“Listening and questioning are the basis for positive classroom interactions that can in turn shape meaningful collaboration, which can then build a culture of thinking.”

To increase learning in the classroom, don’t focus on curriculum or using new “tips and tricks” for instruction.  Instead, Ron Ritchhart, a researcher at Harvard’s graduate school of education, writes that we should change the “culture” of our classrooms by making “thinking valued, visible, and actively promoted in all our interactions with learners” (31).  Many of the ideas here may sound familiar to readers of Maryellen Weimer, Parker Palmer, Stephen Brookfield, and others.  What sets this book apart is the quality and quantity of the resources in his book and his website.  The templates in his appendix are pure gold.

Ron Ritchhart, Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Brand, 2015), 9.