Planning the perfect lesson

There are 4 critical parts in planning:
1. The levels of performance of the students at the start (prior achievement).
2. The desired levels at the end of a series of lessons or at the end of the term, or at the end of the year (targeted learning).
3. The rate of progress from the start to the end of the series of lessons (progression).
4. Teacher collaboration and critique in planning.

a. Prior Achievement: The levels of students at the start
Any planning must begin with developing a deep understanding of what students already know and can do. In addition to learning what students know, you also need to learn how their students learn as well. Since you want all of your students to reach the same high level of thinking, this will require you to be particularly attentive during peer-to-peer discussions and will really require that you to listen as well as talk in order to learn about your students’ learning.
In addition to prior achievement, students also bring attributes and dispositions that affect their ability to learn. For example, these might include motivation to learn, strategies to learn, and confidence to learn. Teachers need to know which self-attributes students bring to the lesson so they can enhance these attributes and thereby increase the learning.

For example, one self-attribute is self-efficacy
– the confidence that we can make our learning happen. Those with high self-efficacy see challenging tasks as opportunities to learn something new and those with low self-efficacy may avoid difficult tasks and deny personal agency. Teachers need to know this information about students so they can enhance student confidence, help students to accept rather than reject feedback, and help them compare their work to academic goals not to other students’ work. Teachers can actively teach these dispositions. It particularly helps if teachers understand the attributes and dispositions their students bring to class.

b. Targeted Learning: The desired levels at the end
In planning, there are two parts to consider in thinking about the targeted learning – or where you want students to end up.
The first is being clear about what is to be learned – the learning intention or objective.
The second is having a way to know that the learning has been learned – the success criteria. These both must be visible for you and the students. You must be clear about the goals in order to keep the class on track toward the objective. Further, you need to know not when the students have completed the activities, but rather, when they have learned the concepts and understandings.


DEFINITION - Learning Intentions/Objectives
Effective planning involves deciding on appropriately challenging goals and then structuring learning situations so students can reach those goals. Having clear learning goals is vital if we want to develop a good assessment and provide accurate feedback to students about how to be successful. If we want students to achieve learning goals, we must start by communicating clear goals to students. We must help students develop a deep understanding of what they are supposed to learn, help them understand what success will look like, how tasks relate to the intention, and at the end of the lesson, how much closer they have come to achieving the success criteria.


DEFINITION - Success Criteria
Success criteria let students know when they have achieved the learning goal. Imagine if you were told to get in your car and you would be informed when you had successfully arrived at your destination. School feels like this for too many students. It’s not a surprise that they get turned off of learning. Furthermore, we can do more than sharing success criteria with students, we can involve them in making the success criteria. The idea is to get students engaged in and enjoying the challenge of learning that will keep them invested in and committed to school. Below are five components of learning that relate to the learning intentions and success criteria:
o challenge,
o commitment,
o confidence,
o high expectations, and
o conceptual understanding.


Challenge – Creating a challenge is one of the most essential roles of the teacher because this is the essence of how students learn. However, this is incredibly tricky. Challenge depends on what students already know, so you must know students’ prior levels of achievement and dispositions. Furthermore, challenge should not be too difficult. To take on a challenge, students need to know about 90 percent of what they are aiming to master in order to enjoy and make the most of the challenge. In reading it is even higher – students must know about 95 – 99 percent of the words on a page before they can enjoy it!

Commitment – Creating lessons in which students are committed to the learning often comes from creating lessons that are challenging. Two of the most powerful ingredients in planning are commitment and challenge. Peers are also a major source of commitment to school learning through pressure, modelling, and competition.

Confidence – Having the confidence that they can achieve the learning goals is a vital component of success. This confidence can come from four sources:
1. the student (from past success in learning),
2. the teacher (from quality teaching and feedback),
3. the tasks (from appropriate scaffolding),
4. or peers (from feedback).

