Chapter 5 Summary and Discussion Questions - Jose Balduz

Chapter 5 – Learning to Think

Intro
Most professors place high value on critical thinking, but few do much to act on that belief.

Teaching Critical Thinking
Students have many opportunities to engage in critical thinking in college, and their ability increases somewhat from freshman to senior. They are hampered in their progress by a general lack of effort, as they are not forced to do enough homework or engage the course content sufficiently. They are also held back by lack of epistemic development, from ignorant certainty to intelligent confusion and beyond, but may reach only the stage of naïve relativism. Students rely on rote learning and fail to learn basic concepts because of the faculty teaching style, that of lecturing. We must use active learning styles in the classroom. Structuring the course to reflect the goal of fostering critical thinking in the field, we must worry less about covering material and more about engaging the students; and our methods of evaluating students must also reflect these priorities. Several reasons are presented and rejected for using the standard lecture format: inspiring outstanding scholars, class sizes, need for coverage, familiarity, fear, lack of student response. Professional schools have shown us how to use active learning by way of case studies and discussion-based teaching.

Quantitative Reasoning
People in all professions and all walks of life also need some basic quantitative analytical tools. The NCED defines quantitative literacy in terms of Arithmetic, Data, Computers, Modeling, Statistics, Chance and Reasoning. All undergraduates should learn these skills, but they are not well-served by standard math and science course in this regard. Once again, active learning methods are known to work better but are seldom used. Quantitative skills must be taught and encouraged in a wider variety of courses. At the same time, this kind of teaching must not be relegated to graduate students or junior faculty.

The Concentration (Major)
The major developed as a way to make students explore a subject in greater depth. Students acquire a body of knowledge, learn methods of inquiry, and test their abilities as they achieve mastery of the subject. Higher levels of sophistication can be achieved, whether the major is in a standard discipline or is an interdisciplinary construct. But at present the major is not contributing substantially to students’ development of critical thinking skills; in fact, some skills even deteriorate depending on the major field. Majors must not take up too much of a student’s academic program, and they must serve well the purpose that created them, to use in-depth exploration of a field as a way to develop critical thinking skills.

A Matter of Perspective
Teachers talk about critical thinking but they don’t teach accordingly. We should rely on education research to guide pedagogy and program evaluation, not professors’ teaching experience and opinions.

QUESTIONS

a) How do we define “critical thinking”? Are there various definitions?
b) How does one teach a student to engage in critical thinking, especially when the student is reluctant to do so?
c) Should all Gen Ed courses actively teach critical thinking, or is it all right if some do not?
d) How much quantitative reasoning can be expected to take place in social science courses? In humanities courses? Is there enough already going on in our science courses, or are they also lacking?
e) What role does SCI play in all this?
f) Is the NCED list necessary and/or sufficient?
g) Do we really need to rethink our majors as Bok suggests? Can every major serve the purpose equally well, to develop critical thinking?
h) Are we the faculty really as bad as Bok paints us?