Costa, A. L. (Ed.). (2001) Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking.

(3rd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (592 pp., $39.95 paperback, ISBN 0-87120-379-0).

The overarching goal of Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking (3rd ed.) is to "help initiate change, to validate the enhancement of the intellect as a legitimate goal of education, to invite critical assessment of emerging school practices for their contributions to children's intellectual growth, and to foster the expansion of thinking throughout the curriculum, the school, the community, and ultimately the world" (Costa, 2001, p. xi). A thoughtful reader, after carefully examining the content of the volume, might disagree with the editor's (Arthur Costa) modest side comment that this edition is not intended to be comprehensive. Developing Minds, a resource guide for educational leaders-teachers, administrators, curriculum specialists, staff developers and teacher educators--is clearly the most multifaceted, scholarly, and inclusive text intended to challenge one's notions "about thinking," "of thinking," and "for thinking" (Ron Brandt). The volume's 85 chapters written by "who's who" in cognitive psychology and education (87 authors from several countries, including the US, Canada, Mexico, and Australia) offer a very informative and engaging read. By including 90% of new material accumulated in the decade since the last edition of the text, and retaining only the "classic" chapters of lasting value (such as those by Perkins and Salomon on the issues of transfer), the volume can be trusted to reflect the fast-changing pace of knowledge production in the 21st century. Developing Minds is a one-of-its-kind text: readers expecting to see a traditional textbook with detailed drawn-out chapters might be disappointed, as the volume is neither a traditional text nor a reader. The volume's chapters, resembling short and to-the-point articles with their varying length (ranging from 5 to 10 pages), changing focus (from theoretical to "How To"), yet consistently scholarly emphasis, cover a wide range of topics. Presenting a "bird's-eye-view" of the entire volume in the introduction, Costa proposes that its content is unified by five recurrent themes or patterns. They are disclosed at several levels of complexity, and they effectively "glue" the content by suggesting an "agenda for action in moving toward a more 'thought-full' curriculum for a more `thought-filled world'" (p. xv). The five themes are learning to think (focusing on students' capacities to think), thinking to learn (shifting our perceptions of teaching from educational outcomes as collection of skills to a broader goal of developing students' identities as conscious effective thinkers and problem solvers), thinking together (stimulating dialogue and enhancing group intelligence), thinking about our own thoughtfulness (enhancing students' and teachers' metacognition), and thinking big (forging a common vision among the members of the educational community about a more "thought-full" curriculum and "thought-filled" world).

The book is well organized, and consists of a preface, foreword, introduction, 85 chapters, appendices and resources that clearly add to the value of the book, and easily searchable subject and author index. The appendices contain a glossary of thinking skills terms, four instruments, and recommended resources including websites, CD-ROMs, chapters, books and articles. Each section's overview is presented in a brief introduction written by one of the authors or by the editor, which provides a good advance organizer for its contents.

The chapters are organized into 11 sections. I offer a brief review of each section. Section I, "The Need to Teach Thinking," includes seven chapters, and largely represents a comprehensive rationale for teaching students to think. To that end, the contributions reflect the perspectives of the individual, society, and the contemporary world of employment. Nine chapters in Section II, "Thinking: Building Common Understandings," are intended to bring coherence to our views of thinking. With that purpose in mind, the authors explain, define and describe various thinking skills, processes and dispositions. Section III, "Creating Thought-Full Environments," composed of nine chapters, is predicated on the notion that, in order for children to learn and for teachers to teach, the entire school and community are to become environments that mediate and enhance intellectual growth. In Section IV, "Our Changing Perspectives on Thinking," seven essays on intelligence represent "a display of cognitive frameworks" (Robin Fogarty) and reflect the modern view that even though the nature ("genes") are important in determining some aspects of intelligence, intelligence can be modified and enhanced ("nurture"). In the quest for accommodating the needs of diverse learners in the learning communities, the contributors of eight chapters in Section V, "Human Variability and Thinking," reflect on the complex interaction of physical functioning, language and culture barriers, as well as notions of class and gender.

Building on the notion that "changing curriculum means changing your mind from valuing knowledge acquisition as an outcome to valuing knowledge production as an outcome (p. 246), authors in Section VI, "Thinking Across the Curriculum" (six chapters) provide research-based evidence about the attributes of thinking skills that might be most useful to teach to the students, as well as thoughtful guidance on when, how, and where teachers can provide effective instruction in these thinking skills. Section VII, "Thinking in School Subjects," reflects many researchers' and practitioners' view of schools as authentic learning communities (and not "repositories of knowledge") where students can construct their own meanings and negotiate understandings among all members of the learning community. The next three sections represent a quintessence of the volume's "How To" part. One of the largest sections comprised of ten chapters, Section VIII, "Techniques for Teaching Thinking," was written with a specific focus on practitioners. Here, the authors present specific instructional skills and techniques intended to enhance students' thinking and stimulate their intellectual growth. A logical extension of the previous part, Section IX, "Strategies for Teaching Thinking" (8 chapters), explicates effective teaching practices aimed at fostering students' thinking skills. Instruction and technology, inextricably intertwined in the modern world, are reflected in Section X, "Teaching Thinking Through Technology," the smallest, and nevertheless, important part of this volume, which consists of four chapters. The authors emphasize integration of technology as a meaningful tool in educating all learners. The volume concludes with the discussion of the link between evaluation and assessment and emphasis on higher levels of thinking as reflected in many state and national standards.

Among this compendium of well-researched and compelling chapters, it might be difficult to pinpoint certain chapters for a more detailed analysis. Regardless of the emphasis, all chapters are cutting-edge contributions grounded in theory, research, and practice. Many chapters present practical suggestions, methods, strategies, and techniques for promoting intellectual prowess and thinking abilities in students. The volume abounds in extremely useful tables and figures. However, in Section II, the authors missed an opportunity to infuse diScussion on students' self-regulated learning and students' regulation of their own thinking. In particular, the views of social cognitive researchers such as Bandura, Schunk, Zimmerman and others on students' regulation of their motivation and self-efficacy would strengthen Arthur Costa's caveat in the section's introduction that teaching students serviceable thinking skills needs to be supplemented with ways to enhance their desire to use these skills. In sum, this comprehensive volume reflecting the multifaceted, multi-disciplinary, complex, and interdependent nature of current views on thinking, should become a staple in thinking skills courses for students in both regular teacher education and education of the gifted programs.

Reviewed by Lilia Ruban, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Houston, and researcher at the Urban Talent Research Institute (UTRI).