Teaching thinking Skills through Wisdom Pedagogy: A Strategy for Survival and Relevance of African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the 21st Century

Abstract

Today’s Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are facing challenges like globalization, privatization, technological advancement, ranking, massification, demand for skilled labour, change agents and game changers. These forces that have never been known in the past traditional HEIs functionalities, are changing the trends from teaching and learning but rather to facilitators, inventors and innovators. This is because the world of today is questing for graduates with high order skills of thinking and innovation in order to provide solutions to continued challenges that face humanity. The many challenges that humanity is facing today are mostly attributed to education systems and curricula that many graduates have been exposed to especially in HEIs. Many parts of the world are evolving through different education backgrounds that do not seem to provide solutions to their cultural and natural set up, these curricula and educational systems that were aped do not provide both permanent and immediate solutions to humanity hence causing chaos, distrust, corruption, injustice and looting both national and regional resources for personal aggrandization. For countries that envisage to compete positively on the world map and also attract investors, tourists and specialists, must rethink of teaching thinking skills as a new education strategy through which their citizens must compete and participate fully in the new trends of the world order. In this case, if humanity is to regain peace, trust and social justice, protection of environment, culture and freedom, HEIs should be at the fore front to teach and train in thinking skills amongst its graduates and equip them with necessary skills required in the knowledge economy. If this strategy is not embraced and HEIs continue to send graduates to the community without pre-requisite skills and knowledge that lead to new styles of living and coping with 21st century demands, these institutions will lose trust, meaning and relevance to their societies. As many parts of the world are re-strategizing towards achievement of teaching thinking skills, African HEIs seem to be lagging behind due to lack of experts in this field. The purpose of this paper is to unpack the concept of teaching and learning thinking skills so as to provide solutions to African problems.