The
State of Critical Thinking Today:
The Need for a Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking
As the Organizer in
Developing Blueprints for Institutional Change
“Too many facts,
too little conceptualizing, too much memorizing, and too little
thinking.”
Paul Hurd
Introduction
The question at issue in this paper is: What is the current state
of critical thinking in higher education?
Sadly, studies of higher
education demonstrate three disturbing, but hardly novel, facts:
- Most college faculty
at all levels lack a substantive concept of critical thinking.
- Most college faculty
don’t realize that they lack a substantive concept of critical
thinking, believe that they sufficiently understand it, and assume
they are already teaching students it.
- Lecture, rote memorization,
and (largely ineffective) short-term study habits are still the
norm in college instruction and learning today.
These three facts, taken
together, represent serious obstacles to essential, long-term institutional
change, for only when administrative and faculty leaders grasp the
nature, implications, and power of a robust concept of critical
thinking---as well as gain insight into the negative implications
of its absence---are they able to orchestrate effective professional
development. When faculty have a vague notion of critical thinking,
or reduce it to a single-discipline model (as in teaching critical
thinking through a “logic” or a “study skills”
paradigm), it impedes their ability to identify ineffective, or
develop more effective, teaching practices. It prevents them from
making the essential connections (both within subjects and across
them), connections that give order and substance to teaching and
learning.
This paper highlights
the depth of the problem and its solution---a comprehensive, substantive
concept of critical thinking fostered across the curriculum. As
long as we rest content with a fuzzy concept of critical thinking
or an overly narrow one, we will not be able to effectively teach
for it. Consequently, students will continue to leave our colleges
without the intellectual skills necessary for reasoning through
complex issues.
Part One: An Initial Look at the Difference Between a Substantive
and Non-substantive Concept of Critical Thinking.
Faculty
Lack a Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking
Studies demonstrate that most college faculty lack a substantive
concept of critical thinking. Consequently they do not (and cannot)
use it as a central organizer in the design of instruction. It does
not inform their conception of the student’s role as learner.
It does not affect how they conceptualize their own role as instructors.
They do not link it to the essential thinking that defines the content
they teach. They, therefore, usually teach content separate from
the thinking students need to engage in if they are to take ownership
of that content. They teach history but not historical thinking.
They teach biology, but not biological thinking. They teach math,
but not mathematical thinking. They expect students to do analysis,
but have no clear idea of how to teach students the elements of
that analysis. They want students to use intellectual standards
in their thinking, but have no clear conception of what intellectual
standards they want their students to use or how to articulate them.
They are unable to describe the intellectual traits (dispositions)
presupposed for intellectual discipline. They have no clear idea
of the relation between critical thinking and creativity, problem-solving,
decision-making, or communication. They do not understand the role
that thinking plays in understanding content. They are often unaware
that didactic teaching is ineffective. They don’t see why
students fail to make the basic concepts of the discipline their
own. They lack classroom teaching strategies that would enable students
to master content and become skilled learners.
Most faculty have these
problems, yet with little awareness that they do. The majority of
college faculty consider their teaching strategies just fine, no
matter what the data reveal. Whatever problems exist in their instruction
they see as the fault of students or beyond their control.
Studies
Reveal That Critical Thinking is Rare in the College Classroom
Research demonstrates that, contrary to popular faculty belief,
critical thinking is not fostered in the typical college classroom.
In a meta-analysis of the literature on teaching effectiveness in
higher education, Lion Gardiner, in conjunction with ERIC Clearinghouse
on Higher Education (1995) documented the following disturbing patterns:
“Faculty aspire to develop students’ thinking skills,
but research consistently shows that in practice we tend to aim
at facts and concepts in the disciplines, at the lowest cognitive
levels, rather than development of intellect or values.
Numerous studies of
college classrooms reveal that, rather than actively involving our
students in learning, we lecture, even though lectures are not nearly
as effective as other means for developing cognitive skills. In
addition, students may be attending to lectures only about one-half
of their time in class, and retention from lectures is low.
Studies suggest our
methods often fail to dislodge students’ misconceptions and
ensure learning of complex, abstract concepts. Capacity for problem
solving is limited by our use of inappropriately simple practice
exercises.
