The First European Summit for Critical Thinking Education was held in Leuven

With different practical activities, the summit started with an official opening reflection on the need and importance of critical thinking for today’s societies and higher education institutions by the Head of the UCLL, Marc Vandewalle. The second session, led by Professors Caroline Dominguez (UTAD) and Jan Elen (KU Leuven), intended to briefly present the CRITHINKEDU project and the CRITHINKEDU educational protocol to the audience, the last one as a guiding tool to implement critical thinking educational practices within higher education institutions. Followed a keynote speech intitled “Critical Thinking: Avoiding the pitfalls and glimpsing the possibilities” was addressed by the Emeritus Professor of the University College London (UK), Ronald Barnett.

Thirteen workshops prepared by the CRITHINKEDU partners were distributed in two parallel sessions. Participants had the opportunity to carry-out different type of activities (debates, hands-on, presentations, etc.) on specific topics related to critical thinking education like: the use of case studies for critical thinking development, the design of effective learning environments, the relation between critical thinking and information literacy, among others. A final keynote speech entitled “Embracing Universal Principles of Critical Thinking Across Education to Advance Human Societies” was addressed by Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Gerald Nosich the Critical Thinking Foundation (USA).

The summit ended by different representatives from labor market, universities, policy agencies and other associations (OECD, UNESCO, among others) taking a stance for the future of critical thinking in Higher Education in Europe. They were challenged to present the reasons behind their signature of the “Manifesto on Critical Thinking Education”, a practical and very short version of the CRITHINKEDU educational protocol. They were followed by the participants of the audience.

You can read the manifesto and decide to join the many who have already signed it at https://www.petitions.net/manifesto_on_critical_thinking_education

Leuven MindGate already spoke out its support for the manifesto.