Cognition, Thinking & Understanding

The Eureka Effect: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking

Breakthrough thinking comes as a sudden, seemingly unaccountable moment of inspiration. In this book, David Perkins explores the common logic behind breakthroughs in many fields, historical periods, and evolutionary epochs. Drawing on a rich knowledge of both artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, he sets forth a uniquely integrative theory of how insights occur. Along the way he offers dozens of often playful puzzles and illustrations that reveal the four key processes behind breakthrough thinking. (Originally published in hardcover under the title Archimedes Bathtub.) ISBN-13: 978-0393322552

Why Teach Habits of Mind

Why teach habits of mind?

Challenging Educational Assumptions: lessons from an Italian-American collaboration

Abstract: In this paper, the authors argue that in order to create a curriculum of the future, we need to re-evaluate at least four key assumptions about teaching and learning that have guided educational decisions in the past...

Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century

In this book, Howard Gardner describes how the theory of multiple intelligences has evolved and been revised since its introduction in 1983. He introduces here the possibility of three new intelligences and argues that the concept of intelligence should be broadened, but not so much that it includes every human faculty or encompasses specific value systems. As well as responding to some of the critiques of the theory, he offers practical guidance on its educational uses in schools and museums and speculates about the relationship between multiple intelligences and the future world of work. ISBN-13: 978-0465026111

Schools Need to Pay More Attention to "Intelligence in the Wild"

Traditional schools usually emphasize the kind of intelligence students need to solve clearly defined problems. By stressing this kind of "laboratory intelligence," schools typically ask students to engage in focused, systematic tasks that have unambiguous goals and a clear choice of answers: learn this list of words and how to spell them, learn who the presidents were. The tasks may be challenging, but they are challenging in a predictable way. The attention paid to standards and assessments often works to increase the emphasis on this laboratory intelligence.