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October 2011 newsletter 


 
Foundation for Critical ThinkingNEWSLETTER
Foundation for Critical Thinking
www.criticalthinking.org

October 2011  
Critical Thinking in the News...

Teaching Students to Thinking Critically: Are We?

Dr. Linda Elder was interviewed on October 7th on BAM! Radio network with Frank Keil and Maureen Kelleher, focusing on Teaching Kids to Think Critically in the Age of Standardized Testing.


Many believe that we are seeing a critical absence among students of the ability to think critically. Some blame it on the emphasis on standardized testing; others see it as a weakness in critical thinking skills even among adults. The interviewees offer tips on how to work critical thinking into teaching as early as possible.

play the podcast:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bam-body-mind-child-preparing/id267447938


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Producing Intellectual Labor In The Classroom:  The Utilization Of A Critical Thinking Model To Help Students Take Command Of Their Thinking
Enoch Hale (Fellow of the Foundation for Critical Thinking) Phillip Crenshaw (East Central Community College) and Sallie L. Harper (Mississippi State University-Meridian)

This article discusses critical thinking in the student-centered classroom. The authors focus on a cross-disciplinary conception of critical thinking and discuss the application of one critical thinking framework within a community college history course.


Journal of College Teaching & Learning, July 2011 8(7)

 

The article is available at this link:

http://journals.cluteonline.com/index.php/TLC/article/view/4848/4940

 

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Our website gets a new look!
 

After many months of planning and work, we have launched our new website.  We hope you find the new site inviting.  As can be expected, there are a few (or perhaps more than a few) bugs still to be worked out.  Please be patient with us as we work through the issues that might affect your experience on our site. Visit us at www.criticalthinking.org to see the changes, and let us know if you need assistance with using our new website. cct@criticalthinking.org

  Join us for the

SPRING 2012 WORKSHOPS
ON CRITICAL THINKING

February 17-19, 2012

at the Claremont Hotel,
Berkeley, California 

near the University of California

at Berkeley

 

Register Now…

In the spring workshops we focus on critical thinking as essential to education.  We will offer two workshops for new or returning registrants and one for those ready to go to deeper levels of critical thinking theory and application.



Choose one of the following sessions:

- Engaging Students in Taking Ownership of Content Through Thinking…Dr. Linda Elder

 

- Fostering 21st century skills through a substantive conception of critical thinking:  Using the Tools of Critical Thinking to Teach Students How to Study and Learn…
Dr. Enoch Hale

 

- Becoming a Critical Thinking Theorist …
Dr. Richard Paul (advanced session) 

 


Click here to read more about these sessions
and get more information

 

Please click here to download a color flier.

Fostering Critical Thinking in the Classroom…                       

Discuss class time as a time in which the students will PRACTICE thinking (within the content) using the fundamental concepts and principles of the field. 

When teaching historical thinking, biological thinking, mathematical thinking, sociological thinking, thinking like a professional nurse, etc…

1.       Approach every class session with a clear sense of the relevant thinking you are looking for in the students.

2.       Be prepared to model or dramatize the thinking you want.

3.       Design activities so that students both generate and assess thinking.

In other words, in teaching for critical thinking in a subject, you should design the class so that you model the thinking you are looking for. This requires you either to think aloud in front of the class or to present the class with thinking in written form. Once modeled for the students, we should look for the students to engage in practice that emulates the model (not slavishly but in the spirit of the model). Shortly after the students engage in some guided practice, they need to assess that practice discovering thereby their strengths and weaknesses – their present level of understanding. This discovery should become a daily part of their learning, not something they discover six weeks down the line after receiving the results of the quiz or test. 

Critical Thinking Quotes...   Thoughts from the Past….
The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large.  They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires…they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought, and without considering that by sufficient effort the whole condition of their lives could be changed...It is only a few rare and exceptional men who have that kind of love toward mankind at large that makes them unable to endure patiently the general mass of evil and suffering, regardless of any relation it may have to their own lives. These few, driven by sympathetic pain, will seek, first in thought and then in action, for some way of escape, some new system of society by which life may become richer, more full of joy and less full of preventable evils than it is at present.
                                                                                                                                              Bertrand Russell, 1919