Critical Thinking - Gut reaction1-10 (1= not at all; 10= massively)

1. How important are critical thinking skills for HE students?

2. How important is teaching critical thinking within your HE delivery? (and FE delivery)

3. How difficult is it to teach critical thinking skills?

4. How well do your teaching strategies instill critical thinking abilities within your students?

“Everyone agrees that students learn in college, but whether they learn to think is more controversial.”

Wilbert J. McKeachie (1992, p. 3 cited in Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum: A Brief Edition of Thought & Knowledge By Diane F. Halpern Lawrence Erlbaum 1997 US)

A poke in the eye for academicsIt’s errm, well

it’s obvious, you know it’s…

Characteristics

critical thinking not critical thinking

Yeah, and…?

Watch, critique, update your definitions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OLPL5p0fMg

Critical Thinking

“Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief”

Dumke, G., 1980. Chancellor's Executive Order 338, Chancellor's Office, Long Beach: California State University.

Teaching Habits

Teachers tend to teach the way they were taught.• Content acquisition valued over learning process.

Students tend to learn only what will be assessed.• Time, attention and focus geared at factual learning.

Assessments tend to emphasize content over thought.

• Questions designed around ease of grading, textbook knowledge, time-constraints of testing, etc.

Slide content source: University of Nebraska (otherwise un-named)

Evaluation

• Look at your own and peers’ resources in turn

1.To what extent do they support or develop or allow for critical thinking?

2.How could they do more of that?3.What techniques could you ‘steal’?

Reading

Impressions & conclusions

Strategies

Application

Produce and explain 2-3 printed or e-resources that illustrate ways in which you develop your students’ critical thinking, analytical skills and peer review techniques. (outcomes 1, 3, 4) Should refer to texts dealing with (HE) pedagogy Words: 1500Suggest:•“Lecture” or PowerPoint (or similar) slides•Other Resource- task or assessment•Some sort of problem solving/ collaborative activity