Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is part of General Studies in the L6th.

The short course consists of one double lesson per week for five weeks. During that time, girls discuss sources including newspaper articles, exercises from tests of Thinking Skills, radio programmes of an analytical nature and television debates.

In addition, girls may opt to take a course in the subject in the U6th, leading to the AS qualification in Critical Thinking offered by the OCR board.

The AS course is taught in two lessons per week, plus homework time.

Critical Thinking is different from other subjects at AS/Alevel. It does not involve the learning of facts but, as the title suggests, it is about learning how to think and reason, as well as how to write in a coherent and logical way. The aim is to provide students with a framework which can be applied in a practical manner to a range of materials, situations, problems and issues.

Girls taking the course will learn to:

Understand and apply the language of reasoning
Understand and apply different patterns of reasoning
Recognise and evaluate special kinds of reasoning
Judge the credibility of sources
Assess arguments
Develop and present arguments
Recognise and apply basic logical ideas.

Useful link: www.criticalthinking.org.uk

The OCR AS examination consists of 2 Units:

Unit 1: Introduction to Critical Thinking

Unit 2: Assessing and Developing Argument.

Some girls will be taking the BMA test for admission to particular medical schools, others will take LNAT for admission to Law courses at particular universities. Both of these tests involve an element of Critical Thinking.

In addition, some universities and Oxbridge colleges, faced with thousands of applications from students predicted to achieve grade A and A* are increasingly turning to their own admission tests to differentiate between the good and the outstanding students. These test srely heavily on Cricital Thinking skills.