Open Workshop

The Intuitive Connection between “Powerful Thinking” and “Powerful Talking" 2014

Date: 2 or 3 June 2014 (please select a preferred date)

Venue: To Be Confirmed

Time: 9.00am to 5pm

Closing date: 16 May 2014 Friday

Workshop Fee: S$300.00 per participant which includes all training materials, 2 tea breaks and 1 lunch.

For 2 or more participants from the same school/organisation who sign up, the cost will be S$250.00 per person. Fees do not include GST.

Registration is on a first come, first served basis. Register early to avoid disappointment.

Click here to download the Open Workshop Registration Form.

School/Cluster Based Workshop Registration
Dates available for booking: 4, 5 or 6 June 2014

Please contact Joseph Loy by email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or tel: 6363 0330 on the cost of conducting the workshop.

Please indicate your preferred date in the School/Cluster-Based Registration Form but this is subject to availability.

The school/cluster will need to provide the venue, refreshments, logistics, materials and printing of handouts.

 Click here to download the School/Cluster-Based Workshop Registration Form.

This workshop will focus on the intuitive connection between “powerful thinking” and “powerful talking”. The former includes higher-order thinking, critical and creative thinking, and inquiry-based thinking, while the latter, also called dialogue, refers to both the skill and the inclination to articulate ideas that are important to us, and to listen carefully to others. We know that through dialogue we can express and communicate our thoughts, but what is less well understood is that dialogue is also a generator and driver of powerful thinking.

How can talking improve our thinking? Does it matter what we actually talk about? Does dialogue have its own rules? Is thinking something private that occurs inside our own minds? How can classrooms be transformed into thinking environments in which students learn to think for themselves by thinking together? What is the role of philosophy in helping children and adolescents become more powerful thinkers? These are among the key questions to be addressed.

Session Outline:
The workshop will model three key dimensions of powerful thinking.

1. The nature of the classroom environment
A “safe” place that encourages students to express and reflect upon their ideas, to be intellectual risk-takers, and to see themselves as “one-among-others”

2. How we think together
Collaborative thinking, thinking as dialogue, thinking about our thinking, formulating and applying criteria for good thinking and judgment formation

3. What we think (about). Powerful thinking requires content which:

• Students find intriguing, fascinating, puzzling;
• Can be readily accessed but not readily resolved by them;
• Is presented to students as stimulus and context, rather than as completed “knowledge”;
• Is transformed by the process of inquiry (knowledge and meaning construction).

Objectives
Philosophy, with its ancient tradition of inquiry, has a particular affinity with these three dimensions. The workshop will:

• Analyze the connection between philosophy and teaching for better, more powerful thinking;
• Explain the framework of “Philosophy with/for Children” including the use of stories as windows to inquiry and dialogue;
• Explain how philosophy combines with the three Dimensions above to help transform classrooms into communities of inquiry;
• Discuss what forms of transfer can be expected to other teaching and learning contexts?

Learning Outcomes
Participants will learn how to:

• Build a “safe” environment for dialogue, based on mutual respect, care and empathy
• Develop tools for powerful talking and thinking – including critical reflection, probing questioning and the vocabulary of thinking;
• Make use of philosophical ideas and concepts to think more deeply about the “Big Questions”
• Find a comfortable balance between urging students to think and leaving them room to think for themselves.

Target Audience
This workshop is intended for primary school and lower secondary school classroom teachers.

About the Trainer - Professor Laurence J. Splitter

Laurance Splitter, is Professor of philosophy and education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. A former Rhodes Scholar, he is a renowned scholar and educator in the field of Philosophy for Children, and was responsible for introducing philosophy into Australian schools and classrooms during the 1980s and 1990s.

He has worked with children of all ages, and conducted professional development activities in many countries, including (in Asia) Singapore (starting in 1989), China, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. He brings a deep understanding and appreciation of philosophy – including logic, ethics and the theory of knowledge – to bear on key questions relating to teaching and learning, including the goal of transforming classrooms into powerful thinking environments known as communities of inquiry.

He is sensitive to the culture and environment of Asian classrooms in which participating in open dialogue over contested issues remains a somewhat daunting prospect. But he remains passionate about the value of dialogue, insisting that while it may not solve all possible problems, we are intellectually, morally and spiritually lost without it.