42nd Conference Guest Presentations

Mary Helen Fagan
Associate Professor of Management
University of Texas at Tyler - Soules College of Business
Tyler, Texas

Critical thinking skills are essential for effectively thinking through complex problems in educational, professional, and personal aspects of life. Helping students develop their conceptual understanding of critical thinking and practice applying their skills with complex problems can assist them in internalizing an effective process for making decisions and taking action. Students who develop a systematic process for reasoning, evaluating, and improving their critical thinking and problem-solving skills will be better equipped to pursue and achieve their desired life goals.

In this session, participants will learn about the pedagogical approach to critical thinking developed for a core undergraduate business course taken by all business majors, Critical and Analytical Thinking in Business. The session will focus on sharing the way the learning, practice, and evaluation stages of the course have been designed and implemented. A key focus of the presentation will sharing the lessons learned from implementing this approach to help students use critical thinking skills in complex problem-solving endeavors, including the impact on students, learning outcome assessment, and the broader college level curriculum learning goals.

Mark Bocija
Professor of History and Humanities
Faculty Fellow for Critical Thinking
Columbus State Community College
Columbus, Ohio

The desire to cultivate the CT skills of students is a major goal of higher education. (Behar-Horenstein and Niu, 2011). Yet, despite almost unanimous support for the importance of critical thinking outcomes,  most college students still exhibit inadequate critical thinking (CT) achievement (Halpern & Butler, 2019).  Typically, critical thinking achievement is measured through standardized instruments such as the Watson-Glaser, the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test, California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST), or the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(CCTDI), to name only a few.

The extent to which critical thinking skills are likely to be activated is reliant on the individual’s dispositions or intellectual virtues. For example, an individual may have the capacity to analyze a problem but may lack the intellectual perseverance to persist in the face of significant complexity, or not possess the intellectual courage to consider explanations that threaten cherished beliefs, or simply not think that critical thinking skills learned in an academic context might be applied outside of the thought environment within which they were learned. Whatever the reason, disinclination to engage in critical thinking will have disastrous consequences.

In November of 2021 the Pew Research Center published the results of a national survey. The survey asked a nationally representative sample of 6,485 people: “In your own words, why do you think terrible things happen?” The survey asked people to write their responses. The responses were then grouped together based on shared concepts and themes. The most common explanation for the problems the world faces was essentially **** happens.  The next largest category included those people who attributed the problems of the world to God's will. People who asserted that sin and evil were the cause of human suffering comprised the third largest group. An equal number of respondents believed that free will was the cause of terrible events in the world. That was followed by those people who believed that destiny, fate, or karma were causal factors of human suffering. In 6th place were those who attributed human suffering to human behavior in the secular sense and system and institutional failure. In last place were those respondents who simply opined that suffering helps us grow and learn.

We should be terrified and dismayed by these results. In one of the most educated countries in the world, judged by years of schooling anyway, 75% of respondents saw the world’s problems as unintelligible. Say that again to yourself and shudder. Only one group, 6th on the list, attributed human suffering to causes that might be subject to examination.  The vast majority of respondents exhibited no faith in reason and no intellectual courage.  Instead, they slid comfortably into trite, inherited beliefs that alleviate the believer from the burden of reasoning about a problem. 

The problem that faces us is this: While we in the critical thinking movement often highlight the value of critical thinking dispositions and virtues, we have little insight as to how those dispositional states or intellectual attitudes can be achieved. Most strategies begin and end with “telling” people that they ought to have these qualities, sometimes through eloquent appeal. But empirical studies, and simple observation, show over and over again that such appeals are ineffective. Moreover, even when people respond positively to the message, the message often fails to result in a significant shift in intellectual behaviors.

In this presentation, I want to make the case for a theoretical approach to enhancing both critical thinking virtues/dispositions and behavioral carry-over by drawing on the empirical findings from motivation-behavior change science and attitude–behavior relations studies. 

In this presentation, I want to make the case for a theoretical approach to enhancing both critical thinking virtues/dispositions and behavioral carry-over by drawing on the empirical findings from motivation-behavior change science and attitude–behavior relations studies. 

