The Critical Outcomes in the National Curriculum Statement (South Africa) form the foundation of the entire curriculum. If you read them carefully (found in chapter 1 of all subject curricula), you will see how every one of these outcomes refers to a range of creative and critical thinking skills. The Critical Outcomes in the National Curriculum Statement Grades R-12 aims to produce learners that are able to:

 

• identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking;
• work effectively as individuals and with others as members of a team;
• organise and manage themselves and their activities responsibly and effectively;
• collect, analyse, organise and critically evaluate information;
• communicate effectively using visual, symbolic and/or language skills in various modes;
• use science and technology effectively and critically showing responsibility towards the environment and the health of others; and
• demonstrate an understanding of the world as a set of related systems by recognising that problem solving contexts do not exist in isolation.

These Critical Outcomes remain the most important goal, and as such give a clear mandate for creative and critical thinking skills. It is the teacher’s responsibility to identify opportunities for exploring and reinforcing them – even if they are not explicitly stated elsewhere in the curriculum documents.

MindBurst’s mission is to go beyond the content of our curricula and equip our teachers and learners with the transferable skills they need to engage any content to their advantage – enabling them to think critically and creatively, communicate clearly, collaborate dynamically and adapt to change with as little anxiety as possible.

We call these transferable skills because they are not limited to a specific context. They can be transferred from subject to subject, from language to language, from electives to the core, from informal learning in the community to formal learning at school, from working things out in class to working them out in your personal relationships, and so on.

The way schools teach and assess learners tends to be content-heavy and focuses on narrow criteria for success. This is not a great model when it comes to assessing the kinds of higher-order thinking skills necessary for the innovation that is valued in our knowledge economy and will ensure livelihoods in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

To prepare young people for sustainable and meaningful lives in the 21st century our teaching practice needs to:

• move beyond a focus on content …

  … towards facilitating transferable skills
  required to deal with any content

• move beyond assessing rote memory…

  … towards trial-and-error learning
  with an experimental attitude that does not fear failure

• move beyond top-down instruction and the reproduction of inherited knowledge ...

  ... towards bottom-up discovery of knowledge
  enabling learners to become agents of their own knowledge production

• move beyond a focus on correct answers …

  … towards empowering learners to ask generative and disruptive questions
  that challenge assumptions and open up possibility

• move beyond discrete subject areas ...

  ... towards exploring the connections between subjects
  transferring knowledge from one context to another and enabling systemic thinking

• move beyond competition between individual learners
  and the occasional reluctant cooperation ...

  ... towards dynamic collaboration
  and the development of collective intelligence through dialogue

• move beyond the extrinsic motivation of marks, rankings and awards (according to narrow criteria and standardised tests) ...

  ... towards a learner's intrinsic motivation
  stimulating the learner’s curiosity, independent agency,
  need for purpose in the service of something larger than themselves,
  desire to get better at something important to them,
  and deep sense of participation

• move beyond social cohesion based on reinforcing uniformity ...

  ... towards social cohesion based on engaging diversity

The revolutionary educator Paulo Freire distinguished between two kinds of education.

There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

- Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

The first kind of education reproduces inherited knowledge. The second emancipates learners to become agents of their own knowledge production, exploring an open-ended, innovative process in which knowledge products are constantly changing. This kind of education does not treat knowledge as an abstract collection of absolute truths that only need to be believed, memorised and reproduced. When education is simply about reproducing knowledge it is what Freire called ‘banking’.

The students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués [statements] and makes deposits, which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.

- Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed

We have to recognise that the ability to memorise information or faithfully reproduce a procedure is something computers already do better than us. Automation is quickly replacing humans in the kinds of jobs where the skill of memorisation is required. Graduating from school with the skills of a poor computer is not a strategy for thriving in the 21st century.

For Freire, the process of enabling learners to become agents of their own knowledge production is a counter-cultural process that is not based on the passive acceptance of abstract truths, traditions or authorities, but on the active participation of learners in knowledge production driven by a particular quality of dialogue.

Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.

- Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed

It is this dialogue that MindBurst is committed to. If knowledge is more than a means to reproduce power and privilege it needs to be co-created and emancipatory.

