How can you teach critical thinking and problem-solving skills?

Teaching critical thinking and problem-solving skills can be valuable in helping individuals navigate complex challenges and make informed decisions. It requires patience, continuous reinforcement, and providing students with opportunities to apply these skills in various contexts. Encourage questioning: Foster an environment that values curiosity and exploration. Encourage students to ask "why" and challenge assumptions. This helps develop their analytical skills and promotes a deeper understanding. Provide real-world examples: Use real-world scenarios to illustrate problem-solving and critical thinking processes. This allows students to apply their knowledge to practical situations and enhances their ability to think critically.

One of the most rewarding ways is to offer up a range of visual, written, & spoken resources to the participants and enable them to define the skills relevant to the subject, topic or project you are inviting them to work on. By being open to the learners having their own ideas based on their lived experience of the subject or topic a richer, more embedded relationship to their chosen skills will be developed. Tools like seeking out themes within material, watching videos and looking for key words that resonate and then shifting and sorting in order of importance are all useful step. Being willing to let the group decide their process also underpins the value of critical thinking, decision making & effective co-working.

Critical thinking and problem-solving are employability skills essential in the workplace. The definitions of these skills find the terms creativity and innovation included for one when they should be reflected in both. It is equally as important to think critically and creatively. Simple tasks can be given to individuals with equally simple instructions that engage one in critical and creative thinking. These tasks can then layer skills to increase difficulty. The process can be used in teaching or training of students in critical and creative, thinking. Problem-solving is used for targeted critical thinking, as solutions to problems, unfold. Using scenarios, with specific end goals, helps one think through cause and effect. Makes it real

Critical thinking skills are crucial for an individual's growth. From my perspective one enables critical thinking in a student when they are not spoonfed. The concept may be explained through storytelling. This gives the student space to think tangentially and laterally. This in turn gives rise to curiosity and critical thinking.

Simulations are a great exercise for active learning. I have found hands-on experiences such as demos great too. Interaction helps you understand the mind of the student and throws light on what they are grasping.

Agree with Gitika Chandra’s contribution. The simulation approach can be so crucial for many students. For many, the concept of critical thinking is very abstract and it’s not clear to them what’s involved in practice. Even if they might exercise their critical faculties all the time! It can be good practice to provide groups of students with a series of starter questions to interrogate a text, a case study or a talk - to start asking meaningful questions about it. This allows them to identify the “how” of critical thinking but also to self discover the “why” - they quickly discover flaws or biases in a text, sweeping assertions and assumptions which shouldn’t go unchallenged. This approach sticks!

The most impactful final “exam” I had was a two-week long crisis simulation. For my international security course, my classmates and I all assumed roles as various world leaders and their staff to manage a simulated crisis in East Asia. The simulation made us understand how world leaders think in crisis by putting us in their shoes. We got to see just how hard it was to remember theory and doctrine in the face of breaking news. Moral of the story? If you want students to understand something, make them act on it. Proper, dynamic experiential learning is how lessons stay remembered after the class ends.

Exploration and reflection on that exploration, our key in both critical thinking, and problem-solving. Instructional strategies that incorporate. Both of these key elements are necessary to engage students in this learning process.

La importancia de las preguntas abiertas en el diálogo con los estudiantes es fundamental para generar los espacios de crítica y pensamiento crítico y asertivo de frente a la problemática que se dialoga. Además, las preguntas descriptivas permiten que el estudiante exponga su sentipensar sin ser juzgado o se?alado, debido a que este tipo de preguntas permite la indagación sin prejuicio alguno.

Many people have not spent much time working on their critical thinking skills and the process can be intimidating. This is especially true for younger folks, and those who are used to education focusing on regurgitating the correct facts from rote memory. By providing appropriate scaffolding and feedback we empower individuals to practice their critical thinking in safe ways, and encourage them to take risks. For some students, providing an example or guidelines can help take a challenge from overwhelming to developmental.

El andamiaje en el aprendizaje del alumno permite que se acerque al resultado esperando sin dejar de lado su experiencia previa. Además, el aprendizaje requiere siempre de la retroalimentación para que este se acerque al aprendizaje esperado. Por ejemplo, en el aula de clase siempre es indispensable conocer el aprendizaje previo de los estudiantes con preguntas abiertas y llevándolo por medio del cuestionamiento al aprendizaje esperado, teniendo presente la retroalimentación que requiere para acercarse al resultado esperado.

A growth mindset should be included. While I was studying, many of my teachers had a fixed mindset. They looked down upon mistakes and failures. As an educator if we do that, we produce perfectionist robots. Progress over perfection always.

Making sure to comment on thought processes is key to encouraging students to focus on learning around critical thinking, and problem-solving. Again, the use of a simple task that has to be completed, and then, transitioning to a more difficult task, allows the learner to increase their skill as well as gain confidence in the ability to use those skills effectively.

El fomento de una mentalidad de crecimiento no solo depende del alumno, sino que en su gran mayoría el docente lo fomenta con la indagación, con los recursos e investigación de frente a la temática que se trabaja. Por otra parte, el fomento de una mentalidad de crecimiento no asegura el pensamiento crítico, pero sí ayuda a que el estudiante desarrolle competencias de lectura crítica, análisis de texto o discurso abierto, permitiendo así que en algún momento llegue al pensamiento crítico.

El fomento de una mentalidad de crecimiento no solo depende del alumno, sino que en su gran mayoría el docente lo fomenta con la indagación, con los recursos e investigación de frente a la temática que se trabaja. Por otra parte, el fomento de una mentalidad de crecimiento no asegura el pensamiento crítico, pero sí ayuda a que el estudiante desarrolle competencias de lectura crítica, análisis de texto o discurso abierto, permitiendo así que en algún momento llegue al pensamiento crítico.

Require students to think - to generate their own thoughts. This is much more important than the topic of thought. The other insights are important, but taking the time to generate thoughts and being rewarded for the process of doing so is imperative!

Creating an atmosphere where failure is accepted, normalized, and even embraced is also a key element of building critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Honestly, I believe failing upward fits into multiple categories in this topic including Growth Mindset, Open-ended Questions, and Hands-on Learning. It is imperative to first create a safe environment in which to "fail" as often as needed and one in which "failure" is normalized as part of the learning process. Building a safe space takes time. The trust needed to take risks in learning must be a solid foundation. Unfortunately our culture and education system has a long waybto go to normalizing "failure" as an important part of learning critical thinking and problem-solving.