High expectations – The influence that was highest in all of Visible Learning was self-reported grades. Students have reasonably accurate understandings of their levels of achievement. Across six meta-analyses (about 80,000 students), the effect was d = 1.44 or a correlation of about 0.80 between students’ estimates and their subsequent performance in school tasks.
What this suggests is that we should be providing students opportunities to predict their performance once they are given clear learning goals and success criteria.

Seeing learning through the eyes of students

I see learning through the eyes of my students

 

Mind Frames     I am an  evaluator/ activator   I am a change agent   I am a seeker of feedback   I use dialogue more than monologue   I enjoy challenge   I have high expectations for all   I welcome error   I am passionate about and promote the language of learning

A cooperative and Critical Planner   I use learning intentions and success criteria   I am for surface and deep outcomes   I consider prior achievement and attitudes   I set high expectation targets   I feed the gap in student learning

An Adaptive Learning Expert   I create trusting environments   I know the power of peers   I use multiple strategies   I know when and how to differentiate   I foster deliberate practice and concentration   I know I can develop confidence to succeed

A Receiver of Feedback   I know how to use the three feedback questions   I know how to use the three feedback levels   I give and receive feedback   I monitor and interpret my learning/teaching

 

I help students to become their own teachers

 

The Best Teachers

The best teachers…

o      Build relationships with students.

o      Know when a student is successful.

o      Have sufficient understanding of the student’s understanding.

o      Demonstrate a willingness to explain material and help students with their work.

o      Know enough about the content to provide meaningful and challenging experiences.

o      Passion reflects the thrills as well as the frustrations of learning.

o      It requires more than content knowledge, acts of skilled teaching or engaged students to make the difference—it requires a love of the discipline being taught.

o      Provide clear learning intentions

o      Provide challenging success criteria

o      Use a range of teaching strategies

o      Know when students are not progressing

o      Provide feedback

o      Visibly learn themselves.

 

 

In their everyday practices they ask:

Who did I teach well, who not so well?

What did I teach well, what not so well?

Where are the gaps/strengths or achieved/to be achieved?

 

 

Expert teachers don’t rely on what has been done before, but question, interrogate, challenge and seek improvement.

Some inspiration

Vygotsky - my hero!

Vygotsky's Social Development Theory points out the importance of communication to learning. Language used in social relationships is central to Vygotsky's ideas about intellectual development. Zone of Proximal Development, or "ZPD," is an important part of this theory. ZPD distinguishes between a person's ability to solve problems alone and a person's ability to solve problems with someone's help. This help is sometimes called scaffolding. Vygotsky viewed scaffolding as a social process. Through scaffolding, the learner externalizes higher cognitive functions with help from someone else. The learner then internalizes these functions. Learning environments influenced by Social Development Theory bring learners together in purposeful interactions with adults and knowledgeable peers. These environments shouldn't be about random communication. Rather, the adult or knowledgeable peer should have a clear idea about what the learner should achieve. Language should be used to help the learner accomplish the task.

Communication is also essential to Situated Learning. This theory is often attributed to Lave. Situated Learning Theory holds that learning can't be effectively accomplished in isolation. Rather, effective learning takes place through social interaction. This interaction must occur in environments where the learning is tied to the context of a situation. This type of learning is often structured as group problem solving, or "anchored instruction." Anchored instruction is a learning activity centered on an interesting problem, story, or situation. Activities influenced by Situated Learning feature relevant problems that students solve by working together in cooperative groups. The communication about the problem is instrumental to the students' learning. Some models of Situated Learning feature mentorships or apprenticeships. Knowledgeable others help less knowledgeable members of the group become full members of the group. These members in turn become mentors themselves.

