Speaker 1: 0:13

All right, here we are another episode of Shift Ed podcast coming to you out of Montreal today. Great guest, I'm not reaching that far. We're in Canada, staying in Canada, just reaching over the Quebec-Ontario border. I have Garfield Ginnie Newman with us today. He's actually been doing some work with us in our system here in Quebec. I was so pleased that he took me up on this offer. Thanks so much, garfield, for joining me here today.

Speaker 2: 0:46

You're welcome, delighted to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Well, we're going to jump right in, but I kind of would love to just ask you a question of what got you into education, to start this whole career of yours, this amazing career that you've had. What were the beginning seeds that started this growth in the educational world?

Speaker 2: 1:07

Well, actually it's interesting you start with that question because September marked my 40th year in education and I started when I was young as a high school teacher in York region, north of Toronto, and taught for a number of years there. So I guess I just came out of university thinking teaching is what I would like to be involved in and then, probably 15 years down the road, I'd written a number of textbooks, done a number of other things and in the 90s started to emerge on the neuroscience of learning and how the brain learns, and that intrigued me. But then I was approached by Dr Roland Case, who was actually originally from Montreal, who's the founder of the Critical Thinking Consortium, and we began to explore and work together and at that point I joined and became the senior consultant with the consortium about 20 some years ago.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Amazing, well, and the ride continues on um, doesn't it?

Speaker 2: 2:06

it does, then it's uh, uh. This fall we've been in korea, in china, across canada. This week alone I'm in montreal, quebec city and brandon, manitoba.

Speaker 1: 2:18

So wow, it's all right yeah, it's a lot of jetting around, that's for sure. And I mean, I imagine that the main or some of your main topics that you're talking about now is this critical thinking and kind of looking through that lens when you're looking at your organization, but also your classroom as well. If I were to ask you, like, the first question is kind of what is the thesis behind it? Like, if you had to kind of like condense it into a paragraph or so, the critical thinking is is, is what?

Speaker 2: 2:51

well, I'm actually going to broaden because, you know, in the book on creating thinking classrooms you'll notice in the title, interestingly, we don't use the word critical, and that was intentional, in that we started to think about critical, creative and collaborative thinking and realized that really we want to promote high quality thinking in classrooms. So that would be, you know, as a intersection of critical thinking and creativity, that they're not separate ways of thinking. They both are rigorous and they both involve similar intellectual tools. So really the thrust of the book is how do we promote good, rich thinking which might be critical and or creative and collaborative? And so that's kind of the driver for the book and the thesis and the work is nurturing those. And the other piece I would say that has grown increasingly over the years is, aside from the rich critical thinking, how do we do this in a sustained inquiring approach and that word sustained is increasingly important so that it's not a series of one-off prompts to think critically in isolation, but it's sustained depth over time. Right, interesting.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Interesting and I was particularly attracted towards your chapter three where it was the critical, creative and collaborative dimensions of thinking. Could you kind of explain the crossroads between like I kind of saw it as a Venn diagram a little bit where they do all intersect. Could you paint that line for us where those three come together?

Speaker 2: 4:42

Yeah, actually it's interesting those three come together.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Yeah, actually it's interesting. We played with the Venn diagram idea for a while. We began to wonder the problem is with the Venn diagrams it still leaves part of creative outside of critical and critical outside creative. And we began thinking about that thinking. Is there a time when, for example, creative thought or critical thought aren't intersecting? And we began thinking that is one a subset of the other. Which one is the subset? But that line at the core and it might be helpful to define, and then I can run from there.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Critical thinking has four key dimensions that are important. One is that there has to be a decision of some kind. It's an assessment, a judgment, that's an invitation to reach a decision of some kind. That decision then, to have that decision out there, there have to be options to consider. There are options that I'm weighing to reach my decision. That decision is not just based on a preference, how I feel about something. It's based on a set of criteria.

Speaker 2: 5:46

From the root, critical thinking comes from the Greek word meaning criteria thinking, and then I use evidence Now. So that's at the core of all critical thinking. It's criteria-based thinking that has us weigh options to reach a thoughtful, reasoned judgment. But when we looked at creativity, it's still the same thing. The difference is in creativity there's the fluency and flexibility of thinking to generate those options. So, rather than options presented in the creative space, I have to generate those options. But creative activities still require that I decide is this worth pursuing, do I let it go, do I need to revise it? And all those are criteria-based decisions.

