Thinking about Thinking in IB Schools: How We Know What We Know

Thinking about Thinking in IB Schools: How We Know What We Know by Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete is intended to complement and supplement the curriculum framework of international schools, particularly those that utilise the International Baccalaureate program. The driving questions that undergirds the book – “How do we know what we know?” – is the quintessential question that drives our quest to learn, explore, investigate and, in the end, validate and justify. The discussions within this resource target the micro-skills of thinking, or the “think links” that act like connectors between subject matter and relevant processes across and within the learning areas. These target skills include analysing, evaluating, comparing and contrasting, generalising, making inferences, discerning cause and effect, imagining, visualising and hypothesising. Each chapter features instructional strategies to teach, practise and apply deeper thinking with the rich and rigorous content of the international curricula. Within Thinking about Thinking, seven thinking skill areas are delineated and each of the seven chapters features a lively discussion, explicit ways of thinking about particular ways of thinking and engaging strategies to involve students in the act of deep thinking about the required content. In addition, the chapters showcase compelling stories that serve to illustrate key points, and offer specific and explicit transfer strategies to illustrate how to foster immediate, authentic transfer and application to the F–12 classroom.