Constructivist Theory reflects both Social Development Theory and Situated Learning Theory. Constructivist Theory is influenced by the work of John Dewey, Jerome Brunner, Piaget and others. This theory holds that children internalize learning through an ongoing process of connecting new information to existing ideas. Communication is a vital part of this process; children must test their understanding of new concepts by interacting with others. Constructivist learning situations may include Socratic dialogues, discussion groups, problem solving, group task performance and round table sharing sessions. Such activities should be designed to help students connect new information to what they already know.

Learning something for the first time can be very scary!

Finding the 'sweet spot' for learning

The zone of proximal development "is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." (Vygotsky, 1978) In other words, it is the range of abilities that a person can perform with assistance, but cannot yet perform independently.
Vygotsky believed that peer interaction was an essential part of the learning process. In order for children to learn new skills, he suggested pairing more competent students with less skilled ones. When a student is in this zone of proximal development, providing them with the appropriate assistance and tools, which he referred to as scaffolding, gives the student what they need to accomplish the new task or skill. Eventually, the scaffolding can be removed and the student will be able to complete the task independently. It is important to realize that the zone of proximal development is a moving target. As a student gains new skills and abilities, this zone moves progressively forward.
To apply the concept of the zone of proximal development, teachers instruct in small steps according to the tasks a child is already able to do independently. This strategy is referred to as scaffolding. The teacher should also support and assist the child until she can complete all of the steps independently.
Before teachers can begin guiding students through the steps necessary to learn a concept, they should get a grasp of how these tasks, referred to as scaffolds, are applicable to everyday life. The teacher then builds on these scaffolds to develop the child's zone of proximal development. To most effectively teach by using the zone of proximal development, teachers should stress the connections between the learner's prior knowledge of a task in everyday contexts with the new task or concept being learned. For example, let's say a teacher is instructing students about the water cycle. If a teacher has already taught a lesson on the concept of evaporation, the teacher should use this prior knowledge of evaporation when introducing information about condensation. The child will then be able to make connections between the different phases of the water cycle.
Connections between the task being learned and how it's applicable to the skills needed in everyday life might not become apparent immediately; in fact, they might take several lessons to develop. Through further reading and coursework, children continue to make associations between ideas and everyday experience. For example, a student might not immediately grasp how learning addition might apply to his or her everyday life. However, when asked to add the number of apples in one group to the number of oranges in another group, the student might then be able to make the connection between the theory of addition and counting everyday objects. In some cases, the teacher might not be the most effective person to convey a concept. Group work and collaborative projects with peers who have mastered a task or concept might prove effective as well.
Here's a look at the step-by-step process by which a teacher can apply the zone of proximal development:
o First, a teacher should identify what a student already knows. By identifying this prior knowledge, the teacher can build on that skill set when introducing new concepts.
o Next, the teacher can build on this knowledge through scaffolding; the scaffold will help students move from what they already know to what they should know by the end of class. When planning lessons, teachers should keep in mind the scaffolding process by integrating guided practice in their lesson plans.
o Last, teachers can help students connect their new learning to their prior knowledge. For example, if a math teacher has just taught children how to master dividing decimals, the teacher might then relate this concept back to multiplying decimals.
o All in all, through applying the concept of the zone of proximal development, the teacher identifies what a child already knows, teaches him or her something new to add to it, and then relates this back to his or her prior knowledge so that he or she can now understand the new concept with assistance.

 

 

 

The Lighter Side

The power of fathers in the lives of their daughters

I'm spending the morning waiting for my car in the repair shop. Four men in flannel (I missed the flannel memo) and I sit around smelling tyres and inhaling exhaust fumes while an enchanting little fairy is in constant motion around her daddy. She climbs on him, giggles, turns around, and then she's back to twirling on the tile.

She's bouncing and spinning around in her pink frilly skirt. Her black cable knit tights are sagging around her tiny knees, and her puffy coat makes her arms stand out further than is natural. To top off the ensemble is a shiny crystal tiara. It's been tacked down to her head with what appears to be about 60 haphazard bobby pins.

