Do universities teach students to think critically?
OECD researchers offer evidence that students aren’t getting ‘generic skills’ needed for world of work – with potentially big implications
September 6, 2022
Tom Williams
Twitter: @TWilliamsTHE
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Source: istock
Professional services giant PwC’s recent announcement that new recruits will no longer require at least a 2:1 degree was seen by many as the latest sign that some of the world’s largest employers are losing faith that a good university qualification guarantees a candidate of a certain quality.
The firm is by no means the first to look for new ways of determining the talent and potential of recent graduates as employers become increasingly vocal about the supposed failures of even the top universities to ensure that those entering the workforce have obtained the status of being “job-ready”.
In response, governments and policymakers around the world have emphasised the need for more practical, vocational degree courses that are closely tied to real-world experiences. But a new publication from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) argues that it is in the teaching of more generic critical thinking skills where universities can make the most difference.
he Design Initiatives team collaborates with partner school districts and community organizations, as well as with Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College students, faculty and staff, to develop innovative solutions to the “wicked” problems in education. To
achieve this, we use an intentional, collaborative, open-ended design process that values local context, diverse perspectives, intrapreneurial thinking and iterative testing of solutions.
“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” — Herbert Simon
Inserida no Vale do Silício, na Califórnia, a escola Design Tech usa a metodologia Design Thinking, focada em solucionar problemas com criatividade, desenvol...
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas...
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas...
If there is a makerspace in your school, it may be down the hall, in the library, or in another building. If there is someone other than the teacher managing the makerspace or there is a schedule for the school, your kids may only be able to use it once a week or month. Some makerspace activities may be focusing on how to use the resources available and may not be connecting the activities to the curriculum or around a real world problem. If this is how the makerspace is set up in your school, then your kids may not have access to the resources, materials, and tools when they need them, especially for STEM or STEAM
Als Menschen vor wenigen tausend Jahren erstmals Schriftzeichen in den Lehm drückten, setzten sie eine Revolution in Gang. Nicht bloß kulturell, sondern ...
ISTE and the Computer Science Teachers Association collaborated on a series of resources designed to help prepare young learners to become computational thinkers who understand how today's digital tools can help solve tomorrow's problems.
The goal is to use computational thinking to forge ideas that are at least as "explicative" as the Euclid-like constructions (and hopefully more so) but more accessible and more powerful. In the next section I illustrate the idea by using Turtle geometry to give the theorem about angles subtended by a chord greater perspicuity, a more intuitive proof and new connections to other ideas.
S. Medić, T. Mihalić, M. Hrženjak, and J. Groš. Zbornik radova: 19. hrvatska konferencija o kvaliteti i 10. znanstveni skup Hrvatskog društva za kvalitetu, (2019)
H. Butler, C. Dwyer, M. Hogan, A. Franco, S. Rivas, C. Saiz, and L. Almeida. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 7 (2):
112-121(2012)New Perspectives on Developing and Assessing Thinking: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Thinking.
