Ask the Cognitive Scientist: How Can Educators Teach Critical Thinking?

In this column for American Educator, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham defines critical thinking and provides strategies for fostering thinking in the everyday classroom. Willingham defines critical thinking in three ways stating it must be: novel, self-directed and effective and that it is the third attribute that makes it difficult as what constitutes effective thinking varies…

How to Teach Critical Thinking

In this Occasional Paper Series from Education Future Frontier, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham takes a deep dive into the science behind teaching critical thinking and offers strategies such as understanding the domain knowledge required for understanding, creating conditions for transferable skills, and understanding the structure of the problem, to help students gain and use critical…

Comparing Real Families to TV Families

In this lesson, students delve into how media constructs reality through the lens of TV families, paralleling them with their real-life counterparts—personal and peer families. The session commences with a survey of students’ beloved family-oriented TV shows and their allures. Organized in groups, students opt for a family-centered show to monitor and assess. Post presentations,…

Break the Fake: What’s real online?

This tailored instructional content guides educators in facilitating a lesson where students confront the challenges of discerning genuine from false online information. Through structured steps, students learn to verify online content and then creatively synthesize their understanding by designing a poster that underscores the importance of critically evaluating digital information. The lesson’s outcomes encompass acquiring…

Girls and Boys on Television

This tailored instructional content guides educators in facilitating a lesson where students discuss children’s television programming and its portrayal of gender roles. Through discussions, students identify unfavourable aspects in these portrayals and craft their TV characters that challenge these negative representations. The lesson draws from research by Maya Götz from the International Central Institute for…