy document was the General Director’s Circular No. 20, which defined the image of the appropriate education system graduate. However, although this Circular had been cited extensively in debates about the future of education, it remained on the shelf and was also never implemented (Israel Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, 1996).

These ideas later influenced the Dovrat Report, which also emphasized – at least at the declarative level – the cultivation of a creative and independently - thinking school graduate. This objective was supposed to align with school autonomy on the pedagogical, budgetary, and administrative levels, and to include aspects related to transparency and accountability (Israel Ministry of Education, 2005). The report goes on to elaborate on the practical details of the principals’ administrative responsibilities, but with regard to pedagogy, it settles for a rather general statement on the need to encourage teachers to develop new resources for teaching and learning. Namely, on the declarative level, the report offers detailed recommendations for improving pedagogy in general and thinking-based teaching in particular. However, a practical discussion of pedagogical aspects addressing the core components of teaching is almost completely absent (Adler, 2006; Harpaz, 2005; Salomon, 2005). Most of the Dovrat Report’s recommendations were not implemented either.

From 2006 to 2009, the Ministry of Education’s Division of Pedagogical Affairs formulated the policy entitled “Pedagogical Horizon: Educating for Thinking” (Gallagher et al., 2012; Israel Ministry of Education, 2009; Zohar, 2008, 2013, Ch. 6). The innovation of that policy lies in the fact that thinking-based teaching was defined, for the first time, as a key explicit and universal goal of the Israeli school system. Moreover, the formulation of the policy on the declarative level was followed by methodical planning of practical ways for its large-scale implementation across the school system. The implementation plan included both pedagogical and structural aspects related to three dimensions: developing suitable curricula and learning material, PD of educators on all levels, and appropriate changes in assessment methods (Zohar, 2013, Ch. 6).

A change of government in 2009 was accompanied by radical changes in the Ministry’s educational policy in many areas, including an aggressive drive to raise students’ scores in national and international comparative tests (Zohar, 2013). Despite the change of government, the Ministry of Education continued to support the implementation of the “Pedagogical Horizon” reform, although it had gradually become less central when new reforms eventually pushed it aside.

In 2013, a new government rose to power, bringing with it the comprehensive pedagogical reform called the “Meaningful Learning Reform” (Israel Ministry of Education, 2014; see Chap. 7). This reform integrated some outcomes and processes from its “Pedagogical Horizon” predecessor, including theoretical concepts, learning materials, changes in the national standardized tests, and the expansion of inquiry-based learning and assessment. Thus, here too, we can see how concepts and outcomes formulated as part of one reform do have some effects when this reform is implemented, but they can also produce ongoing influences in future reforms.

Due to these succession of reforms, quite a few changes occurred in the Israeli school system since 2006. Although no systematic study of these reforms has been conducted, there is considerable evidence to the effect that during those years activities related to the teaching of HOT expanded and that this emphasis increasingly found its way into curricula, learning materials, assessment methods, and teacher professional development. Thus, the “islands” expanded, with more and more students benefitting from instruction of HOT. Nevertheless, the huge challenge of implementing pedagogies that promote thinking and understanding systematically throughout the school system has yet to be met.

To conclude, the overview of the large-scale reforms related to the development of student thinking indicates that the general statements made earlier regarding the challenges involved in scaling up the “thinking curriculum” across many schools are genuine and are relevant to school systems around the world. The overview of the succession of reforms related to teaching HOT in the Israeli school system explains why it is a fertile location for studying the scaling up of education for thinking across the school system.

The Challenge of Scaling Up Reforms Promoting Deep Pedagogical Change

This section turns to a more theoretical perspective of how to scale up reforms promoting deep pedagogical change. McDonald et al. (2006) define the scaling up of educational change processes as a practice of translating interventions that have proven their success in a small-scale system into new systems, with the goal of achieving similar positive influence with broader and more diverse populations. According to Dede (2006), scaling up educational change processes involves the adoption of educational innovations whose success has been proven in one context and reapplying it effectively on a broader range of contexts.

From a quantitative viewpoint, a broad variety of contexts means implementing the educational innovation in an entire region, in dozens of schools, or even countrywide. Coburn (2003), however, suggests that definitions of scaling up focusing on the quantitative aspects of the reform, that is, on the challenge of affecting a large number of schools, mask the challenge involved in cultivating the deep aspects of change required to sustain the reform over the long run. Accordingly, she suggests that definitions of scale must attend to four elements: (1) depth, which is the nature of change in classroom teaching processes; (2) long-term retention; (3) the spread of norms, principles, and beliefs; and (4) change in the ownership of the reform. Coburn adds that the scaling up element in the implementation process is one of the major challenges of educational reforms—an issue that has yet to receive proper theoretical treatment in the professional educational literature. Others also highlight the need for further research, for conceptualization, and for maintaining an appropriate intellectual level in future discussions and studies (Lee & Krajcik, 2012; McDonald et al., 2006; Raudenbush, 2007). Among the issues involving large-scale implementation, this book will mainly address Coburn’s first and second element, that is, the depth of change in classroom teaching processes designed to improve students’ learning and the sustainability of this change. The book will therefore examine the meaning of profound change and suggest ways of scaling it up to a large number of schools and of retaining the change over the long term.

