Learning to think

Will a school teach your child to think? This may sound like a bizarre question, but it’s one which all parents should be asking themselves before picking a school for their child. The ability to think actively, creatively and critically is a vital skill in a world that is changing fast and constantly presenting us with new demands. What are schools doing to prepare young people for these challenges? To find the answer, parents need to dig deeper than league tables and exam results.

“What people don’t always realize is that an A grade doesn’t necessarily mean that a student has learnt to think for him- or herself,” says C J Simister, Director of the Advanced Cognitive Development Programme at Northwood College, a girls’ school in north-west London.

Most independent schools are very good at getting their pupils to achieve top grades in exams – and so they should be, says Ruth Mercer, Head Mistress of Northwood College. But this may not be sufficient preparation for university, the workplace or indeed life in general, where they will be faced with situations and problems they have never met before and to which there is no simple answer.
Mercer believes that equipping young people with thinking and learning skills is one of the best ways to prepare them for future success. She has ensured that a thinking philosophy has been put at the heart of how the school works, both inside and outside the classroom – starting with the nursery and going all the way through to the sixth form.

The school is now four years into its Thinking Skills Programme, developed by C J Simister in conjunction with other staff. The Programme includes fun elements like puzzle clubs and themed activity days, but also lessons and workshops.

A key strategy in the Programme is getting the girls to develop what Simister refers to as “thinking and learning dispositions”. These include open-mindedness, flexibility, resilience and a willingness to take risks. She quotes Wittgenstein to encourage the girls to go out on a limb sometimes and bounce back from failure: “If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.”
In the junior school, where the Programme began, girls have weekly thinking skills lessons. One week, a lesson will involve activities and games focusing on a specific thinking skill or disposition. The next week, the girls will relate that skill or behaviour to a curriculum subject.

As they move through the school the level of thinking that is expected is raised, building up the girls’ confidence and ability to handle complex problems and decisions.

Integrating active thinking into the way the whole curriculum is taught, is key to making a programme like this work. “If you Google ‘thinking skills’ you’ll get a million strategies and books,” says Mercer. “But really embedding thinking into a school takes a lot of time and commitment because you have to take the teachers with you and make sure you support them,” she says.

The brightest children may be passive thinkers
Northwood College has been lucky to have an expert leading its thinking initiative. Simister first became interested in thinking several years ago, when she noticed, as a teacher, that some of her most active learners were passive thinkers, who were looking to be told exactly what to think and what to write. “That’s no good if you’re going to end up in a work situation where you need to solve problems and not to panic if you’re faced with a new or surprising situation,” says Simister.

She embarked on an MA in School Effectiveness at the Institute of Education, writing a research paper on thinking skills and piloting thinking skills lessons at Northwood College. Mercer was so impressed by the approach that she decided to expand it throughout the School. “Thinking skills is really about giving the girls life skills as well as exam passes,” she says. “The thinking approach helps them understand themselves better and their own strengths. It helps them rise to challenges confidently because they’ve got good problem solving skills and know they can think things through.”

A thinking school?
It’s not always easy to know whether a school is grooming pupils to achieve brilliant exam grades without encouraging them to think.
Find out whether the school has someone responsible for teaching and learning and whether that person keeps abreast with educational theory.

Try the following questions and see what answers you get. A thinking school should be able to give comprehensive and coherent answers to them all.

1) How do you ensure that different types of learning style are catered for?
2) Tell me about your teaching and learning
3) How do you ensure that pupils learn to think?
4) How do you think parents should use league tables?
5) How do you encourage pupils to pick their A levels?