Critical Thinking in Young Minds by Victor Quinn

This week I was unable to find the book I exactly wanted in the library, and so after rooting around, this book by Victor Quinn proved to be an interesting choice. It's focus is on children learning but the techniques explained and reasons why are worth looking into.


Chapter 12: Climate and Pedagogy (a focus on teaching children)

 1. Humour - brings together the relationship between teacher and student, captivates and is useful for extended periods of deep speaking

 2. Provocation-in-role - use of provocation, abuse, derision, is to help them develop confidence and to counter edginess, not by matching irritation and aggression, but by reason and argument proper.

 3. Listening - systematically disorientate with paralanguage so they don't rely on teacher's clues and respond with the expected answer. Provoked into saying their real views.

 4. Challenge - classroom should challenge their ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and aspirations. And develop giving and receiving criticism.

 5. Intelligence - academic: deals with the conventions and routine of the subject. The intellectual has to do with exercise, development, exploration, and articulation of intelligence.

 6. Pedagogy for judgement - being prompted appropriately by the circumstances of the task , the engagement, the life - not the teacher. It is to see thinking skills as requiring repeated, developmental practise before they become educational attainments, that is before they become judgement or critical thinking.

 7. Common sense - to avoid sterility of a subject  it is necessary to make it a development out of common sense, rather than a superimposition upon existing understanding.   If the learning is mere academic learning, and does not affect their common sense grasp of the world, then the teaching is failing.

 8. Acceptance - allow challenges and foolishness because students want to venture and explore and that it is important to listen to the dismissive adult, to resist him, and to counter his dismissal.

A lot of these ideas deal with young children and the importance of the climate of learning. Some of these points are transferable across all ages.

--ST