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so critical thinking skills let's first think about what critical thinking is so while I pull up my slides if you can give me a quick simple it's hard to do this simply but simple definition of critical thinking in the chat box let's see what you come up with can you all see my slides brilliant thank you thanks for the feedback all right so we've got some answers uh coming from different people let's see so Asma says critical thinkings about solving problems you're not wrong at all very good uh analyzing

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jna yes an analytical skills yes Michaela yes hi lovely to see you again too uh kova using common sense when presented with information I like the fact that it's about what we do and how we think when we are being presented with information that's really really important Common Sense however is isn't always very common is it common is common sense common uh questioning skills Orlando absolutely yes thinking outside the box I like that jua um okay being able to analyze so the word analyze has come up a few times

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understanding yeah understanding is definitely part of it and how we choose to understand this information that we've been presented with is is a huge part of critical thinking analyzing evaluating and then communicating your opinions thank you very much Sahar uh some really good definitions here now let's have a look at one of the so-called official definitions of critical thinking that was given at a critical thinking and educational reform uh International Conference back in 1987 so scriven and Paul says critical

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thinking is the intellectually disciplined process it's already said sound very highly academic U of actively and skillfully conceptualizing applying analyzing synthesizing and or evaluating information gathered from or generated by observation experience reflection reasoning or communication as a guide to belief and action that sounds extremely academic extremely complicated but we can see some key words that you have already mentioned here like and analyzing evaluating um and also not to forget

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things like reflecting reflecting on our own thoughts our own experience observation when being presented with information that might come in many different forms and communication communicating those thoughts those opinions to others and also listening and understanding what others are communicating to us so let's put this really simply according to emsu Prince who wrote the wonderful book Seven skills for the future and I've got it right here really really great book um totally recommend that you read it and uh U

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Prince has obviously critical thinking as one of the key seven skills that she says will be important for the future and her definition of critical thinking here put simply is making an evaluation or judgment uh about what we see or hear about facts or a situation presented to us so it's a bit like what you said earlier about um the information that's being presented to us and this information might be a website it might be some a news article it might be gossip that we hear from a friend or a

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even a situation not necessarily information but a situation that's happening right now that's being presented to us so it's about how we evaluate and make judgments when hearing about this and the origin of critical thinking dates all the way back to Socrates who identify that our natural human tendency is to justify answers to questions based on emotions or impulse thinking rather than a logical or reasoned response and I think I really want to emphasize that this is not just something that happened um hundreds of

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years ago this is something that we still do and probably do a lot of these days because of the amount of information that we're constantly exposed to through social media through the internet um and in order to to process that information quickly we we we tend to make judgments very much based on our feelings our emotions uh impulsive thinking rather than having the time to logically consider what we understand from the situation from the information and form a reason reasoned response so uh emu print says a shocking amount

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of thinking that we do today is actually very much biased and uninformed and probably based on emotions and impulse thinking um as we said in a busy life our brain has no time to process everything and so and information is coming to us in so many different ways our brain has to find shortcuts different ways to make sense of all this information that we've been given and so we've become used to this light approach this fast easy shortcut that allows us is to make decisions and make judgments on

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situations and evaluate if something is good or bad or a threat whether to fight or flight um quickly based on emotions based on impulse thinking and that can't be very good because as we know there is a lot of fake news out there um and sometimes basing our decisions just on our emotions um might lead us down the wrong path to the wrong conclusions now Bloom's taxonomy is a great way of looking at critical thinking by breaking the concept down into several cognitive skills so at the right at the bottom of this pyramid we

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see remember so helping students to remember what they've read remember what they've listened to uh remember what they've learned and then helping them to understand it so not just repeating what they've heard but understanding actually understanding what they've heard maybe we might do this by asking students to uh summarize an article with a partner to make sure they fully understood it but understanding alone is not enough we want them to be able to apply it as they say you know give a man a fish and

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he eats for a day teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime so we want them to be able to apply what they've understood I mean as language teachers we know the difference between understanding and learning about the present perfect and actually being able to use the present perfect two different things there but as we move further up the pyramid we realize that it doesn't stop applying we've got analyzing information which several of you have mentioned in the chat field evaluating information critiquing it

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understanding you know what if we did this what if we did that the pros and cons and then finally at the top of the pyramid being able to create design innovate in order to make something and develop something of our own based on the information we've been given now all these make up critical thinking skills but as we can see the lower parts of the pyramids was are what we call lower order thinking skills and traditionally in education this is what we're very used to doing with students right um uh

