Building Thinking Skills in Thinking Classrooms: ACTS in Northern Ireland

A longitudinal evaluation of the effects of a metacognitively-rich pedagogy on children’s thinking skills in primary classrooms in Northern Ireland is reported (ACTS – Activating Children’s Thinking Skills). Participating in ACTS produced positive changes in children’s self-evaluations of their learning and thinking strategies. However, the changes took time to build and were not even across all learners. The implications for classroom practices for teaching thinking, and for school reform, are noted