A Culture of Thinking

At ISA we foster curiosity, creativity, and a passion for learning that inspires students to look beyond simple answers and facts, to pursue truth and understanding. We cultivate students’ thinking skills and learning dispositions in ways that lead to greater self-awareness, genuine open-mindedness, and deeper content learning.

At ISA we have established a “culture of thinking” through our 20-year collaboration with Harvard Graduate School of Education’s research department Project Zero; including our involvement with the Teaching for Understanding and Cultures of Thinking projects.

Project Zero’s mission is to understand and nurture human potentials –such as learning, thinking, ethics, intelligence and creativity –in all human beings. They aim to help create communities of reflective, independent learners; to enhance deep understanding within and across disciplines, and to promote critical and creative thinking (Steve Sidel, 2000).

As one of the project’s early collaborating schools, ISA’s Centre for Development, Learning and Technology has become a site for annual “Culture of Thinking” conferences led by Ron Ritchhart, Ph.D., Mark Church and other leading Project Zero researchers. These events are attended by educators from across Europe.

In the years since this collaboration began, ISA faculty and students have benefited tremendously from this approach; integrating the project’s core practices across grade levels and subject areas to guide students in making their thinking visible and their learning a shared, collaborative process.