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getting students to remember and recall what they've read what they've learned in the last lesson checking that they understand using con checking questions for example getting them to apply by doing some Gap fills but what we're trying to get students to do more of is perhaps getting them to push that further to higher order thinking skills like analyzing the information evaluating it and then perhaps creating something of their own Now using the chat field would you say if you're thinking about how

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teacher centered or student centered each of these phases might be would you say that lower order thinking skills are more teacher or student centered or teacher or student Le and when it comes to higher order thinking skills would you say they tend to be teacher or student centered just using the chat field what do you think which type of skills tend to be teacher-led and or teacher centered and which which kind of skills tend to be student centered I've got lots of answers coming in maissa says um

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for lower auditing thinking skills more teacher centered yes so does Michaela um pinky as well says lower order is teacher centered um of course both can be teacher-led um Orlando to answer that both can be teacher Le but which one tends to focus more on the you know what the teacher says teacher standing up there um and which one really is a focus on student right student centered uh if we look over here we can see that the higher order thinking skills like many of you have suggested here um are more

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student centered the higher up we go and the ones right at the bottom simply asking students to memorize duplicate repeat Define tend to be more teacher Le right teachers stand up there explain get students to understand so on and so forth so let's see how this applies When developing critical thinking skills in the language classroom now to understand critical thinking skills Perhaps it is best that we divide them into subskills because critical thinking is huge it's it's it's it's it encompasses so many different

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skills so what different subskills are we really talking about so here's a quick summary and then we're going to look at them in a bit more detail we've got analytical skills very often critical thinking and analytical thinking s are used almost synonymously because thinking critically is the ability to analyze the information we receive so analytical thinking is often used to talk about critical thinking uh they are slightly different but they are analytical thinking is definitely a

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subskill of critical thinking and then we have the ability to do research and to formulate reasoned judgment problem solving skills decision-making skills reflective thinking the ability to reflect open-mindedness and communication skills the ability to communicate our opinions our ideas but also to listen and understand the ideas and perspectives of others Joanna you're absolutely right we simply can't just divide the skills between teachers and Learners absolutely um and hopefully by the end of today's

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talk we can see the role of teachers in helping to develop those T critical thinking skills with students so let's have a look at the first one analytical skills right what are analytical skills it is about helping students to look at complex information and complex issues and break them down into manageable chunks or what we teachers call scaffolding to help students recognize relationships between two different parts of a text for example the cause the effect the wise the reasons the patterns and Trends in

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the data they're looking at making connections uh and absolutely yes FMA making connections to real life as well uh and evaluating the strength of the arguments presented to us and looking for evidence that support those arguments absolutely um why is critical H sorry analytical thinking so important the world economic Forum has just recently uh released its future of jobs report 2025 that looks at skills needed between 2025 to 2030 and this was taken from the report as you can see the top skills that all companies surveyed felt

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was important to the future of the workplace is analytical thinking skills skills that will help our students get employed analytical thinking but analytical thinking is not the only critical thinking subskill that we see here we also see a related skill at number four we've got creative thinking often very related to an um to critical thinking if you remember that blooms taxonomy pyramid create in inventing designing producing was at the top of that P pyramid create and that has a lot to do with critical critical thinking

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creative thinking um and we can also see from number eight curiosity and lifelong learning curiosity helps push our students to want to know more to find out about the other perspective to dive deeper into thinking about issues and not simply rely on those imp pulsive one moment judgments but right now we're looking at analytical thinking and that top most important core skill in 2025 now we can see here a infographic what which is one way of presenting information in in a palatable easy to

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digest sense to our students so we see a infographic here presented to students and then we ask questions to enable them to break it down break the information down into manageable CHS and how do we do this we do this in the form of questions so if you look right next to the infographic on the left we have four discussion questions it says discuss with a partner starting with the first question which food group in the infographic do you eat most of which do you eat the least of here we're really

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breaking it down to something really easy for them to answer students are basically using their own experience and answering the question a very factual question that doesn't require too much in-depth thinking right let's just recall and reflect which of these um food groups do we eat the most of least of so we're asking them about their experience then we move on to question number two which do you waste the most and we're going from very factual experiential talk to actually getting

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them to really now go a bit deeper and reflect on their experience which do you waste the most and then number three why do you think people restaurants and supermarkets waste food again we're going even deeper now asking students for their opinions and thoughts and number four what do you think governments and individuals can do to reduce food waste here we're pushing them to that top level of that blooms pyramid create can you innovate can you create suggestions can you create and find

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innovative solutions to the problem of food waste getting students to suggest recommend innovate develop create and here I want to focus on the power of the question earlier uh one of you said you know that distinction between what a student LED teacher LED Student Center teacher centered can be a complex one for sure but in order to develop critical thinking skills it is so important that we don't do the critical thinking for our students for such a very long time the role of the teacher was the found of knowledge we

