ABSTRACT
There appears to be a consensus among educators that a major objective of education should be to teach thinking. It is less apparent that there is a consensus regarding what this means. If one examines specific programs to teach thinking, one is struck by the variation from program to program in focus and emphasis and the lack of a unifying perspective in terms of which to relate them. The authors of Dimensions of Thinking: A Framework for Curriculum and Instruction (Marzano, Brandt, Hughes, Jones, Presseisen, Rankin and Suhor, 1988) take the lack of an organizing framework for the field as their point of departure, and the development of such a framework as their goal. They are careful to note that “framework” is a considered choice of term and that their intent is not to develop a theory or model of cognition or intelligence, but rather to identify, within the work of others in the field, “dimensions that appear to be threads running through both research and theory—perspectives that can be used to analyze various approaches to teaching thinking and to provide direction for planning curriculum and instruction” (p. 3). The dimensions they identify are these:
Metacognition
Critical and creative thinking
Thinking processes
Core thinking skills
The relationship of content-area knowledge to thinking
