TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Karlo Brunović
Partner organisations understand there is no active citizenship nor democracy without critical thinking, but still lack capacities to promote critical thinking on a serious level. They joined the project to increase the quality of youth work in promoting critical thinking. Project’s aim was achieved through three specific objectives:
- increasing knowledge and skills of partners' youth workers related to critical thinking and conspiracy theories
- equipping youth workers with non-formal tools to foster critical thinking through youth work
- exchanging experiences of participating organisations on how to use non-formal education in promoting critical thinking among youth.
Participants were youth workers from Belgium, Italy, Croatia, Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain - working with youth with fewer opportunities.
For example, I used World Cafe to spark discussion on critical thinking. Next, I used Critical Thinking Cards (developed by The School of Thought organisation) with examples of fallacies and biases after explaining most common errors in reasoning.
I also used Percipio, a card game that is built on the perceptions and associations of the participants on different social issues. Percipio cards deck was used to give a chance to participants to express and share their opinions while improving critical thinking. To go deeper into the topic, I conducted the Workshop "Logical Fallacies and Mental Biases" where participants needed to practice their understanding by doing a practical task of discerning fallacies and biases.
During the workshop on fake news, I gave to participants five web articles, only one being true. They needed to decide which one of that news would they post in their Facebook (or any other social media), given the criteria of how accurate they are in terms of information. Afterwards, we debriefed and understood how to recognise fake news and disinformation.
During the session "Four corners", I moderated participants debate on social and political issues. The exercise encouraged participants to engage in constructive debate, practice argumentation and listen to different viewpoints, thereby improving critical thinking skill.
Training was a success judging from participants' evaluation and partners' feedback. Participants learned how to avoid logical fallacies and mental biases, how to spot fake news and how to engage in discussions. They also learned how to
approach conspiracy theories and discuss them with youth.
General info on the activity, including a digital leaflet "Promoting Critical Thinking through Youth Work" is accessible on Udruga Prizma's website:
https://www.udrugaprizma.hr/razor
I was responsible for designing the training programme and overall implementation, including coordination with partners. Besides, conducting core sessions, I also contributed by facilitating Open space, reflection and evaluation sessions. After the training, I was responsible for producing a digital leaflet summarising the most important points from the training programme.