Teachers for Critical Thinking Development

Over the past few months, EWMI ACCESS has supported the Tbilisi-based CSO Education for All Georgia to carry out a wide scale awareness-raising campaign to inform school teachers about the importance of critical thinking and ways to apply this skill in teaching practice. To attract wider attention and interest of the target audiences, the project involved the finalists of the 2017-19 National Teacher Prize (prominent teachers from around the country).

Within the project, a series of social videos were released about the importance of critical thinking and teachers’ role in developing this skill among students. The finalists of the National Teacher Prize also delivered master-classes to more than 300 school teachers in Tbilisi and the regions and distributed relevant informational materials.

One of the main outputs of the project is a comprehensive guidebook for school teachers explaining the essence of critical thinking, why it is important, and how this skill can be developed. A vast part of the guidebook provides practical examples and recommendations on how to integrate these methods into teaching practice. The Guidebook is authored by eight Georgian teachers (finalists and winners of the National Teacher Prize). This is the first Georgian-language guidebook on critical thinking development.

The project closing event was held on October 3 at Ilia State University. The event was attended by Global Teacher Prize finalist Swaroop Rawall, an arts teacher from India, who did a presentation on her teaching methods, with special focus on critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills.