David Perkins, miembro fundador del Proyecto Cero de Harvard, investiga las capacidades cognitivas humanas y su desarrollo. Su investigación explora la creatividad en las artes y las ciencias, el razonamiento informal, la resolución de problemas y el aprendizaje. Perkins ha contribuido a iniciativas internacionales destinadas a mejorar el pensamiento y la comprensión. Su trabajo busca profundizar la educación en todos los niveles y definir qué vale la pena enseñar para la era contemporánea.
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.