ABSTRACT
Despite enormous growth in the study of thinking, we still know relatively little about how people reason about the social phenomena and issues involved in disciplines such as history, sociology, and political science. Yet such reasoning abilities could hardly be more important. They are fundamental to participation in a democratic society and arguably, therefore, should hold a privileged place as a focus of education. To become able to engage in effective debate of the serious social issues that arise in the collective life of a society is a potentially unifying goal of education in an increasingly pluralistic culture (Kuhn, 1993a). Social science topics, moreover, may provide an optimum context for developing reasoning skills, because the average person finds them more accessible than topics in most areas of science.