She's probably 4 years old. So little, so vulnerable. She doesn't seem concerned about it as she sings about teapots and ladybugs in her black Mary Janes. I feel myself tear up as I watch her. I tear up as I watch him watch her. She could not possibly know at 4 what impact this man, his character or his words will have on her for years to come. And, maybe he doesn't know either.

So, to all the daddies with little girls who aren't old enough yet to ask for what they need from you, here is what we wish you knew:

1. How you love me is how I will love myself.

2. Ask how I am feeling and listen to my answer, I need to know you value me before I can understand my true value.

3. I learn how I should be treated by how you treat my mom, whether you are married to her or not.

4. If you are angry with me, I feel it even if I don't understand it, so talk to me.

5. Every time you show grace to me or someone else, I learn to trust God a little more.

6. I need to experience your nurturing physical strength, so I learn to trust the physicality of men.

7. Please don't talk about sex like a teenage boy, or I think it's something dirty.

8. When your tone is gentle, I understand what you are saying much better.

9. How you talk about female bodies when you're "just joking" is what I believe about my own.

10. How you handle my heart, is how I will allow it to be handled by others.

11. If you encourage me to find what brings joy, I will always seek it.

12. If you teach me what safe feels like when I'm with you, I will know better how to guard myself from men who are not.

13. Teach me a love of art, science, and nature, and I will learn that intellect matters more than dress size.

14. Let me say exactly what I want even if it's wrong or silly, because I need to know having a strong voice is acceptable to you.

15. When I get older, if you seem afraid of my changing body, I will believe something is wrong with it.

16. If you understand contentment for yourself, so will I.

17. When I ask you to let go, please remain available; I will always come back and need you if you do.

18. If you demonstrate tenderness, I learn to embrace my own vulnerability rather than fear it.

19. When you let me help fix the car and paint the house, I will believe I can do anything a boy can do.

20. When you protect my femininity, I learn everything about me is worthy of protecting.

21. How you treat our dog when you think I'm not watching tells me more about you than does just about anything else.

22. Don't let money be everything, or I learn not to respect it or you.

23. Hug, hold, and kiss me in all the ways a daddy does that are right and good and pure. I need it so much to understand healthy touch.

24. Please don't lie, because I believe what you say.

25. Don't avoid hard conversations, because it makes me believe I'm not worth fighting for.

It's pretty simple, really. Little girls just love their daddies. They each think their daddy hung the moon. Once in a while when you look at your little gal twirling in her frilly skirt, remember she'll be grown one day. What do you want her to know about men, life, herself, love? What you do and say now matters for a lifetime. Daddies, never underestimate the impact of your words or deeds on your daughters, no matter their age.

By Tara Hedman

 

 

The major argument is that when teaching and learning is visible, there is a greater likelihood of students reaching higher levels of achievement. It involves an accomplished teacher who knows a range of learning strategies to build on the students’ surface, deep knowing and understanding, and conceptual understanding. The teacher needs to provide direction and re-direction in terms of the content being understood and thus maximise the power of feedback, and to have the skill to get out of the way when learning is progressing towards the success criteria. It also requires a commitment to seeking further challenges (for the teacher and for the student) –and herein lies a major link between challenge and feedback, two of the essential ingredients of learning. The greater the challenge, the higher the probability that one seeks and needs feedback, and the more important it is that there is a teacher to ensure that the learner is on the right path to successfully meet the challenge.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York, Routledge. (p.38) 10

What does all of Hattie's research mean?

 These are the ‘Big Five’ findings that follow from ‘Know thy Impact’:

• All interventions are likely to work: the question thus should be what is the magnitude of any intervention? Any intervention higher than the average effect (d = 0.40) is worth implementing.

• The power of moving from what students know now towards success criteria: the more students are aware, as they start a series of lessons, what success is expected to look like, then the more engaged they are in the challenge and they more they are likely to enhance their achievements.

