Real-world problems : engaging young learners in critical thinking

Critical thinking is a process that can be taught. It involves "evaluating the accuracy, credibility, and worth of information and lines of reasoning. Critical thinking is reflective, logical, evidence-based, and has a purposeful quality to it" that is, the learner thinks critically in order to achieve a particular goal". The highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy require critical thinking; it takes time to develop high level thinking as a natural and deliberative behaviour. The critical thinking skills necessary for decision-making are at the core of a healthy democracy and a civil and just world. We have found that young learners will engage in critical thinking and purposeful decision-making when they feel affectively involved or connected to a problem or decision point; cognitively challenged yet capable of working on the problem or decision; and operatively, or behaviourally, prepared and supported with thinking strategies or tools that will help them to organize their thinking.