School of Public Health and Information Sciences June 24, 2011 Patricia Payette, PhD Executive Director, i2a Associate Director, Delphi Center for Teaching

School of Public Health and Information Sciences

June 24, 2011

Patricia Payette, PhDExecutive Director, i2a

Associate Director, Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning

University of Louisville

[email protected]

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What's So Critical about Critical Thinking? Strategies for Fostering Disciplinary Thinking in Your Course

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Session Objectives

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Participants will be guided in exploring the concepts of critical thinking and applying them to promote disciplinary thinking.

Participants will review and discuss Nosich’s construction of fundamental and powerful concepts and central course questions and draft examples of these in their respective teaching contexts.

Participants will reflect upon critical thinking instructional strategies, and discuss current examples of critical thinking “infusion” into UofL courses.

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Key Assumptions

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You are an expert and critical thinker in your field

You are open to thinking in new ways about teaching content that is very familiar

We are sharing ideas, strategies, and insights as teachers and learners

SPHIS is now formally part of the Ideas to Action initiative

Ideas to Action: The basics Ideas to Action or i2a 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 culminating undergraduate experiences.

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i2a structure: Scaffolded curricula

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i2a Team housed in Delphi Center

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Dr. Patty PayetteExecutive Director, i2a

Associate Director, Delphi Centerfor Teaching & Learning

Dr. Cathy Baysi2a Specialist for Assessment

Dr. Edna Rossi2a Specialist for Critical Thinking

Associate Professor Psychology

Dr. Nisha Guptai2a Specialist for Culminating Experiences

Judi MurrayProgram Coordinator

For more information on i2a:

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Home Page:http://louisville.edu/ideastoactioni2a Institute: May 23-25, 2011

Faculty Exemplars: www.louisville.edu/ideastoaction/resources

Faculty Speak Video: www.louisville.edu/ideastoaction/resources/media

Assessmenthttp://louisville.edu/ideastoaction/what/assessment

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Think of a specific course that you teach, or a specific learning context in which you teach and/or mentor students to think critically.

WORKSHEET: 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).

Thinking about your “thinking goals” for students

Fostering the critical thinking you value most: 4 E’s

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Hold students responsible for the thinking they do (evaluate)

Engage students in the thinking you want.

Make explicit the thinking you want.

Outcomes,GoalsCourse description

Class activities,Assignments,Informal assessments

Exams,Homework,Grading expectationsEncourage!

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“Sage on the Stage” or “Guide on the Side”?

Fostering the thinking you value most

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Hold students responsible for the thinking they do.





Exams,Homework,Grading expectations

WORKSHEET: where is this thinking explicitly indicated as part of your course?

Critical Thinking Definitions

The words ‘critical’ and ‘criteria’ come from the same root word meaning judgment.

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process that results in a guide to belief and action.”

Scriven and Paul (2003)

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“I think that for decades I have given my students many opportunities to engage in critical thinking, and I have modeled critical thinking in class discussions. But I don’t think I can claim ever to have taught critical thinking in a systematic way. The model gives me a way to share a critical thinking vocabulary with students and to chart their progress. I know and can tell my students exactly what I am looking for.”Spring 2008 Pilot Program Participant, Department of English

Faculty Perspective


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Specific to your

discipline

Expert vs. novice thinkers

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Fundamental and Powerful (F&P) Concepts

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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 f&p concepts part of the way students think in your field or discipline.

Faculty Examples of F&P Concepts

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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.

F&P Concepts for a course: Internship in Postsecondary Education

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Higher Education Administration(skills, attitudes, behaviors, concepts of the field)

Career Fit(goals, interests, abilities, values, experiences)

Professionalism(leadership, interacting with others, choices, expectations)

“A fundamental and powerful concept is one that can be used to explain or think out a huge body

of questions, problems, information, and situations. All fields have f&p concepts, but

there are a relatively small number of them in any particular area. They are the most

central and useful ideas in the discipline. They are to be contrasted with individual bits of

information, or with less general concepts.”

Gerald Nosich, Learning to Think Things Through (2011)

Nosich, Learning to Think Things Through (2011)

F&P concepts: Public HealthA population is a network of individuals, not a

single entity or system.The P.E.R.I. approach of problem, etiology,

recommendations, and implementation is the basis of public health practice.

Population health is the sum of healthcare, traditional public health, and social policy.

Public health measures are responsible for the major share of the increase in life expectancy and decrease in [known] communicable disease.

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Fundamental and Powerful Concepts

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Try writing one or more f&p concepts from your field/discipline that are essential to a course you are teaching.