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stand at the front of the classroom perhaps behind a lacton and we do the thinking for our students our students perhaps especially in some areas where hierarchy is a big thing might take the thinking of the teacher as their own however in order to develop abilities like analytical thinking with our students we should not be analyzing for the students and then giving them them the information to remember after all we are developing higher order thinking skills not just remembering and lower order thinking skills in order for

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students to actually develop higher order thinking skills they need to be practicing higher order thinking skills like analyzing so instead of doing the thinking for them and giving them the answer ask them questions understand that the question is important ask them about their experience ask them to reflect on their experience ask them about the thoughts and and opinions and then get them to create and suggest solutions to those um problems here are some other examples of questions that we can ask

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students just because we are not the Fountain of Knowledge in front of the classroom does not mean that our role is redundant our role is to ask questions that are useful that can help to personalize the topic to make the topic interesting but also to help them analyze and break the information down into manageable chunks absolutely Nelly why questions make students think critically let me expand on that even further perhaps not just why questions but open-ended questions questions that don't have a

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yes or no um answer questions that have that are open so that students can really dig deep and reflect and think here's some questions that I formulated according to these different skills on the bloom Tex doomy so at the bottom lower AIT thinking skills remember we might ask questions like what is it who is it where is it when is it can you list three of that can you recall this can you identify that getting them to check their understanding might require them to describe or explain what's

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happening and say what the main idea is and summarize getting to apply what they've learned might um involv them explaining the approach they would choose and why they've chosen this but then as we move further up that into higher order thinking skills we're asking questions like what's the relationship between this and that what is the cause of this what are the reasons for that why do you think what's the function what evidence is there for you to believe that what's your opinion

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of it what if the very big hypothetical what if what would happen if this was done and then at the top of the pyramid what can you produce what can you invent what's an original way to do this so moving from analytical skills to research and reasoned judgment getting students to explore for themselves when students ask us a question instead of giving them the answers getting them to find the answers for themselves and do do their own research to discover what is reliable and what's relevant amongst all

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those sources of information that they're bombarded with online to objectively be able to analyze that information and evaluate how credible is it is it fake news is it not considering the multiple perspectives and synthesizing information summarizing it from not just one source but different sources and then to make decisions based on logical inferences and sound reasoning and not jumping to conclusions and judgments too quickly so for example we could start really really easily we have um a unit

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about um shipping and how the world's goods are transported before we expose students to researching the worldwide web we might give them an article to read and then perhaps guide them through think critically in the article uh about for example the reasons why why so many world's goods are transported by cargo ship and the positive changes Etc negative changes so we start with an article a reading article and get getting them to think critically about the information given then we might move

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them towards bigger questions questions that are might not be found in the reading article questions that might require students to go off in pairs in groups to discover and research the answers to these questions before formulating their own opinions and thoughts and suggestions based on the research they've done projects that require students to discover more and explore the topic more before actually forming a reasoned judgment about what's good and what's bad what are the pros and what are the

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cons and what should be the way forward to do this we need to understand the power of inquiry based learning inquiry based learning is learning that requires students to be curious lifelong learning that a lifelong learning skill that requires students to go and find questions for themselves but being able to do research and reason judgments means that students also need to be able to spot the fake stuff students need to know the ethos and the agenda that lies behind the authors or the person who produced that information

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their intent and in the talk after this Rose will be talking a bit more about about that so please do stay for her talk is absolutely wonderful but here's an example of how we can hold our students hands and take them through step by step how we can understand and evaluate the claims that are given in an article or piece of information and how we can look at such a claim um and before devaluating uh the evidence given to us the next subskill the third one here is problem solving skills and decision making skills getting students

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to understand when a problem is being defined and being able to brainstorm potential Solutions consider pros and cons of each option and reflecting on the outcome very important life skills so we might have a problem such as this a litter problem presented in a listening article and getting students in groups in pairs to discuss the suggestions that were presented in the listening and then most importantly number three here coming up with their own ways of stopping people from throwing litter in the street so we have

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a clear problem potential Solutions and then give me your own Solutions structure which you can do to practically any problem that you choose to highlight in class here's another one we've got an article about food waste very often we all know what it's like we ask students a question and some students look at you and say don't know you say give me some ideas what are some solutions for this problem students say don't know I have no ideas what do you do then as teachers we learn to scaffold

