ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two basic approaches to bringing critical thinking into classroom teaching: the subject-specific skills approach, and the general skills approach. Rather, the Impact approach is to integrate appropriate lessons on specific critical thinking skills at appropriate times and places in the curriculum, to be determined by the individual teacher. The Universe of Critical Thinking Skills, as a representation of the conceptual basis of Project Impact, serves as a goals checklist that is used to determine the critical thinking focus of specific lessons like the plane-crash lesson. Without a major reshaping of the standard curriculum in a school to infuse teaching for critical thinking into mainstream instruction, the effectiveness of lessons like the plane crash—however interesting they may be—may be minimal. Just as in the subject-specific approaches, such teaching may be too particularized and students may not integrate the skills they develop into more general patterns of thinking.
