Summary

Tools of the Mind is a research-based early childhood model combining teacher professional development with a comprehensive innovative curriculum that helps young children to develop the cognitive, social-emotional, self-regulatory, and foundational academic skills they need to succeed in school and beyond.

Tools of the Mind gives teachers the tools to ensure every child becomes a successful learner, developing the underlying cognitive, social and emotional skills needed to reach his or her highest potential.  Melding Vygotskian theory with cutting edge neuroscience research, Tools is a unique approach to teaching and learning with research demonstrated outcomes for children and teachers.

Tools believes that with teacher development and a deepened understanding of the curriculum, its tactics and practices, comes a more capable, more knowledgeable, more masterful teacher who is empowered to transform child outcomes.

Tools of the Mind is based upon a specific set of beliefs about how children develop and learn. Tools instructional interactions are designed to help teachers be more effective in identifying teachable moments, assessing children’s development and differentiating instruction. Tools teachers focus on helping children become intentional and reflective learners, creating a classroom in which instruction in literacy, mathematics and science reflect children’s learning capacity, rather than age-level expectations.

Tools combines a comprehensive early childhood curriculum with an innovative approach to teacher professional development to effectively transform early childhood teaching and learning, and improve child outcomes.

Transforming early childhood teaching and learning for almost a quarter of a century, Tools of the Mind is rooted in Vygotskian theory and informed by cutting-edge neuroscience research.

In 1996, Drs. Bodrova and Leong collaborated on a book, Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education. Today this book is recognized as a classic for its down-to-earth explanation of the Vygotskian approach and how it can be applied in classrooms. The second edition was published in 2007, and has been translated into several languages.

Tools of the Mind has been the subject of numerous research studies, ranging from single district evaluations to multi-site, nation-wide implementations. In 2001, Tools was named an “exemplary educational intervention” by the International Bureau of Education, a UNESCO program. The November 30, 2007 issue of Science Magazine presented the results of research on cognitive control from a study conducted in Tools of the Mind classrooms by the National Institute for Early Education Research. In 2012, Tools of the Mind was included in the 2013 CASEL Guide to Effective Social and Emotional Learning Programs. A research article published by PLOS ONE in 2014 presented findings that Tools of the Mind Kindergarten program had a positive effect on executive functions, reasoning ability, the control of attention and improvements in reading, vocabulary and mathematics at the end of kindergarten that increased into first grade.

We credit the successes in Tools of the Mind classrooms to the fact that instruction in these classrooms is based on a comprehensive theory of learning and development—the Vygotskian approach.