The people included in this section are some very important and exciting thinkers.
"Neuroscienteist tell us that the brain organizes information in networks and maps."
Pat Wolfe is a former teacher of Kindergarten through 12th grade, county office administrator, and adjunct university professor. Over the past 20 years, as an educational consultant, she has conducted workshops for thousands of administrators, teachers, boards of education and parents in schools and districts throughout the United States and in over 50 countries internationally. Her major area of expertise is the application of brain research to educational practice. Her entertaining and interactive presentation style makes learning about the brain enjoyable as well as practical. She is an award-winning author and has appeared on numerous videotape series, satellite broadcasts, radio shows, and television programs. Dr. Wolfe is a native of Missouri. She completed her undergraduate work in Oklahoma and her postgraduate studies in California. She presently resides in Napa, California.
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Robert Marzano, Ph.D.
"Knowledge is stored in two forms: linguistic and nonlinguistically. Research proves that the more we use both systems of representation the better we are able to think and recall knowledge."
Robert J. Marzano, PhD, is cofounder and CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in Englewood, Colorado. A leading researcher in education, he is a speaker, trainer, and author of more than 30 books and 150 articles on topics such as instruction, assessment, writing and implementing standards, cognition, effective leadership, and school intervention. His books include Designing & Teaching Learning Goals & Objectives, District Leadership That Works, Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading, On Excellence in Teaching, and The Art and Science of Teaching. His practical translations of the most current research and theory into classroom strategies are internationally known and widely practiced by both teachers and administrators.
Art Costa, Ph.D.
"School is a home for the mind"
Arthur L. Costa is an Emeritus Professor of Education at California State University, Sacramento and Cofounder of the Institute for Habits of Mind in Westport, Connecticut He has served as a classroom teacher, a curriculum consultant, and an assistant superintendent for instruction and as the Director of Educational Programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
He has made presentations and conducted workshops in all 50 states as well as Mexico, Central and South America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Islands of the South Pacific.
Art has written and edited numerous books, including The School as a Home for the Mind, Techniques for Teaching Thinking (With Larry Lowery), and Cognitive Coaching (With Robert Garmston). He is editor of Developing Minds: a Resource Book for Teaching Thinking and coeditor of the Process as Content Trilogy, (With Rosemarie Liebmann), the four book developmental series, Habits of Mind, and Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind and Habits of Mind Across the Curriculum. His books have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Spanish and Dutch.
Active in many professional organizations, Art served as president of the California Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and was the National President of Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1988 to 1989.
Thomasina DePinto, Ph.D.
"Thinking Maps is within the reach of any school, replicable, and may refine and even reframe reading and writing instruction"
Dr. Thomasina DePinto Piercy is a principal with 18 years of K5 teaching experience. As a collaborative writer about data-driven whole school student performance change, she provides support for colleagues looking for similar significant and lasting results as have occurred at Mt. Airy Elementary. Dr. DePinto shares “The discussion among Ms. Smith and her students is within reach of any school, replicable, and may refine and even reframe reading and writing instruction, and even offer a new direction for cognitive science research. This teacher had brought students to such a high level of fluency with thinking maps that they could begin to identify text patterns on their own. They were able to use fundamental thinking skills vocabulary (describing, compare, causes, etc.) and respective cognitive maps (bubble, double bubble, multi-flow, etc.) and had the metacognitive awareness of being able to explicitly transfer these processes and tools to reading comprehension through identifying text structures.”
Learn more about Dr. DePinto:
Thinking in Great Britain
"I'm able to think easier... [Thinking Maps] make things clearer... ...I get more between the lines..."
Visit a high school classroom in Great Britain including an interview with the Geography Teacher and two students. The teacher shares insights on thinking skills to “...put the notes into a form more conceptually understandable...”. The interview with the teacher is structured into purpose of use; comcept development; and their understanding. The two student interviews include reflections on tools of thinking including the observations of:
“That is brilliant”
“I'm able to think easier... makes things clearer in the mind...”
“...get more between the lines...”
Learn more about the high school:
Yvette Jackson, Ed.D.
"...we provide tools that enable teachers to build on the capacity of the students to think critically through instruction..."
Yvette Jackson, Ed.D. is internationally recognized for her work in assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. Her research is in literacy, gifted education and the cognitive mediation theory of Dr. Reuven Feuerstein. She has applied her research to develop an integrated process to motivate and elicit potential in underachievers. This research was the basis for her design of the New York City Gifted Programs Framework when she was the Director of Gifted Programs. As Executive Director of Instruction and Professional Development for the New York City Board of Education, she led the development and implementation of the Comprehensive Education Plan which optimizes the delivery of all core curriculum and support services in the Public Schools of New York City.
Dr. Jackson currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban Alliance, founded at The College Board and Teachers College, Columbia University. She works with school district administrators and teachers across the country to customize and deliver systemic approaches to literacy development through instructional practices that integrate culture, language and cognition to expand and accelerate student learning and achievement. She is a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, a member of ASCD’s Differentiated Instruction Cadre and a keynote presenter at national and international conferences.
Learn more about Dr. Jackson: