The Thinking Curriculum: What Do We Mean When We Say Students Should Think?

Walk into almost any school and ask teachers what they want students to be able to do with what they learn. Very few will say, “I hope they can remember it until Friday.” Educators want students to think critically and make sound decisions by examining evidence and considering different perspectives. We want them to have the agency to control their lives. That is whay drives hope.

With this desired outcome in mind, teachers plan and execute a lesson that often begins with them writing something like “analyze the causes,” “compare the two systems,” or “solve the problem” on the board. They have clearly named the thinking they want, but have they taught students how to do it?

That question has occupied Dr. Robert Marzano for some time. In 1988, Marzano and his colleagues published Dimensions of Thinking: A Framework for Curriculum and Instruction. The first chapter was titled “Thinking as the Foundation of Schooling.” The book was intended to help schools incorporate the teaching of thinking throughout the regular curriculum, not build a separate program that lived outside of mathematics, science, history, or language arts (Marzano et al., 1988).  

Nearly four decades later, I think the question may be even more important. Information is certainly not harder to find. A learner with a phone can retrieve facts, explanations, examples, and now AI-generated responses in seconds. That does not make knowledge less important. It makes the ability to use knowledge well increasingly important. So, what would it mean for schools to make the teaching of thinking an intentional task?

Why: “Think” Is Not Much of an Instructional Strategy

Consider a teacher asking students to compare two civilizations. Some students may immediately begin identifying important similarities and differences. Others may list random characteristics. A few may focus only on what is obvious. Another student may write two facts about one civilization and two about the other and believe the comparison is complete.

All of them received the same task and directions. They need to compare. The difference is that some students already know how to execute the thinking process, while others do so less effectively or efficiently. Teachers can see the same problem when they tell students to analyze, investigate, make a decision, support a claim, or solve a problem. The verb identifies what they want students to do, but it does not necessarily teach them how to do it.

Thinking skills are procedural knowledge. This central idea in Dimensions of Thinking distinguishes between knowledge that describes concepts and facts and knowledge that must actually be executed. Metacognitive strategies, cognitive processes, and thinking skills fall into that second category. A learner has to perform them (Marzano et al., 1988).  Knowing what decision-making means is different from being able to make a thoughtful decision.

The good news is, the thinking skills can be explained, modeled, practiced, improved through feedback, and eventually used with increasing independence. The Marzano Academies model continues that line of thinking. In addition to academic content, the model identifies cognitive and metacognitive skills as an explicit part of what students should learn. The model argues that direct instruction in these processes can improve the complexity of students' thinking and deepen their knowledge. We sometimes talk about those as if schools have to choose between them. One side argues that students need a strong base of knowledge. Another argues that they need critical thinking and problem-solving skills. That is another false dichotomy deeply embedded in the fabric of schooling.

The truth, as with most arguments, lies somewhere in the middle. Students need both. You cannot think deeply about something you know nothing about. Dr. Marzano and his colleagues made essentially the same point in 1988. Thinking does not happen in isolation from content. Knowledge of the topic influences the quality of the thinking a learner can do with it.

Recent scholarship continues to wrestle with this same issue. Dunne (2025), for example, argues that discussions about thinking skills become problematic when they separate general thinking processes from domain-specific knowledge. His conclusion is not that thinking skills are unimportant. It is that meaningful thinking requires both robust knowledge and thinking processes that can be used appropriately within a context. In other words, students need knowledge to think with while also learning how to think with it.

How: Make the Thinking Visible Enough to Teach

The thinking curriculum in the Marzano Academies model is organized into three broad categories.

Metacognitive skills help learners manage themselves and their thinking. They include processes such as seeking clarity, resisting impulsivity, seeking accuracy, taking incremental steps, staying focused when answers are not immediately apparent, and setting goals and making plans.

Cognitive analysis skills help learners examine knowledge in ways that deepen their understanding. The model includes comparing, analogical reasoning, classifying, analyzing perspectives, constructing support, analyzing inferences, analyzing errors in reasoning, and generating mental images. The cognitive analysis materials describe these processes specifically as ways of moving beyond an initial surface understanding of content.

Knowledge application skills ask learners to use what they know for a purpose. These include decision making, problem solving, invention, experimental inquiry, investigation, and systems analysis. The model defines these as processes for applying knowledge, often in situations in which the learner has not previously used it

Those three categories work together to support the mental machinery of all humans. Suppose students are studying a local water-quality issue. They might compare several possible causes or analyze different perspectives on what should be done. Those are cognitive analysis processes. They might then use a decision-making process to determine which response appears most appropriate or engage in experimental inquiry to test an explanation. Those are knowledge application processes. Of course, along the way, they may need to seek accuracy, resist a quick conclusion, or seek clarity when the evidence becomes confusing. Those are metacognitive processes. The content has not disappeared. In fact, the students need a substantial knowledge base if any of that thinking is going to be worthwhile. What changes is that the teacher is no longer leaving the thinking to chance.

The teacher can model what comparison actually sounds like. Students can learn a process for making a decision. They can practice identifying the constraint that makes something a problem. They can learn what questions investigators ask when information conflicts. They can receive feedback on how well they executed the process, not just whether the final answer was acceptable. That is very different from giving students an interesting activity and hoping that critical thinking somehow occurs.

