The National Center for Teaching Thinking is an educational service organization providing workshops, staff development programs, and resources for schools and colleges interested in incorporating an emphasis on critical and creative thinking into their curriculum. NCTT has been in operation since 1992 when it became an independent non-profit organization. It was initially established in 1989 as a three-year pilot project that was supported by the Northeast Regional Laboratory for Educational Improvement, one of the six federally funded education laboratories in the United States at the time. NCTT has now established itself as a world leader in this field.

One important specialty of NCTT is infusing the teaching of thinking into content instruction. Robert Swartz, presently an emeritus faculty member at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, directs the center. Since the early 1980s Professor Swartz's research, based on close work with a large number of classroom teachers, has focused primarily on this technique and he has published a number of books on this topic. Art Costa, former president of ASCD and faculty member at Sacramento State University, and David Perkins, of Project Zero at Harvard University, both active researchers in this field as well, are long-standing members of the board of directors of NCTT. NCTT prides itself on basing its practical work, and the educational strategies and techniques it promotes in its workshops, on well-researched educational ideas and principles and well-tried and honed educational practices.

NCTT was the sponsor of the Sixth International Conference on Thinking, held at MIT, in 1995, and has participated in almost all of these conferences through the recent 14th International Conference on Thinking, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

NCTT now offers a variety of programs and on-site workshops worldwide. NCTT is presently establishing branch offices in Amman, Jordan; Valencia, Spain; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. These offices will provide and administer local programs offering the same high-quality workshops it has always offered, staffed by trainers who have been certified by NCTT to do this type of consulting.

NCTT is the leading agency in the world offering certification of teachers as teachers of thinking. It has a three-tiered certification program, moving from certification as a teacher of thinking, to certification as a coach and workshop presenter, and then to certification as an advanced researcher in this field. NCTT also offers schools certification as model thinking-based learning schools.