• Errors are the essence of learning and they are to be welcomed as opportunities: we go to lessons because we ‘do not know’ and thus errors, mistakes and not knowing are the key to all subsequent learning. Errors should be seen as opportunities to learn but to admit error requires high levels of trust (between student and teacher, and between student and student).

• Feedback to teachers about their impact: the most powerful person in most classrooms who relates to enhanced achievement is the teacher – the more teachers are open and seek feedback about their impact (relating to how many students they affect, which aspects of the lessons are being learnt, struggled with, and so on, where to go next).

• The need for passion about, and to promote the language of learning: it requires a passion to see the impact of one’s teaching to maintain the energies, the mission and the attentions to student learning. It also requires a narrative about effort, learning, high expectations and avoiding a language of labels, ability and low expectations.

Hattie did not merely detail lists of the relative effects of the different influences on student learning. He also set out to identify the message underlying them. He found that the key to making a difference was making teaching and learning 'visible'. Hattie explained how visible teaching involves teachers deliberately intervening to ensure changes in their students' thinking. This requires teachers to be clear about the learning intentions, know when each student is successful in attaining those learning intentions, have knowledge of the students' understanding, and provide a progressive development of challenging experiences and opportunities for students to develop learning strategies based on surface and deep levels of learning. It also requires teachers to use feedback from students that reveals what they know and understand; to provide direction, but also step back when they see learners are progressing towards success criteria. 
What learners do is important too. When learning is visible, students are active; they are involved in determining success criteria, setting higher expectations, being open to different ways of acquiring knowledge and problem-solving.

Influences of learning according to Hattie's research

It is important to look at the research results in light of the barometer of influence:

You know it's making an impact from 0.4 to 1.2.
Many of our educational interventions have a low impact of 0.2 to 0.4.
Considering that inordinate amounts of money, resources and time are used to yield an effect size of 0.2, it would be better to simply allow a child to develop normally and the effect would be 0 to 0.2!
Even worse, what about the interventions that have a negative effect? From -0.2 to 0? They actually have a reverse effect on learning! Summer vacation, television and retention are the BIG losers.

With this in mind, consider some of the following findings:

Hattie's Research - What is a "meta analysis"?

 It is a method that uses statistical techniques to combine results from different studies and obtain a quantitative estimate of the overall effect of a particular intervention or variable on a defined outcome—i.e., it is a statistical process for pooling data from many studies to glean a clear answer. Meta-analysis produces a stronger conclusion than can be provided by any individual study.

The process of meta-analysis is as follows:

1. Identify an outcome
2. Identify an influence
3. Research to find studies that include the outcome and the influence
4. Determine effect sizes
5. Establish comparisons

To illustrate this, the "homework" example can be used:
Outcome = student achievement
Influence = homework
Research = 59 studies from past 20 years
Effect = (d=0.40 overall, d=0.5 for secondary and d=-0.08 for primary)
Conclusion - Secondary students are better able to self-regulate and monitor their work and time.

Hattie's Research Design

Hattie set out to find out about the impact of different factors on student learning. He looked at the evidence from over 800 meta-analyses which encompassed 52,637 studies. These recorded the impact of different factors from the home, student, teacher, teacher strategies, curriculum and school as effect sizes. He found the average effect size for each contribution (resulting in 146,142 effect sizes) and ranked these according to their impact. He estimated that his study included approximately 236 million students. Hattie developed a scale (or barometer) to help interpret the effect sizes and compare the different contributions. He argued that it is important to determine what works best rather than what works. His barometer included negative effects (-0.20-0.00), developmental effects (0.00-0.15), typical teacher effects (0.15-0.40) and a zone of desired effects (0.40+). Hattie found that in a typical year the average teacher would have an effect size of between 0.15 and 0.40. He therefore argued that it was important to look for innovations with effect sizes greater than 0.40 which he termed the hinge point. Interventions above the 0.40 hinge mark would have an impact that was greater than that of an average teacher.

