David Perkins, membro fondatore del Project Zero di Harvard, indaga le capacità cognitive umane e il loro sviluppo. La sua ricerca esplora la creatività nelle arti e nelle scienze, il ragionamento informale, la risoluzione dei problemi e l'apprendimento. Perkins ha contribuito a iniziative internazionali volte a migliorare il pensiero e la comprensione. Il suo lavoro mira ad approfondire l'educazione a tutti i livelli e a definire cosa vale la pena insegnare per l'era contemporanea.
Breakthrough thinking comes as a sudden, seemingly unaccountable moment of inspiration: From Archimedes' discovery in the bathtub of the principle of water displacement to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, from Brunelleschi's development of perspective drawing to the Impressionist revolution, from the taming of fire to the creation of the laser, it has shaped and advanced civilization.
Originally published in 1990, this title attempts to provide for the educational practitioner an overview of a field that responded in the 1980s to a major educational agenda. This innovative 'agenda' called for teaching students in ways that dramatically improved the quality of their thinking. Its context is a variety of changes in education that brought the explicit teaching of thinking to the consciousness of more and more teachers and administrators.