We are excited to share that Eeducation Leadership (EL) Magazine, the official publication of ASCD, centered their April edition on exploring “how schools can center students’ ability to think critically, apply effective thinking dispositions in various disciplines, & discuss ideas with others in probing yet respectful ways.”
 
We’re thrilled that for their feature story, Tara Laskowski, senior editor, reached out to interview our Founder & CEO Colin Seale. Start reading their conversation below, and find the full article here!
 
 
 

What is the critical thinking gap, and how can educators close it?

By: Tara Laskowski for EL Magazine

When I started practicing law, I was on all these different education-related committees, and everyone was talking about critical thinking as “the key to 21st-century readiness” and “the future of the workforce.” But when you start to look at how critical thinking looks in practice in K–12 classrooms, it’s often being treated as a luxury good. You’ll see critical thinking in an after-school mock trial program, or for an honors program that serves 8 percent of the school population, or for the special debate team or the selective entry school.
 
And I’m like, if critical thinking is so essential, why aren’t we teaching it to all kids? Why do we assume that some kids can’t do it? And what I began to realize is that it is not a gap of ability. It’s a gap of expectations. And when we start thinking about what it would look like to teach critical thinking to all kids, we’re really addressing a very specific aspect of the belief gap. Because if you’re buying into the idea that some kids can’t, you’re essentially guaranteeing that they will not. Kids are going to school and not even getting content delivered at grade level. Or if they do get content at grade level, they rarely get asked challenging questions that raise the bar.

So, a lot of what I’ve been obsessing about over the last eight years is, How do we create a world where we no longer reserve critical thinking for the most elite kids at the most elite schools? How do we create the kind of environments where instead of hoarding a certain kind of instruction for your gifted and talented students, we have a tier-one instructional design model that unleashes the gifts and talents of all students by design?

Keep reading at ASCD’s EL Magazine: Colin Seale on Closing the Critical Thinking Gap (ascd.org)

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