Critical Thinking in the College Classroom: Teaching the Teachers

1. Critical Thinking in the College Classroom: Teaching the Teachers Bill Reynolds, Mark Berg, & Jedediah Morfit The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey William.reynolds@stockton.edu 609-652-4356

2. Session overview • Project background (Stockton Critical Thinking Institute) • Perspective on critical thinking • Framework for teaching CT • Elements of thought, intellectual standards, intellectual traits • SEEI (state, elaborate, exemplify, illustrate) • Model activities • Discussion • Questions • (Additional components of SCTI)

3. Objectives Upon completion of the session, participants will be able to: • Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the benefit to student learning of explicit, deliberate instruction of critical thinking in subject area courses. • Incorporate the “elements of thought” into critical thinking instruction in their disciplines. • Promote the “intellectual standards” in their critical thinking instruction. • Explain a coherent framework for integrating critical thinking instruction into their teaching.

4. Origins of SCTI • Personal experiences, assessment evidence of students’ difficulties with CT skills • Desire for community of like-minded colleagues who are interested in exploring responses to CT deficits • CT working group, summer 2011 • 2020 Plan Grant (internal), summer 2012

5. SCTI Structure • 2 day summer institute • Day 1: CT Pedagogy • Day 2: Syllabus adaptation/development • Peer observations and coaching sessions, fall and/or spring semesters • Follow up meeting during the semester • Assess progress • Exchange ideas • Summer conference, Foundation for CT, Berkeley

6. Our perspective on CT • One definition: • “reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Ennis, 1997) • Framework for teaching CT skills (from The Foundation for Critical Thinking) • Elements of thought • Intellectual standards • Intellectual traits • Logic of the discipline/fundamental and powerful concepts

7. Fundamental premise • To analyze thinking we must identify and question its elemental structures. • The elements and standards that follow give us a framework that students can apply to course content (readings, lectures, etc.), arguments made by their peers, and their own writing to broaden and deepen their understanding and improve their reasoning ability.

8. The Elements of Thought Intellectual Standards Clarity Accuracy Precision Relevance Depth Breadth Logic Significance Fairness

9. Intellectual traits or virtues • Integrity • Independence • Perseverance • Empathy • Humility • Courage • Confidence in reason • Fairmindedness

10. SEE-I approach to clarity • State: Could you state your basic point in one simple sentence? • Elaborate: Could you elaborate your basic point more fully? (In other words…) • Exemplify: Could you give me an example of your point from your experience? • Illustrate: Could you give me a metaphor or an analogy (or draw a picture, diagram, etc.) to help me see what you mean?

11. Socratic questioning • What was the most important thing you learned in the first session? • Write for 2 minutes • Share in triads • Report to whole group • Socratic questioning is modeled by facilitator using responses from the groups as content.

12. Explanation of questioning process • The quality of our thinking is given in the quality of our questions. • Your framework for determining what questions to ask: • Elements of thought • Intellectual standards • SEEI approach (state, elaborate, exemplify, illustrate)

13. Socratic questioning activity • Organize yourselves into groups of 3 (try to keep a little space between your group and others). • Prompt: For the next two minutes, free write about the following statement: • In the classroom, the goal of teaching subject matter content should take a back seat to the goal of facilitating critical thinking. • One person agrees to be person A; B to her/his right; C to B’s right. • A is questioner, B is respondent, C is observer. • A begins by asking B a question related to the prompt statement and proceeds to ask questions based on B’s response. • C observes and takes notes to provide feedback and questions to A about the nature of the questions (elements, standards, SEEI?). • Switch roles to right (i.e., C is questioner, etc.) when prompted. • Report back to whole group.`

14. Critical Evaluation of Socratic Process • What was your experience of this activity? • What was it like being questioned? • How did you feel while questioning your partner? • How was it to observe the process? • Having assumed all three roles, try to inhabit the student point of view. How do you think your students would respond to this approach?

15. QUESTIONS

16. Additional components of the SCTI (1) Fundamental and powerful concepts (from Nosich, 2005): • explain or help us think about a huge body of questions, problems, information, and situations within a discipline or course. • are the most essential or useful ideas in a discipline. • are to be contrasted with individual bits of information, or with less general concepts. • reflect the primary and essential thinking trait(s) you want students to achieve at the end of an assignment/course. • Bottom Line: What you are aiming for is to make those f&p concepts part of the way students think in your field or discipline.

17. Additional components of the SCTI (2) Logic of the discipline (from Nosich, 2005): • Know what ideas are central to that discipline—its f & p concepts • Understand the logic of the field and its point of view • Know and use the symbol system(s) of that discipline (terms, jargon, shorthand, forms) • Understand what you bring to the field (point of view, impediments, filters, etc.) • Move from outsider (apprentice) to insider (professional)