About The Critical Skills Programme

CSP began in 1981 as an Education / Business Partnership (EBP) in New Hampshire, USA. The EBP selected a group of outstanding teachers from around the state and asked them to design a practical classroom model of teaching and learning that would enable school students to develop vitally important skills and dispositions (attitudes) through the mainstream curriculum.

It began as a partnership between the education and business communities, to answer two key questions:

1. What skills and dispositions are vitally important for students to have by the time they leave school in order to be successful in their lives?

2. What skills and dispositions are currently lacking in the workforce that impede individual and organisational success?

This culminated in the lists of ‘Critical Skills' and ‘Fundamental Dispositions'

Critical Skills		Fundamental Dispositions
Problem solving Decision making Critical thinking Creative thinking Communication Organisation Management Leadership		Owners of life-long learning Self-direction Internal model of quality Integrity and ethical character Collaboration Curiosity and wonder Community membership

A group of practising classroom teachers was then asked to address a third question:

3. What would a classroom be like that gave conscious and purposeful attention to the development of these skills and dispositions?

and to develop a course which would enable teachers to translate that vision into effective practice.

The development group identified ‘key indicators' of each skill/disposition. These indicators have a major influence on the design and use of the problem-solving challenges that form the core of the Critical Skills teaching approach.

"The Critical Skills Programme is one of the most exciting developments in classroom methodology in my 30 years in education. It clearly addresses all our national priorities .. (but) ... by far the most exciting thing ... is that it actually works in the classroom."
Ian Smith, Director, Learning Unlimited