Future careers are no longer about domain expertise or technical skills. Rather, critical thinking and problem-solving skills in employees are on the wish list of every big organisation today. Even curricula and pedagogies across the globe and within India now require skilled workers who can think critically and are analytical.
The reason for this shift in perspective is very simple. These skills provide a staunch foundation for comprehensive learning that extends beyond books or the four walls of the classroom. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are part of ‘21st Century Skills’ that can help unlock valuable learning for life.
Over the years, the education system in the world, including India, has been moving away from rote learning and other conventional teaching and learning parameters.
They are aligning their curriculums to the changing scenario, which is becoming more tech-driven and demands a fusion of critical skills, life skills, values and domain expertise. There’s no set formula for success.
Rather, humans need to be more creative, innovative, adaptive, agile, risk-taking and have a problem-solving mindset. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills become more significant today because they open the human mind to multiple possibilities, solutions, and an interdisciplinary mindset.
Therefore, many schools and educational institutions are deploying AI and immersive learning experiences via gaming AR VR technologies to give their students a more realistic and hands-on learning experience that hones these abilities and helps them overcome doubt or fear. Here are some advantages of critical thinking and problem-solving skills in the curriculum:
Ability to relate to the real world: Instead of theoretical knowledge, critical thinking and problem-solving skills encourage students to look at their immediate and extended environment through a spirit of questioning, curiosity and learning. When the curriculum presents students with real-world problems, the learning is immense.
For example, when children are asked to come up with unique solutions to resolve water crises and promote sensible water usage and conservation measures, the students will research, ask questions, reflect on challenges and solutions and come up with multiple suggestions to solve that problem.
They can analyse a given scenario from different perspectives and attempt to understand why some solutions worked. In contrast, others didn’t explore new possibilities with several permutations and combinations.
Confidence, agility, collaboration: Critical thinking and problem-solving skills boost self-belief and confidence as students examine, re-examine, sometimes fail or succeed while attempting to do something. They can understand where they may have gone wrong, attempt new approaches, ask their peers for feedback and even seek their opinion, work together as a team and learn to face any challenge by responding to it.
Willingness to try new things: When problem-solving skills and critical thinking are encouraged by teachers, they are setting a robust foundation for young learners to experiment, think out of the box, and be more innovative and creative besides looking for new ways to upskill.
It’s important to understand that schools and educational institutions must have upskilling workshops and conduct special training for teachers to familiarise them with new teaching and learning techniques and new-age concepts that can be used in the classroom via assignments and projects.
Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are the two most sought-after skills. Hence, schools should emphasise the upskilling of students as a part of the academic curriculum.
(The author is the head of a Noida-based international school)