Classroom tests often
set the standard for students’ learning. As with instruction,
however, we tend to emphasize recall of memorized factual information
rather than intellectual challenge. Taken together with our preference
for lecturing, our tests may be reinforcing our students’
commonly fact-oriented memory learning, of limited value to either
them or society.
Faculty agree almost
universally that the development of students’ higher-order
intellectual or cognitive abilities is the most important educational
task of colleges and universities. These abilities underpin our
students’ perceptions of the world and the consequent decisions
they make. Specifically, critical thinking – the capacity
to evaluate skillfully and fairly the quality of evidence and detect
error, hypocrisy, manipulation, dissembling, and bias – is
central to both personal success and national needs.
A 1972 study of 40,000
faculty members by the American Council on Education found that
97 percent of the respondents indicated the most important goal
of undergraduate education is to foster students’ ability
to think critically.
Process-oriented instructional
orientations “have long been more successful than conventional
instruction in fostering effective movement from concrete to formal
reasoning. Such programs emphasize students’ active involvement
in learning and cooperative work with other students and de-emphasize
lectures…”
Gardiner’s summary
of the research coincides with the results of a large study (Paul,
et. al. 1997) of 38 public colleges and universities and 28 private
ones focused on the question: To what extent are faculty teaching
for critical thinking?
The study included randomly
selected faculty from colleges and universities across California,
and encompassed prestigious universities such as Stanford, Cal Tech,
USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the California State University System.
Faculty answered both closed and open-ended questions in a 40-50
minute interview.
By direct statement or
by implication, most faculty claimed that they permeated their instruction
with an emphasis on critical thinking and that the students internalized
the concepts in their courses as a result. Yet only the rare interviewee
mentioned the importance of students thinking clearly, accurately,
precisely, relevantly, or logically, etc... Very few mentioned any
of the basic skills of thought such as the ability to clarify questions;
gather relevant data; reason to logical or valid conclusions; identify
key assumptions; trace significant implications, or enter without
distortion into alternative points of view. Intellectual traits
of mind, such as intellectual humility, intellectual perseverance,
intellectual responsibility, etc... were rarely mentioned by the
interviewees. Consider the following key results from the studyi:
- Though the overwhelming
majority of faculty claimed critical thinking to be a primary
objective of their instruction (89%), only a small minority could
give a clear explanation of what critical thinking is (19%). Furthermore,
according to their answers, only 9% of the respondents were clearly
teaching for critical thinking on a typical day in class.
- Though the overwhelming
majority (78%) claimed that their students lacked appropriate
intellectual standards (to use in assessing their thinking), and
73% considered that students learning to assess their own work
was of primary importance, only a very small minority (8%) could
enumerate any intellectual criteria or standards they required
of students or could give an intelligible explanation of those
criteria and standards.
- While 50% of those
interviewed said that they explicitly distinguish critical thinking
skills from traits, only 8% were able to provide a clear conception
of the critical thinking skills they thought were most important
for their students to develop. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority
(75%) provided either minimal or vague allusion (33%) or no illusion
at all (42%) to intellectual traits of mind.
- Although the majority
(67%) said that their concept of critical thinking is largely
explicit in their thinking, only 19% could elaborate on their
concept of thinking.
- Although the vast
majority (89%) stated that critical thinking was of primary importance
to their instruction, 77% of the respondents had little, limited
or no conception of how to reconcile content coverage with the
fostering of critical thinking.
- Although the overwhelming
majority (81%) felt that their department’s graduates develop
a good or high level of critical thinking ability while in their
program, only 20% said that their departments had a shared approach
to critical thinking, and only 9% were able to clearly articulate
how they would assess the extent to which a faculty member was
or was not fostering critical thinking. The remaining respondents
had a limited conception or no conception at all of how to do
this.
A Substantive
Conception of Critical Thinking
If we understand critical
thinking substantively, we not only explain the idea explicitly
to our students, but we use it to give order and meaning to virtually
everything we do as teachers and learners. We use it to organize
the design of instruction. It informs how we conceptualize our students
as learners. It determines how we conceptualize our role as instructors.
It enables us to understand and explain the thinking that defines
the content we teach.
When we understand critical
thinking at a deep level, we realize that we must teach content
through thinking, not content, and then thinking. We model the thinking
that students need to formulate if they are to take ownership of
the content. We teach history as historical thinking. We teach biology
as biological thinking. We teach math as mathematical thinking.
