Megan Pantelides, Senior Director at Board Intelligence, and philosophy teacher Jack Robertson discuss the value of critical thinking, the role of education in developing our thinking skills, and whether dialogic teaching could make a difference.
Below is a transcript of the video.
Megan: Today I’m at Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet to discuss critical thinking with Jack Robertson.
Critical thinking is a cornerstone of collective intelligence. It’s a capability that organisations need to develop at every level if they’re to move fast and smart. But what is critical thinking? Is it a skill and can it be taught? And if so, where, when, how, by whom?
I can’t think of a better person to discuss those questions with than Jack. He is the head of Philosophy, Religion and Society at the school and he’s also an advisor to the FT for Schools programme.
Jack, to start with, I’d love to go back to first principles and ask you what critical thinking means to you. And what does it look and feel like when you see someone doing it?
Jack: Critical thinking in its simplest form would be thinking for oneself. More specifically, it’s using a range of different reasoning skills to form a justified judgment about a claim or a piece of information.
Often, when I’m speaking to students about how to approach a bit of reading, if I’m trying to encourage them to think critically about it, I’ll ask them to think about three different things as they’re going through it. They’re conveniently named the “3 A’s”.
The first is to attend to the information. This might seem like an obvious one, but often we’re not really paying attention to what we’re reading or listening to.
Second is to apply a range of reasoning skills — evaluation, analysis, and so on.
Finally, I ask them to ask questions. When someone’s thinking critically, a key part of that is asking questions all the way through. About the information itself (What’s the evidence for it? Is it reliable?) and about oneself as well. You make an evaluation, but then you take a step back. Is that accurate? What does that lead to?
So, attending, applying, and asking questions. That’s a key part of what critical thinking would look like.
Megan: And why does it matter? I assume it’s a very important part of philosophy as a subject — something that philosophers have long talked about and tried to equip their students with. But in a bigger picture sense, why does it matter? And why does it matter to you personally?
Jack: Good critical thinking is essential for wider society and for individuals in society.
Thinking about the students I teach; they’ll be very soon going off and being able to vote. And a key part of the democratic process is having voters and citizens who can think for themselves. Otherwise, they might fall prey to demagogues and propaganda.
So, there’s that side of it. Also, with any decision-making process, if you’re going to make a good decision, you need to think critically about whatever it is that you’re making that decision about.
Megan: A big part of what education is about is about equipping people to be good citizens of the world, but it’s also about equipping them to be economically productive. I wonder, with the emergence of AI, what you think that means in terms of the sorts of skill sets that students need to go out into the world with. They’re going into a world that’s very different from the world we entered into at the age of eighteen. What impact do you think AI is having on the type of student, the skill set that they have, that goes out into the world after leaving school?
Jack: Well, it’s a big, big question, isn’t it? And who knows? I certainly don’t know where the trends lie in terms of what AI might or might not be able to do. But, at the moment, we’re looking at generative AI, and it seems to me there’s skills that it might not be able to quite do. Perhaps some of those decision-making skills. Do we really want to give the biggest decisions to AI? Those high-level skills and those important decisions that are made? I think perhaps that will still be the reserve of human beings and some of the more low-level skills might get outsourced to AI.
And where does that leave education? I suppose it is focusing more on things like critical thinking, on decision making.
Megan: I wonder how much the students that you teach are asking these sorts of questions as well. Critical thinking is one of those things that you don’t necessarily know you’re doing when you’re doing it. Ultimately, you want it to be a habit, something people just do. But I wonder whether the demand for critical thinking as a skill is coming from the students? And thinking about the impact of AI and what that means for the types of jobs they might do in the future, how much that’s coming up in the classroom?
Jack: They understandably show a bit of concern about where that might leave them in the future. Partly, I guess, it’s the unknown nature of where everything’s heading. It’s naturally going to cause a bit of concern, isn’t it?
They do enjoy and want to engage in critical thinking. And if you do think of it as thinking for yourself, well, everyone wants to do that, don’t they? And they do really enjoy doing philosophy. Part of the thing that they enjoy is that opportunity to bring their own thinking and their own reasoning to bear on whatever it is we’re studying. And they’re sharing their views. They’re forming their own views, and that’s a core part of doing philosophy in the classroom.