Visible Learning and John Hattie

The notion of ‘visible learning’ was introduced by Professor John Hattie in his book, Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. He is the world’s leading educational researcher in the meta-analysis of teacher and school effectiveness. His book is a culmination of 15 years of research incorporating more than 50,000 studies and over 800 meta-analyses involving millions of students and represents the largest collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning.

The overall message in this book is the importance of "visible teaching" and "visible learning". Hattie suggests that visible teaching and learning occurs when learning is the explicit goal: when there is feedback given and sought and when there are active, passionate, and engaging people, including teachers, students, and peers participating in the act of learning.

Hattie points out that the main feature of the research evidence is that the "biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers". This allows students to show self-regulatory attributes that are most desirable for learners, such as self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-assessment, and self-teaching.

The research evidence supports another important message: "what teachers do matters", particularly those who teach in the most deliberate and visible way. These teachers intervene in calculated and meaningful ways to alter the direction of learning in order to attain the desired goals. They also provide students with a range of learning strategies, including direction and re-direction and maximising the power of feedback from the student. Hattie suggests that teachers need to deliberately intervene to enhance teaching and learning, particularly when the content is not understood.

Hattie argues that successful classrooms have visible teaching and learning, where there is great passion displayed by the teacher and learner, and where there is a variety and depth of skill and knowledge by both teacher and student. Teachers must know when learning is correct or incorrect; learn when to experiment; learn to monitor, seek and give feedback; and know how to try alternative learning strategies.

A passage from "Petals of Blood: by Ngugi Wa-Thiong'o

Munira is Headmaster of the new primary school in the African village of Ilmorog. 

Munira took the children out into the field to study nature, as he put it. He picked flowers and taught them the names of the various parts; the stigma, the pistil, pollen, the petals. He told them a little about fertilisation. One child cried out:

"Look, a flower with petals of blood."

It was a solitary red beanflower in a field dominated by white, blue and violet flowers. No matter how you looked at it, it gave you the impression of a flow of blood. Munira bent over it and with a trembling hand plucked it. It had probably been the light playing on it, for now it was just a red flower.

"There is no colour called blood. What you mean is that it is red. You see? You must learn the names of the seven colours of the rainbow. Flowers are of different kinds. different colours. Now I want each one of you to pick a flower . . . count the number of petals and pistils and show me its pollen. . ."

He stood looking at the flower he had plucked and then threw the lifeless petals away.

Yet another boy cried:

" I have found another. Petals of blood – I mean red . . . It has no stigma or pistils . . . nothing inside."

He went to Munira and the others surrounded him:

"No, you are wrong," Munira said, taking the flower. "This colour is not even red . . . it does not have the fullness of colour of the other one. This one is yellowish red. Now you say it has nothing inside. Look at the stem from which you got it. You see anything?"

"Yes," cried the boys. "There is a worm - a green worm with seven hands or legs."

"Right. This is a worm-eaten flower . . . it cannot bear fruit. That’s why we must always kill worms."

He was pleased with himself. But then the children started asking him awkward questions. Why did things eat each other? Why can’t the eaten eat back? Why did God allow this and that to happen? But he had never bothered with those kinds of questions and to silence them he told them it was simply a law of nature.

What was a law?

What was nature?

Was he a man?

Was he a God?

A law was simply a law and nature was nature.

What about men and God?

Children, he told them, it’s time for a break.

Man – law – God – nature: he had never thought deeply about these things, and he swore he would never again take the children to the fields. Enclosed in the four walls he was the master, aloof, dispensing knowledge to a concentration of faces looking up at him. There he could avoid being drawn in.

