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32nd International Conference Sessions

Conference and Preconference Session Titles

July 23-26, 2012
Preconference July 21-22 


Thank you for attending our July conference. The following were the titles for the sessions this year. The details for next year's conference will be posted shortly. 

Registration will open in December.


PRECONFERENCE (Choose one of the following 2-day sessions):

• On Teaching Within the Spirit of the Oxford Tutorial…Richard Paul

• Fostering Multilogical Thinking within the Disciplines…Gerald Nosich

• Practical Ideas for Improving Student Learning…Enoch Hale

• Discovering the Layers Underneath the Layers of Critical Thinking…Linda Elder and Rush Cosgrove
(This is an advanced session and will be limited to approximately 10 participants)


CONFERENCE 

Day One (choose one): 

• Some Ways to Design Instruction Using Critical Thinking as the Driving Force…Richard Paul

• For Administrators: the Foundations of Critical Thinking and How They Can Be Infused Across
the Curriculum…Linda Elder

• Practical Methods for Fostering Critical Thinking in Secondary Instruction…Enoch Hale

• Understanding the Relationship Between Critical Thinking and Socratic  Questioning…Gerald Nosich

•The art of analyzing transcripts of interviews of higher education faculty …Rush Cosgrove This is an advanced session for returning registrants


Day Two Morning (choose one):

• What Can Research Really Tell Us About the Human Mind?...Linda Elder

• Overcoming Bad Habits of Teaching and Learning…Gerald Nosich

• Advanced Session: Analyzing Readings Using the Element of Thought…
Enoch Hale

• Two Conflicting Theories of Knowledge, Learning, and Literacy: The Didactic and the Critical …Richard Paul


Day Two Afternoon (choose one):

• Why we are all pathological thinkers and what can be done about it…Linda Elder

• Cultivating the intellect through close reading and substantive writing…Enoch Hale

• Teaching Students to think within the logic of a discipline…Gerald Nosich

• The Higher and Lower Politics of Critical Thinking …Richard Paul


Day Three

Concurrent sessions – TBA – if you would like to send a proposal for a concurrent session, please contact Foundation for Critical Thinking Fellow, Dr. Enoch Hale, at hale@criticalthinking.org.  Concurrent sessions are one hour in length. Most sessions are conducted by faculty and administrators who have been working with critical thinking concepts and principles for several years - either in bringing critical thinking into the individual classroom or across the curriculum.


Day Four

• Helping students learn to think within the key concepts in subjects and  disciplines…Gerald Nosich

• Teach so that students think through the content using intellectual traits…Richard Paul

• Four forms of sociocentric thought and the harm they cause…Linda Elder

• Bringing it Home: Critical Thinking at the Institutional Level…Patty Payette and Rush Cosgrove

• Identifying Resources that Foster Critical Thinking….Enoch Hale




Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. To continue our work, we must now rely upon your financial support. If critical thinking matters to you, please click here to contribute what you can today.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR WORK.

Thank you for your support of ethical critical thinking.