Speaker 2: 6:26

So we began to see that whether I'm nurturing critical, creative or collaborative, there's still criteria guiding us, there's still a body of evidence. You need to guide that. So, at their core, this is why we said critical, creative and collaborative are all quality thinking. By the way, one other quick piece collaborative thinking, you know, properly understood, is not cooperative. It's not you and I putting our heads together and having to reach the same conclusion. But collaborative is me having to decide what to take from my conversation. That I see value and it makes sense for me, and so each of us are responsible for our own learning. But I benefit from engaging in that conversation, but at the end of the day, I need to reconcile that with my understanding. So what we began to see is that critical, creative and collaborative are these kind of three-dimensional, intersecting pieces that mutually reinforce in our classrooms.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Okay, interesting. It's a great chapter, that one. It was one that I was. I had to kind of go back and look at again too. Um, and do you find that um terms kind of like like we're in education, there's always terms for so many different things Um, and we kind of like get the flavor of the month at times. You know a feeling where a new idea comes out, or research, and then a new thing, or udl versus design, thinking, versus like. How do you, how do you approach a book and writing a book where you want certain concepts to definitely be at the forefront, but that that it, it has this like said, something that sustains, like something that has legs to it. Like, how do you get from the the, the kind of the macro, to the micro in the critical thinking journey?

Speaker 2: 8:15

Chris, that's a really good question, because there's a danger, I think, always, you know, in in the kind of work that we do and that you do, and that how do we not just get caught up in in, like, I'm afraid, that there are times when people you'll create a new, a new catch word, and and now we're a guru because I invented that word and so but you know, um, I'm doing some writing for both new brunswick right now and and manitoba government's on assessment, and you know it's an example of where I'm saying we've created all this language. We stumble over assessment for, of and as formative. Look, at the end of the day, you're either assessing to guide kids or you're evaluating. You know we've created this complexity. We look at, well, what does engagement actually mean? Well, it comes from the French word to commit to and well, it reminds us, being engaged does not mean being more entertained, it doesn't mean having more fun, it means getting an intellectual commitment to the process of thinking or to inquire, stripped right back to inquires, to seek answers. So, an inquirer, I asked you earlier hey, will I see you on Wednesday? You said, yeah, well, okay, done, that's an inquiry. And I got an answer. So when schools say, oh, we teach through inquiry, well, that could still be. You inquired, you found your answer. It doesn't mean there's deep thinking. So we try to return to the root of words and say, now, let's work with the root of that word so we can have some clarity, and so that's often important.

Speaker 2: 9:42

Now there are some words and this you know. We talk about a critical challenge or we will talk about criteria for judgment and those are to put a finer point on. And if I can just very quickly, you know criteria, you know what. What are? Criteria can be either simply descriptive or they can be qualitative in nature. Simply descriptive or they can be qualitative in nature. So there we add the word for judgment to say when people are using criteria.

Speaker 2: 10:09

I had a gentleman taught woodworking and he said my criteria my kids have to build a box and my criteria is they have to use a particular one of the three types of corners. I teach some they have to have a lid and it has to be certain dimensions. Those are criteria but they're descriptive. There's no judgment in that. They're binary Either you did it or you didn't. Those criteria for judgment would outline the qualities I'm looking for in that work, you know there is a thinking behind it.

Speaker 2: 10:34

So sometimes the words are added to add clarity to what they're doing, what we're doing, and sometimes it's a matter of stripping back those words and reminding ourselves. You know, I find teachers find it always enlightening when I remind them that the word assessment comes from the Latin word assidere, meaning to sit alongside. It doesn't mean to sit in judgment, it means to sit in guidance, to support. So those are kind of two things that guide us in trying to not. I often go into places I'm working, though and say look, if there's language people are getting tripped up on, just tell me the language you're already using. We don't need to add more layers on that. So if you're using essential questions and I'm using a throughline question then just let's decide on which one you want to use, and I'll get caught up in language absolutely I like to.