We expect students to analyze the thinking that is the content,
and then to assess the thinking using intellectual standards. We
foster the intellectual traits (dispositions) essential to critical
thinking. We teach students to use critical thinking concepts as
tools in entering into any system of thought, into any subject or
discipline. We teach students to construct in their own minds the
concepts that define the discipline. We acquire an array of classroom
strategies that enable students to master content using their thinking
and to become skilled learners.
The concept of critical
thinking, rightly understood, ties together much of what we need
to understand as teachers and learners. Properly understood, it
leads to a framework for institutional change. For a deeper understanding
of critical thinking see The Thinker’s
Guide Series, the book, Critical
Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life,
and the Foundation For Critical Thinking Library.
To exemplify my point,
The Thinker’s Guide Series consists in a diverse set of contextualizations
of one and the same substantive concept of critical thinking. If
we truly understand critical thinking, for example, we should be
able to explain its implications:
- for analyzing and
assessing reasoning,
- for identifying strengths
and weaknesses in thinking,
- for identifying obstacles
to rational thought,
- for dealing with egocentrism
and sociocentrism,
- for developing strategies
that enable one to apply critical thinking to everyday life,
- for understanding
the stages of one’s development as a thinker,
- for understanding
the foundations of ethical reasoning,
- for detecting bias
and propaganda in the national and international news,
- for conceptualizing
the human mind as an instrument of intellectual work,
- for active and cooperative
learning,
- for the art of asking
essential questions,
- for scientific thinking,
- for close reading
and substantive writing, and
- for grasping the logic
of a discipline.
Each contextualization
in this list is developed in one or more of the guides in the series.
Together they suggest the robustness of a substantive concept of
critical thinking.
What is Critical Thinking (Stripped to its Essentials)?
The idea of critical
thinking, stripped to its essentials, can be expressed in a number
of ways. Here’s one:
Critical thinking
is the art of thinking about thinking with a view to improving it.
Critical thinkers seek to improve thinking, in three interrelated
phases. They analyze thinking. They assess thinking. And they up-grade
thinking (as a result). Creative thinking is the work of the third
phase, that of replacing weak thinking with strong thinking, or
strong thinking with stronger thinking. Creative thinking is a natural
by-product of critical thinking, precisely because analyzing and
assessing thinking enables one to raise it to a higher level. New
and better thinking is the by-product of healthy critical thought.iii
A person is a critical
thinker to the extent that he or she regularly improves thinking
by studying and “critiquing” it. Critical thinkers carefully
study the way humans ground, develop, and apply thought---to see
how thinking can be improved.
The basic idea is simple:
“Study thinking for strengths and weaknesses. Then make improvements
by building on its strengths and targeting its weaknesses.”
A critical thinker does
not say:
“My thinking is
just fine. If everyone thought like me, this would be a pretty good
world.”
A critical thinker says:
“My thinking, as
that of everyone else, can always be improved. Self-deception and
folly exist at every level of human life. It is foolish ever to
take thinking for granted. To think well, we must regularly analyze,
assess, and reconstruct thinking---ever mindful as to how we can
improve it.”
Part Two: A Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking Reveals Common
Denominators in all Academic Work.
Substantive Critical Thinking Can be Cultivated in Every Academic
Setting.
By focusing on the rational
capacities of students’ minds, by designing instruction so
students explicitly grasp the sense, the logicalness, of what they
learn, we can make all learning easier for them. Substantive learning
multiplies comprehension and insight; lower order rote memorization
multiplies misunderstanding and confusion. Though very little present
instruction deliberately aims at lower order learning, most results
in it. “Good” students have developed techniques for
short term rote memorization; “poor” students have none.
But few know what it is to think analytically through the content
of a subject; few use critical thinking as a tool for acquiring
knowledge.(see Nosich)
We often talk of knowledge
as though it could be divorced from thinking, as though it could
be gathered up by one person and given to another in the form of
a collection of sentences to remember. When we talk in this way
we forget that knowledge, by its very nature, depends on thought.
Knowledge is produced by thought, analyzed by thought, comprehended
by thought, organized, evaluated, maintained, and transformed by
thought. Knowledge exists, properly speaking, only in minds that
have comprehended it and constructed it through thought. And when
we say thought we mean critical thought. Knowledge must be distinguished
from the memorization of true statements. Students can easily blindly
memorize what they do not understand. A book contains knowledge
only in a derivative sense, only because minds can thoughtfully
read it and, through this analytic process, gain knowledge. We forget
this when we design instruction as though recall were equivalent
to knowledge.
