45th Conference Roundtable Discussion Descriptions

C. Keith Harrison
Professor of Business, Hip-Hop, and Sport (Retired)
University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida

Co-Authors:

Marcis Fennell
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

Whitney Griffin
Cerritos College 
Norwalk, California

Madeline Maulini
University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida

This Roundtable presentation will illustrate a method by which participants can engage in critical thinking through the content of hip-hop lyrics. Hip-hop lyrics reveal abstract and blunt content about the world in terms of education, social inequalities, sports, and other themes inside the USA and global cultures. In a practical way based on theoretical approaches, students in our courses are taught to gaze at various hip-hop content (e.g., lyrics, music videos) with a critical prism about the context of these messages. This includes the deconstruction of images, words, language, etc. and teaching students critical thinking through inductive and deductive coding of content from hip-hop poetry and representations of social realities. In terms of research, data has been systemically collected by the following approaches. 

In the past, scholars of business, entrepreneurship, and economics have relied almost exclusively on quantitative methods (Starr 2014). However, in our research, we adopt a qualitative approach, using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) online software to analyze hip-hop lyrical content. LIWC is a computerized research tool capable of examining everyday language and through a series of thematic codes, it seeks to explore the frequency in which certain words and phrases occur (Pennebaker et al. 2015). This software has over 100 preset dictionaries that examine text files word-by-word, categorizing words on the basis of their relative psychosocial similarities. For example, LIWC attempts to reveal the degree to which text-based scripts have an interest in status and dominance by using power dictionaries (Pennebaker et al. 2015). Each dictionary consists of a list of words, word stems, emoticons, and other specific verbal constructions that have been identified to reflect a psychological category of interest. Hip-hop artists are known to use creative slang, but this is seldom a problem because LIWC takes advantage of several probabilistic models of language use. LIWC reads a given text and compares each word in the text to the list of dictionary words and calculates the percentage of total words in the text that match each of the dictionary categories. For example, if LIWC analyzed a single speech containing 1,000 words using the built-in LIWC dictionaries, it might find that 50 of those words are related to power. LIWC then converts these numbers to percentages: 5 percent related to power. 

Interestingly, scholars of business and economics have described entrepreneurs as “subjects of power, primarily concerned with achieving some form of domination and commercialized success” (Dey and Steyaert 2014), and so we elected to utilize the power dictionary as well as the preset dictionaries associated with achievement, authenticity, money, reward, risk, and work. Stephen Spinelli and Robert Adams (2016) identified the following as attributes of effective entrepreneurship: commitment and determination, courage, leadership, opportunity obsession, tolerance of risk, ambiguity, creativity, self-reliance, and adaptability. These seven preset dictionaries provided by LIWC closely resemble some of the characteristics defined by previous scholars of entrepreneurship. From our analyses, we seek to further our empirical understanding of hip-hop moguls and their dominant entrepreneurial schemes.

Fatiha Bazouche
Teaching Assistant
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio

This Roundtable presentation, focused on professional development, introduces an evidence-based approach to enhancing preservice teachers’ critical thinking skills in hybrid learning environments by applying the Dual-Process Model of cognition. Grounded in Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction and Paul and Elder’s Intellectual Standards, the workshop explores how balancing fast, intuitive thinking with slower, reflective reasoning can support the development of higher-order thinking. This presentation aims to introduce educators to practical methods that merge cognitive theory and pedagogy, ultimately supporting the development of adaptive, critical thinkers prepared for the complexities of modern classrooms.

Caroline Obiageli
Associate Professor
Nigerian Defence Academy
Kaduna, Nigeria

As a young doctoral graduate of Critical Education in 2015, participation in the Nigerian Defence Academy’s Center for Critical Thinking, Teaching, and Learning reassured my continued academic journey in fostering critical thinking. The Center exposed me to the Paul-Elder Model of Critical Thinking, facilitating easier navigation along this journey. In this decade-long journey, I attained significant milestones in internalizing the model, promoting critical thinking with the help of the model at all levels of education in the Nigerian military and intelligence community, attaining local and international recognition as a Fulbright Scholar for program and curriculum development in critical thinking, and ultimately being successfully adjudged a Professor of Critical Thinking and Educative Entertainment. 

This presentation highlights how, in this journey through which I achieved a discovery of self, I also discovered that a key strength of the Paul-Elder model also creates distinct challenges in the teaching and learning process. The systematic presentation of the application of Intellectual Standards to Elements of Thought in order to develop Intellectual Traits offers clarity and convenience in the broad application of critical thinking to diverse tasks, problems, and situations. However, the same systematic approach has continually posed a challenge to teaching and learning critical thinking in my experience. This Roundtable Discussion will invite the exchange of ideas with other practitioners to develop strategies for overcoming this challenge.  

Azriel Williams
Graduate Teaching Assistant
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

Loui Chang
Graduate Teaching Assistant 
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

Edna Ross
Professor of Psychology
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

The introductory psychology course at the University of Louisville requires students to use the Paul-Elder critical thinking framework in a written assignment. This assignment is designed to encourage students to analyze, evaluate, and interpret information, enabling them to understand and make informed decisions regarding the data presented in published journal articles. The authors recently have noted increasingly more students having difficulty with this assignment. This increase corresponds with the increase in the inclusion of students who experienced junior high and high school during the difficult era of online education due to COVID-19. Students commit definitional errors regarding the specific terminology of the Elements of Thought. Despite instructions to the contrary as well as requiring students to read The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, students often use more familiar definitions than the precise meanings given by Paul and Elder to respond to the assignment questions.  

Our goal in this discussion is to engage educators, scholars, and critical thinkers in creating a motivating space to share ideas and innovative solutions that can help address the challenges and obstacles that post-COVID university and college students may encounter in their critical thinking development.

Il Barrow
Associate Director of Assessment
University of Louisville – Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning
Louisville, Kentucky

This Roundtable Discussion explores the use of the Learning Critical Thinking Inventory (LCTI) and the Teaching Critical Thinking Inventory (TCTI) as validated tools for self-assessment of critical thinking characteristics within academic courses. These instruments provide a quick, anonymous method for instructors and students to evaluate critical thinking from their respective perspectives. The results can inform instructors and academic programs on strategies to enhance critical thinking skills within specific courses. Additionally, universities can leverage these insights to assess and improve the integration of critical thinking across the undergraduate curriculum, ultimately fostering a more robust educational environment.