Daniel+Willingham

Teach the deeper thinking structure of your discipline (logic for English, concepts for math and science)

• When the surface structure changes, the recognition process fails in students

• One must have deep conceptual knowledge in order to think critically in a ﬁeld

• Reading requires considerable background knowledge--the knowledge between the facts.

-Reading is not just about seeing the words on the page, it's about the background information (the words and reasoning behind the words)

• What you think critical thinking is inﬂuences how you teach it

• Critical thinking skills are speciﬁc to a discipline

• 21st century skills and __knowledge__ must be intertwined

• Training outside of a discipline in critical thinking produces a pretty narrow positive outcome

• What speciﬁcally in your discipline does good critical thinking look like?

◦What are the prerequisites of these skills?

◦What content best supports the development of these skills?

• Developmentally appropriate? Any concept that you want to teach can be

taught with integrity at any age (Jerome Bruner) better to work backwards from your thinking goals as a school

• Teaching deep structure/schemas

◦Being exposed to the schemas in as many different contexts as possible...this makes knowledge more ﬂexible