Encourage critical thinking with 3 questions | Brian Oshiro | TEDxXiguan

I am a professional teacher evaluator and for the last 15 years I have been traveling around the United States and China trying to answer the not-so-easy question of how we can improve our teachers and on a number of recent school visits here. In China, school leaders asked me how their teachers could promote creative

thinking

and creativity in their classes. They wanted to address the claim that their students were mostly Route students and that is the claim that beyond the effects of memorization in figures, their students really did not have. the opportunity to put this knowledge into practice outside the classroom now that they have heard that in the West their Western counterparts have smaller class sizes, perhaps there will be more opportunities for group interaction and students there will have the opportunity to study topics that are of genuine interest for them. them, so school leaders are now looking for ways to inject new teaching methodologies into the Chinese classroom, and as a teacher evaluator, there are certain things I look for every time I observe a class, one thing I look for in particular is the types of

questions

.

Having teachers ask

questions

our way of bringing textbook material to life is a way to directly engage students and make sure they stay on task is also a way to check for understanding to make sure students are truly They are absorbing what they are supposed to be learning, but not all questions are created equal, take a look at this couple of questions here, the first question a says do you know what climate change is? and the second question B says what are the three causes of climate change now, which of these questions best assesses student learning?

If you said B, you are right, question B requires you to possess a specific type of knowledge to answer this question, whether you have this information or not, so, go ahead and this time we will add another question to the mix. Take a look at question C. Why do some claim that climate change is the biggest crisis facing this generation? Which of them best evaluates student learning? This question may be a little more difficult in the previous one because both can do it and therefore the first tests the students' knowledge, while the second gives them the opportunity to think about the consequences of an impending disaster, so that in the ideal class students would ask first or teachers would prefer to ask questions first.

B to establish background knowledge and then they would ask question C to give students the opportunity to use this knowledge. Now think about when you were in school and I know that for many of us this can be a difficult and painful experience, but think for a moment. Secondly, if your teacher only asked you questions like question B, well, this could be great for trivia contests, but we would never have the opportunity to use or put this knowledge to good use and think for a second if your teacher will only ask you. Questions like question C and these are quite difficult questions that could serve to frustrate your learning and perhaps you would be tempted to give up before you even begin.

Going back to the observations, I did these teacher observations recently and we saw different classes, but I noticed that something in particular was missing and, while the teachers were certainly well prepared and there was a lot of participation in the classes, the overwhelming 90% of the Questions that were asked were lower order type questions, in other words. were more like question B and in three of those classes not even a single higher order question was asked, so how does this happen while asking higher order questions is the key to stimulating

critical

thinking

and we should be able to give them students a chance to deal with questions that don't necessarily have a right answer this is more realistic in terms of the type of situations they are likely to face when they leave the classroom now teachers shouldn't have to take responsibility alone when it comes to something As important as

critical

thinking is, then it is our entire collective responsibility to be able to move students forward;

In other words, when it comes to creativity, the door doesn't simply close when the school day ends, and as a parent of school-aged children, it got me thinking about the following question myself: How can we best support critical thinking and creativity? creativity in schools by asking deeper questions outside of them now that we know we can study easier questions, we can answer easier questions and this is great for exams, but as participants in society we all know that we have to deal with questions that are much more complicated than those found in a multiple choice test in reality, and we can see here that real life is a lot of scribbles, there is not necessarily a model that tells us how to get from A to B, so With this type of situation it is important that we expose our students to a degree of uncertainty in their classes and not simply wait until they have to experience it for themselves for the first time outside of the classroom.

In the classroom, you know, today we send our children to practice piano at 4 years old, maybe to practice soccer every 5 years, maybe they learn English at 3 months. I don't know, it's getting earlier and earlier these days, but one of the reasons we do this is to give students a chance to learn some subjects or be exposed to things that they normally wouldn't be able to do outside of the classroom, so That when something as important as critical thinking is at stake, doesn't it also make sense to expose our students to it? to these harder questions before, when the stakes aren't as high now, when we ask harder questions, like why questions, it's a lot harder and it's hard for a number of different reasons and one of the reasons it tends to be hard. is that in answering a wide range of questions students have to expose themselves there is a risk that well, maybe they feel like they won't say the right thing or maybe they will be judged by their classmates, but we need to do a better job of encouraging them. this and instill in our students the courage necessary to be able to persevere in the face of the challenging issues that are presented to them and, therefore, what schools need to then do a better job because we assume to some extent that in school students are able to connect the dots.

