What does “critical thinking” mean to you? (Or do you like better the idea of “crucial thinking”?)
How do higher level thinking skills apply to the work that you do?
How do you think you can develop your ability to effectively think through complex issues (asking more crucial questions)?
In preparation for the upcoming ICT4D Consortium workshop in Tanzania, Tersia, Erkki and I met with Tim Unwin (UNESCO Chair in ICT4D) and his capable team at Royal Holloway, University of London. In addition to the Edulink related meetings, I appreciated how Tim also allowed us to participate in some of the other classes and discussion groups he held.
On the first day he held a discussion with a group of his PhD students on “critical thinking” (based on Paul, R. and Elder, L., 2008, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, Foundation for Critical Thinking). The discussion stimulated a lot of my own thoughts.
This blog entry is my attempt to capture some of my “take-away” thoughts, and to see how they resonate with others:
• As a term “crucial thinking” not only avoids some of the negative connotation (in English) of “critical thinking” but it also suggests something that is more essential and important. I like it.
• Whatever you call it, higher level thinking skills are so valuable, and so needed in making sense of this complex world, and in asking more powerful questions that can help us get at the heart of essential issues.
• Notice the distinction between seeking to prove something vs. seeking to learn/discover (especially in research questions).
• Often we don’t ask questions we should ask. Sometimes it might be because our parents or culture has taught us to ask less questions? Sometimes it might be because we are afraid of looking like we don’t know something that maybe we think we should know?
• Our typical school system rarely teaches us truth seeking curiosity, but rather the typical “learning” mechanisms (e.g. lecture, assignments, etc) and assessments (tests written and graded by a teacher vs. competence based real world projects with expert guides assisting) usually reinforce a lower level of thinking.
• Ask more questions (particularly “why” questions) – be more curious (be more vulnerable in admitting ignorance through asking a lot of questions). What other questions could I be asking?
• Ask myself: What assumptions I am making in the questions I am asking?
• Ask powerful questions – I should post another blog entry sometime on what I mean by this.
• Ask myself: How open am I to that I might be wrong in the solutions I am hypothesizing or that I might even be asking the wrong (less helpful) question(s) to begin with?
• Where do you start and build from in analyzing a situation to improve it? The weaknesses/problems or the strengths and what is going right? Whereas “critical thinking” might imply beginning from being critical of what is not right, crucial thinking could lend itself better to the attitude of starting from strengths, what is going right, (appreciative inquiry), etc.
• What is your claim? How do you justify it?
• Sometimes true crucial thinking is penalized by the existing system, because it often requires you to challenge the status quo (going against sources of money/power/etc). How willing am I to ask honest questions to myself and to those in authority (for the sake of truth), even if they could be seen as a threat or it might mean less privileged favors in the future?
Those are my thoughts. Do you have any to add? Or any answers to the first questions that began this blog entry?
I have another reason for which we would want to abandon the “critical” prefix: The colonialization of educational research by “social justice” and “*critical* perspectives.” These ways of thinking begin with a priori conclusions and seek the data to support those conclusions. While this may be an effective form of activism, it is the antithesis of science and in direct opposition to truly critical investigations.
If we don’t move away from the term “critical thinking,” it will be co-opted by activists sooner or later.
The more I think of this, the more convinced I am that Dr. Inouye’s 620 class was the optimal setup for learning to think on a higher order. I’m deconstrucing a course right now, and I will follow his template as I build it back up.
Good additional point.
I’ll be curious to know how your deconstruction and reconstruction of your class goes.
The class I taught this semester, trying to model it after Dr. Inouye, seems to have gone very well.
Hmmm… I see your point but I think this is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Well, not exactly. And that’s the interesting part of it.
I’m not an English speaker so I started by having a look at the dictionary (the Oxford one 😉 ) and I understand that term can trigger a negative halo [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect] or other subtle inferences to some people.
In my case (my cultural background?) my understanding is closer to the second sense of the word: “expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of a work of literature, music, or art” which collides in a sort of mental oxymoron with the first one: “expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgments”.
I don’t want to be swallowed in the shifting sands of word meanings so I jump out into the key issue: how to think better and especially:
Why ‘why’ questions?
I think there are some assumptions here: 1) our mind is a symbolic system we play with, that is, you can apply some operations (in Piaget’s sense) to some symbols 2) in critical thinking, questions trigger suitable operations to those symbols 3) questions are mainly those operations
I disagree with 3) but it would take too long to be written down now.
I’m interested in what you would see as the most “crucial” impact a teacher of elementary students could have on this redirection of focus in education. I wonder how much change one year will make in the midst of a system that needs much reforming, even if one were to successfully modify their curriculum and their expectations of the students’ performance. I wonder if/how a teacher could redirect the educational focus and still meet the demands of expectations placed on us–like in CRT score percentages (I love the idea of “truth seeking curiosity” as opposed to traditional “I speak, you write” philosophy…) What does this look like in my second grade classroom?
I’m also [still] interested in hearing Dr. Inouye stories. Which one of you is going to write his biography? Quit talking about him on your blog and showing off that you knew him, and teach his philosophies to the rest of us! =o)
1. As a teacher educator I’ll say that a 2nd grade teacher has very little power to bring about change. Sure, a few very talented, very motivated, very creative, and very tenured teachers may manage to change some aspects of the system now, but most power lies beyond the control of any individual.
That’s not to say that you can’t change your classroom. You just have to do it in the small (seemingly meaningless) ways that the system allows you.
The systemic issues are not only related to teachers’ power and not only in the public school systems. To apply for a professorship in many teacher education programs, one must have three years of public school teaching experience. At first, we think, yeah, that makes sense. How are people supposed to train teachers if they’ve never been in the schools themselves.
But if we think about using teacher education as a change agent, then we see a problem with requiring professors to be products of the system they’re (supposedly) trying to change. It’s not that every former teacher is a zombie, but there are many fresh ideas (and people) that originate out of the system that should be welcomed in.
2. My fondest memory of Dr. Inouye was his take-home final exam for IP&T 620. It took me 16 hours to complete, and I wound up slipping it under his door instead of bringing to the final exam time. See, my wife had given birth the day before.
Well, I was the one who missed out. As the six other students in his class met, he declared, “Gosh. I’m hungry. Is anyone else?” And with that he drove them to Osaka’s and fed them sushi while they chatted about the final.
Another good one: Four years after I had his course we sat on a couch at Dr. Gibbons during the Christmas social.
“You must be getting close to graduating,” he asked.
“Yes, it always seems that way.”
“What will you do with your degree?” He always sounded so genuinely interested.
“I’m looking for a position on the tenure track.”
“Really? Well, when you finish you dissertation bring it by my office and we’ll see about changing your grade from 620.”
“Dr. Inouye, I’m happy with the B you gave me.”
“I know, but it may help you in you job search.”
I never took him up on the offer (and I had my position before I finished my dissertation anyway), but he taught me something very important that day: When we educate someone, we do it with the end in mind. Just because I didn’t reach an A-level in his course didn’t mean I would never reach it. He was willing to re-evaluate my work several years later, then update my grade accordingly.