Abstract

The challenging demands being imposed by the societal change, new college entrance examination system and others evoke interest related to the development of the higher-order thinking skills with new vigors. The study explored the problems of developing thinking and problem solving skills from the perspective of the generality-specificity of knowledge, thinking skills and training materials. The conclusions drawn are as follows: First, existing training programs or courses, developed largely from the divergent-production approach rather than from the information-processing one, were found having characteristics such as assuming thinking as a skill or collection of skills, including widely different thinking components, emphasizing domain-independent skill and metacognitive strategies more than the domain-dependent ones, using largely everyday materials or psychometric items, and designing as stand-alone one. Second, the study particularly noticed the distinction of thinking and knowledge, specific advantages of standard approach and those of knowledge and information approch, and the multiplicity of thinking processes potentially needed to be developed, So, the study emphasized the importance of meaningful learning, the necessity of both specific thinking skills and the metacogitive strategies, and the context-dependency of trailing materials. Finally, after analyzing the problem of teaching the thinking training program in relation to the traditional subject-matters, the study suggested the multi-level approach having the immersion approch as a base, and therewith made four recommendations for the effective teaching.