Teaching Critical Thinking - Full Video

The Ethics Centre - Ethics Explainer: Tolerance The yes result of the same-sex marriage survey is in. Now parliament is dealing with the minefield of tolerance: how will it change legislation so it honours family diversity and religious freedoms without discriminating against either? What should be tolerated, accepted and prohibited? How to Teach CT? Robert H. Ennis, rhennis@illinois.edu The actual teaching of critical thinking is a function of many situation-specific factors: teacher style, teacher interest, teacher knowledge and understanding, class size, cultural and community backgrounds and expectations, student expectations and backgrounds, colleagues’ expectations, recent local events, the amount of time available to teachers after they have done all the other things they have to do, and teacher grasp of critical thinking, to name some major factors. I here suggest some general strategies and tactics gleaned from years of experience, research, and others’ suggestions. They are guidelines and must be adjusted to fit the actual situation. Underlying Strategies

The Path to CT Few of us are effective critical thinkers—who has time? The good news, says Stever Robbins, is that this skill can be learned. by Stever Robbins ‘Critical’ Information Literacy The capacity for local conditions and issues to influence the way information literacy is defined and taught, is a concept that has gained significant momentum over the last decade among librarians and educators around the world. This growing realisation has resulted in an increasing body of research produced at the intersection of critical pedagogy and information literacy. From this research, the concept of ‘Critical Information Literacy’ has emerged. Jacobs and Berg (2011) explain: “In its focus on engaging with questions about information, critical information literacy is an attempt to help students see that information questions are deeply embedded within cultural, social, political, and economic contexts”.

10 Examples of CT We all encounter opportunities in our daily lives to engage problems and decisions using strong critical thinking. Everyone needs to think ahead, to plan and to problem solve. Here are ten positive examples of critical thinking: *Facione, P. & Gittens C. Think Critically, Pearson Education A CT Model To Analyze Thinking We Must Identify and Question its Elemental Structures Standard: Clarityunderstandable, the meaning can be grasped Could you elaborate further? Many, Many Examples Of Essential Questions Many, Many Examples Of Essential Questions by Terry Heick Essential questions are, as Grant Wiggins defined, ‘essential’ in the sense of signaling genuine, important and necessarily-ongoing inquiries.” These are grapple-worthy, substantive questions that not only require wrestling with, but are worth wrestling with–that could lead students to some critical insight in a 40/40/40-rule sense of the term.

Conditional Logic and Children From 180 primary children of varied backgrounds half were selected for instruction in conditional logic by means of an audio-tutorial method. At the termination of 15 weekly lessons the experimental students did no better than the control students on our individually-administered conditional logic test ("Smith-Sturgeon Conditional Reasoning Test"), but there was wide variation among age demonstrated mastery of basic principles of conditional logic. Thus, although out methods were not effective in the teaching of conditional logic to young children, many have somehow learned it anyway. In the control group significant relationships between conditional logic ability and verbal intelligence (.6) and socioeconomic status (.4) were found.

All About Asking Better Questions Asking questions is such a basic tool of teaching, yet how many of us have ever been taught to ask good questions? As I started researching for this post, I realized how little I actually knew about asking questions. I asked hundreds of questions a day but had zero training. I know I’m not alone! Here’s the plan: So, we’ll actually start in perhaps a strange place, which is to open with the idea of asking fewer questions as teachers and allowing more room for students to be the questioners.