Chris Spetzler
Executive Director
Decision Education Foundation
Palo Alto, California

The presentation will introduce the Decision Quality model of decision-making, including how this professional framework that evolved out of work at Stanford University has been applied with high school students in programs developed by Decision Education Foundation(DEF). DEF has demonstrated student improvements in GPA and units earned as well as Decision Making Competence, a measure associated with better life outcomes. We have built materials that are accessible, interesting and useful for high school age students that also develop social emotional learning, critical thinking and creativity. Training educators to deliver Decision Skills to youth has also shown benefits to their personal and professional lives.

For Decision Education Foundation, Critical Thinking is very much aligned with the  Paul – Elder model of the Foundation for Critical Thinking. The Decision Chain (DQ model) includes Useful Information, where uncertainty, and probability are combined through Sound Reasoning and Clear Values to identify the Creative Alternative that gets you the most of what you want, given what you can know (at the time of the decision). The Elements of Thought topics and intellectual standards are taught throughout our work, for example the difference between precision and accuracy, or the idea/link of a Helpful Frame, which is defined by the purpose, perspective and scope of the decision – very much the combination of point of view and question at issue. By representing the six essential elements of a decision as a chain, we highlight how a decision (like an argument) is no stronger than the weakest link. It’s a practical, relevant and important application of critical thinking and, it moves to action/commitment that leads to changes in lives.

Mohamad B. Bagheri
Critical Thinking Researcher
California

Critical Thinking is the art of using the best thinking one is capable of in any set of circumstances (Elder & Paul, 2013). Critical thinking is a necessary condition for both life and education. It has been emphasized that learning how to think is the central purpose of education (Arend, 2009; Dewey, 1933; Ennis, 2011; Lipman, 2003; Paul, 2012). In this presentation Four roles of Thinking in Education will be discussed: (1) Education as the use of Thinking for Learning, (2) Education as critical analysis of ideas, (3) Education as becoming not only knowledgeable but also reasonable, and (4) Education as learning how to think within a discipline or career.

Educational efforts should include the use of thinking for the acquisition of knowledge. Rote memorization is not genuine learning and knowledge should be constructed by the learner via thinking processes. Thinking processes have the potentiality to help the learners internalize knowledge. In fact, content is internalized only through thinking. As Paul (2012) maintains, the educated person is not a repository of information analogous to an encyclopedia or a data bank.

Genuinely educated people use thinking to interpret, analyze, and evaluate the content. They raise fundamental questions and generate new ideas within a discipline. Knowledge changes so rapidly, so it serves no purpose in memorizing a great deal of facts which may be soon obsolete. Living in the era of information and misinformation requires learners to be equipped with ‘Information Literacy’. This allows them to use critical thinking in the analysis and evaluation of materials so that they can construct ideas which are reliable and well-reasoned. In any field of knowledge there are dissenting ideas and theories proposed by prominent scholars. Young scholars are expected to decide which approach to adopt as their own and develop their own unique perspective. This necessitates the development of the ability to think critically about ideas they come across in their fields of study. Instead of memorizing some unlinked facts to be reproduced in a test or exam, learners are expected to be involved in critical analysis of ideas.

Humans naturally and innately do not think and reason well and one should learn how to think properly. The capacity of humans for good reasoning can and should be nurtured and developed by an educational process aimed directly at that end (Ennis, 2011; Lipman, 2003; Paul & Elder, 2012). Lipman (2003) emphasizes that education should not be confined to teaching for knowledge, and teaching for judgment should be at the heart of all educational efforts. Schools should produce not only knowledgeable but also reasonable individuals.

Knowing some random facts about a discipline does not mean that the learner has achieved the thinking mode appropriate for that discipline. For example, a biologist is expected to be equipped with biological thinking and a historian with historical thinking (Paul, 2012).

Yanning Dong
Lecturer
Tsinghua University
Beijing, China

Critical thinking is one of the key objectives in 21st-century education. Socratic questioning is believed to be an effective way to promote critical thinking. As Paul and Elder (2001) state, “[t]hinking is not driven by answers but, rather, by questions” (p. 113). Asking high-quality questions that stimulate thought contributes to both thinking and learning. By categorizing questions into three types: (1) questions of fact, (2) questions of preference and (3) questions of judgment, Paul and Elder (2001) highlight the importance of the third type of question (question of judgment) as it requires good reasoning rather than one right answer or subjective opinions.

