The aim of the "CriThink" Project is to share experiences to find an effective way how to work with the theme of "Critical Thinking" especially for people 55+. We want to find good examples from other countries, so partners from different parts of Europe has been invited to the project. In order for the discussion framework to be as broad as possible, the emphasis was on making all invited partners pay attention to this topic, but in a different way. We want the know-how to be exchanged and the synergies between partners to be found despite their cultural and historical differences. At the same time, we want to inspire each other in educational concepts. The starting point for the "CriThink" Project is the experience Právě teď! o.p.s. (Aplicant) from their lectures entitled "Information and Disinformation". During courses, the lecturers have repeatedly verified that, regardless of their educational attainment and despite their great life experience, seniors have a problem with Critical Thinking and often confuse "critical thinking" and "criticize". The primary target group of the project are seniors 55+ , who are unable to adequately process large amounts of information comes from the Internet . The secondary target group are the families of seniors, especially grandchildren (young children), who are also a very vulnerable group due to the instant perception of the world. The CriThink partnership brings togethere professionals and seniors organisations who will together work on the following outputs: 1/ good/best practices when teaching to older adults; 2/ methods and learning styles for that particular target group (pedagogy vs andragogy ; Kolb’s cycle, Honey and Mumford, etc.); 3/ basic specification of cognitive distorsion; 4/ preparation of documents and suggestions for ICT toolbox; The project partners (consortium) will do need analyze in each country, then find common starting points to work with the topic. Thus, local good practices, experience and expertise will be shared during Transnation Meetings and Skype Calls. All this information will be published by the consortium members on the project website, on their site and on social networks. The activities have an impact locally, regionally, nationally in Czech Republic, Slovenia, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Lithuania. The inability of critical thinking also leads to differences in the understanding of the contemporary world, and this leads to conflicts between generations. We believe that if we restore critical thinking capacity and the ability to argue with it in an older generation, this project can also reduce intergenerational misunderstandings or conflicts.
The objectives of the project were defined as follows: 1) The need to improve the orientation and understanding of the current functioning of the world and the events 2) Ability to function in a world in the 21st century and fulfillment of the company's requirements on the individual competencies of individuals for which understanding of what is happening, key 3) Preparation of 55+ people for the aging process (functional literacy)
With the help of partners from selected foreign organizations, we wanted to find out (map) how they are doing in this area in their countries. And how they work with this issue. In the project, we wanted to map the situation in the area of critical thinking ability in adults and especially the senior population in individual countries. At the same time, we wanted to be inspired by each other by sharing good practice. During the preparation of the project, therefore, organizations were selected that are dedicated to adult education and especially to the education of seniors or for example they work with the topics of cognitive bias..