[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Critical Thinking From Buzzword to Action

## Details

**Authors** Kraft J, Schmiesing D, Phillips S

**Year** 2016

**Publisher** Children's Technology and Engineering 20(4):16

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Education

**Secondary disciplines** Systems Science

[Read it](https://www.iteea.org/39195.aspx)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

The article describes an elementary-school STEM program designed to move critical thinking from an educational “buzzword” into concrete classroom practice. At Providence Elementary School, K–6 students worked through hands-on engineering challenges requiring them to define problems, develop possible solutions, build and test designs, analyze results, collaborate, and revise their ideas. Providence Elementary itself identifies this article as a publication about its award-winning STEAM Lab.

### What they found (results)

The program presents critical thinking as something students must actively practice rather than merely be told to develop. Engineering challenges require learners to confront open-ended problems, generate and compare solutions, learn through trial and error, use evidence from testing, and continually improve their designs. Providence educators emphasized productive failure and refinement as essential to building resilience and higher-level problem-solving skills that students could apply beyond the STEM Lab.

## Commentary

### In short

Article in Children's Technology and Engineering 20(4):16.

### In more detail

Providence’s STEM Lab exposed students across elementary grade levels to repeated engineering-design challenges. Contemporaneous descriptions show activities ranging from kindergarten students sorting and classifying to sixth graders designing a lunar craft to protect “astronauts.” Students followed an engineering-design cycle that involved asking questions, brainstorming alternatives, planning and diagramming solutions, constructing designs, and improving them based on what happened during testing. The broader program intentionally developed problem solving, collaboration, experimentation, data analysis, communication, imagination, curiosity, and resilience, with the goal that students would transfer these thinking skills beyond individual STEM activities.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**How to cite this** Kraft J, Schmiesing D, Phillips S (2016). Critical Thinking From Buzzword to Action. Children's Technology and Engineering 20(4):16.