Head of St Andrews High School Discusses Knowledge and Critical Thinking Skills at Festival of Education Thailand 2023

The INSIGHTS magazine article “Knowledge is Power?” contains quotes from a number of educators, including our Head of High School at St Andrews International School Bangkok, Roo Stenning, discussing the balance of knowledge and critical thinking skills that we should be developing in our students in the age of AI.

As Andrew Lancaster, Principal of The British International School Shanghai, Puxi, says,

“It’s not just about committing facts to long-term memory, although this is important for IGCSEs and the IB Diploma. Equally important is understanding what you’ve learnt and the connections between banks of knowledge, the ability to research and work collaboratively and creatively, being a good communicator and developing evaluative skills.”

Mr Roo discussed the IB Diploma Programme Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course as an example of this, and expanded on this when presenting at the recent Festival of Education Thailand, a renowned education event from the UK that took place for the first time in Bangkok, Thailand, in November 2023.

Mr Roo has used the article’s title, “Knowledge is Power?”, with his TOK students at St Andrews when discussing Michael Young’s distinction between “knowledge of the powerful” (“the knowledge those in power happen to think is more important”) and “powerful knowledge” (“knowledge that students wouldn’t get from their everyday lives” that “can give us the power to think and potentially act in new ways”).

As a core IB subject, TOK explicitly requires students to think about the nature of knowledge, examining questions such as, “how knowledge is produced, acquired, shared and used; what it is and what it is not; who has it and who does not; and who decides the answers to these questions”.

Questions like these help our IB students “to be engaged and able to use knowledge”, “to think critically about it” and to be “responsible global citizens”.