Book Description

There is considerable interest in education around the world in flexible thinking and learning skills but very little consensus as to the nature of these skills and how best to promote them in schools. This book puts forward a clear and practical framework for understanding thinking, creativity and learning to learn as the fruits of engagement in dialogue. It also outlines in detail how this framework can be applied to teaching across the curriculum at both primary and secondary level, drawing on the best practices associated with the teaching thinking; creativity; and learning to learn movements explaining their success in terms of dialogic theory. In particular the book incorporates aspects of a number of thinking skills approaches, such as Lipman�s Philosophy for Children approach, as well as features of contemporary innovations in education such as assessment for learning and the development of creativity. Each chapter opens with a vignette to set the scene and continue into a light and popularly written exposition of theory, before moving on to a description of practice and concluding with practical guidelines for how to teach for thinking and creativity in schools and classrooms. The first six chapters in the book have more of a focus on developing core theoretical themes and the following six chapters in the second half of the book focus more on practice-led themes. The relationship between theory and practice is treated as flexible and dynamic, theory being developed by practice as much as practice implementing theory.