Tbe nlove to more formally incorporate the Teaching
of Thinking into elementaty an I secondary schools in
the United States is now approaching ten years of age.
It has originated to a large ckgrec from the emphasis of
educators themselves as opposed to government initiatives;
it is not fundamentally based within subject matter, although
in recent years some subject area groups have incorporated
these ideas; and the critical element is explicit discussion of
cognitive and metacognitive processes within most of the
thinking skills program.
Many, hut not all, of the thinking skills programs require
some form of teacher training, but most of the training has
been within the in-senIce category, Preservice teacher
education programs, on the other hand, have as a group been
slow to respond to the need for explicit preparation of
teachers of thinking in order to meet the need created by the
thinking skills movement in the field. Yet, with the impending
retirement of many teachers within the next 10 years,
together with expectations by school districts that new
teachers be able to implement thinking skills programs already
installed within their school systems, teacher preparation
institutions have a special ohligatkm to incorporate this
aspect or preparation into their programs in some form. The
most recent reports of the Nat k mal Assessment of Educational
Progress, indicating that American youth are still woefully
deficient as a group in higher-level problem-solving