Singapore’s 21st Century education vision of Thinking Schools, Learning Nation has set the precedence for a change in mindset and teaching paradigm in our local schools and institutions of higher learning. In this issue, we bring to you a selection of articles by various educators, both local and foreign, on their experiences with the teaching of Thinking Skills.
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| Thinking Skills in Education: Ideal and Real Academic Cultures | ||
| Dr Francis Adu-Febiri | ||
| Sociology Professor and Diversity Consultant Camosun College and University of Victoria Victoria, B.C., Canada |
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| Thinking, that is, the ability to reason systematically with logic and evidence is a valuable human attribute. Thinking is learned and can help people become original, creative, and innovative problem-solvers. However, many educational systems do not systematically develop thinking skills in students. Continue reading | ||
| Fostering Thinking in Large-group Teaching and Small-group Tutorials | ||
| Associate Professor Agnes Chang Shook Cheong | ||
| Associate Dean/Post Graduate Diploma In Education Psychological Studies Academic Group National Institute Of Education, Nanyang Technological University |
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| Undergraduates are assumed to be capable of creative and critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. With large classes of over a few hundred and over-crowded syllabuses, explicit teaching of thinking skills during lectures and tutorials is not considered a practical choice. Continue reading | ||
| Nurturing Thinking Skills | ||
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| Higher order thinking requires the manipulation of ideas and information in ways that derive new implications and meaning or modify existing ones. Through such processes as combining ideas and facts to hypothesise, generalise, synthesise, explain and arrive at interpretations or conclusions, students can be led to discover new meanings and solve problems. Continue reading | ||
| An Exercise in Thinking, Writing, and Rewriting | ||
| Professor Lee Gass | ||
| Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Canada 2001 CASE Canadian Professor of the Year |
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| Science teachers often complain about their students’ thinking and writing, but often do not know what to do to improve them. Here I describe an exercise that addresses both challenges at once with first year university students in a special programme. Continue reading | ||