For themselves, in other words, we assume that they can take whatever knowledge they learn in school and somehow be able to figure out how to use it outside of school, but this assumption is completely wrong and, in fact, schools need to do better. I work to not only teach students the what or the content, but also teach them the how by asking wiser questions, and fortunately, we can all play a role in this, in fact, we can ask better questions by inviting others to ask us better questions. questions and here are three ways. in which you can do that, so let's go ahead and start with number one.

We can first start with a what question, but let's not end there. Remember that when we ask a what question, this is the starting point and when we ask these types of questions in The students in the class get a little excited because it's one of these answers where if you get it, you get it and if you don't, You don't, but let's take a question that we started with before and it is this, what are the top three? closet or rather causes of climate change, so if I asked my students this, the students could easily find the answer by doing a quick search on the Internet or perhaps they would review their class notes, but the point is that it would require little effort to Answer these types of questions, but asking these types of questions is tricky because if you get enough answers right, it might give you a false sense of security like, oh, I know the right answer, but as we know, our job in all of this is to move. beyond textbooks because that's what textbooks are for and our job is to put some kind of real-world spin on the kind of content that students learn in school, so there's a way to make this kind of of questions are a little more productive instead of Simply asking students, what we could do is ask them to explain or paraphrase what they said in class, what they learned in class and thus consider the transformation that we change, what are the three causes of climate change, to explain what the three main causes of climate change are. are and here, when asking this question, students should give a little more; in other words, it's not just a safe answer, they have to go ahead and take that risk and put themselves out there, so once we've established what, then we can start making connections by asking a series of AND questions and therefore ask These why questions give students the opportunity to connect any knowledge they have to something personal in their lives, so here are just a few examples of possible Y questions that students can do well.

Climate change is important to me, someone who lives here in Guangzhou, why should I as a student worry about this now and not later and why is it relevant and when students make information or you know abstract information from textbooks is relevant, then they can see the value in this and start to ask themselves: how can I take this information and put it in my sphere of influence and think about how it could be useful in my everyday life? So once we've established the what and then we've figured out how to connect it to the AND, then we can get the fun stuff started right trying to figure it out by asking the house and these are some of my favorite how questions, the first one is how do you know? in our previous question about climate change.

Instead of just giving the answers, students have to back up their answers, so what are the three main causes of climate change, blah, blah, blah? And then you can ask how you know this, and by asking this question, students can't just get away with it. the easy answer, in other words, they have to provide some kind of evidence and be able to defend their answer against some logical attack. The second question, how might your perspective be different from that of others? This forces students to empathize with others, for example if they are in some kind of debate or something, then this gives students the opportunity to evaluate the other side's arguments and consider their needs and maybe find some common ground and the final question is how can this problem be solved and of course, This is kind of the queen mother of all questions, it is very true, but in doing so, students must synthesize all their prior knowledge and be able to figure out how to make it their own and be able to apply it for themselves and take it. great question and boil it down into manageable chunks.

This is a brave and valuable part of the process. What is the conclusion of all this? Well, for the students who are listening to this, this is an opportunity for you to extend your learning beyond the exams. an opportunity that will be useful to them in the future; In other words, they're not just asking questions to answer questions, they're doing it to prepare for the types of uncertainties they're likely to face if a parent is listening to this, asking better questions is a great way to help your students revise. , as they have to explain content that may not be as familiar or that you may not be as familiar with and then they have to think about how.

They're going to put this into digestible chunks so you can understand it and it's a great way to consolidate your learning. If you are a teacher listening to this, think about how you could further integrate higher order. questions in his classes and if efficiency is one of the reasons he does not ask enough higher order questions, then evaluate the type of activities he does with his students in class and whether they do not aim at the goal of advancing critical thinking . and creativity, then think about whether these activities are really relevant or not and, if you are a lifelong learner, ask yourself these questions to test your assumptions about what you think you already know, at least what you will be able to empathize with. the other side and possibly find some common ground now you know it's naive for us to think and for me to be here and say you know just by asking more questions of how or a few more questions of why this is going To be enough to create the next generation of great innovators and critical thinkers, after all, it takes a kind of group effort in which schools collaborate with teachers, students and parents to create an environment where risk is rewarded and there is no fear of getting a answer. wrong, but nowadays in schools we tend to reward correct answers and penalize incorrect ones and, as dr.

Ken Robinson and other educators have noted that our schools are in danger ofbecome hopelessly outdated in preparing our students for the challenges that come with the mid-21st century, and therefore, if risk is something we hope to promote among our students, then it is only fair that we allow our teachers to take these risks and also give them a place to ask Moorehouse and, more wisely, this models the type of critical thinking that we hope to instil in our students, so if we can all improve and support critical thinking by asking a few additional questions each day, then such Perhaps the most appropriate question we should ask ourselves is why not, thank you very much.