November 6th, 2014
There is a general consensus among educators that improving students’ critical thinking skills is a major goal of higher education. There is some question, however, regarding the extent to which the educational system has achieved success in producing critical thinkers. Faculty may believe that a) an understanding of their discipline requires that students think critically, and, therefore, b) by teaching their discipline they are teaching critical thinking. However, research suggests that traditional classroom instruction has little impact on students’ critical thinking skills.
Join us for lunch as Dr. Bill Reynolds (Stockton College) leads a workshop to help faculty become more deliberate, explicit, and transparent in their incorporation of critical thinking content into their courses. This workshop will introduce participants to a critical thinking framework conceptualized by Richard Paul and colleagues, and participants will partake in model activities that are directly applicable to their own classrooms.
By the end of the session, participants will be able to: 1) explain the impact on student learning of explicit, deliberate instruction of critical thinking in subject area courses; 2) integrate the “elements of thought” into critical thinking instruction in their disciplines; 3) use the “intellectual standards” in their critical thinking instruction; and 4) explain a coherent framework for integrating critical thinking instruction into their teaching.