The long-range goal of the Twin Lakes/Purdue project is to establish a collaborative site where college students can observe and practice teaching behaviors that enhance thinking skills and facilitate cognitive growth. A more immediate objective is to help teachers at the site develop teaching strategies which enhance thinking in the content area of social studies. Efforts have been focused on helping these teachers make a transition from conventional teaching to teaching guided by a research based instruction model. According to the model, instruction is initiated through confrontations, experiences which are emotionally compelling and open to a variety of interpretations. These questions which the teacher asks should help the students seek explanatory relationships. This will lead to using resources beyond the textbooks as the inquiry unfolds. Teachers must encourage students to pursue their own emerging lines of inquiry in this process. The accomplishments and positive aspects of this close relationship between university and school are discussed, as are the difficulties in implementing such programs that force teachers to confront their instructional assumptions and strategies. The aim of this process is to develop the students' abilities to attain skills that will enable them to encounter their environment, probe and process the information discovered, build new constructs, and reorganize the cognitive structure. Student questionnaires, 44 references, and profiles of components of the program are included. (PPB)