Tag Archives: critical thinking

Teaching Critical Thinking Is Essential Education

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Lost and not knowing which way to go is a concept that has greater meaning and worry in our world today. There are an abundance of noises and loud voices with few guiding lights and fewer guardrails for what is real and valid. Thinking critically is a skill set educators can and must teach children to use for finding their way.

What should a person who is lost do to find their way forward? If physically lost, there are a series of well-advised steps to take, like staying calm, stop wandering, retracing your steps, using landmarks, and using devices like GPS and maps to find your way. Finally, stay put and wait for help. As helpless as being physically lost seems, there are real and tangible things to do.

Being figuratively or mentally lost is a similar conundrum, but also significantly different. Staying calm, using devices, and waiting for help can apply. But the mind does what the mind wants to do, and it wanders and often becomes more lost and mired without a way forward. The absence of physical and tangible remedies causes being mentally lost to seem increasingly overwhelming.

What do we know?

Moore’s Law spoke about the rate of transistor development and the increasing speed of change. The world sped through that law, yet Moore and the speed of change can be applied to change in the world as a whole. The political, economic, social and cultural landscapes of our world are changing at Moore-like speed. Given the amount of vastness of changing things and all the crappola flung about, it is easy to feel lost and adrift in the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

Facets of this changing landscape are the ever-increasing sources of information that are available to every “connected” student today. On any question, a student can find similar, different, conflicting, fact-based and alternative fact-based information at a moment’s notice and tomorrow there will be more. For a growing mind, noise and voices are bedlam. And to make it even more difficult, listeners in the beldam are told who to believe and who not to believe as often as they are told what to believe.

In the 60s and 70s some young people were so abused by disinformation systems that “dropping out” of mainstreamed culture was an attractive option. In this century, disenchantment with adult voices of all persuasions leads to Millennials and Zers becoming semi-isolates, to prioritize self-reliance and collaboration instead of following and looking for ethical leadership.

Teachers are empowered to teach critical thinking.

Wisconsin Statute 118.01(2)(a)(2) instructs public educators to teach “… analytical skills, including the ability to think rationally, solve problems, use various learning methods, gather and analyze information, make critical and independent judgments and argue persuasively.” It may appear to be cherry picking to isolate this singular statute, but in a culture that is unable to attach whimsical decisions to bedrock, identifying a state statute is a true anchor.

Critical thinking also is an identifiable thread running through each of the disciplines of the Common Core curricula, adopted and incorporated into Wisconsin’s Academic Standards.

https://dpi.wi.gov/standards

What does teaching critical thinking look like?

In its simplest terms, critical thinking is an intellectual, brain-based process of careful evaluation, analysis, and synthesis of various pieces of information to create a rational, and thought-out judgment or decision about a targeted question. Everyone has the capacity for critical thinking. However, many choose to be told rather than to think.

All teachers, regardless of grade level or subject, can teach children to understand and use critical thinking skills. These skills can apply to every question or substantive decision in a child’s school and personal life, though many daily decisions are semi-baked into a child’s education and training. For example, looking both ways before crossing a street does not require critical thinking. But trusting adults a child does not know does. And understanding daily news does. And understanding personal relationships does.

While we do not want to paralyze child decision making, we do want to teach them how and when to exercise deeper thinking skills to navigate through their growing up.

These elements are foundational to critical thinking. As practitioners of critical thinking, we teach children to –

  • evaluate by assessing the credibility and relevance of information. Who says it, why do they say it, who do they represent in saying it, what do they want to achieve by saying it? Children need to understand and recognize bias in information and voices. They need to discern facts from opinions, and in most recent terms, false facts and disinformation. Critical thinkers verify the accuracy of the information they consider by asking questions and reading/listening to diverse points of view.
  • analyze information by finding similarities and differences in what the information says, breaking these into smaller bits from which patterns and relationships in the information can be identified, and creating a concept or theory that explains, in the student’s own words, what she has learned and knows. She understands perspective while knowing that some information does not make sense in a coherent argument.
  • synthesize the bits, connections and disconnection, and relationships needed to make an informed and personal statement. While evaluation and analysis deconstruct information into smaller bits, synthesis is constructing a meaningful statement based upon sorting and valuing the bits.
  • reason with others. This the hardest step in critical thinking. When a student reasons with others, she puts her understandings and informed conclusions against those of others. It is a testing of a student’s evaluation, analysis, and synthesis. Good reasoning sometimes requires accommodating well-reasoned arguments from other students.

If not teachers, then who?

It is difficult to be young today. Maybe it always was, but in this decade even more so. It is hard for adults to sort the chaos and find their own truths when every statement in the news conveys the speaker’s or writer’s self-interests and biases. It is equally difficult to find incontrovertible sources of information. It is hard for adults; it is really hard for children.

