Teach Middle East Magazine Sep - Dec 2020 Issue 1 Volume 8 | Page 39

Sharing Good Practice
YOUNG THINKERS OF THE FUTURE:
DEVELOPING CREATIVE AND CRITICAL THINKING FROM AN EARLY AGE
BY RUSSELL GRIGG
H
ow should schools prepare
students for the future?
According to a recent YouGov
poll of parents in United
Arab Emirates, the most important
skills schools can teach their children
are creative and innovative thinking.
Employers agree. In a fast-changing
economy, they want to keep ahead of
competitors and need employees who
can spot new opportunities and ‘paint
outside the lines.’
But what do we mean by creative and
critical thinking? Put simply, these are
complementary skillsets which help
people identify and solve problems
effectively - creative thinking does
this by adding value and novelty, while
critical thinking applies logic and
order. Creative thinkers ask: ‘What
if…?’ whereas critical thinkers ask
‘Why?’ and ‘So what?’
This might appear all too academic
for young children. But this is not so.
By creating a stimulating learning
environment, carefully scaffolding
learning and by adopting consistent
whole-school teaching strategies, the
foundations for creative and critical
thinking can be well set in the early
years. Here, children as young as
three and four are capable of posing
thoughtful questions, exploring ideas
and imagining new worlds. In my
recent book, Teaching Creative and
Critical Thinking (Grigg and Lewis,
Sage, 2019), We report upon how
teachers achieve this through the
use of thinking hats, visible thinking
routines, thinking maps, thinkers’
keys, Philosophy 4 Children, cognitive
acceleration and promoting habits of
mind such as persisting and striving
for accuracy. We illustrate these
approaches through real-life case
studies, in a range of contexts.
For example, in one school, early
years’ practitioners use puppets such
as ‘Connie Confidence’, ‘Gabby Get-a-
long’ and ‘Pete Persistence’ to model
the habits of mind that are essential
for life. Teachers use engaging
starting points such as a sports league
to challenge children’s thinking and
encourage discussion and debate,
while paintings and interesting objects
are used in other lessons, as the
stimulus for young children to see,
think and wonder about the world.
Creativity is not a special inborn gift
bestowed upon some children and
not others; neither is it confined to
the arts. These are damaging myths.
All children have the capacity to be
creative across a range of subjects. Of
course, thinking does not happen in
a vacuum. Children need something
to think about and this is why infusing
thinking skills across the curriculum,
rather than as stand-alone exercises,
is likely to bring most benefits.
Establishing inviting role-play areas,
such as a bakery, building site or market
stall, opens up lots of possibilities
for planning, explaining, comparing,
questioning, testing, sequencing,
inferring and analysing. In Teaching
on a Shoestring (Grigg and Lewis,
Crown House, 2018) we describe more
than a thousand practical ideas to
develop these kinds of skills through
using everyday objects such as apples,
cardboard boxes and feathers. There’s
no need for teachers to spend money
on expensive resources. The humble
cardboard box can be turned into
space ships, photo frames, paint
palettes, hats and even a drive-in
movie, to name a few creative uses.
The great Italian educator Maria
Montessori considered all children
were like ‘young explorers’ eager to
investigate their world and make ‘what
if’ discoveries. In our experience this is
often the case, and our role as teachers
is to develop stimulating, authentic
contexts for young children to talk
about and develop thinking skills
across the curriculum. The importance
of building ‘cities for creativity’ was
highlighted at the recent World
Government Summit in Dubai. The
foundations begin in the nursery.
Dr Russell Grigg is an Education Inspector at the UAE’s Ministry of Education’s
School Improvement Unit and author of many books and materials on teaching.
He provides courses on creative and critical thinking. You can follow him on
Twitter @russellgrigg
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