Thinking

What might a school that wholeheartedly values thinking look like? How can we encourage students to be active learners instead of passive recipients of knowledge? In this engaging book, Boostrom invites readers to think about the ways in which the practice of teaching unintentionally promotes non-thinking. By engaging the reader in the experience of thinking rather than trying to define it, this accessible volume:

• Addresses the current emphasis on standardized curriculum and how it discourages teachers from providing content that provokes thought, and discourages students from intellectual engagement.
• Uses engaging, real-life examples from high school and college classrooms.
• Offers a fresh perspective on a problem all teachers struggle with—how to get students thinking.
• Reexamines familiar topics to see how they come into play in the problem of non-thinking, including higher-level thinking, multiple intelligences, disciplinary boundaries, narrative, cultural literacy, and plagiarism.

Robert Boostrom is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Southern Indiana and U.S. Editor of the Journal of Curriculum Studies.

“In this book, Boostrom deftly shapes an old topic in new ways and convinces us straight off that thinking about thinking, let alone teaching it, is far from as straightforward a task as most of us tend to imagine and so act.”
—Jonas F. Soltis, Series Editor