Avondale College Learning and Child Develop in the 21st Century Deisy Martins Chadwick 14093322 - 2014
Rationale The capability for Critical and Creative Thinking is a wide spectrum that is important for making the learning process interesting and meaningful. It is designed to make the students understand not only themselves, but the world in which they live. This will enable students to think broadly and deeply. It will also help develop their imagination, by using new ideas through analyzing, comparing and innovating. Students will also improve their critical and imaginative faculties and broaden their cultural understanding. Creative and critical thinking supports the development and expression of a system of personal values based on a student’s understanding of moral, ethical and spiritual matters and gives expression to their hopes and ideals. The aim of every teacher should be to produce an engaging and challenging environment through the key learning areas. It should also help them to become effective communicators in written and oral expression. Proficiency in critical and creative skills is fundamental to a student’s progress in all areas of school life and will also help them become active participants in Australian society. It must develop skills to enable students to experiment with ideas and expression, so that they can become dynamic, independent learners, who can work with others and also reflect on their learning.
Australian Curriculum General Capability “Critical and Creative Thinking”
“In the Australian Curriculum, students develop capability in critical and creative thinking as they learn to generate and evaluate knowledge, clarify concepts and ideas, seek possibilities, consider alternatives and solve problems. Critical and creative thinking are integral to
activities that require students to think broadly and deeply using skills, behaviors and dispositions such as reason, logic, resourcefulness, imagination and innovation in all learning areas at school and in their lives beyond school” .
This capability combines two types of thinking:
Critical Thinking And
Creative Thinking
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
3
This capability involves students developing and using arguments, using indicators to support that argument, drawing reasoned conclusions, and using information to solve problems.
Children need to be shown how to grow as reasonable, fair-minded critical thinkers. Then they will be able to practice the skills of questioning, interpreting and analyzing, explaining, comparing, concluding and calculating, which all will provide patterns for experience
Critical thinking skills must be developed and established during childhood. The student must learn and practice critical thinking skills when forming a solid base of numeric and verbal knowledge. A firm intellectual base and critical thinking is fundamental for a student’s development.
The Australian Curriculum incorporates from the early years, programs that emphasize and integrate critical thinking in English or Mathematics. Through this integrated critical thinking process, students are taught to draw content from several subject areas, rather than a narrow focus on the subject that they may be currently working on.
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
Experts agree on several general principles that engage students in critical thinking programs in their schools.
Critical thinking needs to be taught openly, clearly and practically, as students will have difficulties learning only from observing their teacher. Good stand-alone programs for teaching critical thinking, with plenty of practice in solving problems, is essential. Successful programs will create an environment conducive to critical thinking. Teachers should be models of critical thinking for their students. They also should convey confidence in student’s thinking abilities. Students with greater technological skill levels demonstrate a higher level of thinking skills.
The social and cultural context of cognitive development in adolescents, is vital in understanding how other people and social settings affect thinking during the adolescent years. Piaget’s cognitivedevelopment theory is an important
foundation for understanding the development of critical thinking. He believed that a child’s cognitive development goes through four key stages, where they explore to make sense of the world around them.
creative_thinking_by_lokoitachi-d2zws1j
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
6
By developing creative thinking, students become involved in learning that helps them generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts. It also helps them see existing situations in a new way, by identifying alternative explanations and seeing or making new links that generate positive outcomes. Critical and Creative thinking can be encouraged simultaneously through activities that integrate reason, logic, imagination and innovation. Through this simultaneous integration students will develop flexibility and precision.
and by receiving effective feedback. This all helps students learn to value the multiplicity of learning communication styles. By using logic and imagination, and by reflecting on how they can best confront issues, tasks and challenges, students are progressively more able to select from a range of thinking strategies. This will enable them to engage selectively and naturally in an increasing range of learning contexts. Activities should be engaging, challenging, innovating risk-taking and help them to use their imagination.
