Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

At one time or another we have all engaged in poor thinking habits. After all, nobody’s perfect and neither is anybody’s thinking. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t get better at it and start thinking more critically. It’s worth our time to seek ways of improving our thinking and to guide our learners to do the same.

Poor thinking habits refer to the ways of thinking that produce adverse effects in every part of our lives. They can negatively affect our personal progress, our relationships, and everyone around us. But they do much more than that, actually. Not only do they affect the outside world, but they do damage from within as well. In the long run poor thinking can affect our self-esteem, our ability to cope with challenges, and even our physical health.

Great minds don’t think alike—which is why students need to witness examples of genuine thought in all its glorious and messy individuality.

I work with a fifth grader—let’s call her Sasha—who struggles with math. She’s anxious about it, she’s told me. Sasha doesn’t like how it feels when it seems like the other kids are getting it and she’s not. She asks me to give her a practice problem like the ones she’s working on in class.

I think for a moment, then type onto our Zoom chalkboard: “I recently bought an 8-kilogram bag of Kitty Kibble. Assuming that I don’t go to the store again and Tabitha eats 50 grams of food a day, after how many days will she be completely out of food?”

Onscreen, I watch her read. First, she smiles—she likes it when my cat makes it into word problems—and then her expression darkens. She blinks, then swallows. Blinks again. Then she looks up. “Fifteen,” she says matter-of-factly.

At one time or another we have all engaged in poor thinking habits. After all, nobody’s perfect and neither is anybody’s thinking. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t get better at it and start thinking more critically. It’s worth our time to seek ways of improving our thinking and to guide our learners to do the same.

Poor thinking habits refer to the ways of thinking that produce adverse effects in every part of our lives. They can negatively affect our personal progress, our relationships, and everyone around us. But they do much more than that, actually. Not only do they affect the outside world, but they do damage from within as well. In the long run poor thinking can affect our self-esteem, our ability to cope with challenges, and even our physical health.