The Thinking Classroom: Supporting Educators to Embed Critical and Creative Thinking

Introduction

"Critical thinking narrows and

creative thinking expands,

but they must work in tandem for

problem-solving and decision-making"

Pearl Zhu

Critical and creative thinking are often labelled as ‘soft’ skills and considered by many as buzz words in the Australian education system; however, these seemingly ‘soft’ skills provide the foundation from which students learn to build an understanding of different concepts across and between subject areas, as well as support them as they learn to make sense of the world around them. In Australian schools, critical and creative thinking are classified as general capabilities, which means that they permeate all learning areas and underpin the development of content knowledge and skills across the curriculum.

In a rapidly evolving world that values the thinking capabilities of people, it is important that educators don’t just leave the development of student thinking to chance, but ensure that it is strategically planned, designed, modelled, scaffolded and assessed in order to move learning forward and achieve the best educational outcomes for all students.

This book was written with the teacher and leader in mind and is a mix of foundational theory and practical strategies and tools you can take away and apply in your classroom or with your teams tomorrow. It is divided into five parts, with each component diving into key areas of embedding critical and creative thinking into practice.

Part one

The role of critical and creative thinking examines the role of critical and creative thinking in the Australian schooling system and outlines reasons why these ‘soft’ skills are crucial for all students to master.

It is therefore paramount that educators have a strong understanding of what critical and creative thinking entail, the differences between the two and how they intersect each other. Educators will examine the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) learning continuum and explore the four key components of it in order to understand how the development of thinking progresses as students move through their schooling. By the end of part one, educators will be able to:

Understand why metacognition is important

Understand the difference between critical and creative thinking

Elaborate on the connections between the two types of thinking

Examine the role of critical and creative thinking in the

classroom setting

Understand the ACARA Critical and Creative Thinking

learning continuum

Reflect on and explore the implications on their own

classroom practice

Part two

Pedagogy and planning for thinking dives deeper into the pedagogical practices that support the development of critical and creative thinking skills in the classroom and highlights ways teachers can explicitly plan for and structure thinking to enhance the metacognitive processes of their students. Educators will unpack ways that evidence-based practices such as explicit instruction and visible learning combined with thinking routines and effective questioning can be leveraged in every classroom to support and enhance the thought processes of students. Educators will also be provided with practical tips and strategies for planning for and implementing these pedagogical practices in their teaching practice. By the end of part two, educators will be able to:

Explain the pedagogical practices that support critical and

creative thinking

Identify strategies that can be employed in their teaching practice

Understand the role of explicit instruction in scaffolding thinking moves for students

Explain the role of thinking routines in supporting metacognition

Understand the phases of development and their implications on the development of student thinking in the classroom

Identify the role of questioning in the classroom

Utilise the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in the planning cycle

Understand ways to plan for critical and creative thinking

Part three

The thinking classroom in action highlights practical examples of thinking routines in action in the classroom setting. Its aim is to support teacher understanding of how thinking routines can be utilised across the curriculum to scaffold the development of, deepen and assess student thinking and level of understanding. Educators will be introduced to a number of thinking routines, their purpose and be provided with practical examples of how I have utilised them in my own practice, including snapshots of student learning samples and QR code links to the Thinking Pathways website where educators can explore templates and videos of educators applying the thinking routine. Educators will explore the importance of providing feedback to students about their thinking and examine ways they can leverage self-reflection to support student growth and awareness of their thought processes. By the end of part three, educators will be able to:

Identify a range of thinking routines

Explain how thinking routines support and scaffold student thinking in literacy

Explain how thinking routines support and scaffold student thinking in numeracy

Explain how thinking routines support and scaffold student thinking in other key learning areas

Understand the role of feedback and self-reflection in the development of thinking

Explain how reflective thinking routines support and scaffold a student’s ability to think about and reflect upon their thinking

Reflect on and explore the implications on their own

classroom practice

Part four

Assessing student thinking unpacks the role of assessment and how educators can utilise thinking tools, such as thinking routines, to ascertain the level of student thinking and how to move thinking forward in order for students to develop a deeper understanding of concepts and content, and be able to apply this understanding to a range of different situations and subject areas. Educators will explore the notion of surface, deep and transfer learning, and develop an understanding about why all three levels are important for students’ learning growth and development. Through developing a deeper understanding of the levels of learning and how they intersect with the phases of thinking development, educators will examine the SOLO Taxonomy and explore ways they can leverage this to pinpoint student understanding and identify ways to move learning and understanding forward. By the end of part four, educators will be able to:

Understand the role of assessment in the development of

student thinking

Identify ways we can leverage thinking routines as part of the assessment process

Identify the key components of the three phases of learning: surface, deep and transfer

Explain ways to assess the depth of understanding and critical and creative thinking skills through the three phases of learning

Understand the range of levels in the SOLO Taxonomy model

Explain how the SOLO model can be used to support critical and creative thinking in the classroom

Part five

Leading teams in critical and creative thinking explores ways that educators who lead a team of teachers can utilise the principles and practices that underpin critical and creative thinking to support and build the capacity of their team to effectively implement and build these skills in their students. Educators will explore the Action Research or action inquiry model and the role of collaboration in this process to support the building and sustainability of classrooms that have a strong critical and creative thinking culture. Educators will understand how they can utilise thinking routines to support the process of analysing data and student learning samples in order to make informed and consistent judgements about the level of student thinking and depth of understanding across classes, grades and stages. By the end of part five, educators will be able to:

Understand the need to develop an action inquiry/research process with their team

Explain the role of collaboration in collectively building a culture of critical and creative thinking

Identify how thinking routines can be used to examine and analyse data and student learning samples

PART ONE

THE ROLE OF CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING

CHAPTER 1

What is critical and

creative thinking?

