Here’s a wild goose chase: open-up the UK National Curriculum for secondary schools and see if you can find any requirement to teach critical thinking skills.
For reasons probably best left unquestioned, the government sees fit to ask students to “think critically” in only three subjects: history, art and design, and citizenship. There’s one reference to “critical analysis” (science) and four references to different critical reading skills, but that’s it. Clearly, if you’re teaching mathematics or theatre, then you need no critical faculties at all.
That’s not entirely fair – of course teachers will support students to develop as critical thinkers, be that in mathematics or PE. The point is that this process is entirely left to chance. The government provides no direction of travel. There is no agreed framework of critical thinking skills. There are no assessment rubrics, and so no metrics, to know whether any of the young people subject to the national curriculum have any measurable, transferable critical thinking skills at all.
“The government provides no direction of travel. There is no agreed framework of critical thinking skills.”
Of course, many students leave school with a range of skills and many go on to university, where they enjoy success. However, the point remains: without a framework of critical thinking skills – an intentional, written curriculum – we should not be surprised that secondary school students have no learning objectives for critical thinking. The irony is obvious: we have no data at all to think critically about critical thinking.
One reason it is so difficult to assess critical thinking is because it looks very different in different contexts. We all understand that claims to knowledge are framed and assessed in different ways, in different disciplines. They are also framed differently in different languages and cultures. To be able to think critically about any specific knowledge claim is a complex, layered process. To be able to explain, observe and demonstrate the mechanics of this thinking, and test it with any kind of objectivity, is fiendishly difficult.
There used to be an OCR Critical Thinking AS/A Level, but this is no longer available; and there’s no course or qualification available at Key Stage 4. This is disappointing, but to say that it’s too hard to teach does our teachers a serious disservice. It’s challenging, but not impossible to teach. We just need a framework to make it happen.
“To say that it’s too hard to teach does our teachers a serious disservice.”
I’m lucky enough to lead an IB school. At the heart of this, for students 16 – 18, is the IB Diploma’s Theory of Knowledge (ToK) course. This is a fabulously brave attempt to put critical thinking at the heart of the curriculum; students cannot pass the diploma if they fail to meet the minimum ToK requirements, which are assessed by an external examiner.
As the course guide says, ToK is “fundamentally about critical thinking and inquiry into the process of knowing rather than about learning a specific body of knowledge. The ToK course examines the nature of knowledge and how we know what we claim to know. It does this by encouraging students to analyse knowledge claims and explore questions about the construction of knowledge.”
For younger students, Y7 – 11, the IB provides a framework of “approaches to learning”, including a whole section on thinking skills. As IB educators, we’re required to make thinking visible, to critique it, and to develop intentional interventions and strategies to support students in developing transferable critical thinking skills.
“You don’t have to be an IB school to build understanding of what a critical thinking curriculum looks like.”
This is further supported by interdisciplinary learning, which is a requirement of successful authorisation as an IB school. In this context, critical thinking is about building thinking routines; analytical habits of mind that become transferable skills. This sits at the heart of every discipline – that students have the intellectual agility to see beyond the construct of academic categories.
If you are not a teacher or leader in an IB school, this does not mean that you cannot dive into their literature and build a better understanding of what an intentional critical thinking skills curriculum looks like. You can still sign up for CPD that develops your own critical thinking teaching skills. You can build centres of inquiry across your own school, empowering staff to explore relevant literature and attend courses, and encouraging them to nest this learning in their curriculum.
None of this makes teaching critical thinking easy. But, unlike the government, at least we can say that we have tried to give our students the essential skills they need to thrive in the workplace or at university.