Mastering Thinking Skills: A Comprehensive Guide

Thinking Skills courses play a crucial role in equipping students with a versatile toolkit applicable across diverse subjects and intricate real-world scenarios. These skills encompass critical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving, fostering the ability to analyze unfamiliar problems, devise effective strategies, and evaluate multiple solutions. This guide delves into the essence of Thinking Skills, its syllabus structure, available resources, and effective learning strategies.

The Essence of Thinking Skills

Thinking Skills develops a set of transferable skills, including critical thinking, reasoning and problem solving, that students can apply across a wide range of subjects and complex real-world issues. This course enables students to develop their ability to analyze unfamiliar problems, devise problem solving strategies, and evaluate the diverse ways a problem may be solved. During a Thinking Skills course, students learn to put their personal views aside in favor of examining and evaluating the evidence. Students learn how to make informed and reasoned decisions and construct evidence-based arguments.

Syllabus Structure: A Two-Pronged Approach

The Thinking Skills subject content is divided into two parts: Problem Solving and Critical Thinking.

Problem Solving: Deduction and Decision-Making

Problem Solving is about making use of the information available to deduce further information, draw conclusions and make choices and decisions. Very often problems will involve numerical information, but problem solving is not a test of mathematics. Only basic numeracy is expected, although these numeracy skills are a vital part of the toolkit for solving many problems. Students are expected to have basic numeracy skills, including understanding of percentages, ratio and proportion. They should also understand the simple statistical measures of mean, median and mode, and be able to represent the chances of something happening in precise numerical terms (i.e. as a fraction, decimal or percentage). Simple algebraic skills can be a very powerful tool for problem solving, particularly for more complex problems. These skills include the ability to represent and manipulate information, and relationships between pieces of information, concisely and efficiently. However, these algebraic skills will never be assessed directly; the focus of the syllabus is on developing the student’s ability to make valid problem-solving insights and deductions, whether they make use of these tools or not.

Critical Thinking: Evaluating Evidence and Constructing Arguments

Critical Thinking is about judging the value or usefulness of evidence, and understanding how sound arguments are constructed. Students will encounter a broad variety of topics, often reflecting real-world situations or subjects of debate. As in the real world, some topics may be controversial, and students may have pre-existing feelings about them. However, the focus of the syllabus is on the student’s ability to demonstrate critical thinking skills, and not on whether one point of view is morally superior to another.

Read also: Decoding the AICE Diploma

Navigating the Syllabus and Specifications

Each exam board uses a syllabus or specification to clearly state, among other things, the subject course content and methods of final assessments. Additionally, each exam board will give suggested textbooks and other resources, some of which are endorsed (that is, they carefully follow the specific syllabus or specification). Teachers and students can choose the best resources to facilitate learning. To have the most success in final assessments (exams), read the syllabus or specification carefully.

The CAIE exam board uses a syllabus to clearly state, among other things, the subject course content and methods of final assessments. Additionally, the CAIE exam board will give suggested textbooks and other resources, some of which are endorsed (that is, they carefully follow the specific syllabus or specification). Teachers and students can choose the best resources to facilitate learning.

Resources for Success

You don't need all the suggested resources, but it is useful to have one or two textbooks as a scaffold, alongside the syllabus or specification and online resources as needed. There are endorsed textbooks that are closely aligned to exam board courses and these will be the best resource to use as a scaffold for learning. Each exam board also suggests other textbooks and resources for each subject course.

Grogono, A. & Hart, C. (2018) Cambridge AS & A Level Thinking Skills. ISBN: 9781510421899 [Endorsed]
Zaccaro, E. (2006) Becoming a Problem Solving Genius: A Handbook of Math Strategies. ISBN: 9780967991597
Thomson, A. (2008) Critical Reasoning: a practical introduction, 3rd Edition. ISBN: 9780415445870
Butterworth, J., & Thwaites, G. (2013) Thinking Skills. ISBN 9781107606302
Lally, J. et al (2008) OCR AS Critical Thinking: Student Book. ISBN 9780435235895
Lally, J., Hart, C. & McCabe, T.

Online Resources

PapaCambridge provides Cambridge International AS and A Level Thinking Skills (9694) Notes and Resources that includes topical notes, unit wise notes, quick revision notes, detailed notes and a lot more. It’s the guarantee of PapaCambridge that you will find the latest notes and other resources of Cambridge International AS and A Level Thinking Skills (9694) like nowhere else. Moreover, we have taken convenience to another level now. Just login and you will be able to browse content faster and in a convenient way. You can now favourite, share, download notes, papers, other resources and can do much more by simply registering.

If you don’t want to mess around here between notes, slides, ebooks etc and just want to have past papers of Cambridge International AS and A Level Thinking Skills (9694). Check out : Cambridge International AS and A Level Thinking Skills Past Papers.

Teaching Resources

Teaching AICE Thinking Skills and feel overwhelmed with the Problem Solving Part? Do your students feel lost as well and are they thinking they will never pass? They will! And these lessons will not only help them pass the exam but also give you the confidence to know what you're talking about when explaining these hard problems. My lessons also have fully printable materials and pdf's for all items inside. You'll see in the thumbnails that I provide VERY clear and understandable explanations so that even if you're not a "math" person, you can easily understand these problems too! This is the FULL 4 section packet with over 50 problems in total and all explanations! Rated 5 out of 5, based on 6 reviews5.0 (6 ratings)Grades8th - 12th, Higher Education

Strategies for Success

Using an endorsed textbook alongside the syllabus or specification is always my first strategy in teaching or tutoring AS and A Level Thinking Skills.

Practice with Past Papers

One of the best ways to understand how well you will do in the final assessments is to complete some past papers, mark them, and reflect on your strengths and challenges. Then repeat the process.

Seek Support

Strong AS and A Level knowledge and skills are built through practice, so you should make sure to get support from teachers, tutors, or mentors as necessary. I have tutored students in Cambridge AS and A Level Thinking Skills so I am familiar with the syllabus content, varied teaching and learning strategies for individual students, and preparation for assessments (examinations).

Examination Structure

There is no coursework component needed to complete Cambridge International AS and A Level Thinking Skills (9694). That is, students can attain the qualification by examination only.

Alternative Options

At this time, AQA and Pearson Edexcel do not offer Thinking Skills or Critical Thinking at AS or A Level.

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