Compared to the face-to-face learning context, online discussion forums are considered to be a safe space for students to pose questions (Colbert et al., 2007). However, the use of discussion forums in an asynchronous online course does not automatically elicit high-quality questions from students (Martinho et al., 2014). Factors such as the nature of tasks (Tan & Seah, 2011), the use of incentives (Colbert et al., 2007), or students’ perceptions of questioning in an online learning environment (McMahon & Zyngier, 2009) may affect students’ questioning behaviours in online discussions.

This study is designed to explore how a “learning-by-doing” approach may affect students’ use of Socratic questioning in their online discussion responses. The study involved 17 students who were enrolled in two asynchronous online courses in an online MEd in TESL program at a Canadian university: one course was a graduate course on the theories and research in second language writing, and the other course was an introductory research methodology course. The methodology course was designed based on a “learning-by-doing” approach and the other one was not. In both courses, the students were required to submit a discussion post for each module and were encouraged to provide a response to one or more of their peers’ posts. By analyzing and comparing students’ use of questions in their discussion responses in these two online courses, the study intends to explore whether the “learning-by-doing” approach could have a positive impact on the quantity and quality of students’ use of Socratic questioning. By drawing on students’ reflection comments and course evaluation, the study also intends to explore the potential factors that may influence students’ questioning behaviors in online discussion forums. The findings of this study and the practical implications for the instructional design of online courses that promotes critical thinking will be discussed in the presentation.

Yashwant Ramma
Professor
Mauritius Institute of Education
Moka, Mauritius

Narendra D. Deshmukh
Senior Scientific Officer
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR & Associated Institutions
Mumbai, India

Savita Sable
Associate Professor
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR & Associated Institutions
Mumbai, India

Additional Contributors from the Mauritius Institute of Education in Moka, Mauritius:

Ajeevsing Bholoa (Senior lecturer), Brinda Oogarah-Pratap (Associate Professor), Kavish Moheeput (Lecturer), Shakeel Atchia (Lecturer), Vickren Narrainsawmy (Lecturer), Suryakanti Anu Fulena (Lecturer)

Additional Contributors from Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR & Associated Institutions in Mumbai, India:

Megha Gokhe (Assistant Professor), Vandana Shivajirao Nalawade (Associate Professor), Radhika G Deshmukh (Assistant Professor), Sudhir Annasaheb Kumbhar (Assistant Teacher), Dipti Chandan Singh Bisht (Assistant Teacher)

The UNESCO Education 2030 Agenda urges teacher education/training institutions to make provision for the enactment of critical thinking in all teacher education programmes with the intention to be aligned with the requirements of the 21st Century knowledge and skills in their teaching-learning repertoires.

Critical thinking is not a new concept, and it has always been a key component of teacher education and school curricula. However, it has recently taken a more prominent perspective (Reeve, 2016) because of the rapid economic, social and technological changes taking place in the society. These contextual changes are summarised by AACTE as follows:

"To be college and career ready today, student learning must go beyond mastery of core subjects and include 21stcentury knowledge and skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and technology literacy. (AACTE, 2010, p. 3)"

These changes are driven by situations and challenges with unpredictable outcomes. Consequently, there is a need to prepare educators who in turn will prepare our 21st century students to get ready for “jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve social problems that we don’t yet know will arise” (Schleicher, 2014).

We align our understanding of critical thinking with that of Scriven & Paul (2007)

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

and that criticality is assessed at three levels, namely: thinking, reflecting and action (Barnett, 1997).

The question that arises is how best the development of critical thinking skills can be adequately promoted, and more importantly, assessed during teaching and learning transactions? The challenges of embedding the 21st century knowledge and skills in lessons are pronounced and demand careful structuring of LTP’s (Lesson Transaction Plans) grounded on contextual situations from the perspectives:

1. How effectively the Content Analysis (idea formation, idea analysis, idea practicability, idea assessment) is done to develop conceptual understanding of the science concept?

2. While dealing in the classroom, how effectively is the disciplinary grounding given while devising Teaching Learning approaches from critical thinking perspectives?

3. Whether the LTP if implemented leads to meaningful and successful learning and development of critical thinking as intended learning outcomes?