Communication is fundamental to each of the thinking processes. This communication can be facilitated by shared thinking in the classroom, or through visualization and innovation. It can also occur by being given
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
7
“Critical and Creative thinking are fostered through opportunities to use dispositions such as broad and adventurous thinking, reflection on possibilities, and metacognition.�
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
8
“Critical and Creative thinking are fostered through opportunities to use dispositions such as broad and adventurous thinking, reflection on possibilities, and metacognition.” Critical and Creative thinking is addressed through the key learning areas and is identified wherever it is developed, or applied, in content description across the Australian Curriculum. “Twenty-first century learning theories emphasize the importance of supporting authentic and ubiquitous (anywhere, anyhow) learning, and providing students with opportunities, resources and spaces to develop their creative and critical skills.”
Visible thinking should become part of the fabric of an everyday classroom. It is a flexible approach to integrating thinking routines in the culture of the classroom and is designed to deepen student’s content learning. Visible thinking is a broad and flexible framework for inspiring classroom learning in the content areas and increasing student’s development and progress at the same time. Here are some of its key goals:
> Deeper understanding of content
> Development of learner’s
thinking and learning abilities.
> Development of learner’s
> Greater motivation for learning
attitudes toward thinking and learning and their alertness to opportunities for thinking and learning (the "dispositional" side of thinking).
By increasing critical and creative thinking a shift in classroom culture toward a community of enthusiastically engaged thinkers and learners can occur. This must surely be the aim of any teacher wanting to produce quality learning in a positive, productive and fun filled environment.
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
9
Organizing Elements “The Critical and creative thinking learning continuum is organized into four interrelated elements, each detailing differing aspects of thinking. The elements are not a taxonomy of thinking. Rather, each makes its own contribution to learning and needs to be explicitly and simultaneously developed. The four interrelated elements are 1) Inquiring – identifying, exploring and organizing information and ideas 2) Generating ideas, possibilities and actions 3) Reflecting on thinking and processes 4) Analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating reasoning and procedures. The diagram below sets out these elements.”
Organizing elements for Critical and Creative thinking:
Inquiring – this element involves students to identify, explore and clarify information and ideas, followed by organizing and processing the information.
Generating ideas – this element involves students in imagining possibilities and connecting them through different alternatives, and seeking solutions when putting their ideas in action.
Reflection on thinking and process – this element involves students thinking about thinking (metacognition), reflecting on actions and process’s, and transferring knowledge into new contexts to create alternatives, or open up new possibilities.
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
Analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating reasoning and procedures – this element involves students in applying logic and reasoning, drawing conclusions and designing a course of action. They also learn to evaluate procedures and outcomes.
Young people must be creative and resourceful, able to think critically and analyze information and be able to solve problems, so that will make sense of their world. But it is how the teacher thinks and acts in the classroom that will affect how the student will get engaged in the learning process.
10
Creative and Critical thinking into the Key Learning Areas Australian Curriculum
English:
Discuss and analyze texts, create own writing, use their imagination, create, seek possibilities, plan, explore, justify, respond, listen.
Mathematic:
Learn to generate and evaluate knowledge, clarify concepts and ideas, seek possibilities, solutions, consider alternatives, solve problems, formulate questions, justify own choices, look for alternatives.
Science:
Seek new pathways or solutions, pose questions, make predictions, solve problems through investigation and flexibility, make evidence-based decisions, analyze and evaluate evidences.
History:
Be able to clarify concepts and ideas, seek possibilities, question sources, interpret the past from incomplete documentation, and argue using evidence.
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
11
Poster by D. Chadwick
References Hoffnung, M., Hoffnung, R., Seifert. K. L., Smith, B. R., Hine, A., Ward, L., Pause, C., (2010). Lifespan development: a chronical approach. Milton, Australia: Wiley. McGuinness, C. (1999).Thinking Skills to Thinking Classrooms: a review and evaluation of approaches for developing pupils’ thinking. Research Report No. 115, Department for Education and Employment, Norwich, UK. Newton, C., & Fisher, K. (2009). Take 8. Learning Spaces: the transformation of educational spaces for the 21st century, The Australian Institute of Architects, ACT. http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ http://www.thinkingschool.co.uk/resources/thinkers-toolbox/critical_thinking http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/01_VisibleThinkingInAc tion/01a_VTInAction.html http://soundloungeblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/twelve-things-you-were-nottaught-in-school-about-creative-thinking/
Teacher's Guide - D Chadwick
12