The skills most often mentioned in definitions of critical thinking are the ability to think creatively, make decisions, solve problems, visualize, reason, analyze, interpret, and know how to learn. Vocational education should be involved in developing thinking skills for the following reasons: occupations are becoming more reliant on cognitive capacities; the changing work environment requires flexibility and adaptability to changing conditions; and vocational education provides a real-world context for cognitive development. Teaching strategies to develop these skills can be based on three types of cognitive theories: information processing, knowledge structure, and social history. Johnson and Thomas (1992) present five general principles and related teaching methods that integrate all three: help students organize knowledge, build on what students already know, facilitate information processing, facilitate deep thinking through elaboration, and make thinking processes explicit. Teacher behaviors that promote cognitive development and characteristics of classroom environments that support higher order thinking have been identified. Applications in vocational education go beyond giving a lesson or two on thinking skills, as examples in technology education, home economics, agriculture, and cooperative education show. (Contains 11 references.) (YLB)