Integrating Thinking Skills across the Curriculum

Abstract

In recent years, the major concern has been expressed by educators, journalists and employers are lack of thinking skills in students. Employers frequently report that even the students who entered with high scores in their degree also lack the ability to think through problems and offer alternative solutions in their workplace. In the Indian higher education context, no attention is paid to the explicit stimulation of thinking skills and there is no such course related to thinking skills. Teachers also believe that thinking skills develop spontaneously through regular subjects. Thinking is not a subject to learn but it is a skill to be practiced consciously. It is a cognitive activity which involves remembering, forming concepts, planning, imagining, and reasoning, solving problems, considering opinions, making decisions, making judgements and generating new perspectives. In this regard, this paper aims to investigate the impact of thinking skills interventions on teaching and learning in order to make learners as thinkers not just a degree holders as successful thinking in school and college is a necessary requisite of successful thinking in practical life.