Fiona: As a whole school staff everyone has been trained on the critical skills approach. And we have a very broad view towards problem solving across the curriculum. And it's very much the teacher as a facilitator, rather than feeding the information to the children but supporting the children through doing these processes. And although we do this in all the classes in the school, we found that as we go through each class, that the teacher's support as facilitator needs to become more directed at younger children. But very much often taking that back seat and not saying it, you know, getting the ideas from the children, getting them to lead it. And that's threatening for teachers as well, that's difficult for teachers, and if that is a change that's something they have to take on board as well.
Within the broader context of problem solving within the school, the critical skills approach has very much taken forward the children's ability to identify their own skills and strengths. And then they can bring to a group activity what they know they can bring at that point. Whereas previously maybe a child might have said “oh I'm not very good at adding” or “I'm not very good at drawing” or something like that – they know their strengths.
David: We teach thinking skills right from the very early ages, in the early years department, and work on that right up through. And what we're really trying to get the children to do is to think about how they can solve a problem, to be positive about approaching a problem, not to pull back and think that's just too difficult for me.
I think the thinking skills material is great in that it does complement what we do on the maths problems side of things. The thinking skills one is very much geared towards ensuring that we can use it cross-curricularly – so we can use it in english language, we can use it in history, we can use it in geography, we can use it in sciences and so on. And interestingly we had a new member of staff a couple of years ago who took a class that piloted the thinking skills programme for the year. She didn't know that that class had been doing thinking skills and she noted to several members of staff that – there's something about that class, the way they tackle problems, the way they talk to one another, the way they support one another, the way they're positive about problems. And it was then that we mentioned that was the class that piloted the thinking skills. So we were particularly pleased that it has worked so well.