Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Theory and Research in Education
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Wegerif, R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Towards an Account of Teaching General Thinking Skills that is Compatible with the Assumptions of Sociocultural Theory

Rupert Wegerif

Open University, UK, r.b.wegerif{at}open.ac.uk

The sociocultural paradigm in educational research, emphasizing the situatedness of learning and the embeddedness of thought in cultural and linguistic practices, has called into question the plausibility of the enterprise of teaching general thinking skills. In this paper I argue that the sociocultural research programme needs an adequate conceptualization of general thinking skills if it is not to be vulnerable to various criticisms, including that of a lack of reflexivity, connected with the charge of relativism. I go on to argue that Habermas’ insight that rationality can be described in terms of a speech situation can be adapted to provide a coherent redescription of general thinking skills. This redescription of reason, compatible with the assumptions of the sociocultural paradigm, is in terms of the orientations and ground rules that structure an always socially situated but self-reflective and self-transcending type of dialogue. On this account teaching general thinking skills can be conceptualized as induction into the practice of dialogue across difference.

Key Words: dialogue • discourse • Habermas • reason • thinking skills

Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 2, No. 2, 143-159 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1477878504043441
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Improving SchoolsHome page
K. E. Glevey
Thinking skills in England's National Curriculum
Improving Schools, July 1, 2008; 11(2): 115 - 125.
[Abstract] [PDF]