Читать книгу Engaging Ideas - John C. Bean - Страница 35

Once teachers are convinced of the value of critical thinking, the next step is to design a course that nurtures it. What is such a course like? In her comprehensive review of the literature on critical thinking, Kurfiss (1988) examined a wide range of successful disciplinary courses devoted to the teaching of subject matter and critical thinking. In each case, she explains, “the professor establishes an agenda that includes learning to think about subject matter. Students are active, involved, consulting and arguing with each other, and responsible for their own learning” (88). From this review, she derives eight principles for designing a disciplinary course that supports critical thinking:

1 Critical thinking is a learnable skill; the instructor and peers are resources in developing critical thinking skills.

2 Problems, questions, or issues are the point of entry into the subject and a source of motivation for sustained inquiry.

3 Successful courses balance challenges to think critically with support tailored to students' developmental needs.

4 Courses are assignment centered rather than text and lecture centered. Goals, methods, and evaluation emphasize using content rather than simply acquiring it.

5 Students are required to formulate and justify their ideas in writing or other appropriate modes.

6 Students collaborate to learn and to stretch their thinking, for example, in pair problem solving and small‐group work.

7 Several courses, particularly those that teach problem‐solving skills, nurture students' metacognitive abilities.

8 The developmental needs of students are acknowledged and used as information in the design of the course. Teachers in these courses make standards explicit and then help students learn how to achieve them. (88–89)

This book aims to help teachers develop courses that follow these guidelines. Of key importance are Kurfiss's principles 2, 4, and 5: a good critical thinking course presents students with “problems, questions, [or] issues” that make a course “assignment centered rather than text [or] lecture centered” and holds students responsible for formulating and justifying their solutions orally or in writing. This book particularly emphasizes writing assignments because they are perhaps the most flexible and most intensive way to integrate critical thinking tasks into a course and because the writing process itself entails complex critical thinking. But much attention is also given to class discussions, small‐group activities, and other teaching strategies that encourage students to work collaboratively to expand, develop, and deepen their thinking. Attention is also given throughout to the design of problems at appropriate levels of difficulty, to the developmental needs of students, and to the importance of making expectations and criteria clear (principles 1, 3, and 8).