Educational Policies Committee
1987-88
Carmen Maldonado Decker, Chair Cypress College
Michael Anker Contra Costa College
Sue Britton Cypress College
Lynda Corbin San Diego Mesa College
Randal Lawson Santa Monica College
Karen Sue Grosz, President
Academic Senate
for California Community Colleges
Erna Noble Chaffey College
Susan Petit College of San Mateo
Robert Turley San Bernardino Valley College
Maryamber Villa Los Angeles Valley College
Background In 1986, the Board of Governors of the
California Community Colleges instituted a policy
calling for strengthening the rigor and academic
standards of all college-level courses to be counted
toward the associate degree. These new Title 5
regulations are in the process of being implemented
in the community colleges through the cooperation
of academic senates, curriculum committees, and
instructional offices. One of the policy's new
requirements calls for all courses to promote
the student's "ability to think critically"
and "to understand and apply concepts at
a level determined by the curriculum committee
to be college level."
One of the first
difficulties encountered by curriculum committees
throughout the state was the establishment of
a definition of critical thinking broad enough
to encompass college level courses throughout
the academic and vocational/technical curriculum,
as well as a definition that could apply to both
content-based and skill-based courses. The Educational
Policies Committee of the Academic Senate has
prepared the following paper in order to provide
a broad definition of critical thinking skills
and to assist faculty in identifying some of the
intellectual actions that constitute critical
thinking in their courses.
A
Definition of Critical Thinking In a recent paper prepared by Chancellor's
Office staff member Nancy Glock, the following
definition of critical thinking skills has been
proposed to assist faculty within all disciplines
to meet the new requirement. The critical thinking
skills proposed here (see appendix) should allow
faculty to assign work that challenges the critical
thinking abilities of their students without creating
a new or artificial component of their courses.
Instruction and conscious application and practice
of these critical thinking skills should enable
students to develop and apply these skills to
other areas of the college curriculum.
Critical thinking
skills are those diverse cognitive processes and
associated attitudes critical to intelligent action
in diverse situations and fields that can be improved
by instruction and conscious effort. (Glock, 1987:
9).
Glock further refines
the application of critical thinking by noting
that actions involving physical skills that not
only are habitual but embody instantaneous decision
making, such as some instances of athletics or
crafts, do call upon critical thinking. The test
is whether actions can later be analyzed and assessed
for strategic or aesthetic effectiveness and improved
thereby.
If they meet this
test, then the actions in question have the potential
for instruction in critical thinking. That potential
is realized when students are required to make
explicit their reasoning, and are taught how to
generate further options and to assess their strategies
and outcomes against the standards of the field.
Thus, critical thinking is itself an open-ended
and continually evolving process that should be
fundamental to most disciplines, and also useful
in adapting to different situations. At the broadest
level, critical thinking skills are transferable
from one discipline to another, but the effective
application of these generic skills also requires
domain-specific knowledge. Although the transfer
is not necessarily automatic, a student with well-developed
skills in critical thinking in one area should
be able to apply these skills to other areas,
and "substantially decrease the amount of
time necessary to become proficient in a new field
of endeavors (Glock, 1987: 10).
While critical
thinking cannot be reduced to one
skill or one set
of skills, it can be defined in terms of intelligent
actions that enable students to comprehend, communicate,
or engage in problem-solving or strategy-building
techniques. Questions that ask respondents to
list or to describe what has already been listed
or described in class or instructions that require
execution of a fixed series of motions or rote
drills are not "intelligent actions"
in the required sense. Thus, a college course
should require students not only to exercise judgment
by describing alternate solutions, but also to
make decisions, and to be able to justify those
decisions. The development of critical thinking
will allow students to move beyond the passive
learning of evaluative standards to the creation
of their own standards of criticism. The incorporation
of critical thinking skills as a primary objective
of college-level courses will have a great impact
on the college curriculum and its responsibility
in assisting students to develop the skills necessary
to arrive at better answers. The role of community
college faculty in improving by instruction and
conscious effortsA their students' critical thinking
skills in the context of their discipline, should
enhance the students' ability to do well in other
areas and thus create a learning environment of
Critical thinking across the curriculum.
To define critical
thinking skills is to restate many of the traditional
goals of higher education; that is, to provide
a program of instruction that enables students
to become independent learners, to be capable
of exercising informed and balanced judgment,
and to contribute as mature citizens in their
society.
Critical
Thinking in Some Skill-Based Areas of the Curriculum Following are illustrations of how critical
thinking skills can be integrated into specific
fields of study, to benefit both students and
the curriculum.
Performance Classes
in Art and Music
It is a well established principle that even beginning
art students can be taught to critique their own
work and that of others. As they articulate the
successful and unsuccessful aspects of a work,
they are performing just those evaluative tasks
that mark independent, rather than passive, reaming.
They are developing the ability to make thoughtful,
informed, and careful judgments and, thereby,
to develop confidence in the value and strength
of their own judgments. Thus, the task here is
only to enhance student awareness of these activities
and the connection between them and the rest of
their education, indeed the rest of their lives.