Authentic presence

Throughout my career in education I have been fascinated by what makes some families happy, healthy and well-functioning, while others are wrought with discord and disharmony. The same applies for any community, including schools. Some schools are happy places (and I am blessed to be part of one!) whereas others seem somewhat devoid of soul in their endless pursuit of results above everything. What is it that separates a disjointed community (including families) from a harmonious one? I am mindful that the answer to this question is multi-layered, however I am certain that true community cannot be achieved if one vital ingredient is missing authentic, presence. I say authentic presence because it implies so much more than simply being physically present. It is in fact multidimensional and enhances the purpose, quality and depth of the relationships you have with others, especially with your child/children.
Eckhart Tolle describes presence as “a still and alert attention, a type of consciousness which causes you to awaken to yourself and to the other in your relationships.” In this sense, presence means more than simply ‘being there’ but implies a sacred stillness in which by sharing your presence with others, and others sharing their presence with you, you free yourself from your own ego and desires and give the opportunity for authentic relationships to develop. Parents face a difficult challenge in the busy 21st century with all its stress and demands. Yet, in these busy times, how often do you show authentic presence to your child? Now remember, when I talk of authentic presence I’m not asking how often you are with your child. You can be watching a movie, sitting in the lounge together or eating dinner and not be authentically present in the least. So, the question is, when last did you bring your ‘whole’ self to interact with your child; where you listened, took a deep interest and where the
rest of the world did not matter in that moment of time because all that mattered was your child? Sadly, in most schools we have many children who I could at best describe as ‘social orphans’ – they are fed and clothed, and given all they need to lead a supposedly normal existence, yet their parents are completely absent to their emotional and spiritual needs. Children yearn for acknowledgement, recognition and affirmation, and this MUST come from the home, first and foremost. A line from the film, ‘Shall We Dance’ sums this up:
           "Everybody needs someone to witness their lives."

What is a critical thinker?... a possible definition

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the art of analysing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it.

It is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored and self-corrective thinking. As varied as conceptions around ‘critical thinking’ may be, ‘creative thinking’ is also used judiciously, yet not necessarily with a common understanding or definition. It is perhaps as a result of meaning ascribed by society to the concepts of creativity and criticality that the relationship between the two is commonly misunderstood. Where creativity is associated with imagination, spontaneity and emotion, criticality is associated with scepticism, negativity and caution. In other instances, particularly in school contexts, creative and critical thinking are regarded as one and the same; a totally indistinguishable whole. However, when examined closer it is fair to say that criticality and creativity are both achievements and outcomes of thought.

Where creativity masters a process of making or producing, criticality is a process of assessing or judging. High-quality thought involves the mind’s ability to simultaneously produce and assess. One analyses to assess; one assesses to improve. Quite simply, sound thinking requires both imagination and intellectual standards. Rather than being polar opposite, there is indeed an interdependence that exists between criticality and creativity. Looked at in another way, critical thinking is the art of thinking about thinking in such a way as to firstly identify its strengths and weaknesses and then to recast it in improved form if necessary. The first characteristic requires the thinker to be skilled in analytic and evaluative thinking. The second requires the thinker to be skilled in creative thinking. Thus, critical thinking has three dimensions: the analytic, the evaluative and the creative.

One of the greatest challenges teachers face is developing purposeful thinking of students. Purposeful thinking requires both critical and creative thinking, because the student is able to successfully design, create or produce results, but in achieving this challenging end, she also has criteria which are applied in order to determine to what extent that ‘end’ is being achieved. A student’s ability to assess her thinking in a discerning, exacting, discriminating and judicious manner gives her a sense of whether her thinking is sufficiently clear, precise, accurate, consistent, relevant, deep or broad for its specific purposes and aims. When a teacher is able to inspire a student to take on a challenging task, the teacher provides the catalyst for intellectual work and subsequently the creation of intellectual products. When this happens, creativity and criticality are interwoven. It becomes clear that developing critical and creative thinking in students requires the very same of teachers. Furthermore, critical and creative thinking are not the simple by-product of teaching and learning, but must be actively pursued through the judicious application of intellectual standards.