ABSTRACT
Despite the wide range of interventions in recent years aimed at enhancing thinking in classrooms and beyond, this chapter shows that critical evaluation of the effectiveness of different approaches has been limited by different conceptualisations of what it means to be an effective thinker and different theoretical models of how thinking can be taught. Our overall understanding of the experience of thinking in situ and the importance of context is under-researched and less well understood. We know it is possible to teach for better thinking, but we know little about whether students then routinely do. The weight of evidence from a multitude of research studies taking a range of different perspectives is strongly supportive of the value of teaching people of all ages and capabilities how to think critically, creatively and ethically, at least in the short and medium term. However, we need to be absolutely clear as to what we want to achieve and what the conditions are under which this can best be accomplished.
