Dr Peter Ellerton

About Peter

Curriculum Director, University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Affiliate Senior Lecturer in Education
Fellow of the Rationalist Society of Australia
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Critical and Creative Thinking

Peter’s areas of focus include Public Reasoning, Science Communication, Argumentation and Critical Thinking in education. Peter has been a teacher educator and a syllabus designer for the International Baccalaureate Organisation, the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Peter was one of a small team of academics redeveloping the 2021 ACARA Critical and Creative Thinking General Capability within the Australian Curriculum. He has consulted and produced papers for a variety of organisations including the European Commission Joint Research Centre, the NSW Department of Education, the Australian Defence Force, the Queensland Office of the Coordinator General, NSW Ombudsman and many private and public schools. He has delivered professional development in Teaching for Thinking to thousands of educators throughout Australia and internationally and has been invited to deliver programs at the University of California Los Angeles, Pepperdine University Los Angeles and Simone Fraser University in Canada and across South Africa. Peter's passion is working with educators to enable a teaching for Thinking focus across all year levels and subject areas.

Live projects:

Peter is one of a small team of academics to recently rewrite the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities in Critical and Creative Thinking.
Peter also sits on the ACARA National Assessment Program for Scientific Literacy (NAP-SL) working group.
Australian Research Council linkage grant on Problem Based Learning in STEM with Monash University, Brisbane Catholic Education and Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools.
Peter is an expert contributor to the European Commission Joint Research Centre's Enlightenment 2.0 project, involving public reasoning in political processes and developing meaningful and ethical communication.
Thinking Schools India — A project linking leading Indian schools and educators with students and parents to deliver a thinking focussed education.
The Aspiring Thinkers Network linking thousands of educators and institutions internationally to deliver professional learning in a Teaching for Thinking pedagogy.

Teacher comments on Teaching for Thinking workshops

Media

Peter's TedxBrisbane Talk: The right to be heard is not the right to be taken seriously

See Peter's essay "This is why you will lose your argument."

theconversation.com/profiles/peter-ellerton-8574/articles

Peter's articles on The Conversation (over 2.7 million reads)

Nutting it outWhat is critical thinking? And how can it help us sort out the true from the false - particularly on such specialist topics as climate change?

ABC Radio National Philosopher's Zone

018 - Peter Ellerton - Critical Thinking - Team GuruPeter Ellerton, lecturer in Critical Thinking, joins the Team Guru to talk about the power of an effective thinking process - and tricks of those who don't.

A video abstract of our paper: Cook, John, Ellerton, Peter and Kinkead, David (2018). Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors. Environmental Research Letters, 13 (2) 024018, 024018. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/aaa49f

Some resources for teachers

Peter's Youtube Channel for educators involved in critical thinking

This channel supports teachers involved in professional programs on Teaching for Thinking provided by the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project. It focusses on the core skills of a critical thinking education. www.youtube.com/channel/UCTr7dpSQ1HN5bwMComkAwTA

A philosophy and critical thinking course developed by Peter and colleagues at the University of Queensland on the EDx platform.

https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:UQx+META101x+1T2020/home

CT Matrix A3 colour.pdf

A critical thinking matrix to map critical thinking skills

GT NEQ.pdf

Collaboration NEQ.pdf

Schema PCKI NEQ.pdf

Questions NEQ.pdf

Arguments NEQ.pdf

VOI NEQ.pdf

PCKI tree NEQ.pdf

Some publications

Thinking about thinking helps kids learn. How can we teach critical thinking?Critical thinking is being taught successfully in schools and universities around the world. Studies show it improves students’ thinking ability and even their standardised test scores.

Minds still matter in education.Investigating the brain is exciting and offers huge potential for our collective progress. But, in education, there is good reason to still talk about minds.

How do you know that what you know is true? That's epistemologyIt’s not what you think you know, but how you can justify your knowledge that is most important.

This is why you will lose your argumentIt’s so easy to get side-tracked in any discussion and once that happens you’re doomed. So what do you need to know to win your argument?

