By Lydia Nabwire
Over 40 secondary school headteachers in Namisindwa and Manafwa districts are set to undergo training in critical thinking. The teachers were recently hosted at Luigi Giussani Foundation head offices in Kampala where they were told about the need to enhance critical thinking skills among learners.
The teachers, who were accompanied by the the district chief administrative officers and district education officers, will be trained under the Promoting Gender Equity by Enhancing Girls’ and Boys’ Critical Thinking Skills Through a Whole School Intervention project.
The project will see officials from the foundation train classroom teachers on various aspects, including defining education, understanding the school culture and leadership management, gender-responsive pedagogy and critical thinking enhancement. The training is expected to kick off before the school term opens on February 6. The project will last two years.
“High-order thinking is a desirable and necessary human competence that young persons should acquire along their educational path. Critical thinking has become an educational priority to promote economic, political and cultural independence from the legacies of colonialism,” Emmanuel Adengo, the project manager, said.
He added that the project, which is already being implemented in Mpigi and Nakaseke districts, will involve all the subjects in the lower secondary curriculum.
The National Curriculum Development Centre revised the lower secondary curriculum to include skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration or teamwork, communication, flexibility and information literacy. This has, however, evoked questions of whether the new curriculum can be effectively implemented given the inadequate learning facilities in Ugandan schools.
But Adengo says the foundation’s project seeks to address some of these challenges. The project is expected to rely on a professional development approach in order to understand the transformation process in teachers’ pedagogical practices while developing and implementing lesson plans envisioned to provoke critical thinking among learners. In this process, teachers will also be trained on the main tenets of critical thinking.
“The project aims to evaluate the extent to which the whole school system approach contributes to the development of critical thinking abilities among Ugandan secondary school learners,” Adengo emphasised.
According to the foundation’s executive director Gillian Atuheire, the project seeks to ensure that key education bodies and other stakeholders understand critical thinking skills.
Stakeholders Speak Out
“I have been discouraging my students from attempting questions which require logic because I know they have low critical thinking abilities. With this training, we will discover ways of enhancing critical thinking among the learners,” Samuel Kigenyi, headteacher of Bugobero High School Manafwa, said. Paul Kimono, headteacher Bubutu SS, Namisindwa, said critical thinking will help students avoid making “careless decisions”.
