Developing Minds

Emerging brain health studies suggest training adolescents in higher-order critical thinking serves as a catalyst to frontal lobe development, laying a foundation of actionable steps to achieving adult-level reasoning, complex abstraction, judgment, problem-solving skills and in turn the ability to innovate.
Innovation is an element of cognition (complex thinking) that measures your ability to expand your thinking beyond single solutions toward seeking a multitude of possible ideas, pathways, perspectives, opportunities, and options. It increases nimble, flexible thinking and is a major brain potentiator to increase neural efficiency.

Adolescent Reasoning Initiative
Using science-based practices that teach students how to learn, not what to learn, this program enables middle school through ninth grade teachers to take advantage of this important brain development stage and optimize student learning for success in the classroom and beyond.
Jacquelyn Gamino, PhD
Director of Adolescent Reasoning Initiative Assistant Research Professor