Critical Thinking Techniques Darryl Walker MaryAnn MacKenzie Mery Rojas-Lupoli Kemaly Parr

1. Critical Thinking Techniques Darryl Walker MaryAnn MacKenzie Mery Rojas-Lupoli Kemaly Parr

2. Critical Thinking Techniques • Objectives • Discuss the definition of critical thinking. • Discuss how to model critical thinking. • Discuss various ways educators may facilitate critical thinking including: modeling, critical debate, critical reading, and evaluation.

3. Critical Thinking Techniques • Definition • What does it mean to critically think? • Uniquely an adult process? • “I believe that it is in adulthood that critical thinking is learned and lived at its deepest and most significant level” (Brookfield, 2004, p.341) "An unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates

4. Critical Thinking Techniques • At next recall, if recommendations followed, what progress do you expect to see? • Treatment plan (nutritional counseling, local anesthetic choice, scaling, oral hygiene instruction education, etc.) • What other effects result from HBP? • How does HBP affect oral cavity or treatment choices? • What do the ranges mean? Health/disease • Blood Pressure Ranges

5. Critical Thinking Techniques • Assumptions • “…we are our assumptions” (Brookfield, 2004, p. 341-2) • Main Purposes • Hegemonic assumptions • Power relationships

6. Modeling Critical Thinking • What does it mean to model critical thinking? • How is this accomplished? • Starts and fits • “experiential deflowering” • Hostility • Builds trust http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfC4u5GCy3I

7. Critical Debate • “…a theatrical device with an element of playful swagger built into it” (Brookfield, 2004, p. 351) • Experience?????

8. Critical Debate • Contentious issue • Propose motion and form teams • Switch sides • Conduct the debate • Debrief

9. Critical Debate • Reflection paper • Assumptions clarified or confirmed • Hidden assumptions • Research new assumptions • New perspectives • Existing assumptions challenged or changed

10. Critical Debate • Pros? • Cons?

11. Critical Thinking Techniques • Lectures • End with a series of questions • Deliberately introduce alternative perspectives • Introduce periods of assumption hunting

12. Critical Thinking Techniques • Questionaires • Most engaged • Most distanced • Action most affirming/helpful • Action most puzzling/confusing • Surprised most about class

13. Critical Thinking Techniques • Scenario Analysis

14. Critical Thinking Techniques • Structured Critical Conversation

15. Critical Reading What is Critical Reading?

16. Critical Reading Critical reading is an analytic activity. • The reader reads and rereads a text to identify patterns of elements -- information, values, assumptions, and language usage-- throughout the discussion. These elements are tied together in an interpretation, an assertion of an underlying meaning of the text as a whole. When you read between the lines, you can probably come up with a simpler definition being true to yourself. When you have integrity, you’re honest with yourself and others. Unknown

17. How to do Critical Reading • Five step process to critical reading • Pre-Reading • Interpretive Reading • *Critical Reading • Synoptic Reading • Post-Reading

18. Four Categories of Critical Reading Questions • Epistemological • Experiential • Communicative • Political

19. Epistemological Questions Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that seeks answers to two main questions: How do we know? and How do we know we know? Sample • To what extent does the writing seem culturally skewed? • To what extent are the central insights of a piece of literature ground in empirical evidence?

20. Experiential Questions Defined as: The process of making meaning from direct experience Sample • How do the metaphors for teaching used in a piece of educational literature compare to the metaphors you use to describe your own experience of practice? For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." Aristotle

21. Communicative Questions Sample • Whose voices are heard in a piece of academic writing? • Does the paper use colloquial language of adult learners and adult educators?

22. Political Questions Sample • Whose interests are served by the publication of a text? • In writing on adult educational change, to what extent are the political impediments to educational innovations addressed?

23. Evaluate Critical Thinking • How do you know people are thinking critically • How to judge whether adult educators are having any effect? Critical Practice Audit (Handout) • Understand how you analyze situations • How you make decisions • How to take actions

24. Critical Thinking Techniques • C o n c l u s i o n …