Choosing a career or making other decisions involves
an interplay between self-expression and the constraints
of reality different from, but parallel to, the
artist's work in creating from the medium something
beautiful, meaningful, or aesthetically satisfying.
Critical thinking
is inherent in musical performance, and even the
beginning student becomes aware of the constant
split-second decisions which must be made in transforming
the composer's Blueprints of musical symbols into
sound. The task of the instructor is to stress
the expressive elements of music making such as
touch, tone quality and phrasing, from the outset,
while simultaneously teaching the basic skills
of music-reading and instrumental technique. Students
should be shown the criteria by which their performances
are evaluated by the instructor and learn to use
these criteria to analyze the performances of
fellow students. If they discuss one another's
interpretive decisions, they learn about the objective
and subjective bases of these evaluations. As
they make and justify their judgments, they are
becoming more skillful at introspection, more
knowledgeable about music, and more autonomous
in their own judgment. The knowledge gained from
this analysis can then be applied to their own
performances. As the student progresses, the elements
included in this analysis will begin to include
interpretive decisions and stylistic awareness
as well as technical accuracy and basic musicianship.
Since the knowledge gained through lecture, demonstration,
and performance analysis in the classroom must
be applied by the student during practice outside
of class, the concept of independent learning
is very much supported here.
Students who learn
self-expression as a means of reaching deeply
into themselves and who can, at the same time,
stand back and evaluate the success of their self-expression
and its meaning and value for others, are learning
lessons of value outside their artistic endeavors
while improving their creative abilities as artists
and musicians.
Foreign Languages
One of the inherent values in the study of a foreign
language is that students will learn to understand
and respect cultural traditions and values other
than their own. From the elementary to the advanced
level, the foreign language instructor should
foster qualities of open-mindedness, intellectual
curiosity, objectivity, adaptability and a comparative
perspective enabling people of diverse cultural
and ideological backgrounds to understand each
other better. As the population of California
becomes increasingly diverse culturally and ethnically,
the adaptability of these skills to other areas
of the curriculum as well as to situations outside
the classroom becomes indispensable. Foreign language
instruction in this area should focus on the student's
ability to use the language in culturally appropriate
ways, to interpret what is culturally relevant
in a social situation or a text, and to be able
to interact in a range of social situations, including
unexpected ones. Functional acquisition of these
skills should enable students to recognize cultural
characteristics beyond mere stereotypes. From
the elementary to the advanced level, foreign
language instruction should also encourage students
to understand historic processes of cultural interaction
through the linguistic influence of one language
on another.
Foreign language
instruction today focuses on the student's developed
proficiency in terms of cultural awareness, comprehension,
and productive skills. One of the major purposes
in the study of a foreign language is learning
to communicate. To develop this ability, students
need to use various receptive skills, such as
listening, watching, reading, and deducing from
context. However, comprehension, whether it be
aural or written, precedes the acquisition of
productive skills because the student's mind is
busy internalizing and integrating the multiplicity
of stimuli being received. The foreign language
instructor should encourage the synthesizing of
all these incentives into oral production. The
most creative aspect of a student's acquisition
of the language is the ability to improvise orally
or in writing in response to different situations.
In mastering these skills, the student should
make progress from a primarily reactive mode,
to a creative one in which learned elements are
combined and recombined, to an initiative mode
in which the student initiates and sustains communication.
The integration
of the critical thinking skills developed in the
acquisition of a foreign language ail-purpose
strategies for figuring things out from context,
catching inferences, managing a conversation,
learning and sensing what is appropriate in another
culture, internalization of grammatical concepts
into accuracy of production should enable the
foreign language student to perform better in
other areas of the college curriculum as well
as to make informed and responsible decisions
as a citizen of a culturally dynamic society.
Physical Education
and Athletics
Student involvement in physical education or athletic
activities can be regarded as a progressive process
of physical and cognitive learning. At the early
stages of athletic skill development, the cognitive
involvement of the learner is predominantly a
process of imitation and of repetitious practice
of the imitated technique. However, much like
the learning of a foreign language or the refinement
of a musical skill, the learning of an athletic
skill entails early use of critical thinking skills.
Even in early stages of athletic activity, while
the student is still receiving general instructions
from the instructor or coach, it remains for the
athlete to interpret them and to decide how to
implement the completed physical action. In fact,
in every athletic endeavor there are innumerable
ways in which a specific act can be successfully
enacted. Students create their own styles for
throwing balls, or running, or leaping, and this
creative activity can enhance the particular athletic
skill.
At a more advanced
level of athletic performance, students can be
taught increasingly subtle and creative modes
of activity, and they can be taught how to evaluate
the effectiveness of their own performances, as
well as that of their teammates and their competitors.
