Scaling-up Higher Order Thinking: Demonstrating a Paradigm for Deep Educational Change

This open access book addresses the evasive problem of why truly effective educational innovation on a wide scale is so difficult to achieve, and what leaders may do about this. Examining the case of system-wide reform processes centering on teaching a thinking-rich curriculum, it discusses general issues pertaining to implementing deep, large-scale changes in the core of learning and instruction. The book emphasizes challenges related to professional development, assessment, achievement gaps, and the tension between knowledge and skills in 21st century curricula. It summarizes insights the author has gained from approximately 25 years of engaging with these topics both as an academic and as a practitioner who led a national change process. With a Forward by David Perkins.

Chapter 1: On Thinking-Based Teaching and Large-Scale Implementation -- Chapter 2: What and How to Teach in 21st Century Schools- Common Confusions Regarding Knowledge, Thinking, Pedagogy, and The Curriculum -- Chapter 3: Substantive Pedagogy and its Role in Deep large -Scale Change Processes -- Chapter 4: Teachers’ Knowledge: The Most Central Link in Substantive Pedagogy Change Processes -- Chapter 5: It’s Not All or Nothing - System-Wide Implementation of Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning -- Chapter 6: Developing Students’ Thinking in Civic Education as an Example of Scaling-Up HOT Across the School System -- Chapter 7: Feedback from an Ongoing Reform: Analyzing the Implementation of the Meaningful Learning Reform in High School -- Chapter 8: Wide-Scale Implementation of Higher Order Thinking (HOT) in an Era of High Stakes Testing -- Chapter 9: The Implications of Serious Consideration of Substantive Pedagogy for Policy and Implementation of Deep Changes: Summary, Conclusions and Discussion.