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This outline is based on several sources. Click [References] to view sources.

I. What is critical thinking?

II. Do college students think critically?

III. What approaches have been used to teaching thinking skills (Glazer, 1984)?

IV. Why is it difficult to teach thinking skills?

- The issues that are most important for us to think critically about are the ones that we are most committed to.

V. What should we do?

VI. What next? (for discussion)

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Another Look at Critical Thinking        [Top]

From R. Glazer, Education and Thinking: The Role of Knowledge, in American Psychologist, 1984.

I. Early connectionism and its critics

II. Approaches to teaching reasoning, problem-solving, and learning skills

- What is the basic principle underlying such programs?

• general cognitive deficiencies—need to develop habits of reasoning and skills of learning

• improve problems solvers awareness and use of self monitoring

• consider the problems from all angles, go step by step, construct a representation of the problem

- Examples:

• Whimbey & Lochead (1980). Problem solving and comprehension: A short course in analytic reasoning.

• Feuerstein, et al. (1980). Instrumental enrichment: An intervention program for cognitive modifiability.
 

- What is the basic principle?

• as above, getting people to think about their thinking

• deciding on a career, how to spend a holiday

• process approach—state problem, formulate relevant questions, generate options, evaluate

- Example:

• deBono (1984). The CoRT thinking program
 

- What is the basic principle?

• not general cognitive deficiencies, but lack of a variety of strategies for applying to various finds of problems

- Examples:

• Reubenstein (1975). Patterns of problem solving

• Hayes (1981). The complete problem solver.
 

- What is the basic principle?

• Don’t believe in the hierarchy of teaching basic skills and then later, reasoning.

• Reasoning skills have a prominent place in curriculum from the beginning of schooling.

- Example:

• Lipman, et al. (1979). Philosophy of Children.

- Most emphasize teaching of a general process — strategies and rules for reasoning and problem solving — that will transfer to specific problems in their field.

- Most avoid complexity of subject matter information

- Most are based on early theories of human cognition — research for these early theories required little, if any, content-specific knowledge.

III. The role of knowledge structures

Major component of thinking is the possession of accessible and usable knowledge

- Chase and Simon—10 year old experienced chess players remembered chess positions far better than chess unexperienced adults

- Chi and Koeske—child’s recall of dinosaur names. Changes in amount and structure of knowledge influenced recall.

- Carey—young children’s concept of "alive" Knowledge is organized around a people schema. By age 10, with schooling about biological properties of animals, children can reason about why animals, plants, rocks, etc should or should not be included in the concept of alive.
 

- Chi, Lesgold, & Glaser

- Knowledge of novices is organized around the literal objects explicitly given in a problem.

- Experts knowledge is organized around principles that subsume these objects. The principles are not present in the problem as given—they come from the knowledge of subject matter.

- Expert’s schema is tightly connected, novice’s schema lacks knowledge of related principles and their application.
 

IV. Schemata and pedagogical theories

V. General and specific thinking skills

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