As Edward Said, one of the founders of the field of postcolonial studies, put it:

an imprecise, not very concrete hold on language and reality produces a more easily governable, accepting citizen, who has become not a participant in the society but an always hungry consumer. Literate, critical education has an extraordinarily important role to play in providing the instrument of resistance to this and, it must be said plainly, in providing a means of self-defence. Otherwise the picture of billions of people whose volition has been pacified and whose consciousness and will have been usurped is a truly frightening one.

- Edward Said, The End of the Peace Process, 2001.

We believe that school can be the place where we learn how to have productive conversations with diverse points of view, growing our collective intelligence and building knowledge together. A school can become a community of truth seekers that lives, learns, works and plays together.

From our perspective, education becomes the “practice of freedom” when it enables learners to:

• embrace the confidence to work things out for themselves,
• express themselves without inhibition and censorship,
• skillfully question anything without fear,
• grapple with evidence and expose deception,
• persevere with a challenge without giving up too quickly,
• value the insights that failure provides,
• collaborate effectively with others in a solidarity of purpose,
• engage the disagreements of others fully,
• adapt to change with as little anxiety as possible.

We are committed to developing independent thinkers, innovative problem solvers, critical consumers and active citizens who are willing to work together to produce the best explanations and design the best solutions possible.

An extract from MindBurst Workshop's modules on critical thinking skills.

The very things that are so useful in helping you to engage the world, like your senses, your emotions, your memories, and your language, work precisely because they filter the world and organise your experience of it by reducing its complexity and creating regularities that are generalisations. These generalisations are often good enough for basic survival, but become dangerous assumptions, limiting categories and unjust stereotypes when navigating complex social situations. They also distort our experience of challenges in complex ecological systems.

Critical thinking is the skill set you need when what you know about the nature of reality needs to be supported by something more than your sensations, emotions, memories, intuitions, categories, values, beliefs, traditions, recipes and personal taste.

Critical thinking requires more effort than common sense or trust in authorities or the application of rehearsed procedures. It requires you to temporarily step out of your subjective perspective, to question it, and to use the available information to construct a more objective explanation of what is going on around you – constantly testing it and adapting it to become a more useful model of reality. Simply put, critical thinking is being able to work things out for yourself. A useful definition of critical thinking is:

that mode of thinking – about any subject, content or problem – in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them.

- Paul, R., Fisher, A., & Nosich, G.1993. Workshop on Critical Thinking Strategies. CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking, Sonoma State University

Identifying critical thinking skills is the result of asking the question:

Is there a set of principles or procedures that are reliable ways of thinking more clearly in any context, and can therefore be generalised into a set of useful guidelines?

Consider the following simple examples of guidelines or “critical thinking tools”:

• “Consider all the available evidence before jumping to a conclusion.”

  This is about resisting impulse and resisting cultural assumptions in favour of carefully assessing the evidence.

• “Think of the consequences of your action before you act.”

  This is about being aware of the complex connections between yourself and the world around you, and how these change over time (consequences).

• “Do the statements in your explanation support each other in a logical chain of thought without making any unnecessary leaps?”

  This is about analysing the internal structure of ideas, claims, explanations and arguments.

These are examples of procedures that help us to think more clearly. As these tools have been tested and refined our ability to produce knowledge about our world has improved. This knowledge has also helped us innovate technologies that have not only radically extended our physical senses and abilities, but have also improved the quality of our lives.

When combined in a disciplined way these tools become methods that enable us to:

• be more able to question (interrogate all our generalisations and assumptions);
• use logical deduction to analyse the structure of claims, explanations and arguments;
• grapple with evidence and understand how it increases the probability of certain things being true;
• create testable explanations and predictive models of reality;
• design effective experiments to test our hypotheses; and
• stay open-minded by treating all our own ideas as potentially flawed and by engaging the disagreements of others fully.