Speaker 1: 11:21

I heard this quote that you had said and it does kind of simplify things for teachers instead of like another, you know another research, another word or another definition, where you said tweak and fortify was a foundation, that we're not asking you to overhaul everything and throw the baby in the bathwater here. We want you to reflect on what you're doing, tweak certain things and then fortify. Could you, could you expand on that thought, because I thought it was. It was it kind of like lessened my anxiety a little bit when I'm I'm reading all of these different kind of like, oh, trying this and trying that, because we work with all school boards that learn, so we're, we get bombarded with all the languages, um, and all the different you know things that they're doing at their boards and stuff. But could you, could you reflect a little bit on that tweaking and fortifying um statement that you had made?

Speaker 2: 12:16

sure, and first I'm going to set that in a context saying um, and just today, talking to you, I said look, there are two fundamental shifts. We should be interested in Two fundamental shifts One, framing our questions so they invite kids to think. So number one thing is do my questions, invite you to make a thoughtful decision. Have I invited thinking? Make the invitation to think where learning begins, not where it ends, because so often people think I have to front-end load the content first, then I can ask you that rich question. I'm saying well, no, actually you can invite kids to think and then they can change the mind as they learn. So now that leads me to the tweak in Fortify. So the tweak is simply saying can I, for example, add a single word that might put a more clear focus on the thinking that's being asked and we call them qualifiers.

Speaker 2: 13:11

So I could say I want you to identify three arguments the author makes in their writing. Or I could ask you what are the three most compelling arguments the author makes? The first one. I just go in and I find the first three and I write them down. I found three arguments there. I'm done the second one. Well, what do you mean by a compelling argument. What's the criteria that you're using? And I could say to you well, chris, you picked an interesting three. Can you talk to me about why you chose those three? Because someone else picked a different three, different three, and both could be equally sound. But it's not the first three, it's the most compelling.

Speaker 2: 13:46

You know asking young kids why would the little red hen not share her bread? Well, that's a retrieval question, that's not a thinking test. Just, I remember in the story was it fair that she wouldn't share her bread? Oh well, I have to think about what makes something fair. Now I have to use the details from the story to support my decision about whether it was fair or not. Those are what we mean by tweaks, and often they'd be accomplished with simply adding one word to a question best Instead of what are three ways we can harvest trees? We ask what are the best ways to harvest trees? Well, we pause and say, well, best. By best we mean it's sustainable, it's profitable and it's safe or whatever the criteria might be.

Speaker 2: 14:26

That's the tweak part, the fortify part. You know, sometimes we'll be talking with teachers and they got a really good question. That's a terrific question. Some grade three teachers today in the story where the wild things are, and the question they asked was Max dreaming? Now we tweak that a little more, just make it a little stronger, saying what's the most convincing evidence that Max was or was not dreaming in that story. Okay, so now it's not a retrieval, it's not remembering the story, because they're never actually saying the story was he or not? But is it implied that he was? What evidence? Was he or not? But is it implied that he was? What evidence?

Speaker 2: 15:06

Now the fortify is adding what we call intellectual tools. You've got a great question, but if I don't have the background knowledge, I can't answer your question. So how do we build the background or help kids think about the criteria or provide a thinking organizer when they gather evidence, do they have a way to sort and organize so they can see the patterns or make the connections? And I find, with teachers, the tweak they see oh, this doesn't mean I have to rewrite my whole process. It's not a big rewrite, it's often a small but powerful little shift. And the other side of it is, oh, adding that one tool in and, by the way, I have to say, for our kids who are struggling.

Speaker 2: 15:45

Going back to you asked earlier about the journey in this work. I want to tell you, 20 years ago, when I began, critical thinking was really what we did for the gifted program. It was IB program, and what we've found over time is teaching the intellectual tools for thinking is more important for our kids who struggle. Our kids who are strong tend to intuitively do some of these things already. Critical thinking is actually more and most important for our kids who might struggle. We give them some structure. We give them the tools they need. If they have the tools, they can more likely engage.