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information so we should scaffold the development of critical thinking here if you look at number one getting to students to brain storm ideas and solutions from scratch can be really really difficult but instead if we give them some ideas to start with here you have some solutions and then students are to Mark the ideas from one to eight very easy to very difficult and then in exercise two they are then asked to work with a partner to add their own original ideas sometimes throwing students to

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into the deep end and getting them to brainstorm ideas from scratch can be useful sometimes when students are new to developing critical thinking there might be resistance so offering them some ideas to get them started to get them motivated and interested might be easier than throwing them into the deep end and expecting them to swim here we need to also understand the power of working together of collaborating as we know from vigotsky from long time ago the zone of proximal development zpd we are much more powerful when we

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collaborate we can come up and learn so much more when we work together so putting students in pairs in groups and getting them to analyze and evaluate together but it's also one thing about working together that gives us it allows us to be more open-minded it allows us to hear different points of views and different perspectives and then critically examine our own points of views our own assumptions our own biases always of course remembering to suspend judgment of the opinions of people we don't agree with until

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sufficient evidence is gathered critical thinking activities that we do in groups can help us to be flexible um in updating our beliefs based on new information and continuously evaluating our own thought process and our own thinking process absolutely Lesly students become more tolerant when they are used to working together so here's an example of working together and getting students to reflect right um You have a an article about virtual labs and you're getting students to really dive deep what are the

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advantages what are the disadvantages um what what can what kind of benefits can this result in what is your opinion about this but not just getting them to do it alone getting them to work with a partner so that different opinions can come together and allow more critical thinking to happen of course just thinking about facts alone can be useful but we can't talk about critical thinking without talking about emotions getting students to also reflect on their emotions what surprised you what interest what

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interests you about this what's your opinion and and what worries you about this getting students to really dive into those emotions because awareness of their emotions will help them avoid those emotional impulse thinking judgments and help them to really really think more critically and more in a more self-aware manner than if they had not considered their own emotions here we need to understand the power of facilitation as I said we teachers are so used to the concept of a teacher standing on a stage behind a lecton

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lecturing and being the Fountain of Knowledge we don't have to be the Fountain of Knowledge to teach critical thinking what we need to be able to do instead is to help students understand that their ability to think critically is within themselves and you as the teacher just have to guide them towards it we are facilitators of developing the skill we can't do it for them the same way that a driving instructor shouldn't be driving for the student to teach them to drive they should be guiding them we

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should be that guide towards them developing those critical thinking skills and finally the last sub skill I have for today is communication being able to clearly express our thoughts our emotions our complex ideas but also to be able to listen to information to take in information to ask clarification questions to truly comprehend different aspects different perspectives different angles of that information here we have an example of an activity that requires students to work in small groups to

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communicate by writing an opening statement in a debate getting students to work together to communicate ideas to the rest of the class is a good way of getting everyone involved communicating and of course practicing those essential language skills as they do so to do this we need to help students understand the power of diverse voices diverse voices exist in every classroom students have different opinions they disagree um perhaps based on personality different past experiences different backgrounds different

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communities they belong to and this can be so powerful having different voices help students to develop that tolerance of disagreeing that tolerance of understanding different perspectives but also the richness of the different perspectives can enable them to become more Innovative and more productive as a team so provide a safe space where students feel comfortable to offer their own opinions even though their opinions might be unique and different to the opinions of others in the class and give

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students that chance to consider different perspectives because when we can take the perspectives of others can we really think or help students to think critically active listening and understanding others isn't simply about understanding superficial surface meaning it is also being able to infer the speaker's opinion why did the speaker say this what evidence do they have for saying this what is their intention do they have a hidden agenda so helping students to infer and identify the message that

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the speaker wants us to go away with so so there you have it five different subskills that critical thinking consists of notice is a van diagram so there are overlaps that there are there are analytical skills needed when we are problem solving and making decisions uh we need to be reflective and open-minded when we are doing that research and considering the evidence as well as when we're communicating those that information and those thoughts with others in an interaction we need to communicate well in order to problem

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solve and make decisions together in a collaborative team these skills overlap with each other but they are all playing a huge part in thinking critically um and they're all part of developing those essential critical thinking skills for the language classroom so I leave you with this as Educators in order to to develop critical thinking skills in the classroom for the future of our students we need to understand the power of questions asking questions and getting students to be curious so that they can go and find

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those answers for themselves through inquiry based learning and allowing students to work together in pairs in groups to collaborate and find those answers together and evaluate and innovate together understanding the power of facilitating learning not doing it for them not being the Fountain of Knowledge but facilitating them and guiding them so that they find the answers for themselves and finally understanding the power of diversity and diverse voices having different opinions in the classroom can only help us to

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learn more and perhaps be more innovative