ABSTRACT
Good teachers have always known that students possess a variety of ways of expressing their “smarts.” Some students excel in traditional “lesson learning.” While good teachers have known that students have multiple abilities, the nurturing of a wider range of student thinking talents almost always has been a challenge. Teachers have used intuition, trial and error, as well as ideas gleaned from professional sources to attempt to meet this challenge. Most models for higher order thinking skills instruction focus on creative and critical thinking, emphasizing factors of divergent production and evaluation identified by early researchers, such as Guilford and Torrance. Classroom-based research, beginning in 1971 and continuing today, links Calvin Taylor's multiple talent theory with practice in creative and critical thinking. The effectiveness of Talents Unlimited in enriching the learning of all youngsters is directly related to its integration into the instructional program.
