CT 2011

Teaching Students to Think Within a Field or Discipline… Gerald Nosich

One of the main goals of instruction is to help the student internalize the most basic concepts in the subject and to learn to think through questions in everyday life using those concepts. Critical thinking in biology is biological thinking. Critical thinking in anatomy is anatomical thinking. Critical thinking in literature is thinking the way a knowledgeable, sensitive, reasonable reader thinks about literature. A discipline is more than a body of information. It is a distinctive way (or set of ways) of looking at the world and thinking through a set of questions about it. It is systematic and has a logic of its own. In this session, participants will think thought the logic of a discipline of their choosing. They will also focus on teaching the logic of their discipline so students internalize the way of thinking inherent in the subject as a life-long acquisition.

Teaching Students Fundamental and Powerful Concepts… Gerald Nosich

Concepts are ideas we use in thinking. They enable us to group things in our experience in different categories, classes, or divisions. They are the basis of the labels we give things in our minds. They represent the mental map (and meanings) we construct of the world, the map that tells us the way the world is. Through our concepts we define situations, events, relationships, and all other objects of our experience. All our decisions depend on how we conceptualize things. All subjects or disciplines are defined by their foundational concepts. Cell versus mitochondria is an example. Cell is a much more fundamental and powerful concept in biology than is mitochondria. Students who achieve a deep understanding of the concept of a cell will be able to think though and gain insight into a very large number of topics in biology. It will give them a powerful entrance into thinking biologically. Not only that, but a good grasp of the concept cell will enable students to think critically about a range of topics they will encounter outside the course. By contrast, a student who achieves a good grasp of the concept mitochondria will not, thereby, gain insight into nearly as large a range of other biology topics.

When students master foundational concepts at a deep level, they are able to use them to understand and function better within the world. Can you identify the fundamental concepts in your discipline? Can you explain their role in thinking within your discipline? How can you help students take command of these concepts? These are some of the questions that will be explored in this session.

Understanding the Relationship Between Critical Thinking and Emancipating the Mind… Linda Elder

Most people are trapped in their beliefs. They use ideas in their thinking that they are unaware of and have never examined for quality. They have developed a world view which influences much of their behavior, but of which they have little or no understanding. They are using assumptions accumulated throughout their lives which lead to their inferences and conclusions, but which they themselves have little or no awareness of. They are trapped in egocentric narrow-mindedness and sociocentric vested interest.

In short, the mind can be trapped in unexamined beliefs, concepts, assumptions, and world- views, or it can be freed through intellectual self-discipline and cultivation. This session will focus on the multiple ways that critical thinking can help us become more independent, and hence more free, in our thinking. It will focus on understanding the concepts and principles of critical thinking in ways that encourage students to “emancipate” their minds.

Teaching Students to Distinguish Strong and Weak Sense Critical Thinking… Richard Paul

Strong-sense critical thinkers are fundamentally concerned with reasoning at the highest level of skill, considering all the important available evidence, and respecting all relevant viewpoints. Their thought and behavior is characterized primarily by intellectual virtues or habits of mind. They avoid being blinded by their own viewpoints. They recognize the framework of assumptions and ideas upon which their own viewpoints are based. They realize the necessity of putting their assumptions and ideas to the test of the strongest objections that can be leveled against them. Most importantly, they can be moved by reason; in other words, they are willing to abandon their own ideas when other ideas prove more reasonable or valid.

Weak sense, or unethical critical thinkers, on the other hand do not hold themselves or those with whom they ego-identify to the same intellectual standards to which they hold opponents. They do not reason empathically within points of view or frames of reference with which they disagree; They tend to think monologically (within one narrow perspective). They do not genuinely accept, though they may verbally espouse, the values of fairminded critical thinking. They use intellectual skills selectively and self-deceptively to foster and serve their selfish interests at the expense of truth. They use critical thinking skills to identify flaws in the reasoning of others and sophisticated arguments to refute others’ arguments before giving those arguments due consideration. They routinely justify their irrational thinking through highly sophisticated rationalizations. They are highly skilled at manipulation.

This session will thus explore the distinguishing characteristics of strong and weak sense critical thinkers, with the aim of fostering these essential understandings in student thought.

My Notes:

Using the Tools of Critical Thinking to Teach Students How to Study and Learn… Enoch Hale

To study well and learn any subject is to learn how to think with discipline within that subject. It is to learn to think within its logic, to:

• raise vital questions and problems within it, formulating them clearly and precisely.

• gather and assess information, using ideas to interpret that information insightfully.

• come to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards.

• adopt the point of view of the discipline, recognizing and assessing, as need be, its assumptions, implications, and practical consequences.

• communicate effectively with others using the language of the discipline and that of educated public discourse.

• relate what one is learning in the subject to other subjects and to what is significant in human life.

To become a skilled learner is to become a self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinker who has given assent to rigorous standards of thought and mindful command of their use. Skilled learning of a discipline requires that one respect the power of it, as well as its, and one’s own, historical and human limitations. This session will offer strategies for helping students begin to take learning seriously.

This session focuses on a number of instructional ideas that are based in the idea that substantive teaching and learning can occur only when students take ownership of the most basic principles and concepts of the subject. These strategies are rooted in a vision of instruction implied by critical thinking and an analysis of the weaknesses typically found in most traditional didactic lecture/quiz/test formats of instruction. This session, then focuses on some basic instructional strategies that foster the development of student thinking, and strategies that require students to think actively within the concepts and principles of the subject

The Art of Close Reading and Substantive Writing... Enoch Hale

Educated persons are skilled at and routinely engage in close reading and substantive writing. When reading, they seek to learn from texts; they generate questions as they read and seek answers to those questions by reading widely and skillfully. In short, they seek to become better educated through reading. They do this through the process of intellectually interacting with the authors they read, as they read. They come to understand what they read by paraphrasing, elaborating, exemplifying, and illustrating what they read. They make connections as they read. They evaluate as they read. They bring important ideas into their thinking as they read.

Substantive writing, in turn, consists in focusing on a subject worth writing about and then saying something worth saying about it. It enhances our reading. It develops the more subjects we read and write about and the more points of view we use as tools for discovering important points. Whenever we read to acquire knowledge, we should write to take ownership of that reading. Furthermore, just as we must write to gain an initial understanding of the primary ideas of a subject, so also must we write to begin to think within the subject as a whole and to make interconnections between ideas within and beyond the subject. Quite remarkably, many of our students have never read a text closely, nor written a substantive paper in all their years of schooling. Instead, they have developed the habit of skirting by with superficial and impressionistic reading, writing, and listening. This session will explore ways and means for developing student skills in close reading and substantive writing in content areas.