1
Will this Thinking be on the Test? Using
Critical Thinking to Engage Students in Thinking
Deeply in Your Discipline
Please fill out the True-False worksheet while
waiting for session to start!

• Dine and Discover Series
• Delphi Center for Teaching and learning
• Patricia Payette, PhD
• Executive Director, i2a
• Associate Director, Delphi Center
• Patty.payette_at_louisville.edu

1
2
Session Objectives

• Explore concepts and definitions of critical
  thinking
• Examine and articulate the fundamental concepts
  and central questions that live inside your
  courses and assignments, but often seem elusive
  to students
• Revise or revisit your teaching activities to
  more effectively engage students in original
  inquiry, and to think critically

2
3
Focused Listing What is critical thinking?

• Think of a specific course that you teach, or a
  specific learning context in which you teach
  and/or mentor students to think critically.
• Describe in a short list the changes in
  students mindset (or mental models) you want
  to see in them at the end of your time with them
  in the classroom, lab, etc. (e.g. ask relevant
  questions).
• Page 2 of your worksheet packet

4
Focused Listing What is critical thinking?

• Lets share our focused listing regarding
  the changes in students thinking, or thinking
  abilities, we want to see our students achieve.

5
For your Teaching Toolbox Focused Listing

• Focuses student attention on a single important
  term, concept, name, idea from a class session
  and asks them to list several ideas
• Helps students recall the most important points
  related to a topic

6
For your Teaching Toolbox Focused Listing

• Helps faculty assess what students retain about a
  concept OR unearth assumptions or preconceptions
  students bring to the class
• Use in groups
• or as individual prompt to help students recall
  information
• or as a prompt class discussion or review for an
  exam
• It is a low stakes way to assess students
  thinking

Question How could you use Focused Listing to
engage students?
7
One definition of critical thinking
Decisions Synthesize Application
Understanding Concepts Appreciation
(Scriven and Paul, 2003)
8
Ideas to Action The Basics

• Ideas to Action (i2a) Using Critical Thinking
  to Foster Student Learning and Community
  Engagement is our Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP).
• Part of our accreditation report to SACS-COC to
  demonstrate our ongoing commitment to student
  learning
• Our 10-year initiative we created to renew our
  focus on critical thinking and community
  engagement and the undergraduate experience.

9
i2a connecting classroom, campus and community
10
For more information on i2a

• Home Page
• http//louisville.edu/ideastoaction
• Faculty Exemplars
• www.louisville.edu/ideastoaction/resources
• Faculty Speak Video
• www.louisville.edu/ideastoaction/resources/media
• Assessment
• http//louisville.edu/ideastoaction/what/assessmen
  t

10
11
Making critical thinking visibleA
Well-Cultivated Critical Thinker

• Raises vital questions and problems, formulating
  them clearly and precisely
• Gathers and assesses relevant information, using
  abstract ideas to interpret it effectively
• Comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions,
  testing them against relevant criteria and
  standards
• Thinks open mindedly within alternative systems
  of thought, recognizing and assessing, as needs
  be, their assumptions, implications, and
  practical consequences
• Communicates effectively with others in figuring
  out solutions to complex problems

11
The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking, 2008,
page 2
12
How do you make critical thinking visible?

• Choose one critical thinking skill/behavior from
  the list of the well-cultivated critical
  thinker that you teach (or mentor) students to do
  well.
• Paraphrase it in your own words and elaborate on
  that behavior as it relates to a specific
  teaching context.
• In other words
• Give an example of how you teach this skill or an
  assignment that helps students master this skill.
  
• For example.
• Try to describe the teaching/learning dynamic in
  terms of a metaphor, an illustration, a concept ,
  or a diagram. Its like

Page 3 of your worksheet packet
13
For your teaching tool box SEE-I

• S State it
• E Elaborate
• E Exemplify
• I Illustrate

14
Why use SEE-I?

• Using a SEE-I prompt requires you to clarify
  your thinking about an idea, concept or problem
• See page 44 in Aspiring Thinkers Guide
• Communicating about your ideas or thinking using
  the SEE-I can be a tool for checking the accuracy
  of your thinking

15
Gerald Nosich on the SEE-I

• If you can accurately S,E,E, then I a concept
  or principle in a course, it means you almost
  certainly have a good grasp of it, that you
  understand it to a much greater degree than if
  you are merely able to state it.

Nosich, G. Learning to Think Things Through A
Guide to Critical Thinking Across the
Curriculum. (2009). p. 35.
16
When to use a SEE-I

• As a prompt for courses or other learning
  contexts when teaching a new concept or when
  checking for understanding
• As a prompt for going deeper during a discussion
  Can you elaborate on that? Does someone have
  an example of this?
• As a homework assignment /exam review/exam
  question
• Other?

17
Examples of SEE-I in action

• Dr. Lynn Boyd
• College of Business

Question When could you use the SEE-I to prompt
your students critical thinking about a concept,
idea, or topic in your course? Page 4 of your
worksheet packet
18
Teaching Toolbox Fundamental and Powerful (FP)
Concepts

• explain or help us think about a huge body of
  questions, problems, information, and situations.
  