Ellerton, P., & Kelly, R. (2021). Creativity and Critical Thinking. In A. Berry, C. Buntting, D. Corrigan, R. Gunstone, & A. Jones (Eds.), Education in the 21st Century: STEM, Creativity and Critical Thinking (pp. 9–27). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85300-6_2
On Critical Thinking and Collaborative Inquiry: Occasional paper commissioned by the NSW Department of Education National Initiatives & Performance
PREPRINT: On critical thinking and content knowledge: a critique of the assumptions of cognitive load theory. Ellerton, P. (2021, June 18). https://doi.org/10.31231/osf.io/vy687
PREPRINT: Critical thinking and the methodology of science. Ellerton, P. (2021, June 29). https://doi.org/10.31231/osf.io/xvwu7
Working from theory: developing the bases of teachers’ critical thinking pedagogies through action research
Hegazy, Hind, Ellerton, Peter, Campos-Remon, Hannah, Zaphir, Luke, Mazzola, Claudio and Brown, Deborah (2021). Working from theory: developing the bases of teachers’ critical thinking pedagogies through action research. Educational Action Research, 1-16. doi: 10.1080/09650792.2021.1877757
Foundations of the DEFT Project: tertiary educators Developing Expertise Fostering Thinking
Osborn, Judy-anne, Larkins, Jo-Ann, McBain, Bonnie, Ellerton, Peter, Black, Joel, Borwein, Naomi, Breuer, Florian and Roberts, Malcom (2020). Foundations of the DEFT Project: tertiary educators Developing Expertise Fostering Thinking. International Journal of Innovation in Science and Mathematics Education, 28 (2), 2-15. doi: 10.30722/ijisme.28.02.001
Reichenbachian common cause clusters
Mazzola, Claudio, Kinkead, David, Ellerton, Peter and Brown, Deborah (2020). Reichenbachian common cause clusters. Erkenntnis. doi: 10.1007/s10670-020-00269-6
Reasons: a digital argument mapping library for modern browsers
Kinkead, Dave, Brown, Deborah, Ellerton, Peter and Mazzola, Claudio (2019). Reasons: a digital argument mapping library for modern browsers. Journal of Open Source Software, 4 (37), 1044. doi: 10.21105/joss.01044
Critical Thinking in Adolescence
Ellerton, Peter (2019). Critical Thinking in Adolescence. The Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development. (pp. 1-1) edited by S. Hupp and J. Jewell. London, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons. doi: 10.1002/9781119171492.wecad370
Understanding our political nature: How to put knowledge and reason at the heart of political decision-making
Mair, D., Smillie, L., La Placa, G., Schwendinger, F., Raykovska, M., Pasztor, Z., van Bavel, R. and Ellerton, Peter (Expert Contributor) (2019). Understanding our political nature: How to put knowledge and reason at the heart of political decision-making. Luxembourg, Belgium: Publications Office of the European Union. doi: 10.2760/374191
Reasons: a digital argument mapping library for modern browsers
Kinkead, Dave, Brown, Deborah, Ellerton, Peter and Mazzola, Claudio (2019). Reasons: a digital argument mapping library for modern browsers. Journal of Open Source Software, 4 (37), 1044. doi: 10.21105/joss.01044
Detailed list of studies identified in systematic review of published research examining the critical thinking of higher education students
Lodge, Jason, Pezaro, Charlotte, Brown, Deborah, Kent, Kirsty, Corbett, Brooklyn and Ellerton, Peter (2019). Detailed list of studies identified in systematic review of published research examining the critical thinking of higher education students. The University of Queensland. (Dataset) doi: 10.14264/uql.2019.964
Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors
Cook, John, Ellerton, Peter and Kinkead, David (2018). Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors. Environmental Research Letters, 13 (2) 024018, 024018. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/aaa49f
How to read an ethics paper
Jansen, Melanie and Ellerton, Peter (2018). How to read an ethics paper. Journal of Medical Ethics, 44 (12), 810-813. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2018-104997
Pragmatic epistemology, inquiry values and education for thinking
Ellerton, Peter (2017). Pragmatic epistemology, inquiry values and education for thinking. The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. (pp. 111-118) edited by Maughn Rollins Gregory, Joanna Haynes and Karin Murris. New York, NY United States: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315726625
Settling Science - why the scientific method confuses us
Ellerton, Peter (2017). Settling Science - why the scientific method confuses us. The Best Australian Science Writing 2017. (pp. ---) Sydney NSW Australia: NewSouth Publishing.
Metacognition and critical thinking: some pedagogical imperatives
Ellerton, Peter (2015). Metacognition and critical thinking: some pedagogical imperatives. Palgrave handbook of critical thinking in higher education. (pp. 409-426) edited by M. Davies and R. Barnett. US: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-1-137-37805-7_25

Full list of publications