Becoming a Thinking Teacher

One consequence of the transformation to democracy in South Africa was the development of a new school curriculum based on constructivist principles. The curriculum specifies a number of Critical Outcomes that have much in common with the goals of cognitive education but says little about how these are to be achieved in practice. This creates a particularly difficult situation for many teachers who, through no fault of their own, have not had opportunities to develop as thinkers themselves. The paper describes the introduction of a particular approach to “teaching thinking” (Philosophy for Children) to various groups of teachers, and reports on perceived benefits to teachers in terms of analytic thinking skills, creativity, confidence, and classroom understanding. It is argued that these benefits, however conferred, are a necessary precondition for the effective classroom implementation of any cognitive education intervention and that the proponents of cognitive education have possibly underestimated the time it takes for teachers to internalize and implement cognitive approaches.