On World Philosophy Day here’s a thought to ponder: the act of thinking is what makes us human, but the art of critical and creative thinking is what gives humans the agency to focus on what we think.  

At Newington College we live and breathe critical and creative thinking. We do this because we know, to equip our students with the smarts they need to navigate the fast-moving world they inhabit, they need to be adaptative global citizens, able to articulate and hone cognitive skills such as justifying, assessing and evaluating. Critical thinking teaches students the mechanics of using these skills. 

In 2022 we founded our Centre for Critical Thinking and Ethics (CCTE) under the expert leadership of philosopher and linguistics teacher Dr Britta Jensen. Here we explicitly teach our students from Kindergarten to Year 12 to think critically and creatively. Dr Jensen assists Newington’s expert staff to embed critical thinking within subject areas. 

‘Our approach to critical thinking is to advocate for being explicit about the nature of the thinking required to engage with the learning that you’re intending the students to do,’ says Dr Jensen.

Newington’s CCTE is also well-established today as a lighthouse in the provision of professional learning (PL) for teacher development. Internally it offers extensive staff professional learning opportunities and externally, the CCTE has partnered with the Association for Philosophy in Schools NSW to offer Professional Learning to more than one hundred teachers to date.  

‘This term we were pleased to support and mentor teachers through a sequence of three Advanced Practice workshops to help teachers to refine their use of the community of inquiry pedagogy to support student thinking in the classroom,’ says Dr Jensen. 

Newington CCTE’s final Professional Learning workshop for 2024 took place this week with 13 teachers joining us from government and independent schools, and non-profit organizations across Australia including Newcastle, Dubbo, Sydney and Adelaide. 

‘This week’s workshop, Advanced Practice 3: Improving Student Reasoning through Philosophical Inquiry, helped teachers to consolidate and extend their skills in planning and using collaborative inquiry-based methods in the classroom with a particular focus on argumentation and reasoning, which are central to all subjects’ says Dr Jensen.  

Delivered face-to-face across a full day, it was the final workshop in an Advanced Practice course held during the year after which participating teachers can earn a Federation of Asia-Pacific Philosophy in Schools Associations (FAPSA) Advanced Practice Certificate. The event was hosted by Philosophy in Schools NSW at Newington. 

On World Philosophy Day with its theme Philosophy for a Sustainable and Inclusive Future, Dr Jensen says Newington’s CCTE, as well as its Thinker in Residence, its Public Program of evening lectures, and its partnering with the Association of Philosophy in Schools NSW, encourages understanding, compassion and conversation. 

‘All our work at Newington CCTE is motivated by an ethical obligation we feel as educators to equip our future citizens to be fair-minded, informed and discerning critical thinkers, which is vital for functioning democracies.’  

For details of the next Professional Learning workshop for teachers in 2025 please click here.