Education has come a long way since the time people started getting introduced to formal education system. Many learning theories came into being about how a child should be taught. However, all the proposed theories broadly fall under three main categories: Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism.
Behaviorism deals with the perspective that child’s brain is like an empty slate and has to be fed with required knowledge. Cognitivism believes that child learns by processing information that they receive through experiences.
Constructivism believes that we construct new ideas based on our prior knowledge that we have gathered through our experiences.
The teaching-learning pedagogy has undergone a revolution from teacher-centered to student-centered and more focus is being laid on the differentiated teaching-learning strategies keeping in view all different ways a child can learn by considering Multiple Intelligences to develop 21st Century Learner Skills among the students to make them critical thinkers.
As is very well said by, Albert Einstein:
“Education is not the learning of facts but the training of the mind to think”. Hence, our focus now is to train our students mind to think and that too think critically. Why is critical thinking very important? Is it only beneficial in educational settings? Let’s answer these questions.
Learning is a never-ending process and an individual learn as he or she goes through a series of events and experiences throughout his or her life. But the learning process has to be streamlined in a way that we can process information logically, the learning that happens naturally is made use of constructively to reach our aim and goal instead of just getting lost in our own made assumptions and taboos.
Critical thinking help you analyze and evaluate any situation to reach at a logical conclusion. Critical thinking involves a process. It involves brainstorming, evidence-based learning, application of the learned concepts, skill development and analysis of the given situation. All these steps help us reach a conclusion that is not ambiguous and all of us are very clear about what we learned and how and where we have to apply that.
The pedagogy in schools has made a great shift from traditional method of teaching to a learner centered teaching where the role of the teacher is to just mentor and guide and the teaching strategies are designed in such a way that students are given ample opportunities to learn in their own specific way based on their cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains of learning.
Students no more behave a passive listener instead they are the active learners where they perform, inquire, collaborate, share, demonstrate and create.
As is very well evident from the New Education Policy also, that now the education system will focus more on critical and creative thinking to create logical thinkers and not simply mass of people who are just lost in their own irrelevant world of taboos. Critical thinking forms the premise of a successful Nation with a youth which is more logical and believes in development of skills and application of all the skills learnt in real life settings.
“Don’t teach your children to read…teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.”
----George Carlin
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Navpreet Brar, Blogger
navpreet.kuku@gmail.com
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