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BC for CTPS Cover Image

British Council Consultancy 1:
AI for CTPS

Posted on 20th March 2025 by Elena Oncevska Ager & Matthew Ager
Cover image British Council

On 18th March 2025, on the invitation of British Council Wider Europe, we ran a workshop in Tirana, Albania, entitled: How can AI support critical thinking and problem solving in education? The audience was mixed: Albanian teachers, principals, teacher trainers and policy-makers.

In the second part of this blog post, we report on how we engaged the participants in collaborative prompt development to ensure that the AI behaves in pedagogical ways to scaffold rich thinking rather than offering quick, surface solutions.

We are available to run similar workshops for your organisation. Please do get in touch if you think we can help and would like to discuss your ideas and requirements.

Our aims were the following:

  • to present our understanding of the affordances and challenges of using AI to support critical thinking and problem-solving (CTPS) in education, specifically in the context of the 21st Century Schools Programme
  • to engage the participants in collaborative prompt development to ensure that the AI behaves in pedagogical ways to scaffold rich thinking rather than offering quick, surface solutions.

Rather than us merely telling the audience about the benefits and risks, we used Noticing live to show them how an AI designed to scaffold learning (in this case, Noa) can promote deep thinking. The participants were already familiar with Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats, as a technique they used in their CTPS training, so we decided to assign the Blue Hat (moderator) to Noa and ask it to walk us through each of the hats as we presented:

  • Yellow (optimism, benefits, value)
  • Green (creativity, possiblities, alternatives)
  • Black (caution, difficulties, risks)
  • Red (emotion, feelings, intuition)
  • White (facts, information, data)

Not only was designing a new conversation on-demand like this quite simple, due to the underlying flexibility of Noticing, but it also allowed us to demonstrate our new functionality of having a collaborative chat with Noa, in which each step of the conversation acts as a micro-brainstorming session, scaffolded and enhanced by Noa's responses.

We present screenshots of our entire chat transcript and output, showing how Noa elicited and offered, when invited, pertinent ideas, thus engaging us in rich thinking.

BC Six Hats Transcript BC Six Hats Output

Written by Elena Oncevska Ager

Elena Oncevska Ager is Full Professor in Applied Linguistics at Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia.

Her work involves teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and supporting the development of English language teachers, in face-to-face and online contexts. Her research interests revolve around EAP and language teacher education, with a focus on mentoring, group dynamics, motivation, learner/teacher autonomy and wellbeing.

Elena is particularly interested in facilitating reflective practice, in its many forms, including through using the arts and by using AI to facilitate it. Her investigations are designed in such a way as to inform her practice of supporting learning and teaching.

Written by Matthew Ager

Matthew Ager is Software Architect and Co-Founder of Noticing.

Following his PhD in Applied Mathematics, and two years lecturing Mathematics and Physics, he has almost 15 years experience in product design and development. His professional motivation stems from recognising and understanding patterns in data, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Matthew is naturally a reflective practitioner, with a keen ability to notice and articulate the subtleties of his own behaviour and that of others. He is passionate about helping others to develop their own reflective practice through technology, for greater wellbeing and professional development.

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