Perspectives on thinking

The aim of this book is to summarise and evaluate a number of systematic approaches to describing thinking and its relation to learning and teaching which have been developed over the last 50 years or so. We believe that each of these frameworks and taxonomies have value in attempting to describe aspects of thinking. The purpose of this collection is therefore to provide a resource for teachers, learners and researchers in order to make explicit a vocabulary with which to describe aspects of thinking which are relevant across a range of situations and contexts. Without a vocabulary to describe aspects of thinking that we believe to be teachable it is hard to develop teaching approaches or pedagogies that are effective. As a learner it is difficult to understand and make connections with what we have learned at different times and to plan how to take more control of our learning in the future without the language to describe our thinking and learning. For educational researchers it is impossible to describe aspects of the educational experience without developing concepts and terminology that can be identified with some reliability (or at least agreed regularity) across teaching and learning situations.