There is contemporary support for that explicit approach. A 2024 mixed-methods meta-analysis found positive effects of critical-thinking instruction on both critical-thinking performance and academic achievement (Batdı et al., 2024). A 2023 meta-analysis examining collaborative problem solving also found positive effects on critical thinking, with teacher-supported scaffolding among the factors associated with stronger effects (Xu et al., 2023). The message is not that teachers should lecture students about thinking. Students benefit when the thinking process is visible enough to teach, assess, support, and improve with feedback.

What: A Curriculum for Thinking With Knowledge

Dimensions of Learning later took many of the ideas from Dimensions of Thinking and translated them into a classroom framework. One dimension focused on extending and refining knowledge through processes such as comparing, classifying, constructing support, and analyzing perspectives. Another focused on using knowledge meaningfully through decision-making, problem solving, invention, investigation, experimental inquiry, and systems analysis.

That work also made an assumption worth revisiting today: curriculum should explicitly teach the attitudes, perceptions, and mental habits that support learning, and assessment should examine students' use of knowledge and complex reasoning rather than simply their ability to recall information. While recall is an important process in thinking, it is not the goal for a thinking system. Students need to have the ability to retrieve knowledge from long-term memory so it is ready to be used. The current research on metacognition makes a remarkably similar recommendation. The Education Endowment Foundation's updated 2025 review concludes that metacognitive strategies are most effective when teachers explicitly teach, model, and scaffold them within normal curriculum content rather than treating them as isolated “thinking skills” lessons.

That last part is important. A thinking curriculum is not necessarily a new class called Thinking. It is a decision that the processes students use to work with knowledge deserve the same intentionality we give the knowledge itself. A science teacher teaches science and teaches students how to engage in experimental inquiry. A history teacher teaches history and teaches students how to investigate conflicting accounts. An English teacher teaches literature and teaches students how to construct support and analyze perspectives. A mathematics teacher teaches mathematics and teaches students how to recognize constraints, make decisions, seek accuracy, and persist when a solution is not immediately apparent.

Over time, learners build a repertoire. They begin to recognize:

• This is a decision. I need criteria.
• This is a problem. Something is blocking the goal.
• These sources disagree. I may need to investigate.
• I am forming a conclusion too quickly. I need to slow myself down.

That is a very different outcome from simply completing the assignment.

In Mindsets & Skill Sets for Learning, Zima (2021) argues that agency requires both belief and capacity. Learners need to believe they can influence an outcome, but that belief has to be supported by an actual skill set. Students develop that capacity by making decisions, encountering obstacles, adjusting plans, solving problems, and reflecting on what worked. The thinking curriculum gives us a way to teach some of that capacity deliberately.

For the next several months, the Marzano Academies Friday Blog will unpack the thinking curriculum. We will examine the metacognitive skills learners use to manage their thinking, the cognitive analysis processes they use to deepen what they know, and the knowledge application processes they use when they need to do something meaningful with that knowledge. We will look at the research behind each skill in our Theory Blog, but we will also get very practical the following Friday in our Use-It-Tomorrow Blog. Because telling students to think is easy. Teaching them how is the work.

Continue Your Learning

The explicit teaching of the thinking skills is a component of the Marzano Academies Competency-Based Instructional Model. To continue building your understanding of effective, evidence-based, competency-based instructional practices and the full Marzano Academies instructional model, become a member of the Learning Lab. For only $10 per month, Members can access Dr. Marzano’s research Folios, professional learning resources, and practical tools designed to help teachers make competency-based practices work in real classrooms. The Learning Hub also includes Badging Experiences that allow teachers to identify a meaningful professional growth goal, strengthen their classroom routines, and document their growing expertise. Teachers should own their professional learning, and the Learning Hub is built to support that work. You can also sign up for Virtual Office Hours or engage in a CBE Coaching Series with Marzano Academies Faculty to deepen your team’s approach to a personalized, competency-based classroom. Please reach out with any questions.

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References

Batdı, V., Elaldı, Ş., Özçelik, C., Semerci, N., & Özkaya, Ö. M. (2024). Evaluation of the effectiveness of critical thinking training on critical thinking skills and academic achievement by using mixed-meta method. Review of Education. 

Dunne, G. (2025). Rethinking ‘thinking skills’ in 21st-century education: Combining conceptual clarity with a novel 4E cognitive framework. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 44, 493–511.

Education Endowment Foundation. (2025). Metacognition and self-regulated learning: Guidance report (2nd ed.). Education Endowment Foundation. 

Marzano, R. J., Brandt, R. S., Hughes, C. S., Jones, B. F., Presseisen, B. Z., Rankin, S. C., & Suhor, C. (1988). Dimensions of thinking: A framework for curriculum and instruction. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J., with Arredondo, D. E., Blackburn, G. J., Brandt, R. S., Moffett, C. A., Paynter, D. E., Pollock, J. E., & Whisler, J. S. (1997). Dimensions of learning: Teacher's manual (2nd ed.). ASCD/McREL. 

Marzano Academies. (2018). Marzano Academies implementation manual. Marzano Academies.

Xu, E., Wang, W., & Wang, Q. (2023). The effectiveness of collaborative problem solving in promoting students' critical thinking: A meta-analysis based on empirical literature. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10, 16.

Zima, W. (2021). Mindsets & skill sets for learning: A framework for building student agency. Marzano Resources.