About This Event
This webinar is a part of the RIPE (Research Informed Practice in Education) Webinar series that explores the interconnectedness of educational theory, research, and practice.
Creativity and Critical Thinking are two micro-competences that fall under the macro competence of lifelong learning. UNESCO's IBE considers them essential skills for 21st-century learning (Marope, Griffin, & Gallagher, 2019). They are also at the core of our Universal Learning Programme (Hughes, 2020) at the International School of Geneva.
Although our Primary school has been using P4C to teach critical thinking skills to our young learners for many years, its place in our success criteria is limited. Even if we give great attention to the importance of Creative Thinking when writing our Transdisciplinary Units of Inquiry, creativity is seldom considered a learning outcome. Creative and Critical Thinking appear in every domain of learning in the school, yet they are usually undermined when it comes to specific goals or outcomes for learning. Our curriculum and reports still give the impression that our school only values factual knowledge and scaffolded learning outcomes that lead toward middle school baseline requirements.
In this webinar, Patrick will share his views on the concepts of Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking, analyze how they can take their legitimate place in the primary curriculum and learning standards, and how we could assess them at the same level as traditional strands and standards. You will also get the opportunity to look at how these thinking skills can encourage deep vs. surface learning strategies (Ritchhart, 2015, p. 50), how they can complement rather than oppose each other, and how the assessment of creativity and critical thinking can make these concepts real rather than rhetorical(Carlile & Jordan, 2012, p. 122).
About the Speakers
Dr Ahmed Hussain
Chief Education Officer, AISL
Dr Ahmed Hussain is the Chief Education Officer with AISL. This position involves leading on educational strategy and operations across the Harrow group of schools in Asia. He is also an Associate Professor at the School of Education at Durham University, a member of the editorial board of Research Journal: International Education Theory and Practice, a member of the expert panel for Pudong Education Bureau, Shanghai, and a Fellow of the Charter College for Teaching, UK.
Patrick Jefford
Patrick Jefford was a passionate primary classroom teacher in Canada and Switzerland for over twenty years and has been Vice-Principal and Curriculum Coordinator at Ecolint in Geneva for the last five. Patrick taught children from very diverse backgrounds, including young Inuit children from the Northern regions of Canada, where he discovered the intrinsic importance of adapting teaching to the learner's needs. He strongly believes in the values of alternative pedagogies and active learning strategies that he continues to promote and implement in his school through the Universal Learning Programme (ULP). His reflections on critical and creative thinking we're part of a 2021 Master's essay at Durham University.
