Here at St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107, our instructors do their best in integrating critical thinking and problem-solving skills into the youth as part of the holistic learning system of the school.
This assists in preparing the primary and secondary schoolchildren for their future endeavours in college or university studies. It should also affect their adult careers as part of the global or national workforce.
Critical thinking promotes independent and self-sufficient knowledge-seeking and solution creation that even extends to their careers. But this all starts with foundational training at school.
Our teachers believe in our holistic approach to learning and how that helps the children become self-dependent and critical thinkers who aren’t easily swayed by misinformation.
We’ll train these young minds to think for themselves and become independent researchers in their own right. Their critical thinking skill development should also help foster the right knowledge, attitude and skills needed to reach their full potential.
The Importance of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Explained
In other academic settings, children tend to pick up critical thinking skills much later in life and instead learn about basic arithmetic, literacy, and the value of rote memorisation, and the like.
However, it is possible to give foundational training to children on the values of critical thinking and problem solving that extend beyond solving math problems without it being multiple choice or doing creative writing essays on deep subjects.
St. Andrews Sukhumvit has a myriad of strategies for teaching critical thinking skills to youngsters that can benefit them in their school and work careers.
First, what is critical thinking? Simply put, it’s thinking “critically” or questioning the things you learn to better understand such concepts. Educators at St. Andrews teach their children such skills and how they apply to academics, languages, the creative arts, sports, and daily life.
Our instructors appreciate the importance of critical-thinking skills and how ubiquitous they are in every discipline, from academics to beyond that.
These young minds will find it advantageous to learn how to think critically early on to manage different aspects of their lives and to also get more out of their education.
Problem solving and critical thinking separates machines and robots from the sentience of mankind, with it leading to innovation, knowledge application, and so forth.
The teachers are here to open the children’s eyes to experimentation, reason, and logic.
Developing the Critical Thinking Skills of St. Andrews Sukhumvit Children
It’s important for young learners to know how to put the pieces of a puzzle together on their own, from literal puzzles they solve to amuse themselves to more abstract and proverbial puzzles that they could apply to their school or daily life.
It is the goal of St. Andrews Sukhumvit to teach these good pupils the value of critical thinking when involving their decision-making.
This will help them in choosing careers in the future or even money management or voting for the leaders of their nation. Instilling such skills allows your child to act on new information in an informed and critical manner with minimal bias.
They become more analytical and less biased, making them more adaptable to a changing world. Critical thinkers are also more proactive than reactive to the changes around them.
There’s no better way to prepare a child than through holistic learning that also includes how to think critically, which means doing your research and viewing a concept or problem through multiple perspectives.
Teach How Logic and Reason Work
Instead of learning only by regret and hindsight, a child could also apply the lessons from past mistakes to future success. Use past experiences to shape better future outcomes and mitigate future mistakes.
Critical thinking is also about planning, research, development of ideas, and (of course) criticising answers to test their mettle and see if they’re the solution to a given problem.
The school is able to teach children how to solve problems through critical thinking by activities such as discussions, making hypotheses, coming up with theories, and doing experimentation or figuring out practical applications of the things they do.
The school also makes sure that the ideas of the children aren’t wholly dependent on rote memorisation, reciting answers from recent memory, and random (not intelligent) guesswork of multiple-choice answers on their tests, quizzes, and exams.
Analysis of problems to solve them involves the understanding that sometimes there can be more than one answer and that some answers are better than others.
There are also times, like in the case of numbers, mathematics, and arithmetic where there is only one correct answer so figuring out the formula is the key to unlocking such objective problems.
Make Time and Room for Reflection
Having time to reflect on the meaning behind what’s being taught to them allows our children to gain a deeper understanding of such concepts and ideas.
A child willing to push back on preconceived notions and question assumptions is a child that can think for himself. He should have time and room to reflect on every answer he comes up with.
Instead of having children who only memorise the answers that are spoon-fed to them, such that they soon forget such answers when no longer relevant to them, our holistic platform will encourage discussions behind the meaning and reason behind terms and formulas.
A critical-thinking child won’t be able to pass our examinations by merely having the answer key on hand or doing an open-book test. They should also show their work and explain their answers.
Their critical thinking training won’t just involve philosophy and nebulous theories on the meaning of life. They can apply their thinking to reality as well, so they can be both the architects and engineers of their fate.
They should be able to communicate to the teacher and their classmates that they’ve arrived at their conclusion instead of jumping to conclusions or being too book-dependent without any critical or independent thought.
Asking Open-Ended Questions for More Consideration
Our teachers also pose open-ended questions to our students to give room for discussions that include diverse or even opposing ideas, thus there’s a critical lens to every concept instead of blind acceptance to spoon-fed lessons.
We hone our young learners’ critical-thinking skills through gathering evidence, lots of reading for research, applying things to real-life experience, letting answers arrive at their logical conclusions, and making credible explanations for every answer.
We encourage our children to express themselves instead of just reciting textbook facts by having them take positions on open-ended questions and explain the meaning behind the facts and figures they’ve gathered.
Finally, we encourage these young ones to come up with creative solutions to problems that require thinking out of the box while still applying logic to their proposal.
To a child, the concept of critical thinking might seem too nebulous to teach at first, but we here at St. Andrews have found multiple intuitive and applicable ways to show, not tell them how to think critically and practise active learning.
A School Devoted to Developing Your Child’s Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills
At St. Andrews Sukhumvit, we teach the youth entrusted to our international school’s care that it’s okay to think before they act. We also teach them to analyse even their own intuition to make informed decisions. All of these are part of their training to eventually grow into holistically-developed adults with strong leadership skills.
St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107 belongs to the Cognita school group, which in turn is a global organisation that owns and operates schools across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
We encourage you to learn more about the St. Andrews campus by filling out our online form and booking a school tour. You may also watch our school’s personalised interactive virtual campus tour.