It is in this perspective that an international science research group comprising the Mauritius Institute of Education (Mauritius) and the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education & TIFR (Mumbai, India), and six associated institutions are collaborating on a collaborative research project to assess critical thinking of learners in science through the development of contextual real-life scenarios mapped onto the science concepts taught at school.

This approach hinges on a recent publication (Ramma et al., 2021) on critical thinking. The international collaboration is extending the comprehension of critical thinking and its assessment through an assessment matrix which now integrates elements of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Vygotsky’s theory of Learning.

The aim of our participation in this conference is to share our preliminary research-based conception of critical thinking as well as the assessment framework and factual-conceptual-procedural knowledge matrix. We thus intend to initiate a constructive discussion on these aspects of critical thinking in science. Ideas generated during the workshop will, undoubtedly, assist us to collect validity evidence in our methodology.

Herschel Greenberg
English Instructor
Mt. San Antonio College
Walnut, California

Did you just teach a vital lesson in your class, but you are not sure your students “got it?” Are you ready to invite students to critically ruminate on those vital lessons? Join me as we work together by discovering a new technique for structured reflection in the classroom. Regardless of modality, you can incorporate SEE-I, a powerful tool for student reflection that can be used at any point in your class. This presentation will include student examples, a modeling exercise you can do while watching the presentation, and practical tools that can be adopted in the classroom immediately.

Ellen Vincent
Senior Lecturer
Clemson University - Plant and Environmental Science

Assessing critical thinking can be a challenge in the classroom. In HORT 308 Sustainable Landscape Garden Design, Installation and Maintenance class, students’ critical thinking skills are assessed by using a visual reflection essay. The essay involves both identifying and validating a claim from class subject materials; a personal reflection; an alternate view; and a personal action statement. This essay rubric weaves cognitive, affective, and experiential/kinesthetic elements together to operationalize or tease apart, the processes/complexity embedded in critical thinking.  Teaching techniques that support understanding of the essay components include diversity in the form of people/places/times; and student practice occurs in small group in-class exercises. These processes and techniques that are shared that can be transferred into multiple subject fields. Critical thinking materials include Intellectual Traits (Foundation for Critical Thinking); dialogue (Daniel Yankelovich); and engagement (Dr. Frank Fear). The visual reflection essay rubric; small group class exercise worksheets; and survey and test questions pertaining to critical thinking are included. Sample student survey and test question responses are included in the presentation. 

Elizabeth Calderon
Educator
University of Piura - Language Center
Lima, Peru

This proposal presents a practical way of implementing some principles of critical thinking while teaching an intermediate English course. It aims at the application of the basic concepts of critical thinking and offers the opportunity to reflect on how initial ideas, opinions or assumptions, regarding a topic, can change when we base them on evidence, data and others’ ideas. The project involves specific tasks that the teacher can schedule for an academic term if one of the objectives for class is to stimulate this type of thinking. This proposal is the result of research done at the Language Center at Universidad de Piura – campus Lima, Peru – through which I learned that English teachers understand critical thinking, however, this knowledge does not actually permeate in the activities they design for class and hence in the development of these skills by students.

David Hundsness
Founder
Critical Thinking Project
California

K-12 schools say critical thinking is one of their most important goals. They are sincere, but my research shows critical thinking is not specifically required in the curriculum standards, and it is rarely taught.

The first barrier is that critical thinking is such a broad and abstract concept, it is not obvious how to distill that into curriculum. So I have identified specific skills that are components of critical thinking, skills like identifying fact vs. opinion, informal logical fallacies, correlation vs. causation, assessing credibility and plausibility, and many more. These specific skills are easier for educators to identify, teach, and test, which collectively build critical thinking.

The Common Core State Standards, which set curriculum requirements in many states, barely requires these skills. For example, fact/opinion and fallacious reasoning are in only 1-3 standards, but for comparison, quadratic equations are in 14 standards. Classroom instruction is even more imbalanced. My research of 9 million LMS records shows that fact/opinion is taught only 1/16th as much as quadratic equations, and fallacies only 1/29th as much. Quadratic equations is an interesting benchmark because most students never use it beyond the classroom, but every student needs critical thinking for life.

