Interdisciplinary learning and project-based work succeeds when it pushes students into making connections between complex new knowledge. In turn, though, that demands greater clarity around the thinking skills we want to see learners use. Those thinking skills are best taught, rather than caught. 

Learners need to keep developing new thinking skills to process information, solve problems and make decisions. Thinking skills are learnable and teachable. And that means teachers and learners, together, can organise them, and ensure the right skills for the learning we want to undertake. 

A thinking skills framework gives practitioners a solid foundation for organising thinking skills alongside discipline-specific skills and knowledge.