ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter was taken from The 1993 Reading Institute, held at Fordham University: Literacy and Thinking: The Mind at Work in the Classroom. The broad, ambitious title was chosen to insure a wide exchange of ideas for the development of models of literacy and thinking in deciding new agendas for learning. Three key concepts in the title are thinking, literacy, and mind. Each of these concepts is undergoing change and development as a result of recent research and publications: namely, Edelman (1992), writing on the relation of brain and mind; new translations and commentaries on Vygotsky’s psychological approach to thinking (Kozulin, 1990; Vygotsky, cited in Rieber & Carton, 1987); and new work on the origins of speech and literacy (Lewin, 1993). Educators may want to reflect on these developments and determine how recent conceptualizations of literacy, thinking, and the mind inform educational practice.