Speaker 2: 16:17

So I'll just finish by saying I always have to remind teachers just asking better questions doesn't mean you get better engage. So I'll just finish by saying I always have to remind teachers just asking better questions doesn't mean you get better answers. So I tweaked my question, but my kids still gave disappointing answers. Well, if you didn't build the toolkits, they need the background knowledge they drawn the way to see the connections. You're not going to get better answers just because you ask better questions. And so that's the floor to fight. How do we add the tools that will help kids be successful?

Speaker 1: 16:42

Right, right, and you've talked about five intellectual tools. Right Like, can you, can you, can you ring those off and, kind of like, add a little color to them?

Speaker 2: 16:52

Yeah, yeah. So the first two we've kind of touched on, but the first two that are really the pillars are background knowledge, and we say background knowledge because you can't think in a vacuum, you can't think about nothing. And the second one is criteria for judgment. Those are the two pillars, but I have something to think about. I have some criteria to guide me in that thinking. I want to loop back to those. I'll give you the five, then I'll quickly come back.

Speaker 2: 17:16

The third one is critical thinking, vocabulary and that one's looking at the language of thinking. And you know, I always have to remind teachers, not the language of your site Pythagorean theorem is background knowledge. You know. Metamorphosis, that's background knowledge. Analyze and evaluate is vocabulary of thinking. And if you don't know the difference between analyzing and evaluating, then you just, you know you write whatever. Do you know the difference between a bias and a perspective? If someone says could you form a conjecture? See, if I don't know these terms and the sad thing is often on provincial exams I may get tripped up by the question, not the content. I studied, I know the content. I misunderstood what you're asking in the question. It was interesting today how many when I asked, asked how many kids don't really understand what an inference is, and even high school teachers saying, yeah, they often don't really understand that. Well then, sometimes we need to slow down and unpack. You know what makes a sound versus weak inference, what makes a difference between observation and inference. So there's a lot of language of thinking that we can get tripped up on if we're not careful.

Speaker 2: 18:24

The fourth tool are, I mentioned, thinking strategies and, by the way, I should mention, as I go through these, the tools need to be owned by the learners. I think teachers often see them as tools that I'm going to use to teach, but really our goal in nurturing agency over time is that students start to have a bank of their own thinking strategy. So when they encounter a problem, they can say, oh, this is a good time for me to use a Venn diagram to help me this strategy to be used. So we want to build students comfort with these strategies. The fifth tool and it's different than the other four, are habits of mind. These are the habits of good thinkers being curious and paying attention to detail and, you know, being collaborative in your thinking. And so how do we nurture the habits of good thinkers?

Speaker 2: 19:08

And, to be quite frank, in most provinces, unfortunately, we reference them in our curriculum but we don't evaluate them very well, we don't report on them very well, and yet they're often one of the most important pieces if you're going to be successful. Perseverance, for example, is a habit of mind and much of the research shows it's one of the most important you want to succeed in life. Perseverance is going to be one of the number one things. I want to just back up for a moment. Background knowledge I mentioned is an absolute pillar and it's important in our work that we don't, when we start talking about inquiry, that people don't. You know, when we start talking about inquiry, that people don't think it's discovery, because we are definitely not about discovery learning. You know, here's a question go out and explore and you'll eventually arrive at an answer. No, they won't. And so what I'm always important to say to teachers what teachers do really matters in classrooms because we help build the background knowledge. It's also important we understand.

Speaker 2: 20:03

As a teacher, I don't teach answers, I teach the intellectual tools.

Speaker 2: 20:07

You need to reach your own answer, which means I will teach content, but not to answer the question.

Speaker 2: 20:12

That's your job. The other piece I want to be careful of building background knowledge doesn't mean park the thinking. Well, I fill in all the details, then we'll come back to the thinking. So one of the challenges is how do we teach content knowledge? How do we build content knowledge, or background knowledge, in a way that invites thinking? How do we ensure that every day in my class, thinking is what happens here and it will happen even as I'm building content knowledge. So one of the things I will try to do in the next day with the group I'm working with is just offering here's a dozen ways I can teach content through a thinking approach. So we want to find a way that I understand, I need to build your understanding of science, of history, of math concepts and so on, but I need to engage you in thinking while you learn about it, because we know from lots of research that if you're engaged in thinking when you're learning, you're more likely to retain what you were learning. It's harder to to transfer into long-term memory information.