We need to make classrooms into laboratories for critical thinking at all ages and levels of cognitive development. As teachers and public education leaders declare classrooms to be apolitical and agnostic regarding social, political, economic, and cultural controversy, teachers and students are free to investigate issues, ask insightful questions, and use critical thinking to derive informed answers. This is why teachers are critical to critical thinking.

Secondly, teachers are prepared to develop critical thinking skills, not rush them. Critical thinking fits well into an educator’s understanding of “developmental appropriateness.” Our youngest primary students can observe, listen, touch and feel, and constructively identify what they learn about things, ideas, people, and their world. They identify information and begin to evaluate it. Primary aged children are not ready for deeper analysis, synthesis, or reasoning.

Intermediate grade level students can begin analyzing information. Hilda Taba, a curricular theorist and student of John Dewey’s, gave us a method for analyzing information and using critical thinking inductively for students to create their own informed concepts and generalizations. Students in the intermediate grades begin using Taba techniques to analyze information on the way toward generalizations.

http://mrbeasleysaigsite.weebly.com/tabas-concept-development-model.html

Secondary school is ripe for critical thinking in every area of our curriculum. Every teacher can meaningfully ask, “what do you know about…”, “what do you observe about …”, “what do you think about …” questions and move students through evaluation and analysis into synthesis and reasoning. Given the range of cognitive development in secondary students, all students, even those still immature in their reasoning skills, benefit from being engaged in formulating their thoughts and explaining and supporting their reasoning.

Taba died in 1962, but her words ring true more than 60 years later.

“One scarcely needs to emphasize the importance of critical thinking as a desirable ingredient in human beings in a democratic society. No matter what views people hold of the chief function of education, they at least agree that people need to learn to think. In a society in which changes come fast, individuals cannot depend on routinized behavior or tradition to make decisions, whether on practical every day or professional matters, moral values, or political issues. In such a society, there is a natural concern that individuals be capable of intelligent and independent thought.”

So, if not teachers, who do we want to teach children to be critical thinkers. Our elected leaders? Our social influencers? AI?

Teachers cause learning.

Reading Skills Proficiency or Critical, Mindful Reading – What is the Goal?

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Can a student in school become a proficient reader without being a mindful and critical reader? Can a mindful reader lack proficient reading skills? Testable skills? Applicable skills? I thought I knew, but foolish me.

For decades I have fretted reading scores. I pore over our school’s annual results on the statewide academic assessments looking at individual scores, disaggregated groups of scores, and multi-year trends in score patterns. When scores inch up a decimal, I smile. When scores dip a similar decimal, I frown. At the end of poring, everything boils down to cause effect analysis. How is our instructional program in reading affecting student proficiency in reading test score? And, how can improvements in teaching cause children to be better readers? Better readers!

As I sat in a local coffee shop, I eavesdropped on people at the next table sipping, munching and talking. They talked about local issues. Weather, road conditions, the ups and downs of local business, and local gossip. Talk, talk, talk. When the conversation turned to politics and taxes, I leaned a bit closer. Perhaps they would talk about something of substance. I waited and waited until I heard one person say, “I read …”. I was intrigued to hear how this person reported out what she had read. I heard her say “…the article said…”, “… the reports say …”, and “… according to this, the data says …”. Okay. She read for content comprehension. Then, I heard another voice say, “I read a different story that told me …”. Smile. Now, there was a little analysis of what had been read. They were comparing and contrasting what each person understood from their reading. Sip, sip and munch, munch. The first voice said, “…I don’t think I agree with what I read. I think …, because…” and I smiled more broadly. Yes, I heard some evaluation of what she read. She read, understood, considered, analyzed, and evaluated what she read against her own understanding and experience. She gave an alternative interpretation and explained why she favored this alternative. I had listened to a conversation based upon critical and mindful reading. Many smiles. But, were they proficient readers? How had these folks gone about their reading? Did they apply the reading skills taught in school? I did not care. I glanced at them as I left my table. They probably were young adults in their late 20s, no longer in school anywhere, getting together for a morning ritual before moving on to their day. They represented the outcomes of a school education.

At a developmental level, we must pay attention to the assessments of reading proficiencies that populate K-6 schooling. The science of reading tells us that, although we can teach all children to read, reading is not a natural human activity.  It takes time for children to learn to read. And, it takes time for children to advance their reading skills toward being mindful and critical readers. When we combine the science of reading with each student’s proclivities for learning, home and environmental support, and instructional effectiveness, assessments give us guidance as to the what kind, when and to what extent we need to apply teaching and learning exercises. The assessments are checkpoints in a pathway to more important outcomes.  Don’t fret the small stuff, I am learning.

