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Practice

Thinking Skills
Six key skills have been identified in the introduction to National Curriculum 2000 as being important to the improvement of learning and proformance among young children. We have found Philosophy to be an effective method for teaching four of these skills:

• Communication: Speaking, listening, understanding and responding to others, particularly in group discussions. To build on the ideas of others and take thinking forward by means of a community of enquiry.
• Working with others: Contributing to small-group and whole-class discussion, and working with others to meet a challenge. Developing social skills and a growing awareness and understanding of others' needs.
• Improving own learning and performance: Pupils reflecting on and critically evaluating their work and what they have learnt and identifying ways to improve their learning and performance. Identifying the purpose of learning, reflecting on the processes of learning, assessing progress in learning, identifying obstacles or problems in learning and planning ways to improve learning.
• Problem Solving: Developing the skills and strategies that will help them to solve problems they face in learning and in life. Identifying and understanding a problem, planning ways to solve a problem, monitoring progress in tackling a problem and reviewing solutions to problems.

Philosophy is also an effective way of teaching thinking skills; these are five further skills which complement the key skills and are also embedded in the National Curriculum.8

• Information-processing skills: Locating and collecting relevant information, sorting, classifying, sequencing, comparing and contrasting, analysing part/whole relationships.
• Reasoning skills: Skills which enable pupils to give reasons for opinions and actions, to draw inferences and make deductions, to use precise language to explain what they think, and to make judgements and decisions informed by reasons or evidence.
• Enquiry skills: Skills which enable pupils to ask relevant questions, to pose and define problems, to plan what to do and how to research, to predict outcomes and anticipate consequences, and to test conclusions and improve ideas.
• Creative thinking skills: These enable pupils to generate and extend ideas, to suggest hypothesis, to apply imagination, and to look for alternative innovative outcomes.
• Evaluation skills: Skills which enable pupils to evaluate information, to judge the value of what they read, hear or do, to develop criteria for judging the value of their own and others' work or ideas, and to have confidence in their judgements.

8 Dfee. The National Curriculum, Handbook for primary teachers in England (London, 1999) p.22.