Our aim at Paringa Park Primary School is to create a rich professional culture of thinking that promotes the dispositions needed for students to become active learners and effective thinkers eager and able to create, innovate, and solve problems.
We define “Cultures of Thinking” as places where a group’s collective as well as individual thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the regular, day-to-day experience of all group members. Drawing on previous research by Ron Ritchhart (Senior Research Associate, Harvard University), cultures of thinking focuses teachers’ attention on the eight cultural forces present in every group learning situation, which act as shapers of the group’s cultural dynamic and consist of language, time, environment, opportunities, routines, modeling, interactions, and expectations.
As teachers strive to create cultures of thinking in their classrooms they can use a variety of methods, including making time for thinking, developing and using a language of thinking, making the classroom environment rich with the documents of thinking processes, and making their own thinking visible.
Bravery ⋅ Care ⋅ Challenge ⋅ Trust
"The Best We Can Be"
