Ways to teach Students to Think for Themselves Infographic

Teaching children to think for themselves is a vital life skill that will aid their development long after they have left our classroom for the last time.

The truth is (well, certainly for me in a post-primary school), we are preparing them for a world that doesn’t exist yet – the world in February 2022 will be out of date by the time my year 14 class enter the workplace (presuming they all go to university as they are planning to) in 2026. That world will look equally different to my current year 8 class who will enter the workplace in 2033 (also assuming they go to university), which is a very sobering thought!

How do we prepare them for this? As an EdTechist (and Digital Technology teacher) I might have more exposure to those technologies as I will be teaching them, but even that doesn’t guarantee success! So what are the practical steps we can take to give the necessary skills to our students for when they need them?

There are aspects of this that do not require much by way of implementation, but can make a big difference to how students think – not being afraid of mistakes is a prominent point for me – especially when teaching programming. I want students to work towards error free code, but it is a journey – I expect mistakes and see them as part of the learning journey.

Enter the 1st inaugral infographic from the EdTechist – “Ways to Teach Students to Think for Themselves” (you can click on the infographic to download it as a pdf).

The infographic is not complete and purposefull so – but as a starting point for you to think about how to implement it in your classrooms, how would you take this forward? I’m always interested to see what people do in their classroom – what does this look like in an English classroom, or a primary classroom? What would you add to this to help students to think for themselves in a deeper/better way?

Please share your thoughts and comments below!