At the heart of good thinking, David Perkins suggests in his 1992 book Smart Schools, is the “thinking disposition” an inclination to learn that encompasses the abilities or “know-how” we want children to acquire. Good teachers model, cultivate, point out, and reward these dispositions, he says, in everything from classroom discussions to assessment activities. Perkins and his colleagues Eileen Jay and Shari Tishman offer the following model of the thinking dispositions.

1. The disposition to be broad and adventurous
2. The disposition toward sustained intellectual curiosity
3. The disposition to clarify and seek understanding
4. The disposition to be planful and strategic
5. The disposition to be intellectually careful
6. The disposition to seek and evaluate reasons
7. The disposition to be metacognitive(to think about thinking and learning)