Join us for the
30th International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform
CONFERENCE THEME:
How To Teach Students To Master Content By Developing A Questioning Mind
The Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking have together hosted critical thinking academies and conferences for three decades. During that time, we have played a key role in defining, structuring, assessing, improving and advancing the principles and best practices of fair-minded critical thought in education and in society. We invite you to join us for the 30th International Conference on Critical Thinking. Our annual conference provides a unique opportunity for you to improve your understanding of critical thinking, as well as your ability to more substantively foster it in the classroom and in all aspects of your work and life.
The conference will consist in approximately 40 conference sessions offered over four days. Participants will choose in advance the sessions offered on days one, two, and four. At the conference, participants will choose from a number of concurrent sessions offered on the third day of the conference.
All conference sessions are designed to converge on basic critical thinking principles and to enrich a core concept of critical thinking with practical teaching and learning strategies. We are committed to a clear and "substantive" concept of critical thinking (rather than one that is ill-defined); a concept that interfaces well with the disciplines, that integrates critical with creative thinking, that applies directly to the needs of everyday and professional life, that emphasizes the affective as well as the cognitive dimension of critical thinking, that highlights intellectual standards and traits. We advocate a concept of critical thinking that organizes instruction in every subject area at every educational level. | Choose from the following conference sessions:
DAY ONE (following the Keynote Address) DAY TWO Morning
DAY TWO Afternoon DAY THREE - Concurrent sessions. Participants will choose from among numerous concurrent sessions while at the conference. Concurrent sessions are invited, and will be posted presently.
DAY FOUR Afternoon | | News from the Archives…by Linda Elder
 The Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique was established by Dr. Richard Paul in 1980 at Sonoma State University in Northern California. The first conference on Critical Thinking, held in 1981 and sponsored by the Center, was titled: The First National Conference on Critical Thinking, Moral Education and Rationality. Conference sessions targeted the following questions: - What is the nature of critical thinking and how best can it be taught?
- Is it possible to educate students morally; and what is the relation between such education and developing skill in critical thinking?
- What is “rationality” and in what major ways can it be taught?
- What is the relation between an education that enhances “rationality,” “critical thought” and “morality?
- How does “indoctrination” fit into this picture?
In 1983, the Center for Critical Thinking broadened its scope from a national to an international emphasis and the conference title was thus broadened to the First International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform. In 1984 Focus magazine [i] targeted critical thinking and the presentations of the Second International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform. Remarks by the following presenters, among others, were highlighted: Robert Ennis, David Lazere, Mathew Lipman, Richard Paul, and Neil Postman. David W. Gordon, one conference presenter, warned against the possibility of critical thinking becoming a fad in education. He said “The danger is that the critical thinking movement will degenerate into a series of panacea programs and quick fixes. We can’t let it go the way of the countless other fads in education. We need a clear vision of what we want to achieve. Critical thinking must be imbedded in every subject and not just a few scattered courses here and there. It can’t be done with half-day workshops, and the effort must continue even after critical thinking ceases to be a hot topic of conference circuit.” Robert Ennis, a pioneer in critical thinking, expressed concern about the lack of critical thinking materials and coordination efforts at that time. He said “the enthusiasm is growing, and my fervent hope is that it doesn’t all fall on its face in five years. Enthusiasm isn’t enough if you don’t have good curricula and materials. There are a lot of people who want to do something, but nobody knows quite what to do. A lot of teachers are out there floundering. I’ve spent my whole career in this field, and suddenly I feel that I’ve got a tiger by the tail.”  Gordon and Ennis’s warnings and concerns are still relevant thirty years later. Unfortunately, many teachers and instructors still falsely presume that critical thinking is a set of tools one can easily tack onto instruction to help students think better, a set of questions at the end of the chapter, a set of formulaic procedures one can easily follow, a course students take their first year in college and so on. And though many curricula materials have been developed since the early 1980s, mindsets remain largely the same and coordination efforts are often sadly lacking. The reasons are many. One is that critical thinking is largely still seen as an add-on, not a set of principles integral to thinking within any field of study. Another is that so few scholars have taken the idea of critical thinking seriously and developed explicit ways to integrate it into their subjects and into instruction in their fields of study. Thus at the Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking we emphasis and target these and related barriers to the cultivation of fairminded critical societies. Interestingly, the questions at the heart of the first conference on critical thinking, due to their universal nature and depth, are still the focus of the International Conference on Critical Thinking today. Still we work to understand the nature of critical thinking and how it can best be taught. Still we strive to understand how to foster fairminded thinking in instruction. Still we contemplate how to teach rationality and reasonability. As long as there are humans striving toward a more fairminded critical world, these and related questions will guide what they think and how they live.
[i] See Albert Benderson, Critical Thinking, 1984, in “Focus.” Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, vol. 15, p. 3. | | “It has taken centuries to persuade the most enlightened peoples that liberty to publish one’s opinions and to discuss all questions is a good and not a bad thing. Human societies (there are some brilliant exceptions) have been generally opposed to freedom of thought, or, in other words, to new ideas, and it is easy to see why.” – John Bury, 1913 | |
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