New Conceptions of Thinking: From Ontology to Education

AbstractCurrent efforts both to conceptualize good thinking and to teach thinking are dominated by what might be called the general processes view, which holds that good thinking consists in a number of general cognitive processes supported by appropriate skills and strategies. This view suggests that thinking works top-down through the activation of general processes that access context-specific knowledge and call subprocesses. However, contemporary scholars in this issue and elsewhere have proposed constituents of good thinking quite different from processes, strategies, and skills—in effect a broader ontology of the kinds of things that figure in good thinking. We define three categories in this broadened ontology in addition to processes: the language of thinking, abstract conceptual structures, and dispositions. It is argued that these categories bring with them a less top-down view of how thinking works: Different constituents of thinking are activated by the particulars of an occasion of thinking and by one another in a process that might be termed coalescence. The greater range of constituents and the nature of coalescence call for a richer conception of teaching thinking. It is suggested that the notion of enculturation provides such a conception.