The 29th Annual Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform July 20-23 Preconference… July 19-20 We invite you to join us for the 29th 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. This year’s theme focuses on Fostering Intellectual Discipline. The conference will be held in beautiful Berkeley, CA. NOTE: In light of the financial challenges educational institutions in this country and abroad are facing, we are now offering further group rate reductions. Please visit our website for more information or phone us at 800-833-3645. | Professional Development Workshops
President Obama recently explicated the importance of integrating critical thinking into education. As you know, this has been the Foundation’s goal for the last 29 years. To work toward this end, we offer professional development workshops for faculty in primary, secondary and university settings. Each workshop is designed according to the needs of individual institutions. Below is an abbreviated list of topics covered in past workshops. - Foundational: introduction to critical thinking fundamentals
- Critical thinking and assessment
- Socratic questioning
- Critical thinking, reading and writing
- Teaching students to think theoretically and empirically
- Teaching students to ask good questions and follow out the implications of thought
- Reasoning across the curriculum
- Critical thinking and the role of administration
- Embodying valuable critical thinking dispositions
- Analytic reasoning
- Critical thinking and emotional intelligence
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| Fostering Critical Thinking in the Classroom…
Test for Students to Repeat in Every Course Every academic field has its own logic or system of meanings. To learn the field is to learn the system. Whether we are designing a new screwdriver or working out a perspective on religion, we must create a system of meanings that make sense to us. To learn the system underlying a discipline is to create it in our mind. This requires that our thinking be re-shaped and modified. As you study a subject, periodically ask yourself: - Can I explain the underlying system of ideas that defines this subject? (like writing an encyclopedia entry)
- Can I explain the most basic ideas in it to someone who doesn’t understand? (answering their questions about it)
- Could I write a glossary of its most basic vocabulary?
- Do I understand the extent to which the subject involves a great deal of expert disagreement or very little expert disagreement?
- Have I written out the most basic logic of the subject? (its purposes, key questions, information, assumptions, inferences, points of view, concepts, implications)
- Can I compare and contrast the logic of the subject I am learning with that of other subjects I have learned?
- To what extent can I relate this subject to significant problems in the world?
- To what extent has thinking in this field helped me to become more intellectually humble, perseverant, autonomous…?
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