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Ian Wright's Critical Thinking, Why Bother

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Critical Thinking, Why Bother? Ian Wright (2002)

‘Critical Thinking, Why Bother?’ is a chapter from ‘Is That Right? Critical Thinking and the Social World of the Young Learner’. I selected this work due to its practical nature and applicability to my profession, primary school teaching. Wright outlines a fair discussion about critical thinking intending to guide the teacher to help children to ‘think through situations where the answer is in doubt’ (2002, p.9). Throughout this chapter Wright pioneers critical thinking has a ‘practical value’ for social education, that it could help children grasp subject content in a profound and meaningful way.
Examples of how to teach critical thinking are included throughout this chapter however, the lessons overlook other views of critical thinking as a process of developing skills and sub-skills. Wright (2011) generalises that critical thinking involves questioning from the higher end of the cognitive domain according to Blooms Taxonomy; ‘analyses, synthesis and evaluation’ (2002, p51). …show more content…

Wright (2002 p.25) claims that controversial issues might be opposed by parents however, possible responses to the limitations could have been more considered by Wright particularly from an ethical point of view. Controversial issues could potentially transform something positive and autonomous into something negative and controlling. The teacher is not advised how to avoid or respond to this possibility. Mulnix (2012, p467) elegantly expresses, in moral terms, that critical thinking ‘is a theory about how to think, not about how to live.’ From an inclusive, ethical, moral and academic point of view, the author did not deliver this essential message strongly enough. Wright (2002, p26) subtly remarks; ‘In the first years of schooling, the making of

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