MAKING IT EASIER TO BE A BETTER TEACHER

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TECH TALK

How do you even teach critical thinking?

Teaching students critical thinking skills can be challenging in today’s digital age where every piece of information seems to come with some form of bias.

In a world where they’re bombarded with new (uncited) information in 7 second video clips, hundreds of times per day, it can quickly get confusing.

We need to show students how to sort through and identify potential gaps in what they know. But can we ever really get rid of the information bias?

The Solution: Gapminder

Let’s start with the obvious - it is near impossible to get rid of all bias; even statistics these days can be modified to match any belief we want them to. Gapminder is no exception.

But it is an excellent conversation starter to get students to evaluate their own beliefs, opinions, and sources of information.

Gapminder is an independent web resource that aims to help fight global misconceptions (their words, not ours).

What’s interesting though is that they are featured by a wide variety of news outlets that politically lean in every direction.

Gapminder tests thousands of people on some common global issues. Students take very short quizzes (all in school-friendly wording) on these, and Gapminder lets them know, backed up with citable data, where they were incorrect.

When answered, it will tell you how many people have answered it incorrectly and why the misconception exists along with sources and neat graphics to help.

How About YOUR Classroom?

We recommend this for middle school and up (Grades 6 - 12).

Not only is this an engaging tool, but it’s a great way to open up difficult conversations in the absence of critical thinking curriculum.

Strategies:

Use Gapminder not to focus on the direct issues, but on critical thinking itself - how people can come to different conclusions when given the same data.

Or, you can dive in to a specific topic only - such as plastic in the ocean - for a much more subject-tailored resource and conversation starter.

Or, go all out (for older grades) and have them explore the whole website followed by a reflection on which misconceptions they shared and if their opinion changed after viewing any data.

Even though this is by a non-profit, bias can be everywhere. No matter what you decide to do with Gapminder, let learners know that this too can impact the information shared. But it is still a great tool to start opening up your approach to critical thinking development.

BRAINY BITS

It’s never too early

In our digital age, the push for critical thinking skills is already happening in primary and beyond - but just how young should students start to develop these skills?

The Study: Critical thinking in the preschool classroom - A systematic literature review

This week’s academic focus is a systematic literature review paper. This paper reviews 25 other experiments on ways of teaching young, pre-primary students how to think.

Although 25 is a small number for a review paper, we need to keep in mind that this age group is rarely studied for critically thinking development, unlike older grades.

Critical thinking at this age looks a little different too. Here, it means teachers are looking for students’ abilities to inference, self-regulate, and ask open-ended questions.

The Results:

Here are the top 3 takeaways that these researchers found to best prepare young learners to critically think (after comparing the 25 studies):

1️⃣ Using conversations and questions as opposed to just lessons and modeling helps to instill the habit of asking a variety of questions to come to a conclusion.

2️⃣ The language that a teacher uses should model their own thinking process out loud.

For example, “We know this is true because…”

3️⃣ Using stories to convey how other characters and people think about a problem and approach it, can show different ways to reach a solution.

Using a variety of stories will yield a variety of problems that a variety of characters need to solve; all showcasing different approaches to critically thinking about a solution.

In Your Classroom:

Studies like this are important because critical thinking skills are the foundation of so many other important skills - including creative and logical thinking.

Developing these skills at a young age can also contribute to a kid’s well-being and intellectual growth.

The best term to sum up these skills, that was most often used in these 25 studies, is problem solving - so start there at this early age.

Strategies

No need to reinvent the wheel here - introduce and model problem solving techniques throughout your already planned activities and happenings.

For example, asking students why we need to clean up after ourselves, or recognize numbers.

If a student is having a tough time emotionally regulating, model through the problem solving process. Have them identify why they feel frustrated, what triggered it, and how they would help solve this issue if it were happening to a friend.

If we want to best prepare our students to be better critical thinkers in later grades (and beyond), then it is critical that we start young.

REFERENCES

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

Gapminder. (2024). You are probably wrong about. Retrieved from https://www.gapminder.org/

Brainy Bits:

O’Reilly, C., Devitt, A., & Hayes, N. (2022). Critical thinking in the preschool classroom - a systematic literature review. Thinking Skills and Creativity,46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2022.101110