Developing Critical and Creative Thinking Strategies in Primary School Pupils: An Inter-Cultural Study of Teachers’ Learning

This project involved schools and teachers in England and China. It was designed to explore the ways in which teachers in two very different cultural settings took on ideas and strategies focused on the fostering of creative and critical thinking in their pupils. The authors were particularly interested to explore the extent to which challenges to teachers' thinking and learning resulted in professional dilemmas. It was hypothesised that where wide discrepancies exist between pre-existing teacher beliefs, and externally provided ideas and solutions to classroom practice, the articulation of dilemmas, which teachers face may help teachers to bridge these discrepancies. This empirical study was designed to explore the ways in which teachers dealt with such dilemmas, either confrontationally or incrementally. Similarities and differences across cultures were noted. The teachers' beliefs did not seem to change greatly across the project period. However, their practice did; the constructivist pedagogy of the thinking strategies intervention was seen to influence the didactic teaching in China toward a more dialogical method by teachers. Teachers in both settings increased in their detail and precision in the planning of teaching episodes, although the English teachers employed greater diversity in the sequencing and techniques used in the thinking lessons compared to the teachers in China