• are attached to a course theme
• are to be contrasted with individual bits of
  information, or with less general concepts.
• reflect the primary and essential thinking
  trait(s) you want students to achieve at the end
  of an assignment/course.

Bottom Line What you are aiming for is to make
those fp concepts part of the way students think.
19
Faculty Examples of FP Concepts

• English Texts construct culture cultures are
  complex sites of contest.
• Finance Almost all decisions that corporations
  make have to be made under conditions of
  uncertainty.
• Psychology Human thought and behavior can be
  studied scientifically.
• Engineering analysis Use the principles of
  mathematics and science to obtain analytical
  solutions to engineering problems.

20
FP Concepts for ELFH 690 Internship in
Postsecondary Education

• Higher Education Administration
• (skills, attitudes, behaviors, concepts of the
  field)
• Career Fit
• (goals, interests, abilities, values,
  experiences)
• Professionalism
• (leadership, interacting with others, choices,
  expectations)

21
Fundamental and Powerful Concepts (worksheet, p.
3)
Try writing one or more fp concepts from your
field/discipline that are essential to a course
you are teaching. Page 5 of your worksheet
packet Remember that fp concepts are used in
your thinking about every important question or
problem in the course.. yet they also allow
you to begin to think through questions that lie
beyond the scope of the course
Question how can you illuminate and revisit the
fp in your assignments and course activities?
22
Making FP concepts take root Promoting Deep
Learning
Deep learning is learning that takes root in our
apparatus of understanding, in the embedded
meanings that define us and that we use to define
the world Tagg (2003)
Deep knowledge
Tagg, J. (2003). The learning paradigm college.
Boston, MA Anker.
23
Teaching Toolbox Promoting Deep Learning

• Helps students go beneath the rote memorization
  of an idea to think through ideas and
  concepts
• Relies on making connections between ideas and
  information (connecting the dots)
• Applies ideas and concepts to real life
• Fosters the integration and synthesis of
  information with prior learning or knowledge

24
(No Transcript)
25
Teaching Toolbox Thinking Through Important
Ideas and Concepts

• See page 46 in Aspiring Thinkers Guide
• Choose one FP concept from your list of course
  concepts
• 1. State the meaning of the concept in one simple
  sentence (boil down its essence in everyday
  language)
• X is. or In other words.
• 2. State the significance of the idea or concept
• This idea is important because.
• 3. Give an example of the concept (as it applies
  to real life)
• For example.
• 4. Connect the concept or idea to other concepts
  in the subject
• This concept is connected to the following
  ideas/concepts within the subject
• 5. Give examples for number 4. above
• Some examples that show the relationship between
  this idea and other important ideas are.

Page 6 of your worksheet packet
26
Thinking Through Important Ideas Why and When?

• Allows you to help students move beyond
  memorization and work with new concepts
• Promote deep learning by focusing on
• Integration
• Synthesis
• Real life relevance

27
Central Course Question

• provides the structure through which everything
  else is understood and all components of the
  course are connected.
• serves to unify your vision of the course and the
  field.
• is an open-ended but specific question that is
  ripe for exploration from a number of angles and
  has no easy, central answer.
• functions like a mission statement for your
  course

28
Faculty Examples of Central Course Questions
English In what ways and why did England change
in the transition from medieval to early modern,
and what was the role of texts in that
change? Criminal Justice How does reading,
understanding, and critiquing scholarly research
publications in the field of criminal justice
system develop a consumerism for criminal justice
research?
29
Central Course Questions and FP Concepts
Almost all decisions that corporations make have
to be made under conditions of uncertainty.

• Central Course Questions from Finance
• What are the major sources of uncertainty in
  doing business at home and abroad?
• 2. How is the required reward affected by the
  level and sources of uncertainty?
• 3. What are the compounding and mitigating
  sources of uncertainty on the multinational
  level?
• 4. How do multinational enterprises adapt their
  activities to manage uncertainty on the
  multinational level?

30
Central Course Questions and FP Concepts
FP Concept from Biology An individual human's
survival depends on homeostasis the maintenance
of relatively constant internal body conditions
which are favorable for survival and function of
many specialized cell types. Central Course
Questions How do the forms of human body
structures support their function? How do the
form and function of human body structures
contribute to the maintenance of
homeostasis? How can we monitor the function of
such structures in order to 1) understand their
response to challenges and 2) determine whether
they are working well enough to maintain
homeostasis?
31
Teaching toolbox your central course question
Try writing the central course question of one of
your courses. Write four versions of
it. Consider Which one seems to capture the
most central question of your course?
Page 7 of your worksheet
32
Your central course question
Question How can you use your central course
question to foster and illuminate the critical
thinking you want your students to practice?

• Try this at home
• Writing an answer to that question in a few
  paragraphs and consider how your course currently
  responds and reflects your answer.

33
Core Concepts teaching critical thinking
Make explicit the thinking you want.
Hold students responsible for the thinking
they do.
Engage students in the thinking you want.

34
Lets share 10 Insights

• Lets generate 10 ideas, insights, strategies or
  new concepts you are taking away from todays
  session.

Page 8 of your worksheet