Remember that f&p 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 and are central to the discipline


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Exams,Homework,Grading expectations

Worksheet: where does your course allow students to practice working with F&P concept(s) explicitly?

Central Course Question:

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•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

Faculty Examples of Central Course Questions

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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?

Central Course Questions and F&P Concepts

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Central Course Questions from Finance:1.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?

Almost all decisions that corporations make have to be made under conditions of uncertainty.

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Public Health 101 (introduction to Public Health) central course question:"What are the outcomes of public health and its concepts, techniques, applications, and practice?"

Public Health 101 central question for module on principles of public health:

“What are the principles for understanding and applying public health?”

Public Health 101 central question for class on the population health approach:

"How can and does public health affect our daily lives?"

Public Health 101 central question for class on evidence-based public health:

"How does the evidence-based public health process function?"

Central Questions: Public Health

Your central course question

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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?

Your central course question

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Try this at home:

Write an answer to that question in a few paragraphs and consider how your course currently responds and reflects your answer.

Worksheet: How can you use your central course question to foster and illuminate the critical thinking you want your students to practice?

Core Concepts: teaching critical thinking

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Hold students responsible

for the thinking they

do.


Model the thinking you want.

Revisit your central course questionagain and again as you introduce content.

Critical Thinking Framework Adopted for i2a

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Richard Paul-Linda Elder framework

Agreed upon by all reviewers (virtually perfect inter-rater reliability)

Most comprehensive (many ‘models’ merely narratives)

Discipline neutral terminology

Provides a common language/terminology for discussing, modeling and measuring critical thinking that can be readily applied to all disciplines

Has a wealth of discipline specific resource materials

http://www.criticalthinking.org

Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework

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Intellectual Standards

Elements of Reasoning

Intellectual Traits

Must be appliedto

to develop

AccuracyClarityRelevanceLogicalSufficiency

PrecisionDepthSignificanceFairnessBreadth

Which leads to deeper

PurposeQuestionPoint of viewInformation

InferencesConceptsImplicationsAssumptions

HumilityAutonomyFair-mindednessCourage

PerseveranceEmpathyIntegrityConfidence in reasoning

p. 3-6

Using the Elements of Thought

“Going around the wheel” means that we are thinking things through (thinking critically) with an explicitly reflective approach

This process become a way to making critical thinking visible for novice thinkers

Using the Elements of Thought can be a tool for routinely analyzing and assessing our own thinking and the thinking of others

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Dental Hygiene Case Study for Critical Thinking

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Key Question: Key Question: What What problem am I addressing?problem am I addressing?

Information: Information: What What information do I need?information do I need?

Implications & Implications & Consequences: Consequences:

What are the implications of my What are the implications of my proposed solution?proposed solution?

Point of ViewPoint of View: : Which points Which points of view do I need to consider?of view do I need to consider?

Interpretation & Interpretation & Conclusions:Conclusions:What are the judgments that What are the judgments that will allow me to know if I’ve will allow me to know if I’ve been successful?been successful?

Essential Concepts: Essential Concepts: What concepts do I need to What concepts do I need to apply to correct the problem?apply to correct the problem?

Assumptions: Assumptions: What am I What am I taking for granted?taking for granted?

Elements of Thought35

Example of before and after: Social Work Practicum

BEFORE: Identify an ethical issue or high risk incident and analyze how you responded to it this month.

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AFTER:

“Briefly describe an ethical problem or high risk incident that you responded to this past month. How did you conclude this is a high risk incident? Provide at least two examples of evidence or pieces of information that informed your response or reaction. What were possible solutions, what were the consequences, and what did you decide to do? Based on your reflection, how could you have responded differently? Are there other points of view or perspectives that did—or might have—influenced your decision?”

Core Concepts: teaching critical thinking

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Hold students responsible

for the thinking they

do.


Model the thinking you want.

Ask students to make visible the thinking they do for you; guide them to demonstrate the process of critical thinking, not just the product.

“Go around the wheel” with your course

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Disciplinary thinking:

•Fields and disciplines embody distinctive ways•of looking at the world.

•Practitioners know the concepts that structure information and content.

•How parts of a discipline fit together creates “thelogic of a discipline”

The Logic of Your CourseWorksheet

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“Go around the wheel” with your course in mind using the single worksheet. Which Elements represent the thinking you value most in your course?How can you explicitly engage students in these thinking skills & assess their ability to master these skills?

Let’s share 10 Insights

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Let’s generate 10 ideas, insights, strategies or new concepts you are taking away from today’s session.

Documents

School of Public Health and Information Sciences June 24, 2011 Patricia Payette, PhD Executive Director, i2a Associate Director, Delphi Center for Teaching