Critical Thinking Skills

[Nigel]

It is my understanding that critical thinking skills are a matter of being able to connect and relate concepts to one another, thus creating new concepts or forming relationships among concepts. So in order to foster a child's ability to think critically, one must guide the child in forming relationships among concepts and integrating new concepts into preexisting conceptual knowledge. Is this right?

I realize that a definition of critical thinking is probably necessary to answer this question, but its an ambiguous term that has no good definition.

[Zoid]

Forming concepts and establishing relationships between them is necessary for any thinking, let alone critical thinking. Could you explain in more detail what you're asking and what prompted the question?

[Doug Huffman]

Thinking relates and correlates. It is only critical when a concept is compared to a principled standard and rejected or accepted on that basis.

[Nigel]

Forming concepts and establishing relationships between them is necessary for any thinking, let alone critical thinking. Could you explain in more detail what you're asking and what prompted the question?

I was in an online forum for teachers, since I am one, and someone had asked for others to define critical thinking. The definitions given related to Bloom's Taxonomy and Dewey's theories on critical thinking. I reject all of Dewey's work on education outright since he was a radical motivated by ideas not related to education. Bloom's ideas have some merit (not much); he missed a lot and his work is certainly not as sound as people like to believe.

So my question is, what is critical thinking?

[ToyoHabu]

I would define critical thinking as a thinking skill, used in the independent analysis and integration of an concept.

[Zoid]

I was in an online forum for teachers, since I am one, and someone had asked for others to define critical thinking. The definitions given related to Bloom's Taxonomy and Dewey's theories on critical thinking. I reject all of Dewey's work on education outright since he was a radical motivated by ideas not related to education. Bloom's ideas have some merit (not much); he missed a lot and his work is certainly not as sound as people like to believe.

So my question is, what is critical thinking?

As I use the term, critical thinking is the careful application of logic in examining the validity of a claim. This definition is by no means the only reasonable one, but I think it accurately captures the way the term is commonly used. It consists of asking such questions as: What evidence supports this claim? Is the evidence reliable? Does the claim necessarily follow from the evidence provided, or is there another explanation? Does this claim integrate well with what I already know? Will accepting this claim require me to reevaluate any assumptions I've made? And so on.

Teaching critical thinking to children would consist of applying these kinds of questions to the claims they encounter in their coursework. The current culture of egalitarianism and subjectivism in American education reinforces fuzzy thinking, and critical thinking skills are a useful antidote.

[lidryn]

As I use the term, critical thinking is the careful application of logic in examining the validity of a claim. This definition is by no means the only reasonable one, but I think it accurately captures the way the term is commonly used. It consists of asking such questions as: What evidence supports this claim? Is the evidence reliable? Does the claim necessarily follow from the evidence provided, or is there another explanation? Does this claim integrate well with what I already know? Will accepting this claim require me to reevaluate any assumptions I've made? And so on.Teaching critical thinking to children would consist of applying these kinds of questions to the claims they encounter in their coursework....

It would be nice to see, or cite, a syllabus with some objectives & so forth, the usual tools for consistently delivering classroom content over time - is this something you can do, Nigel?

Zoid's definition brings some assumptions to the table that would need to be unpacked for such a syllabus, or would perhaps be pre-requisite (what grade levels are you talking about, BTW?): what does it mean to examine a claim? what does valid mean? what is evidence? what does reliable mean? Those are good beginner questions.

[lidryn]

I was in an online forum for teachers, since I am one, and someone had asked for others to define critical thinking. The definitions given related to Bloom's Taxonomy and Dewey's theories on critical thinking. I reject all of Dewey's work on education outright since he was a radical motivated by ideas not related to education. Bloom's ideas have some merit (not much); he missed a lot and his work is certainly not as sound as people like to believe....

You wouldn't necessarily want to do this in front of the kids, but it might be a good exercise in the application of critical thinking skills to show your work? Dewey should be rejected because of which ideas, and how were they misapplied to education? Differentiate the merits and demerits of Bloom's work: what did he miss? What is unsound?

Any reliable critical evaluations of these ideas available for reference?

[LovesLife]

To think critically, it would help to have a good understanding of:

-- Logic (deductive and inductive)

-- Concepts

-- Percepts

-- Objective vs. subjective vs. arbitrary

-- How we know things (putting it all together)

-- The connection of language to concepts

-- The nature of science, evidence and theories

That would allow you to break ideas down into their component parts, to identify potential errors.

Basic versions of these ideas could be introduced even for pretty young kids, I think.

[Nigel]

It would be nice to see, or cite, a syllabus with some objectives & so forth, the usual tools for consistently delivering classroom content over time - is this something you can do, Nigel?

I am working on some sort of syllabus. I was looking over Introduction to Objectivist Epistemoloy first. I teach 7-12th grade science. I taught eighth grade last year, but I am moving up to high school.

In part, one thing I have been considering is the break down of science into different disciplines in high school (e.i. physics, chemistry, biology, earth science). I am opposed to this methodology. Learning to integrate concepts is essential for critical thinking, and teaching science in an integrated fashion demonstrates how this is done, allowing for students to practice these skills. For example, in learning cellular biology, chemistry is essential to gain a full understanding. Chemistry should be integrated in teaching about protein structures and the structure of the lipids that make up cell membranes. Physics should also be included in the form of fluid dynamics and electromagnetism. Teaching cellular biology in a vacuum creates false conceptions and is an instance where a deeper understanding of science can be fostered. A conceptual hierarchy consisting of cellular concepts is integrated into chemical and physical conceptual hierarchies, demonstrating a complex and very high level of conceptual integration. From my experience, I would teach something like laws of motion and give students math problems relating to this. Students would forget things like how to multiply or how to set up a proportion. This is a result of not integrating concepts from math class with concepts from science class. I know students know how to multiply, but math and science concepts are discrete concepts that must be integrated to be useful together.

Likewise, teaching biomes in biology is problematic without an understanding of weather from earth science. The two are dependent on each other. By teaching the process of integrating these two concepts, the teacher is fostering the students ability to integrate concepts.

I want to go deeper with this, and include more concrete examples and instances where students can practice logical thinking, but this is where I am starting. Also, I like to have students evaluate scientific theories, but that can be challenging and requires a lot of structuring if it is to be done meaningfully.

Edited July 18, 2011 by Nigel