FEATURE: SUCCESSFUL INNOVATIVE TEACHING PRACTICES
Building agency through critical thinking E
stablished to raise awareness of and educate on the dangers of coercion and coercive control within society, non-profit, charitable organisation The Open Minds Foundation tells Education Today why critical thinking matters and how it can help give children agency.
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking is a deliberate thought process used to evaluate information. It means specifically and intentionally examining information to determine its validity and relevance. Sometimes called ‘healthy scepticism’, it is a learned skill, using reflective, analytical thinking to make a reasonable, rational decision on what to believe or do.
For children, this skill can (and should) be introduced to encourage lateral thinking, build confidence, develop their own opinions, and importantly, to give them agency. It is an essential skill to complement fact and knowledge-based learning.
Working with Jigsaw Education Group, critical thinking charity The Open Minds Foundation has launched a set of resources aiming to teach critical thinking in schools to children aged 4-12. They have also delivered a series of webinars on the importance of critical thinking in children and young people.
“It is clear that critical thinking is an invaluable
life skill that needs to be introduced at an early age”, explains Victoria Petkovic-Short, Executive Director at The Open Minds Foundation. “Agency is a crucial skill that is ever developing and by introducing ways to look at a subject critically and objectively, it can build better agency in children and young people, as well as improving ‘soft skills’ such as self-esteem.”
Developing critical thinking skills in primary schools can appear to be a daunting challenge for educators in the UK. After all, how do you begin to develop these skills in children as young as four? But it can be as simple as asking open questions in every lesson, getting children to understand how and why they know something to be true, not just what the truth is.
Why is critical thinking important? Instead of focusing on core knowledge, or believing what we are told, hear or read, critical thinking helps us to evaluate all that information and form our own judgement.
By learning to think better, we also get better at problem-solving, when we encounter a new experience or situation. This gives us more confidence, more surety, and we become more self-reliant. This is particularly important for encouraging children to try new experiences. Our brains are very distractible and easily influenced, which can leave us vulnerable, or learning poorly. Building critical thinking skills
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helps to create a lifelong foundation for learning and effective thinking, making us able to make better, faster decisions, and to remain more focused. It also leans into our natural curiosity. Self-esteem and critical thinking are also intrinsically linked. People only feel confident to express an opinion if they have self-esteem. Self- esteem can be enhanced by encouraging critical thinking, giving people the confidence to rely on their own reasoning, therefore improving their own self-esteem.
Closely linked to critical thinking and self- esteem is “group think”, whereby it is very easy for people to ‘go along with’ someone else’s thinking. In a school situation, this can manifest as peer pressure, but in adult life it can have disastrous consequences.
The explosion of the Challenger 2 rocket was attributed to group think where group thinking became aligned and individuals didn’t challenge the status quo. Critical thinking encourages people to know their own mind, and to be confident in their own actions, helping reduce the effects of peer pressure within groups. The World Economic Forum recently identified “misinformation and disinformation” as the biggest global threat for the next two years, and the fifth biggest threat for the next 10 years. Critical thinking directly diminishes the impact of false information, reducing the impact on the individual, their network, and wider society.
September 2024
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