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In this regular "American Educator" column, findings from the field of cognitive science that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application are considered. Individuals vary in their views of what students should be taught, but there is little disagreement on the importance of critical thinking skills. In free societies, the ability to think critically is viewed as a cornerstone of individual civic engagement and economic success. In this column, Daniel Willingham offers a commonsensical view. One is thinking critically if (1) the thinking is novel--that is, not simply drawing a conclusion from a memory of a previous situation; (2) the thinking is self-directed--that is, not merely executing instructions given by someone else; and (3) the thinking is effective--that is, it respects certain conventions that make thinking more likely to yield useful conclusions. These would be conventions like "consider both sides of an issue," "offer evidence for claims made," and "don't let emotion interfere with reason." This column focuses on this third characteristic and shows how what constitutes effective thinking varies from domain to domain.

In this regular "American Educator" column, findings from the field of cognitive science that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application are considered. Research over the last 10 years measuring whether participants learn better when new content fits their purported learning style shows little to no support for style distinctions. However, there is emerging evidence that people have a propensity to engage in one style of processing over others and that the type of mental processing people use often has a substantial effect on task success. According to the research, people can control the type of processing they use, and there is no evidence that overruling their processing bias incurs a cost to thinking. This research suggests that educators need not worry about their students' learning styles and that students should be taught fruitful thinking strategies for specific types of problems. Students can be taught useful strategies for committing things to memory, reading with comprehension, overcoming math anxiety, or avoiding distraction, for example, and their learning styles will not influence these strategies.

Distinguishing between good and bad science is not easy. Evaluating whether or not a claim really is supported by good research is like buying a car. There is an optimal solution to the problem, which is to read and digest all of the relevant research, but most people do not have time to execute the optimal solution. What they need is a good shortcut. The shortcut this author has developed is composed of four steps: (1) strip it and flip it; (2) trace it; (3) analyze it; and (4) make the decision about whether to adopt it. In this article, he provides some detail on the first of the four steps: strip it and flip it. To get started, one needs to be very clear on three points: (1) precisely what change is being suggested; (2) precisely what outcome is promised as a consequence of that change; and (3) the probability that the promised outcome will actually happen if one undertakes the change. All other considerations are secondary and should be considered distractions. (Contains 2 footnotes and 19 endnotes.)

A growing number of business leaders, politicians, and educators are united around the idea that students need "21st-century skills" to be successful today. It's exciting to believe that one lives in times that are so revolutionary that they demand new and different abilities. But in fact, the skills students need in the 21st century are not new. What's new is the extent to which changes in the economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills. The authors argue that if these skills were indeed new, then Americans would need a radical overhaul of how they think about content and curriculum. Developing students' skills requires a content-rich curriculum, well-supported teachers, and sophisticated assessments. The authors seek to call attention to the magnitude of the challenge and to sound a note of caution amidst the sirens calling the political leaders once again to the rocky shoals of past education reform failures. Without better curriculum, better teaching, and better tests, the emphasis on "21st-century skills" will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains for the appearance of short-term progress. (Contains 5 endnotes.)

Shouldn't teachers learn how children think during their training? In this essay, the author considers why they don't and what we might do about it. Many U.S. teachers report that their education is overly theoretical and not of great utility. It's clear that they are required to learn some basic principles of psychology as part of that education, but it is not clear that practicing teachers remember what they were taught. The author highlights two prominent ideas for the reform of teacher education: eliminating the traditional requirements for a teaching career, or radically changing those requirements to maximize student-teaching experience and minimize coursework. The author suggests a third way: change the content of education degree coursework to focus on consistencies in children's thinking, and greatly curtail how much scientific theory we ask future teachers to learn.

Although most teacher education programs include instruction in the basic science of psychology, practicing teachers report that this preparation has low utility. Researchers have considered what sort of information from psychology about children's thinking, emotion, and motivation would be useful for teachers' practice. Here, I take a different tack. I begin by considering three varieties of statements in basic science: empirical observations, theoretical statements, and epistemic assumptions. I suggest that the first of these can support classroom application, but the latter two cannot. I use that conclusion as a starting point for considering the instruction of prospective teachers in psychology.

Theories of learning styles suggest that individuals think and learn best in different ways. These are not differences of ability but rather preferences for processing certain types of information or for processing information in certain types of way. If accurate, learning styles theories could have important implications for instruction because student achievement would be a product of the interaction of instruction and the student's style. There is reason to think that people view learning styles theories as broadly accurate, but, in fact, scientific support for these theories is lacking. We suggest that educators' time and energy are better spent on other theories that might aid instruction.

The article provides an answer to a question on the techniques that teachers should do to help lessen the anxiety being felt by students in learning mathematics.