CRITICAL THINKING For Future Generation Thinkers

Critical Thinking happens to be a trendy topic and an obvious conclusion to include it in your teaching practice. In fact it is very important for teachers to implement critical thinking in their lessons. For it helps students develop autonomy, self esteem and a better understanding of our world, through a conscientious evaluation of available information.

This course substantially introduces the concept of critical thinking. Also, it helps you grow  tools and strategies needed to incorporate it in your lessons. The main goal is to develop the skill on how to teach critical thinking to students through any subject or discipline, and at any level of education. In this course, teachers are introduced to the elements of reasoning, universal intellectual standards, and intellectual traits through readings, discussions, and practical activities. Teachers have the chance to redesign lessons and strategies using the concepts and principles of critical thinking, practice strategies for Socratic discussions, help students to learn how to consciously use critical thinking skills and strategies while learning, and in their lives. 

Critical thinking is connected with creativity, problem-solving, and leadership. These skills are fundamental, especially after the long and very stressful period of COVID pandemic. 

In order to equip students with the necessary competencies to face the real outside world, adapt their career to future and new job placements. To gain a better understanding of the role they would like to cover in society and better interact with the people they’ll meet (colleagues, competitors, mentors, friends).

Critical thinking is and continues to be, a deeply misunderstood cognitive set of skills. Although all educators can agree on its importance, views remain split on what exactly critical thinking is, or how to effectively teach this skill to students.

The course covers strategies to not only develop students’ critical thinking skills but also blend critical thinking lessons into an instructor’s specific discipline and subject/topic.

Participants explore the complex topic of critical thinking and get a perspective on how a student could conceptualize—and practice—critical thinking in the classroom.

Teaching young people skills such as active listening, self-awareness and empathy can equip them to succeed both academically and socially.

On one end this training helps educators discuss and learn more on emotions, touching most of the psychological literature; On the other end, it fosters the understanding of the need for a common teaching method based on the development of “emotional competencies” skills in learners/students. While Education has perhaps been slow to recognise the importance of such emotional capacities, recent work has  sought  to  address this  lacuna.    Perhaps  the  best-known  representation  of  this  trend  is  the work  on  Multiple  Intelligences  (Gardner  1983;  1993)  and  on  Emotional Intelligence  (Goleman,  1996;  Mayer  et  al.  2000,  Bar-On,  2002).  

In educating nowadays – in a wider European perspective – we know the EU guidelines on the new “Key competences for the lifelong learning” (Recommendation May 2018) and other guidelines based showing the need to develop other key aspects like:

• Active listening,
• Vocabulary for feelings, 
• Developing self-awareness, 
• Showing empathy being ‘with’ others, 
• Managing emotions and self-regulation.

This training will help educators improve their teaching method, by reflecting and increasing their knowledge on the main topics, widening perspectives and broadening their work to new cooperations with colleagues and international educators.

LEARNING GOALS:

Through this course, teachers will learn:

• how to build critical thinking learning outcomes, assessments, and learning experiences into a discipline-based course
• understand which are the best tips to follow while designing classes focused on developing critical thinking 
• formulate critical thinking assessments to fit your personal subject/topic
• the ability to ask  high-level questions that trigger critical thinking in your students and have them ask even more.
• combine critical thinking assessments, outcomes, and experiences to ensure maximum effectiveness in learning
• avoid typical mistakes in teaching critical thinking
• teacher education, emotional competencies and development education: why it matters and how to teach it.