When you tell someone you are thinking,

what is actually going on in your head?

How many times have you actually stopped to think about the answer to this question? I’m guessing it’s not really something you have given much thought to before now. This was certainly the case for me when Ron Ritchhart posed this question to a room full of educational leaders and teachers at a professional learning seminar back in 2017. I hadn’t stopped to think about what I do when I think and therefore probably wasn’t clear in providing clarity to my students about what it might look like, sound like and feel like prior to this moment. This moment changed my teaching forever. It became the catalyst for a shift in my pedagogical practice. If we, as educators, are not clear about our own thought processes and have a good understanding of the types of thinking we do, then how will we be able to effectively make our thinking visible to others and support our students to do the same?

This chapter will explore the research surrounding the capability of critical and creative thinking, and seeks to provide a common definition to build your understanding of the differences between the two kinds of thinking as well as their intersecting characteristics. It will unpack why metacognition is important for a thriving society, examining the implications for teachers in the classroom.

Chapter learning intentions

By the end of this chapter, educators will be able to:

Understand why metacognition is important

Understand the difference between critical and

creative thinking

Elaborate on the connections between the two types

of thinking

Unpacking metacognition

The term ‘metacognition’ is used to describe thinking about an individual’s cognitive processes and activity. Simply put, it is the process of ‘thinking about thinking’ (Ritchhart, Church & Morrison, 2011; Lamb, Maire & Doecke, 2017). Frequently, it is subsumed under the broader notion of ‘self-regulated learning’ and is associated with improved learning and academic outcomes. Metacognition includes being able to recognise the processes we use when we think about something, as well as recognising when we don’t know something yet.

This ability is, of course, mediated by the age of the learner; however, this doesn’t mean that our youngest students cannot begin to ‘think about their thinking’. Younger children have more of a limited capacity to undertake metacognitive processes than older children, but limited doesn’t mean they cannot do it at all, as highlighted by Frey et al (2018). It simply means that instructional routines are required to prompt self-questioning in order to support this (Frey, Hattie & Fisher, 2018). Metacognition is seen as involving both knowledge about cognitive processes and strategies for monitoring these processes with research highlighting that the development of student metacognition is best engaged through specific curriculum areas, since metacognitive skills depend on both content knowledge and expertise (Lamb, Maire & Doecke, 2017).

Implications for the classroom

As our society evolves, the need for our students to be active thinkers becomes more apparent. Reflections on the knowledge and skills students must acquire in education for future success and wellbeing is certainly not a new concept (Lamb, Maire & Doecke, 2017). As educators, it is our job to ensure that our students are equipped with the necessary skills to move beyond superficial and surface-level thinking to more advanced and higher-order thinking that includes critical and creative thinking. This is not to say that surface-level thinking doesn’t have a place in the classroom – quite the opposite. Surface-level thinking and learning experiences are important components of the learning process and are essential building blocks to the development of deep understanding. This notion will be covered further in part four.

Thinking is the mental process of using information to reach a conclusion. For students to be highly effective thinkers, they must be presented with structures and frameworks that can assist them in being more proficient at the act of thinking. Generally speaking, the process of thinking involves our ability to take in and make sense of information as it is presented to us in multiple ways. A proficient thinker is able to then connect, apply and transform this information into unique and novel ideas, drawing on their capacity to critically analyse, evaluate and problem-solve in order to synthesise ideas and generate creative solutions (Cash, 2011).

Our students must be equipped to think differently, cogently and flexibly to thrive in today’s world. The challenges of today’s society require young people to be creative, innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use critical and creative thinking purposefully.

I’d like to pose this question to you now: When you tell someone you are thinking, what is actually going on in your head? Take a moment to really think about what this looks and feels like for you as a learner before engaging with the activity below.

Activity: What goes on in your head when you’re thinking?

Brainstorm a list of things you do when you are thinking. For

example, wondering.

The critical and creative thinking capability combines two types

of thinking:

Critical thinking, and

Creative thinking

Though the two are not interchangeable, they are strongly linked, bringing complementary dimensions to the thinking and learning process (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, n.d.).

Before we jump into defining these two types of thinking, let’s take a moment to engage with the thinking routine Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate (Ritchhart, Church & Morrison, 2011) to help us understand key skills and connections between critical and creative thinking. This thinking routine is perfect for helping us to examine generated ideas and draw connections between ideas.

Activity: Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate thinking routine

Step 1: Examine the following generated list of skills:

Step 2: Sort these skills on the following page into skills you think are required for critical thinking and those required for creative thinking.

Step 3: Connect ideas and skills that you know have something in common or are related/linked to each other by drawing connecting lines from one to the other.

Step 4: Elaborate on these connections by writing a short explanation about how or why you think these skills are connected.

Scan the QR code to find out more about the Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate thinking routine.

GCSE activity page:

Below is an example of a worked GCSE concept map. This example highlights some of the connections that educators have drawn to different critical and creative thinking skills. What is evident when you