Читать книгу Engaging Ideas - John C. Bean - Страница 36

A crucial step in teaching critical thinking is to develop good problems for students to think about. Tasks can range from enduring disciplinary problems to narrowly specific questions about the significance of a graph or the interpretation of a key passage in a course reading. The kinds of questions you develop for students will depend on their level of expertise, their current degree of engagement with the subject matter, and the nature of question asking in your own discipline.

When we conduct workshops in writing across the curriculum, we like to emphasize a disciplinary, content‐driven view of critical thinking. One of John's workshop strategies is to ask faculty to write out one or two final examination essay questions for one of their courses—questions that they think assess subject matter knowledge and a desired level of disciplinary or generic critical thinking. Participants then discuss the kinds of thinking needed and possible ways to revise the questions to increase or decrease the level of complexity. Once participants have revised their questions, John suggests that it is a shame to waste them on an in‐class exam, where students are graded on a hasty, unrevised rough draft. More learning might emerge if such questions were integrated into the fabric of a course, where the question could keep students longer on task, stimulating deepened and more complex thought, engagement, and disciplinary learning. Chapters 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 focus specifically on the design of critical thinking tasks to serve as formal or informal writing assignments or as starting points for other critical thinking activities.