Megan: You mentioned earlier that there’s a framework, the “3 A’s”, around critical thinking. So, is critical thinking a skill, and can it be taught?
Jack: Certainly, I do think it’s a skill that can be taught. Thinking about Aristotle, let’s say, he talks about phronesis, which is practical wisdom, of which critical thinking is a huge part. And that’s a skill that can be taught.
His approach is that various virtues, the characteristics that we have, are skills that that you develop through habituation, through education.
Think about a young person, for example. At first, they might follow some rules — rules like the “3 A’s”, which is a nice algorithm for them. But through practice, they develop the skill, they develop the habit.
You only really possess a skill if you can do it, perhaps not unconsciously, but when it’s a disposition, you just do things as a habit. You start doing it without realising it.
Megan: How does your view on critical thinking align or not with the education sector as a whole and its view on critical thinking as a skill that can or cannot be taught within schools?
Jack: Critical thinking is taught within lots of different subjects, especially at A Level. If you want to very well at an A Level, whether it be philosophy or other humanities subjects like English or history, and I believe biology to an extent as well, the exams require more essay or long-form writing, and you do have to form judgments. You have to think critically in order to access the top-level marks.
So, there is a recognition that students need to think critically, but it’s not necessarily explicit enough.
Megan: What do you make of the view that to equip someone with the ability to think critically, they first need a kind of foundational level of knowledge? Because that’s one of the things I have heard from educators that I’ve spoken to — that it’s all very well asking the right questions, but if you don’t understand the subject matter well enough, how can you interpret the answers and then know what questions to ask next?
Jack: There’s a bit of a dichotomy that’s emerged about knowledge versus skills.
If you go back thousands of years people talk about prudence, which was one of the cardinal virtues. And prudence was sometimes shown as having three faces, one was looking backwards and one looking forwards, which represents the past, the present, and the future.
The idea is that, to be prudent, you need to have good reasoning skills, to be wise. But you also need to have knowledge — of the past, your experiences and your memories, and of the present. But you also need to have foresight, to be able to make predictions about the future and recognise how decisions you might make now will impact the future.
So, I think in that sense, of course you need to have knowledge, and you need to have experiences, and you need to have a working memory. But you also need the skills as well. Both are needed.
Megan: Yes, it’s perhaps a little bit too simplistic, isn’t it to think about it as one or one or the other? Ideally, we’re giving people the ammunition they need to make sensible decisions prudently.
Jack: I think that’s right, and also because there was a bit of a movement in education, which was very much skills-based: “let’s not worry too much about loading students with knowledge; instead, let’s focus on developing the skills”. There’s been a bit of a pendulum swing in that sense. And that’s why people are sort of saying we now need to focus on knowledge because maybe it went a bit too far the other way.
But I won’t wade into wade into that debate too much.
Megan: I’m sure it’s a debate that will rage for a long time! I suppose it’s also buffeted by political winds as well. There’s been a change of government, there might be a change of mood music around this stuff as well, which is something we’ll keep an eye on.
Now I know you’ve been pioneering some different techniques and methods here at the school. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you’ve been doing?
Jack: Yes, so we’ve been working on dialogic teaching, over the last couple of years. It’s been a school-wide project.
Dialogic teaching is the idea that through dialogue, whether that be teacher to student dialogue or student to student dialogue, understanding is deepened and strengthened. So, it could be philosophy, it could be history, it could be physics or maths.
There are various components to it. One being making sure you’ve got the conditions in the classroom where it’s possible. A respectful, collaborative atmosphere in the classroom is important.
But it’s also through questioning, perhaps teacher-led questioning as well. There’s a view that often when teachers ask questions of students it takes a particular form which is sometimes called the IRF or IRE: the teacher “initiates” by asking a question, the student “responds”, and then the teacher gives some “feedback” or “evaluates” it.
What dialogic teaching is trying to do is point out that there’s many times when students would benefit from a more extended dialogue.
