Chris Sowton chats to us about MacGuffins ahead of his upcoming webinar in our Academic English Online Conference titled Strategies for teaching critical thinking more effectively.
I realise that the lexical level of this blog’s readers is likely to be pretty high, but even so please allow me to introduce an item which you may not be familiar with: the MacGuffin. Examples of MacGuffins range from the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend, the Heart of the Ocean necklace in Titanic, and the Maltese Falcon in the eponymous film. If my inductive attempts to funnel you towards a definition have failed, let me be more direct. A MacGuffin is a plot device represented in the form of a goal or driving force, usually with no explanation or background, which is pursued by the characters in a film or book.
The reason I present this slightly elongated warmer activity is that it seems to me that ‘critical thinking’ in the modern-day world of ELT is something of a MacGuffin. Almost every course and every coursebook, it seems, promises the development of all manner of either plain old vanilla ‘critical thinking’ skills, or if really trying to make them fly of the shelf, they might plump for the seductive snake-oil charms of ‘21stcentury skills’ or ‘skills for the global economy’.
Of course, this is not to say that these skills are unimportant. Far from it. To my mind, the greater the integration between language, life skills, digital literacy and critical thinking the better. The classroom should reflect, and indeed celebrate, the messy reality of the world in which the language use will take place, rather than provide a sterile antidote. Rather, the question I would ask is: how much do students, teachers, managers, parents, policy makers and other educational stakeholders actually understand about what is meant by these terms? To my mind, there is a risk that both providers and consumers of education are, in essence, chasing a critical thinking MacGuffin without really knowing exactly what they are looking for.
Frameworks
Given this landscape, the relatively recent application of academic rigour to this field, for example through CUP’s development of its ‘Framework for Life Competencies’, should be welcomed. This sits alongside other similar frameworks, such as the British Council’s core skills. The CUP document identifies 8 core skills it believes should be embedded within good classroom practice, namely: creativity; critical thinking and problem-solving; digital literacy; learning to learn; communication; collaboration; emotional development; and social responsibilities. To complete good classroom practice, these skills should also be woven into the learning material fabric for their influence to be truly felt and their impact fully realised.
As a writer and trainer, I have been involved with the development of titles in CUP’s Unlock and Prism series. One of the strengths of these titles is the way in which critical thinking is addressed. A clear explanation, background and rationale for critical thinking is found throughout, from the beginning of each unit where learners must share anything they know about an academic topic, through to the end, where they reflect and self-evaluate their progress across the unit. No MacGuffins are found here. Moreover, within the body of the unit, a bespoke critical thinking section not only develops learners’ understanding of different critical thinking sub-skills, but helps prepare them for the target production task. A critical thinking twist is also given to what might be termed regular ELT activities; discussion tasks, for example, do not simply contain ‘What do you think about X’ type questions, but present users with specific opportunities to hone their critical thinking skills.
A refreshing departure
To my mind, this is a very refreshing departure from many coursebooks of the past, where critical thinking often felt thrown in as a necessary but additional measure, frequently as a stand-alone section without much reference to the rest of the unit in which it sat. Any methodological approach, and any suite of materials, which represents the multimodal reality of modern life, where language, critical thinking, life skills and digital skills sit cheek by jowl, is likely to have a higher impact in the classroom.
The CUP webinar I will be running in November explores some of these areas in more detail. Hope to see you online then.
From 30th October to 2nd November 2018, join us for a series of webinars during our Academic English Online Conference. Listen to a variety of engaging topics delivered by leading academic experts, relevant for today’s learners.
Sign up for the webinars and find out more about Academic English with Cambridge.