Every discipline —
mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, sociology,
anthropology, history, philosophy, and so on — is a mode of
thinking. Every discipline can be understood only through thinking.
We know mathematics, not when we can recite mathematical formulas,
but when we can think mathematically. We know science, not when
we can recall sentences from our science textbooks, but when we
can think scientifically. We understand sociology only when we can
think sociologically, history only when we can think historically,
and philosophy only when we can think philosophically. When we teach
so that students are not thinking their way through subjects and
disciplines, students leave our courses with no more knowledge than
they had when they entered them. When we sacrifice thought to gain
coverage, we sacrifice knowledge at the same time.
In the typical history
class, for example, students are often asked to remember facts about
the past. They therefore come to think of history class as a place
where you hear names and dates and places; where you try to memorize
and state them on tests. They think that when they can successfully
do this, they then “know history.”
Alternatively, consider
history taught as a mode of thought. Viewed from the paradigm of
a critical education, blindly memorized content ceases to be the
focal point. Learning to think historically becomes the order of
the day. Students learn historical content by thinking historically
about historical questions and problems. They learn through their
own thinking and classroom discussion that history is not a simple
recounting of past events, but also an interpretation of events
selected by and written from someone’s point of view. In recognizing
that each historian writes from a point of view, students begin
to identify and assess points of view leading to various historical
interpretations. They recognize, for example, what it is to interpret
the American Revolution from a British as well as a colonial perspective.
They role-play different historical perspectives and master content
through in-depth historical thought. They relate the present to
the past. They discuss how their own stored-up interpretations of
their own lives’ events shaped their responses to the present
and their plans for the future. They come to understand the daily
news as a form of historical thought shaped by the profit-making
motivations of news collecting agencies. They learn that historical
accounts may be distorted, biased, narrow, misleading.
Every Area or Domain of Thought Must Be Thought-through to Be Learned.
The mind that thinks
critically is a mind prepared to take ownership of new ideas and
modes of thinking. Critical thinking is a system-opening system.
It works its way into a system of thought by thinking-through:
- the purpose or goal
of the system,
- the kinds of questions
it answers (or problems it solves),
- the manner in which
it collects data and information,
- the kinds of inferences
it enables,
- the key concepts it
generates,
- the underlying assumptions
it rests upon,
- the implications embedded
in it, and
- the point of view
or way of seeing things it makes possible.
It assesses the system
for clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic,
significance, and (where applicable) fairness. There is no system
no subject it cannot open.
INSERT FIGURE 2: THE STANDARDS
There
is a Necessary Connection Between Critical Thinking and Learning
The skills in up-grading
thinking are the same skills as those required in up-grading learning.
The art of thinking well illuminates the art of learning well. The
art of learning well illuminates the art of thinking well. Both
require intellectually skilled metacognition. For example, to be
a skilled thinker in the learning process requires that we regularly
note the elements of our thinking/learning:
- What is my purpose?
- What question am I
trying to answer?
- What data or information
do I need?
- What conclusions
or inferences can I make (based on this information)?
- If I come to these
conclusions, what will the implications and consequences be?
- What is the key concept
(theory, principle, axiom) I am working with?
- What assumptions
am I making?
- What is my point
of view?
There is a Necessary Connection Between Critical Thinking and Skilled
Reading and Writing.iv
The reflective mind
improves its thinking by reflectively thinking about it. Likewise,
it improves its reading by reflectively thinking about how it is
reading. It improves its writing by analyzing and assessing each
draft it creates. It moves back and forth between thinking and thinking
about thinking. It moves forward a bit, then loops back upon itself
to check its own operations. It checks its inferences. It makes
good its ground. It rises above itself and exercises oversight on
itself.