Speaker 1: 21:11

I merely tried to memorize, so that's that's the real challenge background knowledge built through a thinking approach great and I mean I, I love the, the word it it rang true to my ears is that engagement part, and I think that we see that more as as kids move up in their schooling, right from elementary to high school, we know that engagement decreases quite a bit. How do you, how do you activate that thinking in the higher level high schools, when you are faced with you have to cover these things so that they pass this, they get their mark on the test. How can that mindset shift a little bit so that there is more engagement? Or I feel like I can bring more engagement in if I do these certain strategies or these criterias.

Speaker 2: 22:00

Yeah. So first of all, one of the things we need to keep in mind, and I'll give you an example of this in a second it is an inherently more interesting way to learn to be invited to think than it is to simply memorize. And my best proof of that when I ask people have you ever been to an escape room? And you know, two thirds of my audience put that yeah, I, I'm in an escape room. I said so. You paid money to be locked in a room. You have to think your way out of it. That doesn't prove that the human brain likes to solve puzzles.

Speaker 2: 22:30

We like to be invited to think, and yet often in schools, we don't invite the thinking until the end. First, I have to fill your head with content. Think about video games. Video games you start playing and you figure it out as you go. You think your way through and if you get stuck, you go find and you come back. If school were a video game, nobody would want to play because we'd say no, no, no, you can't. You can't try the game until you finish reading the manual.

Speaker 1: 22:54

No starting over either, right? No retries, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 23:13

Hit, yeah, exactly Hit that reset button and away you go. So how do we do that in classrooms, like, how do we seize on what we see as models that are, you know gaming, you know they're brilliant. I mean, you start with a manageable place for people to get into the game. And then Brandon at the end of the week and he said heads up, a lot of our high school teachers believe that kids can't think until you first fill their head with information and you need to help us try to change that. So we call this a learning launch and it's not a minds on. It's more than that. I'll give you a quick example.

Speaker 2: 23:38

Grade seven science teacher was about to start learning. Kids were going to start learning about the organ systems in the human body. So our learning launch was to ask is Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, is Groot more plant or animal? And we gave kids a dashboard. So it's not a binary. The question wasn't is he a plant or is he an animal? That doesn't get me where I want. Is he more plant or animal? Because he't get me where I want. Is he more plant or animal? Because he's got a bit of both. Is he way more plant, somewhat more plant, somewhat more animal, way more animal, kids took a position. Why do you think that? Okay, let's explore the respiratory system. And they learned about it. Okay, does Groot have a respiratory system? Well, yeah, he's got a voice and he needs a voice box, so we're teaching the content. Well, let me tell you a bit more about our digestive system. We talk about it. Okay, does Groot have one?

Speaker 2: 24:27

By the way, the engagement of the kids and we gave them that space to go back and forth in that dashboard. They debated like they were hooked. So, if we can find a way to get the excitement going first and say, well, what if I told you this? A way to get the excitement going first and say, well, what if I told you this, would that change your mind? What if you learned this? So, using a learning launch that's a shift we're really working on with teachers to say that interesting, provocative question ask it first, don't save it, and be okay with kids saying you don't know right now. That's okay, because we're going to get into this.

Speaker 2: 25:01

Another example of that where do teachers tend to put their field trips in a unit and I can tell you, the vast majority at the end of the unit like some kind of reward. You know you behave. I'll take you on a field trip. That should be the first thing. Go and ask questions, you know. Get out there and wonder and come on back and we'll explore together. So I think there are ways we can raise engagement by not making the most interesting part of a unit towards the end. Use it as the hook, get kids into it and we see pretty consistently when we invert things. By the way, that's another little tweak. Sometimes I see teachers you have a fascinating task but you've saved it for the end.

