Tim Pivarnik Discusses The Importance Of Critical Thinking And Problem Solving In The 21st Century

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Tim Pivarnik Discusses The Importance Of Critical
Thinking And Problem Solving In The 21st Century
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Tim Pivarnik is a knowledgeable educator who has
served as the Principal of Calumet High School
for 3 years. He successfully headed the school,
and brought many significant changes in the
curriculum and teaching strategies that helped
students to get quality education. He worked
painstakingly with his team leaders in developing
School Wide Learning Outcomes (SWLO's) that
included the problem solving as well as critical
thinking skills required for the effectiveness of
this new problem/project based model.
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They thoroughly analyzed the whole teaching
system and discussed as well as decided grade
weight elements to place on their SWLO's together
with how they would teach them in their
classrooms. He observed that improvement in the
areas of teaching, assessments, and curriculum
are essential, so as to assist their students
attain 21st century learning proficiencies like
critical thinking, problem solving, etc. Earlier,
there were separate areas of knowledge and skills
and were tended to speculate if learners had
received specialization in a particular skill,
then they could use that skill to one of the
content areas available within the curriculum.
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Tim Pivarnik, described that elements like
separating the content in different subject areas
were not considered when including problem
solving as well as critical thinking skills. The
biggest challenge they have to encounter is to
determine how to successfully unite these skills,
together with the soft skills essential to form a
viable and efficient curriculum of the 21st
century. Another significant task they have to
take care of is to rectify the teaching
strategies and techniques following these
requirements for successful enforcement and
delivery of the designed curriculum.
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Tim and his team know that strategies which
enable student alliance through problem or
project based learning is a powerful model.
However, they are still managing classrooms in
the normal rows of desks with teachers delivering
subject matter in the lecture method. He says
that teachers hold the opinion that such type of
classroom instruction lead to easier, effective,
and better classroom administration and reduced
overall work in the didactic delivery.
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Tim Pivarnik agrees that it is very important to
modify teaching strategies for the improvement of
educational models, which can take place only
because of accurate and continual professional
development for the teachers along with the
revision of their teacher training courses. The
least, but not the last component that requires
thorough improvement is the quality of
assessments. They need tasks that can
successfully evaluate skills like critical
thinking, problem solving, etc., so as to
determine the actual efficiency of the 21st
curriculum and its consequences on the
achievement of students and effectiveness of
teaching methods. The formation of an integrated
learning type of curriculum is a big step in the
direction of establishing a 21st century learner
friendly atmosphere.
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Thank You Tim Pivarnik