Critical thinking skills

by Freedom rocks 14 Replies latest members private

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  eyeuse2badub

  What Vidiot said!

  just saying!
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  jp1692

  This goal of teaching critical thinking skills has been a focal point of much of my research as an educator over the last few years.
  
  An overarching question that I used to drive this research has been: Can critical thinking actually be taught?
  
  Decades of cognitive research point to a disappointing answer: Not really.
  
  That might seem surprising and even counter-intuitive, but before we go further consider these points.
  
  Part of the reason for this answer is how we think about critical thinking. Is it a skill that — like many other skills — once you learn it, you can apply it in any other similar situation? Research from cognitive science shows that thinking — basic, good ol’ general thinking — is not that sort of skill at all. The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought: domain knowledge (Willingham, 2007).
  
  What that means is that the kind of thinking we learn to use in one area (such as chemistry or geometry) is not readily transferable to other areas (such as historical analysis or argumentation). Learning to balance an equation for the combustion of methane will NOT help you identify logical fallacies in rhetorical discourse.
  
  Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, had conducted a great deal of research focused on the application of findings from cognitive psychology and neuroscience to K-12 education. He stated, “Critical thinking is not a set of skills that can be deployed at any time, in any context.” In other words, it’s not comparable to a basic set of tools that a person can acquire and then use universally. But there is still good news. Wellingham’s research has found evidence of critical thinking “is a type of thought that even 3-year-olds can engage in.” So it can be learned and nurtured from an early age. But he offers this corresponding warning, “even trained scientists can fail in” (2007). How can that be? The fact is that even highly-trained experts that are experienced in analyzing and critically evaluating problems in a very specific area are often surprisingly bad at doing so in areas outside of their field of expertise. In fact, their being extremely knowledgeable in one field can often lead to over-confidence in other areas.
  
  We’ve all seen this happen when some “talking-head” pundit comments of something they don’t really know about but we do. It’s obvious they’re clueless and yet somehow are stunningly oblivious to that obvious fact.
  
  But back to the question in the OP, there is good news. As Willingham commented above, even very young children can think critically. As parents and teachers there is a lot we can do to nurture and foster their thinking and guiding it as they grow and develop.
  
  Some key points are:
  

  • Fostering curiosity and creativity
  • Overcoming obstacles such as children’s fear of failure and making mistakes, and
  • The role of understanding emotions in thinking clearly

  Neil deGrasse Tyson once commented, “We spend the first years of our children’s lives teaching them how to walk and talk, and then the rest of their lives telling them to sit down and shut up.”
  
  An important thing parents can do is to let your kids ask lots of questions. Encourage them to ask questions and then think them through. Depending on their age we can also teach them how to find the answers. This of course assumes that we know how to do that. This is particularly important in today’s social and political climate. Do we know how to identify reliable sources of information? Can we recognize unreliable and biased ones? Do we know how to “triangulate” references to verify the accuracy of information. Do we understand the importance of actively seeking out disconfirming information and ideas?
  
  Related to that is the importance of giving them permission to disagree with the opinions or conclusions of others.
  

  Of of my former students that used to be a JW but has left the religion once told me one of the most important things that he gained from our working together was permission to disagree. He of course had to be able to justify his disagreements and present an evidence-based argument in an effort to convince me. But this was new to him because -- as we all well know -- children raised as JWs are never, ever allowed to disagree or question.
  

  Another really important idea is that creating an environment wherein children are not being afraid to make a mistake or have a wrong answer (and yes: there are wrong answers!). A great resource for parents in that regard is Jessica Lahey’s wonderful book, The Gift of Failure. In it she explains the importance of re-evaluating how we as parents (and teachers too) view “failure. In an article on this subject in The Atlantic, Lahey wrote, “It is the setbacks, mistakes, miscalculations and failures children experience that teach them how to be resourceful, persistent, innovative and resilient citizens of the world” (2015).
  
  These are a few of the key things I’ve learned that have helped me to help my students be critical, independent thinkers!
  
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  References:

  Lahey, J. (2015, August 11). When Success Leads to Failure. The Atlantic. Retrieved December 22, 2016.

  Willingham, Daniel T. (2007). Critical Thinking - Why Is It So Hard to Teach? American Educator.
  
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  Freedom rocks

  Thanks jp1692 and everyone else who replied
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  jp1692

  You're welcome!

  After rereading my post, I wanted to add this: thinking critically is really a way of thinking -- a mindset or an approach to how we attempt to understand things and solve problems.

  It is NOT simply a set of skills such as learning to identify logical fallacies. Although that can be important, a skill like that alone does not make one a critical thinker any more than knowing how to pound a nail makes a person a carpenter. It doesn't.

  jp
  
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  Vidiot

  Re. jp's post...

  Of course, your average JW rank-and-filers (and any fundamentalist, really) will define "critical thinking" - and by extension "higher criticism" - as "being deliberately critical just for the sake of being critical and/or as (somehow) an excuse to not follow 'God's Word'..."

  Kinda like how they define the word "theory" as "impossible to prove and (probably false) hypothesis", rather than "model explaining how the facts best fit together".