Speaker 2: 25:43

What if we made it the beginning? Quick example math teacher had kids at the end of a linear relations unit, grade 9 or solve a murder mystery. We said what if that was the start? And so we wrote this up. The first, you know, 20 minutes kids are introduced. At 6.20 this morning a body was found. We have three suspects. We need you to figure out the time of day and which suspect most likely committed, based on you know a little bit. Then the kids were told well, the liver temperature when the body was found was this here's the data set around the decline in liver temperature after death Using linear relations, calculate the likely time of death. Then they looked at eye pressure. The kids had this ongoing debate about the time of death and he probably committed the murder applying the math. They were so engaged in it. I want you to note normally normally or in the past that same activity was at the end of the unit, not the beginning, and the impact it had by moving it up front. So sometimes with teachers that's a an easy little tweak.

Speaker 1: 26:47

Can you make challenge the start, not the end, and you got kids hooked yeah, I like that idea of hook, hooking them um and and related, letting their experience kind of sing a little bit as they're struggling with the thinking process and at least they have something they can hem it on to, rather than like you know, textbook stuff where it's like, yeah, whatever it's words off a page to me, but you actually bring their lives into play. You know, like every kid seen Groot and thought about you know probably thought of you know he grows like a tree, but he's kind of human and like yeah, that's really cool example.

Speaker 2: 27:25

Well, I want to use I want to flip this just for a moment if you don't mind yeah, so there are the benefits for the kids, there's no question. We see their engagement is up, the depth of their learning is enhanced because they're thinking about it. But I think we shouldn't lose sight of and I just made the teacher's job easier, because if you save everything until the end and I've got a week left in this unit and I'm supposed to give feedback and help kids learn, I'm trying now to give feedback to the 30 kids in my class all in the same week. I only have so much time. Well, imagine if I put that question up front. We've got a month in this unit.

Speaker 2: 28:00

Every time I teach a lesson I'm checking in. How are you applying that? I have way more time. It's a lot calmer for me. A lot of this will happen in my class, in the lesson itself. It's not happening at my kitchen table anymore, it's now. The assessment is built into my lesson and what we find and this is coming from teachers their kids are more engaged, their learning is deeper. And the teachers will say and my life's easier, I'm able to give more meaningful feedback in a more timely way without taking it all home, and they often will say you know, this was good for me and I think, that's another important piece, that it's good for kids, but it's also good for teachers.

Speaker 2: 28:35

It's a more efficient way for them to provide the kind of guidance that we should be providing kids.

Speaker 1: 28:44

Absolutely Fascinating, fascinating. I'm so happy that we're going to keep this conversation going on Wednesday because we'll be seeing you. I love it. I mean, I love that idea too of coming kind of kind of back to it a bit, of just those tweaks and and and little tweaks, like just move that in the forefront and use that question as your guide as you go through. Such a powerful idea any teacher could do it, but it's like believing that it is going to have an effect on the kids. And oftentimes, you know, when I go into classrooms and I work with teachers coaching them, they always are amazed that seeing their kids in a different way or seeing them where they didn't anticipate they would go, because they've always just kind of gone there down their alley, you know, like they just stay on there instead of doing those small little tweaks that can have a profound effect on kids.

Speaker 2: 29:38

I also think it's respectful to teachers that there's a lot of good stuff going on in our classrooms and I think sometimes, you know, when I get outside of Canada and I'm working with schools internationally, you know you're reminded like we have a very good education system. There's a lot of good stuff happening. You know. Can we get better? Absolutely. But I think being respectful to teachers, like, let's build on top of the good work you're doing, don't this isn't to displace the work you're doing. You began the conversation saying, you know, like how do we make sure that we're honoring the work that teachers are already doing and and adding to it and not displacing it? Because if I go in and say to teachers, you know, basically, scrap everything you're doing. A, it's offensive and B, the workload just went through the roof and they're not going to buy in. So I think this approach of tweak and fortify, add these small pieces, is saying build off the good work you're doing, let's find ways to make it even better Amazing.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Let's leave it at that. What a way to end. Awesome, awesome statement. Well, this has been fascinating. I'm going to go head back into that book after this to look at a few more of the ideas behind it, but I really really appreciate your time today, garfield, and sharing some of your ideas and, again, I really look forward to our continued collaboration.

Speaker 2: 30:58

Thanks so much, Chris.

Speaker 1: 31:00

Thank you.