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There and Back Again: Theoretical Wisdom, Practical Wisdom, & Critical Thinking
Matt Isaia
Instruction & Online Outreach Librarian
Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
What is the link between Intellectual Virtues and critical thinking? More specifically, what is the link between wisdom and critical thinking?
In this session, I define wisdom in ancient Greek terms, and more specifically, in the Aristotelian sense where wisdom is divided into two separate concepts: sophia and phronesis. Theoretical wisdom (sophia) can be described as the knowledge we possess about the natural world (i.e., the world around us), while practical wisdom (phronesis) can be described as excellence in moral decision-making (i.e., wise decision-making). I argue that, together, these two concepts of wisdom are essential in helping to shape and improve our critical thinking skills.
The Foundation for Critical Thinking teaches us that “critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thought processes with a view to improving them” (Paul & Elder, 2020, pg. 9). The virtue of wisdom, which is often referred to as meta-virtue, guides not only our thinking but our actions as well. Wisdom should play a significant role in critical thinking of any kind, be it conducting research for an assignment, consuming news media, or learning from our mistakes. For, as we know, “critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking” (Paul & Elder, 2020, pg. 9). Thus, it is wisdom that helps guide us in our self-reflection and decision-making.
In this session, I intend to use key concepts within character education, rooted in the teachings and philosophy of Aristotle, to explore the basic tenets of critical thinking as defined in the Foundation for Critical Thinking’s Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. My goal is to explore the intellectual virtue of wisdom in order to show that both theoretical wisdom (sophia) and practical wisdom (phronesis) play an important role in the critical thinking process. More specifically, I intend to draw upon a four-component model of wisdom and connect them to the concepts found within the Foundation’s Critical Thinking Framework.
Bryan Calkin
Scholar
Charlotte, North Carolina
Critical thinking is the process by which humans align their mental models to reality. There are two fundamental axioms: existence and consciousness. Existence equals objective reality, that which is independent of a mind. Consciousness is that which is mind-dependent, or subjective. Critical thinking (subjective consciousness) must be grounded by objective reality.
When a disagreement occurs between two interlocutors about a fact, reality is the arbiter. For example, if I believe the earth is flat and you believe the earth is ellipsoidal, the facts of reality determine who is correct. Effective critical thinking, and teaching, must use objective reality as the foundation for establishing the facts, formulas, and theories that we use to understand ourselves and the world. That is, we must ground our critical thinking techniques in the fixed and knowable parts of reality. Our knowledge base grows, through the critical thinking process, as our collective mental models more closely align with objective reality.
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C. Keith Harrison
Professor of Business, Hip-Hop, and Sport
University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida
Co-Authors:
Marcis Fennell
University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida
Whitney Griffin
University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida
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.
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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.
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