Proven Techniques For Parents to Build 4C Learning Skills at Home 

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The 4 C’s of learning skills: critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity are more important than ever to succeed in the 21st century, the digital age of disruption and distraction. As robots become more intelligent, teams become more distributed and remote, and everything goes virtual or digital, it’s necessary for humans to learn and work in more human ways than ever.

Here are some simple yet effective techniques for parents to help their children build on their 4C learning skills at home. 

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1. How to Build Critical Thinking Skills

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Critical thinking is about analyzing (breaking the concept or problem down into smaller parts), investigating each part, observing how they fit together and how changing anything may affect the whole. 

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Building critical thinking skills means developing our ability to ask the right questions, connect and track cause and effect, distinguish the symptoms from the causes, and problem solve as an outcome. It is about being able to use facts and data to back up arguments and make a strong case for our point-of-view. 

To build critical thinking skills, parents can use simple daily situations to help children hone the 5 core components that build critical thinking skills and ability: comparing, contrasting, categorizing, analyzing, and evaluating. Here is an example of how this can work.

While making the decision on where to invest the monthly budget for screen-time entertainment. Gather your children to execute a critical thinking exercise.  

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• Categorize: show how components of the discussion can be grouped together for further analysis. For example, here we are thinking about whether to spend the family monthly budget on movies at the theater, OTT subscription (Netflix or Amazon), cable or digital satellite TV. An analysis of these categories helps the family agree that the right way for the family to go would be an OTT subscription, because it offers everyone in the family something to choose from. So, which OTT subscription would work best?
  
  
• Compare: find similarities between the two elements in the situation: they are both OTT platforms, both have movies, both have shows, both have child and adult settings etc. Ask several questions about each others’ perspectives.
  
  
• Contrast: identify differences between them. Netflix has more original shows than Amazon, it has won more awards for its children's shows, but Amazon offers more regional language programming etc. Ask several questions about each others’ perspectives, encouraging them to challenge assumptions and ask for clearer arguments.
  
  
• Analyze: break the idea or problem down into smaller pieces. In this case, we will break it down into price, programming, languages, subscription options, parental control etc. and then evaluate each one on its pros and cons, before making a final evaluation.
  
  
• Evaluate: deriving meaning out of the discussion. What are the possible outcomes and fallouts? What good and bad can come of the decision? 

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Do it in a different order each time, for each topic or subject of discussion. 

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2. How to Build Creative Thinking Skills

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Like I said before, being creative doesn't need you to be an artist or a designer. 

To paraphrase Osho from his unmatchable essay on creativity, Creativity has nothing to do with any activity in particular. Creativity is the quality that you - the doer - bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things.

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So, every action can become creative if we apply creative thinking techniques and strategies to it. Here are a few for you to try at home with your children. 

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• The What-If technique: for parents, when it comes to helping our children build creative thinking skills, our best friend is the “What If’ technique. Ask the most outrageous questions to children using it. Let their imagination run wild - there are no right or wrong answers. Resist the urge to correct and factually or scientifically impossible ideas.
  
  
• Mind maps: help us think in multiple directions in a more visual way, and some kids just enjoy the idea of drawing things out and physically connecting them rather than verbal discussions.
  
  
• Reverse thinking: take the most conventional of items and look for ways to reimagine it. For example, a bicycle. Ask the kids to reimagine a bicycle - from what it looks like to what it can do. Take its core traits and find ways to make them better, find alternative uses for it, ask them to remove any 5 parts of the bicycle without impacting its performance as a cycle, etc. It can go in many directions, so be prepared to spend time on this!!

• Everyday Picasso: you may have heard this term but I love using it with my kids. Whenever we start doing any task, we remind each other to be an everyday Picasso- bring our A-game and do it as mindfully, with as much immersion in the process as we can muster.

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3. How to Build Communication Skills

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Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are foundational survival skills. But the 21st century demands that we be able to communicate effectively and even collaborate with people we may have never met in person. Being able to communicate via social media - one to many, many to one; write blogs, tweet in 160 characters, express ourselves physically in videos, sit for job interviews via video chat, even to machines like Alexa and Siri - are just some examples of the new ways children will need to communicate today and as they grow. Perhaps in our lifetime we may also see them communicate as holograms and through mental telepathy!!

When it comes to communication, remember that the medium may change, but the core elements of communication will always remain the same.

Help them be aware of the essence of communication by understanding and internalizing these 5 components in any communication situation.

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The 5 core components of any communication are: 

• Sender
• Message
• Medium
• Receiver(s)
• Objective/ Context

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Identify these 5 components for various communication situations, practicing preferably during a mundane activity such as folding laundry or driving to swimming class. Ask the children to then bring in creative and critical thinking to build on the efficacy of the communication.

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Here are a few examples of situations they can practice on:

• The Prime Minister’s speech on 15th of August

• The Indian cricket captain’s recent speech about being replaced 

• Any advertisement on TV

• A non-verbal example can include a cousin spending a fat sum on purchasing the Mahindra Thar. What are they trying to communicate with this action?

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4. How to Build Collaboration Skills

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It's getting increasingly difficult to work together for a common goal in a world where everyone is distributed (in different physical locations) and still have their own agendas - stated and unstated. 

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While technology at one level helps us communicate and collaborate with millions of people far removed from our own physical location, it also creates a new set of challenges in terms of meaningful collaboration across unknown cultural contexts. 

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How can parents help children build collaboration skills even as they themselves struggle to develop it in a post-Covid work world? 

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Here is one exercise you can try with your family. On any given Sunday, identify a task that needs doing. Say, buying a fridge online. As a group, identify the various possible roles the task entails, and let each person in the group take on a ‘role’ - especially trying to take on roles that you feel you are not comfortable with, such as doing online research, calling different dealers to enquire on deals and offers, doing the online purchase etc. Change roles with different tasks each week, so everyone gets to practice a diverse set of roles. Create constraints in the activity (you are doing this in a foreign country where you do not speak the language) to add more dimensions to the collaboration.

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This also works great with physical activities. In the park or garden create an obstacle course for your kids and their friends. The rules are that everyone has to arrive at the finish line for anyone to win. 

Create constraints in the activity (someone has a pretend-broken arm, or someone has lost their shoe) to add more dimensions to the collaboration.

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Looking for more practical ideas to participate in your child's learning journey?

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