Searching for commonalities in the teaching of critical thinking skills, from Masters’ to sixth form to primary

This discussion paper was written for the participants at the University of Northampton, School of Education Partnership Conference 2015. It was written in order to facilitate discussion about the teaching of critical thinking skills. In this paper I first describe a small project involving four current teachers and one lecturer regarding the teaching of critical thinking skills in their specific context. The project involves looking at how this is done across a wide range of age groups and searching for teaching strategies and approaches that can inform teaching in other contexts. I first identify issues and challenges that this small group identified in terms of teaching critical thinking. I then describe and discuss a workshop for primary teachers where I presented two strategies commonly used in the secondary and sixth form classroom. I refer to their responses as to whether these strategies could also be relevant for the primary classroom. The two strategies referred to are the origin, purpose, value, limitations approach to using sources and the zones of relevance (Counsell, 1998) approach to planning essay writing.