Thinking skills involve mental processes that we apply when we seek to make sense of any experience. They refer to the human capacity to think in conscious ways to achieve certain purposes. Thinking skills enable us to integrate each new experience into the schema that we are constructing of “how things are.” These skills need to extend to what we see, what we understand, and what we can demonstrate to others. They are a large collection of individual skills and strategies that enable us to monitor and regulate our learning and memory.

Thinking skills are necessary tools in a society characterised by rapid change, many alternative actions, and demand for numerous individual and collective choices and decisions. They are essential in understanding how to learn and are considered to be integral to higher-order cognitive learning. The guiding principle in the thinking skills movement is the idea that individuals will learn to think better if effort and attention is paid to teaching them how to do so.