Since the Socratic era, there has been agitation for a shift from the traditional system of feeding learners with information to promoting intellectual development. This shift aims at developing the intellectual capacities of learners. The implication of this is that schools should have the development of thinking skills of learners at the core of their proceedings. In this age of technological challenges and multicultural world, good thinking is the key to success (Swartz and Parks, 1994). The development of the intellectual skills of learners begins with teachers. Unfortunately, most pre-service teacher institutions do not prepare their teachers adequately for this task (Wideen, Mayer-Smith & Moon, 1998). This qualitative single case study answers two major questions. These are
1. What factors have affected the enhancement of thinking skills in pre-service teacher education institutions (Teacher Training Colleges) in Ghana?
2. How can the thinking skills of pre-service teachers in initial teacher education institutions (Teacher Training Colleges) be improved?
The study investigated the problem at Komenda Teacher Training College in Ghana. The field strategies used included interviews, observations, and documents. The purposive sampling technique was used to select three teachers from science, mathematics, and social studies and thirty students. The researcher used inductive and creative synthesis to analyze the data and the narrative-logic approach as the presentation strategy. I used content analysis approach to analyze the documents and descriptively presented it using the lower level thinking (knowledge and comprehension) - higher level thinking (application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation) dichotomy.
The study revealed that enhancing thinking skills of learners is a secondary concern in pre-service teacher training. It was found that teaching strategies employed by teacher trainers, classroom environment, administrative issues like students' recruitment, large class sizes, staff development, and examinations, nature of the school system school/culture of the society, and documents do not support the enhancement of the thinking skills of pre-service teachers. To ensure that pre-service teachers are trained in the art of thinking for themselves and extending this to their students, the study found that there should be a collaborative effort among all who are involved in the preparation of pre-service teachers.