David Perkins, membre fondateur du Project Zero de Harvard, étudie les capacités cognitives humaines et leur développement. Ses recherches explorent la créativité dans les arts et les sciences, le raisonnement informel, la résolution de problèmes et l'apprentissage. Perkins a contribué à des initiatives internationales visant à améliorer la pensée et la compréhension. Son travail cherche à approfondir l'éducation à tous les niveaux et à définir ce qui mérite d'être enseigné pour l'ère contemporaine.
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.