Since these skills are barely required, the available curriculum is sparse. To help fill this gap, the Critical Thinking Project is developing free apps for some of these specific critical thinking skills. Two are available now for fact/opinion and logical fallacies, with more to be released (possibly before 7/24). The apps use scaffolded instruction, and they are interactive to help students learn and practice applying the skill. They are also self-explanatory so teachers do not need to sacrifice much prep time or class time.

The first step is for teachers to augment their own curriculum and build more support from educators. The second step is for states to revise their curriculum standards to require all schools to teach the component skills of critical thinking in every grade level. In his recent book Rationality, Steven Pinker advocates that schools should make critical thinking a greater part of the curricula: “Rationality should be the fourth R, together with reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

Kevin Smith
Captain (Retired)
United States Navy
Author, Speaker, and Design Consultant
Colorado

During my time Serving as a Naval Aviator, I was one of the most experienced Fighter Pilots in the Navy and was the commander of the first deployed Top Gun Unit, operating aboard the USS Constellation. Military Aviation, and in particular, Aerial Combat, has captured almost everyone's imagination with the release of the Top Gun II movie, on May 27th, 2022.

But while the characters and aircraft are compelling, the most important aspect of any aerial combat engagement is the ability to acquire and maintain Situation Awareness, and yet such a vital cognitive activity can not be achieved without a comprehensive working knowledge of Critical Thinking.

This guest presentation will focus on the key concepts and principles of Critical Thinking, as developed by the Foundation for Critical Thinking, and how this can support and strengthen a fighter pilot's ability to maintain Situation Awareness while performing Complex Air Combat Operations.

Anna González-Fernández
Ph.D. Student
Bages University Foundation
University of Manresa - Professional Campus
Manresa, Spain

Núria Serrat
Professor
Bages University Foundation
University of Manresa - Professional Campus
Manresa, Spain

According to the Healthcare Simulation Dictionary, published by the Society for Simulation Healthcare (SSH) in 2016, Simulation methodology is a "technique that creates a situation or environment that allows people to experience a representation of an event in order to practice, learn, evaluate, test or understand systematic or human actions". One of the main goals of simulation, compared to other teaching methodologies, is to create a ”window into a piece of a professional field” where learners will be able to observe reactions and defend arguments in a scene. This process makes it easier to observe the successes and analyze the mistakes made, to improve them in the short-medium future.

To complement the simulation experience, Thinking Based Learning method (TBL) (R. Swartz) have been chosen to increase thinking processes. This author includes the concept of "learning to think" and providing the student with the tools to think critically in a concrete context.

The integration of the simulation methodology with TBL seeks critical thinking within a safe environment, thus, ensuring reflective learning which is the cornerstone of adult learning.

The approach of the study is based on how the application of the simulation methodology + TBL contributes to fostering critical thinking in a double way: to make decisions in a justified manner and to provide more security and professional techniques to face students’ immediate future.

Alysia Odipo
Principal
Corona Norco Unified School District
Corona, California

Agency and inquiry are effective methods to engage all learners and essential components for a modern classroom. This presentation will address the physiological preconditions for learning and consider agency and inquiry as essential elements of an equitable classroom. The needs of some learners are going unmet, and how we structure our classrooms empowers all learners in a thriving math community.

Kurt Hollender
Visiting Assistant Professor of German
The College of Saint Benedict
Saint John’s University
St. Joseph, Minnesota

Critical thinking is an art as least as old as Socrates, whereas academic approaches to “identity” are strikingly new, yet both are crucial areas of study for the successful contemporary worker regardless of field or university major. Communication, teamwork, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills are top competencies asked for by many employers,* and all relate to either fair-minded critical thinking or identity. This Critical Thinking Foundation Conference presentation shares work from a class I taught in the core curriculum at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota entitled: Culture and Social Difference: Identity (CSD:I). The aim of the course was to “[…] learn to think critically about [students’] gendered, racial, and ethnic identities.” While teaching the identity course, I applied Paul-Elder critical thinking skills to course content on identity in conjunction with taking the Foundation for Critical Thinking course CT700: How to Infuse Critical Thinking into Instruction in Spring 2022. The purpose of teaching critical thinking about identity is to prepare students for all types of careers. This approach goes to the heart of the very stakes of this conference: effective reasoning is a quickly changing world. Attend this presentation to learn how to critically think about identity and to apply this practice to further education or career settings.