ABSTRACT
Thinking skills have now become part of the official curriculum in many countries. Most teachers would probably want to claim that they encourage independence of mind, investigation and problem solving. In England, for example, the National Curriculum has, from its inception, made many references to enquiry, to hypothesis and testing, and to planning and evaluation. Why the emphasis on thinking skills? Teaching thinking is a rather seductive and fashionable idea, a growing trend. The wary, the experienced and the healthily sceptical will rightly wonder what may lie behind the interest of government departments and policy makers in the inclusion of thinking in the formal curriculum. Will the teaching of thinking skills come under the influence of assessment trends and be formulated as an itemised tick list, and will the impetus generated by critical thinking enthusiasts be lost as a result?