One of the most important
abilities that a thinker can have is the ability to monitor and
assess his or her own thinking while processing the thinking of
others. In reading, the reflective mind monitors how it is reading
while it is reading. The foundation for this ability is knowledge
of how the mind functions when reading well. For example, if I know
that what I am reading is difficult for me to understand, I intentionally
slow down. I put the meaning of each passage that I read into my
own words. Knowing that one can understand ideas best when they
are exemplified, then, when writing, I give my readers examples
of what I am saying. As a reader, I look for examples to better
understand what a text is saying. Learning how to read closely and
write substantively are complex critical thinking abilities. When
I can read closely, I can take ownership of important ideas in a
text. When I can write substantively, I am able to say something
worth saying about something worth saying something about. Many
students today cannot.
Part III: We Can Get Beyond Non-substantive Concepts of Critical
Thinking Only If We Face Their Implications.
Fragmentation
and Short-Term Memorization Are Predictable Outcomes Of A Non-substantive
Concept of Critical Thinking
Students in colleges
today are achieving little connection and depth, either within or
across subjects. Atomized lists dominate textbooks, atomized teaching
dominates instruction, and atomized recall dominates learning. What
is learned are superficial fragments, typically soon forgotten.
What is missing is the coherence, connection, and depth of understanding
that accompanies systematic critical thinking.
Without the concepts
and tools of substantive critical thinking, students often learn
something very different from what is “taught.” Let
us consider how this problem manifests itself in math instruction.
Alan Schoenfeld, the distinguished math educator, says that math
instruction is on the whole “deceptive and fraudulent.”
He uses strong words to underscore a wide gulf between what math
teachers think their students are learning and what they are actually
learning. (Schoenfeld, 1982) He elaborates as follows:
All too often we focus
on a narrow collection of well-defined tasks and train students
to execute those tasks in a routine, if not algorithmic fashion.
Then we test the students on tasks that are very close to the ones
they have been taught. If they succeed on those problems, we and
they congratulate each other on the fact that they have learned
some powerful mathematical techniques. In fact, they may be able
to use such techniques mechanically while lacking some rudimentary
thinking skills. To allow them, and ourselves, to believe that they
“understand” the mathematics is deceptive and fraudulent.
(p. 29)
Schoenfeld cites a number
of studies to justify this characterization of math instruction
and its lower order consequences. He also gives a number of striking
examples, at the tertiary as well as at the primary and secondary
levels:
At the University of
Rochester 85 percent of the freshman class takes calculus, and many
go on. Roughly half of our students see calculus as their last mathematics
course. Most of these students will never apply calculus in any
meaningful way (if at all) in their studies, or in their lives.
They complete their studies with the impression that they know some
very sophisticated and high-powered mathematics. They can find the
maxima of complicated functions, determine exponential decay, compute
the volumes of surfaces of revolution, and so on. But the fact is
these students know barely anything at all. The only reason they
can perform with any degree of competency on their final exams is
that the problems on the exams are nearly carbon copies of problems
they have seen before; the students are not being asked to think,
but merely to apply well-rehearsed schemata for specific kinds of
tasks.
Tim Keifer and Schoenfeld
(Schoenfeld, 1982) studied students’ abilities to deal with
pre-calculus versions of elementary word problems such as the following:
As 8-foot fence is located
3 feet from a building. Express the length L of the ladder which
may be leaned against the building and just touch the top of the
fence as a function of the distance X between the foot of the ladder
and the base of the building.
Keifer and Schoenfeld
were not surprised to discover that only 19 of 120 attempts at such
problems (four each for 30 students) yielded correct answers, or
that only 65 attempts produced answers of any kind (p. 28).
Schoenfeld documents
similar problems at the level of elementary math instruction. He
reports on an experiment in which elementary students were asked
questions like, “There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship.
How old is the captain?” Seventy-six of the 97 students “solved”
the problem by adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing 26
and 10. And that is not all, the more math they had, the greater
was the tendency.
Schoenfeld cites many
similar cases, including a study demonstrating that “word
problems,” which are supposed to require thought, tend to
be approached by students mindlessly with key word algorithms. That
is, when students are faced with problems like “John had eight
apples. He gave three to Mary. How many does John have left?,”
they typically look for words like ‘left’ to tell them
what operation to perform. As Schoenfeld puts it, “…
the situation was so extreme that many students chose to subtract
in a problem that began ‘Mr. Left’.” This tendency
to approach math problems and assignments with robotic lower order
responses becomes permanent in most students, killing any chance
they had to think mathematically.
