How to Foster Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills in Students?

Your child learns through everything they watch, hear, or come across in their daily life. Children try to impersonate the same behaviour they see in their parents, peers, or teachers as a response when placed in the same situation. The impersonation is based on your child’s understanding, perception and point of view of the situation. Daily life activities teach children to think and analyse the little data they collect daily. Therefore, teaching them how to think optimistically and nourish positive emotions is crucial. For this purpose, parents and teachers must teach students to nurture their creative and critical thinking to solve real-life problems and promote their children’s educational growth. It is crucial to foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills in students to help them make real-life decisions as they continue to grow.

What is the role of critical thinking?

Everyone is known for their unique understanding, knowledge and thinking different from others. This thinking is different as it is based on an individual’s experiences, observations and perception of situations. Critical thinking is the quality of analysing, interpreting, and evaluating whatever you have read, heard, or seen. Children begin to perceive and sense everything around them very early. Even when they are not speaking, they are learning to respond to people and situations based on what they see. In the later years of their growth, children develop perception and learn to distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong and build an outlook for everything around them. They learn to reflect, analyse, comprehend, and rationalise their perspectives with little understanding of the surrounding. Children filter all the collected information from parents, peers, teachers, relatives, and strangers to make sense of it and imbibe the qualities. Therefore, students learn from what they see, and their behaviour reflects what they grasp which also affects their primary learning style. Children must develop a sense of critical thinking as it is essential in decision-making by comprehending situations objectively. Critical thinking has the following advantages-

1. Triggers curiosity in children.

2. Nourishes creativity.

3. Refines research skills.

4. Improves the quality of decision-making.

5. Helps in problem-solving.

Your child must imbibe these essential skills to teach deep, rational and objective thinking to stand out.

Role of problem-solving skills

Children encounter many situations that they may find frustrating or scary and feel like escaping and running away from them. Letting your child hide behind you in every tough or challenging situation is not always the right choice. Instead, parents and teachers must nurture problem-solving skills in students to help them think and push themselves to make difficult choices and prepare them to handle difficult real-life situations. It helps build your students into headstrong, independent individuals who can become world leaders. Problem-solving skills help students to- 

1. Manage and control their emotions and use their abilities to discern and solve a situation or problem.

2. It helps resolve destructive emotions such as anger, ego, and anxiety issues within children early on.

3. Promote a healthy outlook towards challenging situations.

4. Encourages creativity and boosts critical thinking.

It is essential to encourage students by giving them little tasks that work up their minds to know how they react to those tasks and teach the students a healthier and more effective way of handling themselves in challenging situations.

What are the steps of critical thinking?

Children spend most of their time at school, learning and making mistakes continuously. When faced with a critical situation, children easily give up and run away. It is the responsibility of teachers to help children through the situation so that it does not seem like a task for them and instead take it as a learning experience. To promote this, parents and teachers must encourage their students to- 

1. Identify the issue– The foremost step of critical thinking is identifying and addressing the issue. Knowing if the problem exists or if your child is just building them based on biases or misunderstandings is essential. Understanding the problem and its causes helps in getting an idea of how to solve it.

2. Conduct research– Thorough research helps gain new perspectives and ways to solve the problem. If it is a real-life problem, consider knowing about how other people went about the same problem and dig deeper into more diverse inputs. It helps in forming a rigid and well-informed decision towards the end.

3. Determine the relevancy of information– Synthesise the gathered information by filtering the information gathered for relevant data that you may need. Consider how reliable and significant the collected data is and if it is not outdated. If you build your thinking around false or incorrect data, it will hamper decision-making.

4. Learning to ask questions– It is a crucial step in critical thinking. Before coming to any conclusion, step back from the whole situation and analyse if the decision is free of all biases, if there is any point that was overlooked, if more perspectives can be taken into consideration, and if the decision truly satisfies your needs.

5. Filter the best solution– Critical thinking often results in multiple solutions from different perspectives, but only one must be the final solution. Therefore, carefully considering and filtering the best possible solution is necessary to reach the most effective objective conclusion. The other solutions are backup for situations where they may find their utility.

6. Analyse your decision– After implementing the decision, it is necessary to note whether it gave the expected outcome. It helps in analysing if your thought process and decision-making need a boost, was the solution capable enough of solving the problem, and look for the negatives and positives that resulted from your decision.

How to foster critical thinking and problem-solving in students?

1. Encourage them to ask questions– Students must interact in the class as it accelerates their thinking process and indicates that they are learning. If an issue exists and needs to be resolved, students must consider it from all angles and ask questions to form a clear image of the problem and its cause. Questions help in clearing all existing doubts and giving newer perspectives. Students often hesitate and fear clearing their doubts in class. In such cases, they can wait for the class to end and then ask questions. Parents must encourage their students never to hold the queries and questions back.

2. Participation in group discussions– These are efficient ways of triggering your child’s thinking process. Group discussions help students to analyse the topic and the point made by peers in seconds and act instantly. It exercises the mind and increases critical thinking skills. It is a quick way to learn new things, face disagreements positively, and learn newer perspectives. It helps to solve the issues through the unanimous support of the peers.

3. Improve your research skills– Critical thinking can never be quenched through academic learning alone. Curiosity is the catalyst that triggers critical thinking. Students must go out of their way to learn new things, perform in-depth analysis and research to develop new thought processes and form a strong opinion about something. Only when students have good knowledge about something can they solve the problem at hand.

4. Utilising examples– Students learn through real-life scenarios and examples, allowing them to immerse themselves in the problem or situation and think of ways to solve it. Using examples of cultural, geographical, political and social real-world problems, teachers and parents can encourage students to find appropriate solutions based on their learning and experiences. It also enhances general knowledge and helps students formulate an opinion of real-life problems.

5. Teach problem-solving techniques– Students need to be put in a stimulating environment to utilise their creative and critical thinking to look for solutions for the problem at hand. By giving hypothetical situations to children, you can help students make their own decisions using their knowledge and skills and guide them through the process. It also allows students to bear the repercussions and learn from the process if they fail in decision-making.

These are the few ways parents and teachers can foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills in students.

SKV is a girls’ residential school that offers progressive learning to students from class VI onwards. Our vision is to foster values and skills by providing a mentally stimulating environment for all students.