The term critical thinking is often misinterpreted and resisted because it seems negative. We need to distinguish between “just being critical” and “critical thinking skills”. Critical thinking skills are not simply about objecting or complaining – or about arguing for the sake of arguing. Equipped with these critical thinking tools, you can move far beyond your emotional impulses, cultural assumptions, intellectual biases, personal anecdotes and poorly informed opinions. You can move closer to a more objective perception of what is really going on around you, even if you can never arrive at total objectivity.

Critical thinking is not about being right or certain – it is about acknowledging how you came to have the ideas that you have and admitting that you could be wrong. This is the first step towards working things out for yourself. Can you become vulnerable enough to ask probing and generative questions of your most deeply held convictions? It is when we feel the deepest emotions about something and the greatest amount of certainty that we should be the most critical of ourselves. This is not to say that you should not have convictions and follow them passionately. It is rather an antidote against knowledge-limiting fundamentalism, always keeping you open to possibility.

The philosopher and educator, Bertrand Russell, stressed that the central purpose of education is to prepare students to be able to form "a reasonable judgment on controversial questions in regard to which they are likely to have to act." To have any value critical thinking must offer an appropriate response to a specific challenge. Think abut this from a learner’s perspective:

• How do you evaluate the reliability of information on a website promoting diet pills?
• How do you know when someone is trying to manipulate you with misinformation to invest time, energy and money in a fraudulent or unethical cause?
• How do you create an experiment to find out if your consumption of refined sugar is causing you to feel depressed?
• How do you express your outrage when you discover that your favourite brand is guilty of human rights violations in its factories?
• How do you disagree with someone without offending her or him, so that the conversation can continue to be productive?
• How do you decide when you are ready to have sex?
• How can you decide whether pornography is affecting you negatively or not?
• How do you choose the best nutrition to support you during the exams?
• How do you resist the peer pressure to start sexting or share a naked selfie on social networking media?
• How do you negotiate with school management to change the rules about learner haircuts?
• How can you be sure that the money you give the old lady who is asking for donations is actually going to an orphanage?
• How do you evaluate the risks of trying the mind-altering substance your boyfriend is offering to you?
• How do you explain to your father that you have changed your mind about the career he has strongly suggested you study for?
• How do you decide whether to keep the baby or have an abortion?
• How do you respond to the arguments for becoming a Vegan?
• How do you tell your community that you are not sure whether you want to get circumcised as part of their traditional initiation ritual?
• How do you tell your family that you want to go through initiation and get circumcised together with your friends when it is not part of your tradition?
• How do you make sense of the evidence your friend has used to try to convince you that your girlfriend is cheating on you?
• How do you rescue your reputation when someone has falsely accused you on social media?
• How do you decide whether your reaction to the stranger was based on an irrational stereotype?
• How do you decide which cellular phone package offers the best deal?
• How do you expose the teacher who is sexually abusing girls when the girls have pleaded with you to keep it a secret?
• How do you convince yourself to persevere when the challenge seems impossible?
• How do you decide whether to join in the protest marches of a particular political party?
• How do you think for yourself?

How do you think for yourself?

The challenge of integrating critical thinking into teaching practice and school culture is not new – and neither is resistance to it.

View an expanded introduction to critical thinking here.

MindBurst Workshop was initially based on the ideas of André Croucamp, but has since been expanded by many generous collaborators. André worked for most of his life as an educational media developer. On the basis of his innovations in media, clients started asking him to give talks on creative and critical thinking. These became increasingly popular and he was urged to integrate them into a new business proposition and the concept of MindBurst Workshop was born.

In 2010 a fledgling MindBurst started designing and facilitating creative and critical thinking skills workshops for refugee children with the Three2Six Education Project hosted at Sacred Heart College (and which currently helps 350 refugee children prepare for legal entry into South African high schools). It was this work that drew the attention of Colin Northmore, the Head of Sacred Heart College, and Heather Blankensee, the principal of the high school.

MindBurst has continued working with refugee children to produce books, art exhibitions, a musical theatre production and two stop frame animation films. We have also just produced Thinking and Talking about Refugees (2018), a set of guidelines for South African teachers to integrate an awareness of the issues facing refugees into their regular teaching.

