ELC Professional Development Workshop: Critical Thinking and the Question, 23 October 2013

One of the objectives of the General Education programme is to develop students’ critical thinking abilities. In this workshop, ELC Senior Instructor, Averil Bolster presented the importance of asking questions to generate students’ critical thinking. It is also important to train students to be able to ask good questions. Thought-provoking and powerful questions should stimulate curiosity and evokes more questions from our students. The workshop is based on the idea of “Quescussion” by Paul Bidwell, i.e., to have students discuss about questions related to a certain topic. After dropping down the questions they have, students have to decide which questions are better and more powerful than the others. This helps students to understand what is meant by good questions. Members of the ELC academic staff also found that it is also an effective way to train students to be able to ask good questions and to stimulate critical thinking.