Intended for administrators and policy makers as well as teachers, this digest explores issues surrounding methods of teaching thinking skills and who should teach them. Following an introduction that acknowledges the need for teaching such skills but a lack of consensus on how to meet this need, the digest discusses theories of isolating specific cognitive skills for instruction, including generalizable and local or content specific skills, while noting little agreement on what constitutes thinking, and lack of a compelling taxonomy of thinking skills for use in educational programs. It then explores local skills, skills taught in specific subject areas. Next, the digest explores those thinking skills essential to English and the language arts, and the role English teachers play in teaching thinking skills. Based on the close ties of oral and written language to thinking and the pervasiveness of language in the teaching of all subjects, the digest concludes by discussing the role of language and thinking across the curriculum. (HTH)