It’s late in the evening, time to close the book and turn off the computer. You’re done for the day. What you may not realize, however, is that the learning process actually continues in your dreams.

It might sound like science fiction, but researchers are increasingly focusing on the relationship between the knowledge and skills our brains absorb during the day and the often strange imaginings they generate at night. Scientists have found that dreaming about a task we’ve learned improves performance in that activity (suggesting that there’s some truth to the popular idea that we’re “getting” a foreign language once we begin dreaming in it). What’s more, dreaming may be an essential part of understanding, organizing and retaining what we learn.

While we sleep, research indicates, the brain replays the patterns of activity it experienced during waking hours, allowing us to enter what one psychologist calls a neural (神经的) virtual reality. A vivid example of such replay can be seen in a video researchers made recently about sleep disorders. They taught a series of dance moves to patients suffering from sleepwalking and related conditions. They then videotaped the subjects as they slept. Lying in bed, eyes closed, one female patient on the tape performs the dance moves she learned earlier.

This shows that while our bodies are at rest, our brains are drawing what’s important from the information and events we’ve recently encountered, then integrating that material into the vast store of what we already know. In a 2010 study, researchers reported that college students who dreamed about a computer maze (迷宫) task they had learned showed a 10-fold improvement in their ability to find their way through the maze compared with participants who did not dream about the task.

That study’s chief researcher Herbert Smith suggested that studying right before bedtime or taking a nap following a study session in the afternoon might increase the probability of dreaming about the material. Think about that as you go to sleep tonight.

Few people doubt the value of developing students' thinking skills. A focus on critical thinking is common in education. In the Australian Curriculum, critical thinking and creative thinking are known as “general capabilities”. The US has a similar focus through their “common core".

Many approaches to developing critical thinking are based on Philosophy for Children. One strategy that has a large impact on students' ability to analyse and evaluate arguments is argument mapping, in which a student's reasoning can be visually displayed by capturing the inferential pathway from assumption to conclusion. This type of argument-based intellectual engagement can show high outcomes in terms of the quality of thinking in any classroom. Research also shows deliberate attention to the practice of reasoning in the context of our everyday lives can be significantly improved through targeted teaching.

Teachers at one high school in Australia, who have much training in critical thinking teaching methods, developed a task that asked students to determine Australia's greatest sports person. Students needed to construct their own criteria for greatness. To do so, they had to analyze the Australian sporting context, create possible evaluative standards, explain and justify why some standards would be more acceptable than others and apply these to their candidates. They then needed to argue their case with their classmates to develop criteria that were solid, defensible, widely applicable and produced a choice that seized significant and relevant aspects of Australian sport.

Researchers looking at the gains made in a single term of teaching critical thinking with argument mapping said the critical thinking gains measured are close to those that could be expected to result from three years of undergraduate education. Students who are taught to think well also do better on subject-based exams and standardized tests than those who do not.

In terms of developing 21st century skills, which includes setting up students for lifelong learning, teaching critical thinking should be core business.