My reconsidered attention now is drawn to the effectiveness of early reading programs in 4K through third grade and how individual children develop decoding and encoding of letters and sounds. I am concerned with their orthographic ability to assemble and spell words and to build those words into vocabulary. I am concerned with reading fluency and a child’s ability to read, understand, make self-corrections in their reading.  I look at their ability to develop rich background knowledge through reading. The snapshot assessments of these explicit skill sets make sense to assure each of the pieces of reading is being taught and learned properly so that children are prepared to be mindful and critical readers later in their schooling and adult lives. Analyzing reading proficiency in the primary grades is how we pay attention to smaller details. They are important signposts of learning but annual, small skill assessments are not the “big duh” outcomes of reading.

As I adjust my fretting, I am liking the bigger question of “What can children understand and learn from what they read?”. This is a completely different educational outcome and its assessments, due to their subjectivity, should not lead to fretting. Upper elementary, middle school and high school education provide rich instruction and application of advanced reading skills throughout curricular content areas. At this point, we shift from sub-test analysis to the larger interest of what older children are able to “do” with their reading abilities.  We focus on how they process information, create and test generalization from facts and supporting detail.  We look for critical questioning of sources when they inspect for bias and when they compare and contrast differing material.  We watch carefully when they are confounded by what they read and attempt resolve conflicting points of view or presentation of facts. Schools will continue to take scheduled snapshots of how well children read in these grade levels as part of mandated assessments. And, they also need to look carefully at how children learn from what they read.

Getting one’s pants in a bunch when the data produced by a periodic assessment snapshot does not jive with desired numbers and conclusions may not be as productive as we think it is.  I shall treat those results for what they are. Some assessments look backward at how well children learned and other assessments look forward toward how well children are growing into mindful and critically thinking young adults.

Taken against the big picture of developing mindful and critical readers, I am liking and finding more value in secondary school evaluative assessments of how we want school graduates to be critical and mindful readers. It is like cooking soup. At the early stages of chopping ingredients, we know the nutritional values of what is going into the soup. But, any premature tasting is not of soup; it is checking the process of making soup. Soup is soup when the prep and cooking are completed. The soup of reading should be evaluated when it is served – when graduates leave school for futures in college or career. Make instructional adjustments earlier in the process, but don’t make exclamations about reading achievement until reading is soup to be served. Wait to fret, if fret you must.

Bull Roar Meter – A New Basic Skill

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Reading, writing, arithmetic and a Bull Roar Meter. Should these be our new basic skills for an educated child? I hope so.

We readily recognize that reading, writing and arithmetic endure as necessary basic skills in the education of every child. As children progress through grade levels of curricula, they engage in increasingly complex and rigorous learning activities that grow these basic skills. By the time a child graduates from high school, a learned capacity to read, write and solve mathematical problems makes the child ready for career or college. Great! But, what about the child’s capacity to engage with their daily deluge of media, news and fanciful spinning of stories that face adults every day? On the one hand, we can hand a student a Bull Roar Meter, perhaps an app for their smartphone, coupled to their high school diploma and believe that each graduate will use it. Or, we can educate children to create an internalized, intellectual Bull Roar Meter that will serve them after graduation. I like the latter.

I am heartened that the Wisconsin academic standards include several statements that approach the concept of an internalized, intellectual Bull Roar Meter for every high school graduate. These are the Model Social Studies Standard C – Political Science and Citizenship and the College and Career Readiness Anchor standards for Reading.

Through their social studies curriculum, children learn to –

C.12.8 Locate, organize, analyze, and use information from various sources to understand an issue of public concern, take a position, and communicate the position

https://dpi.wi.gov/social-studies/standards/political-science

And, in their English/Language Arts curriculum, children will learn to –

7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.*

8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/standards/pdf/ela-stds-app-a-revision.pdf

I ponder how the children currently in our schools would prosper in their future careers and adult lives if they are successfully educated to

• Understand that facts are facts – they are known and can be proved to be true or they are known to have happened or to exist.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fact

• Recognize that some statements are lies and to call out lies for what they are. “A lie is a statement made by one who does not believe it with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it”

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/

• Opinions are important. Opinions are not facts and they are not lies and need to be understood for what they are. “A view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter” and “a belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion

As I observe life in our nation today and consider that most of the significant decisions are made by educated adults, high school graduates at a minimum, I am convinced that the majority were not inculcated in their education with a working Bull Roar Meter. Otherwise, they would not purposefully obfuscate their speech with opinions and lies and defend them as facts. Further, I am convinced that working Bull Roar Meters are not turned on in a majority of our population. Otherwise, they would not be so gullible in accepting and repeating opinions and lies as facts.

It is probable that a person reading this blog may flick on their intellectual Bull Roar Meter and with a cough mutter BS.

Or, a reader may check his or her mental screens for discerning facts, lies and opinions and begin to consider how each of these impacts their thinking and decision making.