thought and thinking

Identifies four classroom standards designed to improve student performance on state tests and allow schools and teachers some creative leeway, including rigor, thought, diversity, and authenticity, each with an explanation and related teaching and assessment strategies.

Argues that the education crisis can be helped if teachers and students learn to intertwine their school lives with their home and social lives, instead of viewing them as two separate entities that must be treated differently.

Identifies and describes sixteen habits of thought displayed by intelligent people in response to problems, including persisting, listening with understanding and empathy, thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy, applying past knowledge, and finding humor.

Describes the sources and benefits of Cognitive Coaching, a model for the enhancement of professional performance and school renewal, looks at three key sources of teaching excellence, examines the coaching map of pacing and leading, and provides examples of how the ideals of Cognitive Coaching can be embedded in school curriculum, culture, policies, and practices.

Contends that evolution is responsible for the imperfections in the way the human mind works and uses cognitive and evolutionary psychology to explain mental flaws.

Examines how humans use words to express emotions, drawing on real-life examples to argue that human thoughts are all based on core ideas that are turned into metaphors for every possible situation.

Describes how the brain works and how this complex and powerful organ interacts with other parts of the body to receive and transmit messages.

Presents forty questions that provide an overview of some significant philosophical questions for children, arranged according to subject--values, knowledge, reality, critical thinking--and includes answers that promote classroom discussion and further study.

Poses everyday problems, which at first seem simple, and examines philosophical questions about them, and includes information about philosophers throughout history.

Examines the quality of the questions that teachers ask their students and offers strategies that will prompt student responses and advance their educational development.