One of our first and most important tasks as teachers is to help students develop a rich body of knowledge in our content areas—without doing so, we handicap considerably their ability to engage in cognitive activities like thinking and evaluating and creating. As cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham argued, you can't think creatively about information unless you have information in your head to think about. “Research from cognitive science has shown,” he explained, “that the sorts of skills that teachers want for their students—such as the ability to analyze and think critically—require
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