"Thinking" as a Special Learning Goal

Self-Assessment Question:

When you want students to "learn how to THINK" about your subject, do you have clear ideas about what that means and how to design a course that will promote it?

Quick Take:

Of all the possible learning goals for courses, none receive more allegiance from faculty than that of "teaching students how to think." However surveys and studies of actual teaching also indicate that this goal is often not accomplished well. If you want to improve your ability to enhance your students' thinking abilities, you must do three things.

First, you need a clear, operational definition of what you mean by "thinking." Different people mean different things by "thinking" or "critical thinking." Some published definitions, to use in formulating your own, include the following:

· Problem solving, decision making, critical thinking, creative thinking
· Summarizing, predicting, evaluating, applying
· Analytical thinking, creative thinking, and practical thinking
· Developing and evaluating arguments
· Taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards on these structures

Second, you need to provide students with specific learning activities that will enable them to learn how to think more effectively. In essence, this means giving students truly challenging problems, and then having students do such things as: (a) find and decide on what information is relevant, (b) examine the problem or question from multiple perspectives, (c) examine and assess multiple responses, and eventually (d) formulate their own response--with justification for why they think that response is best.

Third, you need to develop, and help students develop, clear criteria for differentiating good thinking from poor thinking. Without good intellectual standards, it is impossible to determine whether we or our students are engaging in good thinking.

References:

1. Critical Thinking: How to Prepare Studetns for a Rapidly Changing World, by Richard Paul. Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1993. Also available from Paul's Foundation is an excellent 3-part video series on the "Assessment" of critical thinking. Foundation phone: 707-664-2901. This book and these videotapes are by a leader in the movement to promote better teaching of "thinking." Especially helpful from the book are Chapters 14, 15 & 16 in Part B on "How to Teach for Critical Thinking." One of his many valuable contributions is providing a list of criteria for, and emphasizing the importance of, assessing thinking (p. 63).

2. "Phases of Critical Thinking", pp. 25-29 in Developing Critical Thinkers by Stephen D. Brookfield. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991. Suggests that learners need to go through the following sequence when learning how to think: Trigger event, Appraisal, Exploration, Developing alternative perspectives, and Integration.

3. "Discipline-Related Frameworks for Critical Thinking", pp. 5-8 in Teaching Students to Think Critically by Chet Meyers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986. Makes a convincing argument for the importance of providing discipline-specific conceptual frameworks that allow one to "think" effectively about the issues and problems within a given discipline.