FEATURE: SUCCESSFUL INNOVATIVE TEACHING PRACTICES
thinking to their pupils aged between 4 and 11. They had identified that the curriculum focusses on knowledge acquisition and therefore that there was a heightened risk of passivity in students, as teachers sought to cover the whole curriculum. There was a concern from the Headteacher and teaching staff that students may not always see the value in what they are learning.
The school wanted to test the value of critical thinking as an alternative approach. The key was to provide opportunities to foster understanding rather than just knowledge.
Applying it, all started with the very simple question: how do we know?
However, our survival instincts make us prioritise quick decision-making over deep thinking. We make approximately 6,000 decisions a day, and encounter thousands of unique pieces of information. Thinking deeply about all of them would be paralysing. As a result, humans have evolved to include some effective, but often detrimental habits, for example:
- Confirmation bias: where we actively seek or prioritise information that aligns with our existing views
- Truth bias is our predisposition to believe someone or something is telling us the truth, even if we’re told they’re lying
- The illusory truth effect (also known as the illusion of truth) describes the increasing effect of information the more times that we encounter it. Critical thinking is about learning to think better so we actively work against our own bad habits. In doing so, we become less susceptible to poor quality or false information.
For example, social media can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be a tool used to spread misinformation and disinformation by bad actors. With studies showing that around 80% of young people, aged 18 to 24, receive all of their news from social media, it is not surprising that research by YouGov indicates that people who use social media as a news source do not perform as well on the Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST).
This is likely to be reflected in primary and secondary school children too, confirming that critical thinking is a crucial skill that they must learn.
Combating coercive control
At the Open Minds Foundation, we have worked with a number of academic researchers to identify the parallels between different societal challenges such as gang behaviour, grooming, abuse, and extremism. They might seem unconnected, but the reality is that they all come back to coercive control, whereby an antagonist deliberately seeks to influence another individual. Every application, and outcome, is different, but the process through which they happen is the same. Encouragingly, we have also identified the link between better critical thinking and a reduction in susceptibility to coercion tactics, making critical thinking the single most effective tool in reducing the long-term societal impact of these issues.
September 2024
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How critical thinking gives children agency Agency in children is made up of three important elements: sense, exercise and affordance. Critical thinking also requires three important elements: curiosity (a desire to learn); open-mindedness (a willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads); and analysis (an applied process of systematic investigation).
There is so much information to be conveyed during teaching of the curriculum that we are often at risk of inhibiting curiosity, while increasing learning by rote. The open mindedness needed for critical thinking ensures that the often-rigid school curriculum does not inhibit children’s sense of agency, but rather instils them with creativity and curiosity that enhances both their learning and ability to interact with the world around them.
Critical thinking can also be taught in a number of settings, such as through play. Children, like adults, learn best when they experience something first-hand. Teaching important values in a classroom setting can only go so far. By providing the opportunities for children to play, they are living these critical thinking values in a real-life context.
Putting it into practice
A primary school in Somerset that is part of an Academy Trust sought to introduce critical
Everest is the highest mountain – how do we know? The Great Fire of London started in Pudding Lane – how do we know? The angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees – how do we know? Children can often provide the right answer, but understanding why the answer is correct is the key.
To prevent group think, the school also introduced lolly sticks for every pupil so that pupils were selected at random to answer. A ‘no shame’ culture encourages children to give it a go, while balancing the impact of introverted versus extroverted children. The school also considered how they could better utilise non- learning times to foster practice, for example, in all school assembly, while waiting, teachers encourage problem-solving e.g. “There is a ball stuck down a deep hole. How will we get it out?” The answers are creative and imaginative, and the goal is not to solve the problem, but to think about the variety of hypotheses that could apply. The implementation of critical thinking or ‘out of the box’ thinking resulted in more engaged pupils throughout every lesson, better quality thinking with a joyful and non-threatening approach to making learning feel ‘real’ rather than abstract.
Ultimately the children were better skilled at critical thinking and had a better defence against future challenges.
Critical thinking may not – yet at least - have a dedicated section of the curriculum but introducing the concept can lead to positive outcomes and develop agency for children, especially when commenced at a young age.
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