Published: February 15, 2022
One of the modules within my MA: SEND is an introduction to criticality. I never actually realised how often and how useful critical thinking was until I started this module. I would suggest reading into this topic as I wish I had this knowledge and understanding to use within my undergraduate degree.
We learn how to both critically think but also critically reflect upon our own personal and professional development. With critical thinking, you need to make sure that you problem-solve, reason and use higher-order thinking skills before coming to a conclusion. This allows us to create our own ideas, make links between ideas and develop new strategies to complete tasks. I have also learned a lot about talking and how discussions are so highly important not just for children but also for adults to participate in, as this will help us to scaffold our own learning with the help of facilitators to our learning, this can also be done through asking lecturers or colleagues questions to help us to deepen our own understanding.
I also learned with critical reflection that we need to examine whether a task or lesson or even an assignment went well or what areas we could improve, which in turn will help us to not only develop ourselves professionally but also personally as you will be a lot more critical in situations. This can also help when you are reading books or journal articles for assignments as you will always want to critically reflect upon whether the source is relevant or reliable and also valid enough to use within your assignment to help support your argument.
Harriet Behan
MA: SEND
Topic: Course