Incluye referencias bibliográficas (p. 245-255) e índice

Smart schools -- The alarm bells -- Teaching and learning : theory one and beyond -- Content : toward a pedagogy of understanding -- Curriculum : creating the metacurriculum -- Classrooms : the role of distributed intelligence -- Motivation : the cognitive economy of schooling -- Victory gardens for revitalized education -- The challenge of wide-scale change

Although there has been a great deal of impassioned debate over the sad state of American education today, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how children actually learn to think. But, as David Perkins demonstates, we cannot solve our problems in this area simply by redistributing power or by asking children to regurgitate facts on a multiple choice exam. Rather we must ask what kinds of knowledge students typically acquire in school. In "Smart Schools, " Perkins draws on over twenty years of research to reveal the common misguided strategies students use in trying to understand a topic, and then shows teachers and parents what strategies they can use with children to increase real understanding