Spring, J. (2008). Book review: Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives. Learning and teaching in higher education: Gulf perspectives, 5(2). http://www.zu.ac.ae/lthe/lthe05_02_06_spring.htm page 48 Book review: Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives Donald, J. (2002). Learning to think: disciplinary perspectives. San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass. Jerry Spring Zayed University, UAE In this fascinating book, Janet Donald reviews and synthesizes over two decades of research, to which she has made a central contribution, about developing student thinking in higher education. Her book has two main focuses: first, the ways that students’ knowledge and thinking are structured in different academic disciplines; second, the ways that instructors can best help students develop those knowledge structures and thinking processes. Because of critical role that higher education in the Gulf can play in improving student thinking, his book is likely to be of great interest to higher educationalists in the Gulf region – both researchers and instructors. If you are a researcher, then Donald’s comprehensive summary of the research literature will suggest a multitude of research projects into the development of student thinking that have yet to be done in this region. If you are an instructor, the book will surely encourage you to look afresh at the conceptual structure of your courses and the precise ways of thinking that your courses inspire in students (particularly when it contrasts strongly with the modes of thinking they have developed through their previous educational experiences). A great strength of the book is that Donald draws on data from a wide range of disciplines (primarily physics, engineering, chemistry, biological sciences, psychology, law, education and English literature). Consequently, whatever your discipline, there are likely to be enough applicable findings and suggestions to make this book a worthwhile read. Another strength of the book is the range of data that Donald draws on to develop her model of student thinking, and to support her general conclusions and suggestions. This includes both qualitative and quantitative approaches; data from both students and instructors; subjective reports about views on teaching and learning versus objective documentary and observational data about course design, materials, classroom activities and assessment practices; samples from the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia; and, as just mentioned, a range of academic disciplines. In passing, it’s worth bearing in mind that, whilst Donald primarily draws her evidence from particular instructional courses, she wishes these examples to stand for the respective disciplines they belong to. I am not sure whether this is entirely justified, but in this review I generally refer to ‘disciplines’ rather than ‘courses’. In the opening chapter, Donald clearly sets out and justifies an organizing framework in relation to previous theorizing about the nature of an academic discipline. On the way, she identifies four components of academic disciplines and higher educational courses: the key concepts, and their nature; the way that these concepts are linked together into a knowledge structure; the way the discipline validates knowledge through specific criteria and processes; the thinking processes the discipline uses to create new disciplinary knowledge. Donald presents a number of diagrams showing the way key concepts are linked together in specific courses from different disciplines. I found these particularly intriguing for the way they revealed sharp contrasts between, for example, courses with just a few central concepts, from which radiated other concepts like a brainstorming session, and courses where concepts fell into a tidy hierarchy like a