So, for example, if I were to ask a question of a student and they give a response, rather than just saying “OK, great” you’re asking, “What evidence do you have for this?”, “Why do you think that?”, “What makes you say that?” If it’s them giving more of a view or something, I might say, “What are the limitations to what you’ve just said?”, “What’s the biggest counterpoint?”, “What are the biggest objections someone might raise?”
It could be through me challenging them and saying, “hang on a minute, have you thought about this?” and then not just moving on, but asking them to think about it. And, asking other students to think about it as well in the classroom and perhaps bringing them in.
Modeling how dialogue and discussion should be and perhaps even modeling how disagreement can take place and how it needn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
No one likes to be disagreed with, but it’s an incredibly important thing that needs to happen for understanding to develop.
Megan: I can see that there are plenty of potential applications for this within the business context as well. And I and I see the potential for some of the same challenges. Do you think there is an application for this in that sort of context? And how do you think that might actually impact what you get at the other end of that conversation?
Jack: Asking questions is a skill and one that people need to develop and then can get better at. I think within a boardroom or within a business, better decisions will be made in the end, if better questions have been asked in the first place.
By having a bit of an understanding of the repertoire of different questions that can be asked, people will benefit in the long run,
Plus, going back to the classroom example, I would expect in a boardroom, or any other kind of meeting, it’s better where there’s an atmosphere that it’s OK to challenge what I’ve said, and you’re challenging it not because you are challenging me as a human being, but because you want to test it, to ensure that what we’re doing here is the best thing to be doing, In fact, I think that that’s a good way of looking at it and I sometimes speak to students about this. When we’re challenging, we’re testing. And we’re testing because we want to ensure that what we’re saying passes the test. To prove something is to test it and see if it passes.
Megan: What was the impetus for this within the school? And are other schools doing this as well? And how much of an outlier or a trendsetter is this school?
Jack: The motivation was we wanted to focus on speaking and listening just something to keep improving upon as a school. And dialogic teaching seemed a particularly specific, evidence-based way of approaching improving student speaking and learning. Partly because of course it brings in all these different things we’re talking about — our critical thinking and so on.
Robin Alexander, the academic, wrote a couple of books on it. He also speaks about or writes about the fact that we live in a democracy, and we need to be able to consider different views and disagree. And by teaching students how to engage in dialogue, the idea is we’re teaching them how to not just do it in the classroom but do it outside as well. And so hopefully helping them to become better citizens.
Megan: If you could wave a magic wand, what would you ask for? I suppose particularly from government and business, what would make it easier for you as a teacher, as a subject head, as someone who’s influencing the lives of lots of young people, to equip them with this skill?
Jack: Critical thinking does work its way into schools in all kinds of different ways, but it’s not explicitly on the curriculum in many places, and it would be nice to see it even more explicitly there.
I would say this but perhaps making philosophy a core subject all the way through from year seven. We do this here and I know a lot of schools do work in some philosophy, but it would be good to see a nationwide curriculum for the subject just like history and English and various STEM subjects. I’d quite like to see philosophy as a proper subject, as they do in France, for example, and a GCSE in it as well.
Now philosophy is not the only place you have to think critically, but as I’ve mentioned, it does lend itself quite well to teaching critical thinking skills. I think that would go some way to teaching critical thinking better in schools.
Megan: So “a philosophy everywhere in the curriculum” campaign then?
Jack: Yes, which works very much in my interest, of course! But there we go. It’s my magic wand.
Megan: Well, I suppose you’ve seen the impact it can have on the way children think and how they process information and reason, as you say. You’ve seen it work. So, why not?
Jack: Well, exactly. I’ve seen the positive effect it can have, and it just makes sense to me.
Megan: Asking as a parent; my children are younger than the ones you teach, but what can parents do at home with their children to foster this skill set or this appetite to engage with questions and dialogue?
Jack: Well, I think one thing would be by demonstrating it yourself. That’s often how young people learn, by observing. By thinking critically yourself and speaking to children about the value of thinking critically: that, to succeed in life, in any kind of sector, business or education, you need to be thinking critically. So, help them foster that skill and cultivate that attitude by creating the conditions in which they can do so.