At this point, I need to elaborate on the meaning of “depth,” as it is used throughout the book to refer to seemingly different issues, which in fact share the same meaning. For example, in this chapter, the focus is on deep pedagogical change and deep implementation, whereas the next chapter focuses on deep learning and deep knowledge. As elaborated in the following chapter, deep learning is a process that enables learners to apply the learned material in a new situation (i.e., transfer). Thus, the outcome of deep learning is deep or transferable knowledge or, in other words, the knowledge of why, how, and when to apply it in answering new questions and solving new problems (National Research Council, 2012a). Deep pedagogical change touches the core of learning and instruction processes in a way that can lead to students’ deep learning and therefore also to its outcome—which is deep knowledge. Deep implementation of pedagogical change is one that manages to generate a deep or fundamental change in learning and instruction on a large-scale.

Cohen and Barnes (1993a, b) focus on the depth of change in teaching practices and explain that one of the reasons for the slow and inconsistent progress in this area usually eludes those in charge of promoting innovative changes. Their explanation reflects Raudenbush’s (2007) definition of teaching as teacher-student classroom interactions around learning material. Cohen and Barnes suggest that the slow and inconsistent progress in deep change processes aimed at moving away from the traditional teaching model, is related to the difficulties involved in providing the quality teaching many of the reformists seek. Therefore, in seeking ways to improve scaling up, we must delve into the details of teaching and learning processes and see how they both affect the implementation and are affected by it.

Note that despite the pessimistic viewpoint presented above with regard to the success of large-scale pedagogical reforms, some have nevertheless been successful in recent years. These attempts provide us with insights on how to successfully scale up educational change processes (e.g., Barber and Mourshed, 2007; Cohen and Ball, 1990; Cohen and Barnes, 1993a, b; Cohen et al., 2013; Elmore, 2004; Fullan, 2007a; Hargreaves and Fink, 2006; Krainer et al., 2019; Levin, 2008; Maaß et al., 2015; Maass et al., 2019; Mourshed et al., 2010; Niesz and Ryan, 2018; Payzant and Horan, 2007; Shaari et al., 2019; Simper et al., 2019; Volansky, 2020). The most salient aspect of the literature on these insights has to do with teachers’ knowledge: it emphasizes the need to build up the teachers’ relevant professional abilities and support them within the schools in their transition to new practices. Although professional development is almost always an essential element in implementing educational policies, it is not always equally important. Some educational changes mainly require teachers’ consent and collaboration. However, an educational policy of the kind addressed in the present book, that is, one that seeks to develop understanding and thinking, poses unique difficulties for teachers. Traditional teachers find it very difficult to teach differently. To change their practice, they need deep knowledge in both the contents and the pedagogical aspects of teaching. Therefore, promoting the kind of innovative teaching that can facilitate instruction of HOT, requires particularly profound and long-term PD. Chapter 4 explores these issues in more depth.

The centrality of this idea in the literature is evident in its recurrence in multiple studies (e.g., Cohen and Ball, 1990; Cohen et al., 2013; Elmore, 2004; Fullan, 2007a, b; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Mourshed et al., 2010). In many reform proposals, however, pedagogy seems to be “transparent,” and the reform’s leaders hardly address it. This idea will be demonstrated in the Meaningful Learning Reform analyzed in Chap. 7. This is particularly true regarding the pedagogical aspects related to teachers’ relevant knowledge. Cohen and Barnes (1993a, b) argue that policymakers usually fail in scaling up the deep knowledge teachers require in order to be able to support the reform adequately. This idea was demonstrated earlier as part of the criticism of the programs for inquiry-based teaching in the 1950s in the USA (see page 10). In fact, the reformers often lack a precise definition of the new and desirable target teaching methods and therefore cannot define what teachers would have to know and do in order to perform them. Under these circumstances, reformers also have no idea of how to bring the teachers to the point where they own the knowledge and pedagogical tools needed for a different kind of teaching. These points highlight the crucial role of PD in implementation processes. The complex and sophisticated knowledge teachers need for supporting deep pedagogical changes is illustrated in a series of projects (e.g., Ball, 1996; Zohar, 2004a, b). Due to the significance of this issue, Chap. 4 is devoted to discussing it at length.

Another important aspect has to do with assessment and particularly the way various types of assessment may promote or impede pedagogical changes (Osborne, 2013). I have elaborated on this matter in my book It’s Not All about Test Scores (Zohar, 2013; Ch. 10) which discusses assessment in the context of teaching HOT. Particularly, within school systems with high-stakes testing regimes, it examines how teaching students to think is affected by policies calling for raising test scores. In the present book, Chap. 8 discusses the implementation of HOT in an era of high-stakes testing.

To conclude, the aspiration to focus on the depth of pedagogical changes makes it necessary to go beyond the general literature on the implementation of change processes. As explained, deep pedagogical changes (later referred to as “reforms in substantive pedagogy”; see Chap. 3) touch upon deep learning processes and therefore also upon deep knowledge. Hence, the search for solutions to the challenges in scaling up pedagogical innovations requires us to delve into the literature on learning and instruction in order to examine how insights from studies in this field may contribute to our understanding of how such innovations can be implemented.

The main contribution of this book relates to this point: it attempts to uncover some of the significant connections between concepts and ideas from the literature on learning and instruction and the ongoing discussion regarding deep, large-scale, sustainable change processes. At this critical junction, the insights derived from the analyses in this book offer an optimistic message, which can free us from the vicious cycle of the recurring failures described above. In the following chapters, I demonstrate the complexity involved in deep pedagogical changes but also claim that it is possible to succeed as long as we do something that has rarely been done in the scaling up processes of previous reforms. I argue that while planning the reform, there is a need to devote far greater attention to the extensive research on learning and instruction. In particular, it is crucial to highlight findings related to the unique aspects of the specific pedagogical innovation that is at the focus of the reform. The following chapters elaborate on this idea regarding the pedagogies involved in teaching students to think, examining how they interact with large-scale change processes.