Interdisciplinary learning works best of all when planning is collaborative, and that can include planning alongside learners themselves. In turn, though, that co-design demands greater clarity around the thinking skills we want to see learners use. Those thinking skills are best taught, rather than caught.

Learners need to keep developing new thinking skills to process information, solve problems and make decisions. Thinking skills are learnable and teachable. And that means teachers and learners, together, can organise them, and ensure the right skills for the learning we want to undertake.

A thinking skills framework gives practitioners a solid foundation for organising thinking skills alongside discipline-specific skills and knowledge.

How to use this resource

You can use the case studies to prepare for a short professional learning discussion that could form part of your weekly meeting or professional development slot. There are more developed Practical Activities that you can set aside planning time to explore alone or with colleagues.

Explore these examples

Crown Primary School, Inverness

A common language of thinking skills shapes the habits for lifelong learning.

Crown Primary is developing a thinking skills framework to foster independent and self-motivated learners. The framework helps the learners develop thinking skills and attributes that make real connections to employability, the world of work and new personalised learner pathways within their school.

Educators wanted to make concrete connections between the thinking skills required to improve their IDL projects on the one hand, and skills development advice from Developing the Young Workforce on the other. Therefore, the school invested in co-planning time to allow its teachers to translate the Skills Development Scotland (SDS) Meta-Skills advice into a meaningful context for their school.

“Not planning skills as clearly as we might plan content means that an individual teacher might be strong in one area (creativity) but not another (critical analysis), so it gets left to chance or left off the programme altogether.” Cat MacKay, P6/7, Crown Primary School

Key features of thinking skills frameworks at Crown Primary School, Inverness

• Invest in collaborative professional learning to plan and design prototypes for skills
• Use a design cycle to review the frameworks regularly with the team and learners
• Teach a common language of skills that can be applied across the school
• Break down the progression of skills across the stages and unique contexts for IDL projects in the school
• Make direct connections with the world of work and lifelong learning
• Empower learners in the process through learner reflections and documenting their achievements in their learner profiles

Wyndford Nursery, Glasgow

A challenge to shake up the physical learning environment provoked powerful thinking skills and conversation between educators and learners.

IDL looks and feels different in an early years environment. It starts with the child and is even more centred around contexts and provocations for learning. Wyndford Nursery co-designed an outdoor learning curriculum with young people. Outdoor learning was the catalyst for encouraging staff dialogue and challenging perceptions of learning. The impact of this change allowed all staff to see themselves as ‘educators’ and authentically include learners in the curriculum planning and evolution of the nursery learning environments. In addition, powerful thinking from the learners became evident in the influence and traces they left on the co-design of these new learning environments.

“Learners know that the nursery is theirs. They visualise their plan for the morning, are active participants in the environment and have the power to change the environment day to day. They leave their traces of powerful thinking, where before they were hidden.

“It’s not effortless to get to this point, but it looks and feels effortless when you’re working with young people.” Mary Pat Mac Connell, Head of Centre.

Key features of thinking skills at Wyndford Nursery:

• Open-ended environments such as outdoor learning are vital contexts for realising IDL in nursery settings
• Investment of time and space for staff collaborative learning
• Learning provocations prompted thinking skills and subsequent questions and dialogue
• Thinking skills are enquiry-led and collaborative
• Thinking skills focus on inclusive practice and the child at the centre of the learning process
• Thinking skills amplify ‘thinking about thinking’ and share the messy process of learning
• Visual wall displays can chart the thinking skills process
• Thinking skills are at the centre of strong collaborative professional learning

Download(s)

Skills Development Framework: How-To Guide, Crown Primary School

Skills Development Framework, Crown Primary School

Developing the Young Workforce

PDF file: Full case study and discussion prompts (1.8 MB)

PTT: Practical activities (473 KB)

PDF: Practical activities (188 KB)

Next Steps

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