title: Effects of a 'learn to think' intervention programme on primary school students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Methods for teaching thinking may be described as out-of-context or infusion. Both approaches have potential to raise students' general cognitive processing ability and so raise academic achievement, but each has disadvantages.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To describe and evaluate a theory-based learn to think (LTT) curriculum for primary school students, which draws on the strengths of both out-of-context and infusion approaches.
  
  
  METHODS
  One-hundred and sixty-six students in three classes of Grade 1 (6+ years old), Grade 2 (7+ years old), and Grade 3 (8+ years old) in a primary school in Shanxi province, China, randomly ascribed to experimental (90) and control (76) groups.
  
  
  METHODS
  All students were pre-tested for non-verbal intelligence and academic achievement. Experimental students followed the LTT curriculum (one activity every 2 weeks) for 4 school years. All were post-tested on three occasions for thinking ability and four times for academic achievement.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Grade 1 and Grade 2 students showed effects of LTT from 1 year after their start and increasing: on thinking ability d= .78-1.45; on Chinese d= .68-1.07; on maths .58-.87. Grade 3 students showed effects from 6 months after their start: on thinking ability .90-1.37; Chinese .77-1.32; maths .65-1.29. The effects were concentrated in students in the middle band of initial ability.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A curriculum for teaching thinking based on a structured theoretical model that combines elements of out-of-context and infusion methods has been shown to have long-term far transfer effects on students' thinking ability and academic achievement. More work is needed to meet the needs of a wider range of abilities.
authors.affiliation: Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China. weipinghu@163.com
authors.forename: Weiping
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Adey
authors.forename: Xiaojuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Xiaomei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Dong
mesh_terms: D001076:Aptitude; D002648:Child; D002681:China; D003479:Curriculum; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D011340:Problem Solving; D012927:Social Control, Informal; D013663:Teaching; D013850:Thinking