Habitual robotic learning
is not, of course, peculiar to math. It is the common mode of learning
in every subject area. The result is a kind of global self-deception
that surrounds teaching and learning, often with the students clearer
about what is really being learned than the teachers. Many students,
for example, realize that in their history courses they merely learn
to mouth names, dates, events, and outcomes whose significance they
do not really understand and whose content they forget shortly after
the test. Whatever our stated goals, at present, students are not
learning to think within the disciplines they “study.”
Establishing General Education Courses in Critical Thinking Will
Not Solve the Problem
There are a number of
reasons why establishing general education courses in critical thinking
will not, of itself, solve the problem. The first is that most such
courses are based in a particular discipline and, therefore, typically
teach only those aspects of critical thinking traditionally highlighted
by the discipline. For example, if these courses are taught within
Philosophy Departments, the course will typically focus on either
formal or informal logic. If the English Department teaches sections,
the course will probably focus on persuasive writing and rhetoric.
Though good in themselves, none of these focuses comes close to
capturing a substantive concept of critical thinking. The result
is that instructors in other departments will not see the relevance
of the “critical thinking” course to their discipline,
and therefore the course will be ignored. It will do little to help
students become skilled learners.
Establishing
General Education Courses in Study Skills Will Not Solve the Problem
There are a number of
reasons why establishing courses in study skills will not, of itself,
solve the problem. The first is that most such courses are not based
on a substantive concept of critical thinking. Indeed, most lack
any unifying theory or organizing concept. They do not teach students
how to begin to think within a discipline. They do not typically
teach students how to analyze thinking using the elements of thought.
They do not typically teach students intellectual standards, nor
how to assess their own work. What is missing is the coherence,
connection, and depth of understanding that accompanies systematic
critical thinking.
A
Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking Leads to Deep Learning
& to the Acquisition of Substantive Knowledge.
Substantive knowledge
is knowledge that leads to questions that lead to further knowledge
(that, in turn, leads to further knowledge and further vital questions,
and on and on). Acquiring substantive knowledge is equivalent to
acquiring effective organizers for the mind that enable us to weave
everything we are learning into a tapestry, a system, an integrated
whole. Substantive knowledge is found in that set of fundamental
and powerful concepts and principles that lie at the heart of understanding
everything else in a discipline or subject. For example, if you
understand deeply what a biological cell is and the essential characteristics
of all living systems, you have the substantive knowledge to ask
vital questions about all living things. You begin to think biologically.
Teaching focused on a
substantive concept of critical thinking appeals to reason and evidence.
It encourages students to discover as well as to process information.
It provides occasions in which students think their way to conclusions,
defend positions on difficult issues, consider a wide variety of
points of view, analyze concepts, theories, and explanations, clarify
issues and conclusions, solve problems, transfer ideas to new contexts,
examine assumptions, assess alleged facts, explore implications
and consequences, and increasingly come to terms with the contradictions
and inconsistencies of their own thought and experience. It engages
students in the thinking required to deeply master content. (See
Learning to Think Things Through).
Conclusion: Take the Long View
Critical thinking is
not to be devoured in a single sitting nor yet at two or three workshops.
It is a powerful concept to be savored and reflected upon. It is
an idea to live and grow with. It focuses upon that part of our
minds that enables us to think things through, to learn from experience,
to acquire and retain knowledge. It is like a mirror to the mind,
enabling us to take ownership of the instruments that drive our
learning. Not only to think, but to think about how we are thinking,
is the key to our development as learners and knowers.
How do I know this?
What is this based upon? What does this imply and presuppose? What
explains this, connects to it, leads from it? How am I viewing it?
Should I view it differently?
Short-term reform can
do no more than foster surface change. Deep change takes time, patience,
perseverance, understanding, and commitment. This is not easy in
a world saturated with glossy, superficial, quick-fixes, a world
plagued by a short attention span. Nevertheless it is possible to
create a long-term professional development program that focuses
on the progressive improvement of instruction and learning. (See
Elder)
But this can only happen
when those designing professional development have a substantive
concept of critical thinking. Only then will they be able to guide
faculty toward a long-term approach. Only then will they be able
to provide convincing examples in each of the disciplines. Only
then will they see the connection between thinking and learning,
between understanding content and thinking it through, between intellectual
discipline and education. Only then will the “learning college”
become what it aims, all along, to be.
{This article was written
by Richard Paul, Fall 2004, website www.criticalthinking.org.
}
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