Digital Thinking Pedagogy

In this short series of posts, I want to explore what dialogic pedagogy is, why it might be valuable and how a classroom teacher or school might get started with it. I link: https://criticalthinking.org.au/incorporating-critical-thinking-into-stem-education/

The last thing teachers usually worry about is pedagogy: wondering how to navigate the learning environment, which includes engaging with what and how students are thinking.

There are several strategies for gamifying your classwork, and they’re not mutually exclusive—you can combine them.

In this post we turn our attention to the role of the students in creating an environment in which Thinking Together becomes possible and can flourish, allowing them to make meaning of what they have been taught.

A game-based learning expert looks at why teachers should try using games, and shares a new book—available for free—that will help them identify worthwhile games for their students.

The broad term ‘dialogic pedagogy’ encompasses diverse approaches to its enactment in the classroom. My own classroom approach, outlined in this and subsequent posts, is in reality a synthesis of those listed above. I refer to it as Thinking Together.

In the previous post I suggested that Eduardo Mortimer and Philip Scott’s categorisation of classroom talk offers a useful tool for teachers as they reflect on the different ‘communicative approaches’ they use. In this post I will retain the focus on teacher talk and offer some suggestions as to how the transition from authoritative to dialogic interaction could be made.

As essential as STEM in eduction might be, it is far from sufficient. Today's student's need to develop much more from their education than the ability to pipette peroxide, code software, build machines and solve equations. They also need to think critically about what they are doing and why.

Educators can take advantage of digital tools that students want to use to enhance social and emotional learning efforts.

There is no 'one right way' to teach critical and creative thinking in the classroom but rather, there are a rich diversity of effective pedagogies. So it might be useful to explore what a critical thinking activity in the class room actually looks like. Here's an example from a Brisbane school.

To understand why argumentation is so essential to critical thinking, we need to consider why we value critical thinking in the first place. A key objective in the application of critical thinking is to help ensure that our beliefs are warranted or justified. In other words, to ensure that our beliefs match reality or, in the absence of any way to confirm what the truth is, to stand confidently based on the quality of our reasoning.

Collaboration is critical in developing thinking for the reason that learning to think well is a bit like learning to speak a language. Just like learning a language, you cannot learn to think well in isolation. You must do it with others to learn how to do it well. Reasoning is far better understood, in fact, as a social competence rather than an individual faculty.

Argument mapping is a great way to make your student's thinking visible. In this blog post, I explore what argument mapping it and how you can use it online to improve critical thinking.