At St Catherine’s, every teacher’s primary focus is to deliver the best education for the girls they teach every day. With all the hours spent preparing lessons, selection of learning tasks and teaching strategies, always followed by time spent marking assessments and of course, discussions with students often one on one, every girl at the School can be confident that each teacher is supporting them.

Despite our very high standards of practice at St Catherine’s, there is a strong belief that we can improve on what we do. Of particular interest, and a growing concern amongst teachers, is that students are too often focused on learning facts to answer questions and tests in order to obtain a mark or grade. A more sophisticated approach to their learning is required.

The School has commenced a collaborative relationship with the University of Queensland and Peter Ellerton who is a lecturer in critical thinking and is the founding director of the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project. Peter argues that “schools need to better prepare young people for an increasingly complex world. Of paramount importance is the ability to think critically and work with others to approach complex problems in novel ways. These are becoming ever more important for all young people to acquire in order to thrive in a world increasingly globalised and augmented by technology. There are, therefore, more frequent calls for students to have stronger capacities in critical and analytical thinking so that they might identify biases in news, data and in their own interpretations, develop deeper understanding of complex ideas and empathy for different perspectives.”

This project aims to improve teacher capacity to teach for thinking, not just for learning. It is about focussing on student cognition. This does not mean that we are not valuing content or that we are not considering the importance of subject area knowledge. Content matter will always remain essential. At the heart of the project we are evolving the best ways to develop student understanding by focussing on their thinking. Teachers are concerned about the passivity students can demonstrate in the face of intellectual challenge.

Peter Ellerton has developed a pedagogical schema which is focussed sharply on the content knowledge of intellectual inquiry. Three imperatives or principles of action are to:

1. Shift the focus from knowledge to inquiry
2. Think and plan in the language of student cognition
3. Work collaboratively when thinking can be shared

The schema outlines a relationship between cognitive skills, intellectual values and intellectual dispositions, which will be the focus of our teaching and learning across the school. Teachers will develop their skills and knowledge in ensuring all classes emphasise three critical aspects of intellectual inquiry.

• COGNITIVE SKILLS such as Evaluating, Analysing, Interpreting, Synthesising and Problem-solving
• VALUES (provide feedback on the acquisition of the cognitive skills) such as Clarity, Precision, Accuracy, Coherence and Tolerance of ambiguity
• DISPOSITIONS (habits that come from mastery of the values) such as Independence, Persistence, Resilience, Integrity, Curiosity, Empathy and Global responsiveness

We aim to grow our learning culture at St Catherine’s so that teachers and students have common language, common understanding and common approaches to high quality intellectual endeavour.

John Dewey the prominent educational reformer in the first half of the twentieth century, whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform commented that “Thinking is the method of intelligent learning”. Our goal is to make sure intelligent learning is in every classroom, every day.