In 2013 Colin asked MindBurst to assist him with the development of a framework for critical thinking skills education that could be used by the Independent Examination Board (IEB). Colin was the examiner for critical thinking for the IEB. We have subsequently even helped him to set some of the exam questions.

After the success of this research and curriculum development work, Colin asked us to pilot our approach to critical thinking at Sacred Heart College. That process became what MindBurst Workshop is today.

In the process of developing the critical thinking skills course we spoke to some university professors to get an idea of what they thought was lacking in the learners they were receiving from schools. We were told that some first year university learners are skilled at memorising and reproducing content, and even at following predesigned, well-rehearsed procedures (all of them couldn’t even do that), but they do not display the skills or dispositions of:

independent thinkers

who can solve unfamiliar problems

using creative and critical thinking habits

they have integrated into their personal experience of the world.

Universities and industries all over the world are recognising a lack of creative and critical thinking skills in learners leaving school, given an understanding of what is required to succeed in the 21^st century. The focus is shifting away from memorising content to using content more effectively as a context for acquiring fundamental creative and critical thinking skills. As the cognitive scientist, Howard Gardner (well known for his theory of multiple intelligences), put it: “Cover less and uncover more.”

Sacred Heart is where MindBurst began and where we have facilitated our pilot projects over the last five years, but since then we have also facilitated workshops for the Independent Examination Board, King David Schools (Linksfield and Victory Park), Reddam House Bedfordview, Dainfern College, Helpmekaar, Lebone II, St Benedict’s, the Peermont School Support Programme, Epoch and Optima Trust, and Quality Life. Our approach to critical thinking is original and local – developed from first principles and tested in the field.

We are very grateful to Sacred Heart College for its courageous dedication to innovative and progressive teaching practice which has allowed us to experiment with home-grown approaches to critical thinking and project-based learning.

MindBurst has worked on a project-by-project basis, inviting collaboration from various facilitators, writers, artists and filmmakers. Our work has been a combination of:

• developing pedagogical theory;
• experimenting with applications of that theory in classrooms and in massive project-based learning workshops;
• creating teaching materials with a focus on transferable skills;
• facilitating teacher-training workshops and whole-school conversations;
• designing curricula and strategic planning processes with regards to critical thinking and project-based learning;
• giving talks to teachers and parents; and
• consulting.

Since 2014 MindBurst has been developing self-study modules in critical thinking for Grade 10. By the end of 2018 there will be 25 modules of about 22 pages each. This forms a comprehensive curriculum on critical thinking.

In 2016, in collaboration with Sacred Heart College, MindBurst developed a box of cards called Rapid Gains in Critical Thinking as an entry-level tool for teachers to reflect on their teaching practice and school culture with regards to integrating critical thinking.

Members of MindBurst have also recently contributed units to the new university curriculum on Inclusive Education, called Teaching for All, developed together with the British Council and UNISA.

This is an artwork by Ronnie, a 13-year-old refugee from the Three2Six Education Project for Refugee Children. It expresses, with sharp wit, how he feels about surviving in the foreign city he now calls home. Ronnie created this drawing during a Three2Six holiday programme in 2012, hosted by Sacred Heart College in Observatory, Johannesburg, and facilitated by MindBurst Workshop.

MindBurst Workshop has been designing and facilitating creative and critical thinking skills with refugee children at the Three2Six Education Project since 2010.

Access to education for migrant children is extremely problematic. Even though all children in South Africa are constitutionally entitled to a basic education, this is not being practiced. Migrant children face a multitude of barriers when attempting to access schooling: lack of information on legal requirements, a lack documentation (like report cards and birth certificates from their home country that are inaccessible), financial constraints, structural xenophobia, and discrimination are just a few of the barriers they encounter. Many schools dismiss migrant applicants by withholding information from them. Information sharing among migrant communities thus becomes essential. Studies indicate that high numbers of school-age migrant children remain outside of the school system.

The Three2Six Education Project for Refugee Children started in 2008 in response to a horrific outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa. Methodist minister Paul Verryn, who was doing extensive work among the inner city refugee community, challenged Sacred Heart College to do something meaningful about the fact that so many refugee children were not in school, and living in constant fear of xenophobic attacks. And so the Three2Six project was born.

