CRITHINKEDU derives from the experiences of partners’ institutions and from the need to link higher education institutions with the labor market and society, meeting the needs and challenges of the 21st century in the development of critical thinking skills in students. It aims to: 1) connect Higher Education Institutions (HEI), NGO’s and companies in order to identify curricular goals and outcomes in critical thinking education; 2) characterise current critical thinking education practices among faculty teaching staff in European HEI; 3) propose a quality assurance criteria for the enhancement of critical thinking education in the European HEI; 4) deliver critical thinking training/learning activities for faculty teaching and students from European HEI taking in account the proposal of quality assurance criteria for the enhancement of critical thinking education; and 5) disseminate the need of critical thinking education across the European Higher Education curricula.These goals are endorsed by a consortium of 11 institutions (10 HEIs, 1 NGO) from 9 countries (Portugal, Greece, Lithuania, Italy, Romania, Czech Republic, Spain, Ireland, Belgium) with consolidated backgrounds/ expertise in critical thinking (teaching and research, resources development and extension to the community) and/or in international projects. The project entails 4 main collaborative Work Packages, which contain specific activities, managed according to a participated project plan - led by the proponent partner (UTAD/ Portugal). A “Preliminary proposal of Guidelines/Recommendations for quality-assurance criteria in critical thinking education in HEI” (OUTPUT 2) will address the gaps between the critical thinking skills needed in the labor market (identified by the NGO’s/Companies - OUTPUT 1) and the current teaching practices - we expect up to 50 participating NGO’s/companies in the project. A training course (OUTPUT 3) will be designed to address the “Guidelines/Recommendations for quality-assurance criteria in critical thinking education in HEI”. It will be delivered to partners’ members (at first) and then adapted and extended by these at a local level to interested teaching faculty staff and respective students. These will implement/reinforce critical thinking educational activities in curricula, within the deployment scenarios/case studies in each institution - we expect up to 600 participating higher education students and 40 teachers in the project. The work will end with a large international Boot Camp (EVENT 1) that will challenge students of the participating institutions to approach and solve “real” workplace problems addressing critical thinking skills, developed jointly by the partnership with companies/NGOs. In parallel, the project outcomes and results will be presented, evaluated and publicly discussed in an international meeting/seminar (EVENT 2) that will assemble experts, teachers, EU education bodies representatives, companies and NGOs. A dissemination strategy will ensure the wide penetration of the project outputs at the international and national levels using new and existing (and potential) local/national/ international networks and channels. The two final events will cover the development of the ‘European guidelines/recommendations for critical thinking education in High Education Institutions’ (OUTPUT 4) and the project technical report (OUTPUT 6). A scientific special issue on ‘Critical thinking Education in HEI’ (OUTPUT 5) will be published adding value to the project by disseminating it to the worldwide educational community, attracting new educators, institutions and researchers to join the network and to keep, apply, expand and replicate CRITHINKEDU activities/outputs. The expected Intellectual outputs may consist in relevant tools (due to their potential in terms of transferability and applicability) to guide and support the development of quality higher education curricula reforms, as well as to implement critical thinking projects and initiatives in EU HEIs. This project will be a great opportunity for the involved institutions to develop and implement a holistic internationalisation strategy in the field of critical thinking education, towards the creation of a specific European working group/network, that will bring and link together HEIs, NGO’s/companies, experts, EU decision-makers, and other relevant stakeholders in an endless project - based on a future agenda for further research and development.
CRITHINKEDU arises both from the background and ongoing concern of some European Higher Education Institutions (EHEI), business corporations and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) to better support and align the development of students’ Critical Thinking (CT) with labour market needs and societal challenges. Led by a partnership of 10 EHEI and 1 NGO from 9 different countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania and Spain), its main goal was to elaborate quality recommendations for CT education through the proposal of an educational protocol. The project carried-out several research and training activities, leading to the development of 6 innovative outputs that can be assumed as a pioneer toolkit to the sustainability of CT education around the European Higher Education Area (EHEA): OUTPUT 1 (O1) - A European collection of CT skills and dispositions needed in different professional fields for the 21st century, driven by the analysis of 32 focus groups enrolling 189 professionals of the following fields: Biomedicine, STEM, Social Sciences and Humanities. It represents the specificities, challenges and illustrative scenarios of current European labour market needs regarding the CT skills and dispositions foreseen in new graduates. OUTPUT 2 (O2) - A European review on CT educational practices in Higher Education Institutions. It takes into consideration the analysis of 46 research papers and 53 teachers’ interviews. It characterizes the CT educational practices adopted by EHEI teachers and identifies the gaps between these and the labour market needs previously identified in O1. As a result, a preliminary proposal of guidelines for quality in CT education in EHEI was elaborated. OUTPUT 3 (O3) - "The CRITHINKEDU European course on CT education for university teachers: from conception to delivery" describes the 5-day teachers’ training course, collectively designed by the partnership considering the results of O2. It aimed at supporting EHEI teachers to redesign their courses with a systematic and explicit focus on students’ CT development, based on three key topics: learning design, teaching/learning strategies and assessment. It was tested in Rome during the Learning Activity C1 and was later replicated in some national contexts. A total of 113 teachers were directly empowered by the course. O3 provides different CT educational resources, and represents a major tool for the sustainability of the project since it is highly transferable and useful in other higher educational contexts. OUTPUT 4 (O4) - Promoting CT in European Higher Education Institutions: towards an educational protocol. This educational protocol reflects the analysis of a large literature review within the field on one hand, and the analysis of 40 deployment scenarios implemented by EHEI teachers who attended the 5-day Rome training course (presented in O3), involving a total of 2283 students, on the other hand. It gives practical guidelines for the successful development of CT at the institutional, teaching program and course levels. The protocol triggered the elaboration of a Manifesto on Critical Thinking Education, challenging EHEI, labour market actors, and other educational stakeholders to commit themselves with the active promotion and support of CT education. OUTPUT 5 (O5) – Special Issue on ‘CT in Higher Education’, published in the “Studies in Higher Education” journal (Vol.44, 2019). It contains 5 research papers and 3 essays which reflect some of the main project achievements. It is an important resource on CT education for the scientific community. OUTPUT 6 (O6) - Infographic: CRITHINKEDU IMPACT REPORT – A journey on CT in European higher education. It consists in a “marketing” tool that summarizes, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the main activities and outputs achieved during the project lifetime, as well as their impact on different audiences. In sum, 65 events (e.g., workshops, conferences, bootcamps) were carried out and/or attended by the partnership, reaching 1082 external people from 38 different countries, and a total of 2637 participants were directly involved in the project activities (mainly students, teachers, professionals and other educational staff). In general, CRITHINKEDU has contributed to considerable changes towards a more sustainable, systematic, and explicit development of CT within the EHEA, like: • Higher awareness of the need for CT education • Improvement of curricula design and classroom educational practices • Enlargement of academics and researchers' network • Engagement of all institutional levels in supporting CT education • Closer University-Business Cooperation for CT education • Empowerment of teachers' professional development and students' CT • Implementation of activities and teaching strategies that prompt and support CT • Creation of CT scenarios in diverse higher education fields