The article follows the conceptual path made by the teaching thinking movement. It emerged as a reaction to the explosion, obsolescence, availability, and relativity of knowledge, as a call to teach thinking instead of knowledge, and returned to knowledge in the form of the third approach to teaching thinking — teaching for understanding. Understanding knowledge is the essential, perhaps even sufficient, condition for good — effective, critical and creative — thinking.

The article follows the conceptual path made by the teaching thinking movement. It emerged as a reaction to the explosion, obsolescence, availability, and relativity of knowledge, as a call to teach thinking instead of knowledge, and returned to knowledge in the form of the third approach to teaching thinking — teaching for understanding. Understanding knowledge is the essential, perhaps even sufficient, condition for good — effective, critical and creative — thinking.

The article aims at (1) organizing the theoretical ideas of critical thinking on the basis of an overall and systematic conception of education, (2) exposing tensions and contradictions in the various conceptions of critical thinking and (3) suggesting a directing principle for the teaching of critical thinking. In order to achieve these far-reaching aims, the author projects “The Cognitive Map of Instruction” developed by Zvi Lamm on the discourse of critical thinking. Through this “map” it seems that all sub-trends of (...) teaching critical thinking may be divided into three defined “logics,” and that these sub-trends harbor two kinds of internal contradictions: between the different “logics” of teaching, and between their pattern of teaching and the idea of critical thinking. Since none of the three “logics” suggested by Lamm (1976) in “The Cognitive Map of Instruction” suits the purpose of teaching critical thinking, the article turns away from this “map,” that served it so well to locate and expose the various trends of critical thinking. This turn is made on behalf of another idea of Lamm—that of undermining pedagogy. This well-rooted idea may direct the pedagogy of critical thinking toward a coherent and effective instruction. (shrink)

This book explores a new pedagogical model called The Third Model, which places the encounter between the child and the curriculum at the center of educational theory and practice. The Third Model is implemented in an alternative classroom called Community of Thinking. Teaching and learning in a Community of Thinking is based on three "stations": the fertile question; research; and concluding performance. The essence of a Community of Thinking is the formation of a group of students and teachers who grapple (...) with a troubling question to which they do not know the answer at the outset - and sometimes even at the end of their investigation. The Community of Thinking framework is supported by a whole school model - the Intel-Lect School. The model, or parts of it, is currently implemented in schools in Israel, England, Australia, and New Zealand. The book suggests a new pedagogical narrative based on alternative "atomic pictures" of learning, teaching, knowledge, mind and the aim of education, and a systematic pedagogical practice based on this narrative.. (shrink)