Sacred Heart College is a Catholic Marist school. The Three2Six Project is inspired by the mission of its founding saint, St Marcellin Champagnat, who believed that, “to teach children, you must first love them, and love them all equally.” St Marcellin also taught his disciples to give special attention to the poor and neglected.

Three2Six is an afternoon bridging school for migrant children between the ages of 6 and 13. The project is named Three2Six because the children make use of the high school’s classrooms from 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock every afternoon. When the Sacred Heart learners are finished with their school day and the classrooms are empty, the Three2Six children can start their lessons. The project focuses on three main areas: English, Maths and Life Skills. The idea is that the children need to be prepared to enter the state schooling system as soon as they are ready. The children are also given uniforms and a daily meal.

During the school holidays, the Three2Six learners participate in a holiday programme where they explore art, science, computing, sports and other activities that they don’t have time for during their usual hours. The holiday programme was first started in 2010 when it was feared that many of the children might be at an extra risk of child trafficking during the Soccer World Cup. The holiday programme was such a success that it has been repeated every year since.

MindBurst Workshop has enjoyed the privilege of facilitating holiday programmes for the Three2Six children since 2010. These have included the production of books, stop-frame animations, a musical theatre production and art exhibitions. These holiday programmes teach creative thinking and expose children to rigorous problem solving and design processes. They also instil confidence and open up opportunities for young refugees to tell their stories.

The idea is to inspire children to do more than the quick drawing or painting they usually get an opportunity to do. Instead we want them to experience the process of conceptualising and refining an artwork. They need to experience feedback from someone with expertise and apply that to their process of making even if it means they have to start over. We want them to dig deep and explore their capacity for refining their self-expression. The finished works need to represent a learning journey they have made in conversation with the artists. The final products are often exhibited, auctioned and sold to raise both awareness and financial sustenance for the Three2Six Education Project.

At the launch of an exhibition of Three2Six artworks, Professor David Andrew, from Wits School of Arts, said:

At the World Summit on Arts Education, held in Munich, Germany in May 2013, discussion focused on how quality arts education is able to equip learners with what are becoming known as so-called “twenty first century skills” or “habits of mind”. In one presentation, a speaker spoke of five dimensions of creativity as being about the presence of:

• Inquisitiveness
• Persistence
• Imagination
• Discipline
• Collaboration

It would seem to me that each of these dimensions is present in the exhibition of art by refugee children from the Three2Six School. There is also a healing dimension that takes place through involvement in aesthetic processes and this is very evident in the work of the Three2Six children. Perhaps this dimension of healing and compassion through the arts requires further surfacing in the understanding of “twenty-first century skills”.

The MindBurst team also researched, wrote and designed Talking and Thinking about Refugees (2018), a set of guidelines for South African teachers to integrate an awareness of the issues facing refugees into their regular teaching.

Three2Six is about more than education. It is about allowing children to regain their childhoods, to play, to belong, to dream. It is a story of hope. It is also a story of community – for as much as the Three2Six children and their families gain from the project, so too do the communities where they have found a home: Sacred Heart College, Observatory Girls, and Holy Family Parktown. These schools actively embrace the idea that all human beings are connected to one another and that local communities need to work together to create a better life for all. They are enriched by the presence of the Three2Six children, and the project is a daily reminder that they are privileged to be part of a wider African community.

The three schools engage with the Three2Six children in different ways. At Sacred Heart College, for instance, there are various occasions, such as special Masses, Heritage Day and at some sporting events, when learners from Three2Six and Sacred Heart College come together to share in activities and learn from each other.

You can call us dogs. You can drive us to the streets. You can beat us. You can refuse us opportunities. But we will stand up and show you who we really are.

We don’t need your permission to be the best we can be.

We want to say to all South Africans. We are here to stay. We come with open hearts. We are wiling to learn and willing to work. We love this country and just like you we want to make it a better place for everybody.

- An extract from the script to a musical theatre production developed by refugee children between the ages of 6 and 13, participating in the Three2Six Education Project holiday programme in 2014