Like the artist and the musician, the athlete
learns to think critically by becoming conscious
of alternative styles, by developing and refining
a style, and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages
of these differences. An understanding of the
elements of effective athletic actions can be
used by student athletes to improve their performances,
both of themselves as well as others. Eventually,
students can learn to interpret the dynamics of
effective motion and movement, as well as to appreciate
the creative tactical and strategic elements of
successful athletic performances. Students would
discover that the rules of athletic competition
exist to make the activities safe, fun and fair,
and they may develop ideas of how the rules could
be changed to enhance an activity. The acquisition
of critical thinking skills allows students to
develop the abilities to train or coach themselves;
that is, to analyze their own efforts, and to
devise methods for improving upon their performances.
As a result of
applying these domain-specific critical thinking
skills to athletic endeavors, students can also
develop the generic skills of analysis and evaluation
that can be transferred to other areas of interest
and inquiry in the curriculum. In this sense,
critical thinking skills are as relevant to the
enhancement of physical activities as they are
to more traditional applications n academic areas.
Vocational Education
Vocational education programs provide a unique
opportunity for students to acquire employable
skills as well as critical thinking skills which
will allow them to adapt to emerging technological
changes. In the modern industrial and post-industrial
society, technological obsolescence occurs at
an increasingly rapid pace.
Thus, vocational
education programs cannot teach students only
a specific set of skills, but must also prepare
them to progress beyond the entry level job, to
adapt to changing technologies and to make informed
career decisions.
Students in vocational
education must learn to see their occupation in
historical perspective, to understand its origins
and its future. They must develop the ability
to understand the broader implications of their
occupation in the social structure, to interpret
changes around them in terms of the consequences
for their own careers, and to anticipate the need
for changes In technique and technology. They
must have the ability to analyze developing circumstances
and understand the alternatives they face before
making decisions.
Critical thinking
skills will also allow an individual to construct
a working environment that is amenable to both
practitioners and clients. A critical awareness
of the position and importance of the occupation
in the economy will result in a concern for worker
satisfaction, a pride in craftsmanship, an elimination
of job alienation, and a concern for customer
satisfaction. The vocational education student
who has acquired critical thinking skills will
be equipped to take a broader view of the economic
and social relationships that are a part of the
workplace, and to understand the short-term and
long-term effects of various actions.
It is essential
that vocational education students have the skills
for adaptation and survival in a rapidly changing
world. Critical thinking skills will enhance the
adaptive abilities, and these skills will be of
lasting importance over the course of a lifetime.
Works Cited
Glock, Nancy Clover. "College Level' and
'Critical Thinking': Public Policy and Educational
Reform."Los Angeles: Paper
presented at the 1987 Fall Conference of the Academic
Senate of the California Community Colleges.
Intersegmental
Committee of the Academic Senates. Statement on
Competencies in Languages Other Than English Expected
of Entering Freshmen. The Academic Senates of
the California Community Colleges, The California
State University, and The University of California,
1987.
Our native tongue
appears to us at the beginning as a purely transparent
window on the real world. Ony later on, in encountering
other tongues and other usages do we come to a
more reflective self-consciousness about our own
symbolic representations. Extended further, such
self-consciousness turns sytematically critical,
forcing a theoretical wedge between ourselves
and our own representations.... we thus acquire
a reflective distance....(p. 20, Of Human Potential,
by Israel Scheffler)If it is to be authentic,
the requirement for "critical thinking"
in a course cannot only affect the objectives
of the course, its content, texts, assignments,
and evaluation modes. It must also, most importantly,
affect the style and methods of instruction and
the atmosphere of the class. Care in reasoning
matters little if the products of reasoning are
not taken seriously in the class; if problems
are set only as exercises. And if care is taught
only in connection with exercises and never in
connection with real beliefs, deeply felt, then
the likelihood of the transfer of critical thinking
skills to any context where they really matter
is greatly reduced. On the other hand, if the
critical thinking going on in a classroom is to
be authentic, then it means that the statements
of the teacher and of the text, and the assumptions
and values inherent in the discipline or field
under study must all be open to scrutiny, should
question arise. It may also mean that the teacher
should explicitly and consciously raise such fundamental
questions and be prepared to seriously entertain
any resulting challenges.Nor must this questioning
in its turn be permitted to become but an empty
exercise. The object is not the production of
knee jerk scepticism. Questioning is only part
of critical thinking. Understanding and being
able to assess evidence, knowing when to act on
partial evidence, and recognizing where values
or fundamental principles must simply be accepted
as starting points are also crucial aspects of
the full exercise of critical thinking. In the
end, the educational objective is for students
to arrive at better answers--not to refuse answers
at all. It is for them to take more responsibility
for the answers they accept--not to avoid tatting
stands at all. Desire here blossoms into committment,
perseverance, loyalty--a kind of love of the project
embarked on, w ith which one identifies oneself
and which helps shape one's self-respect. Beyond
realistic hope, not always available, lies faith;
and love of the goal may inspire the courage to
conquer even realistic fears. It is not only in
the realm of moral principle, thus, that fear
and love, courage and respect, have a role to
play, but throughout the sphere of action their
relevance is evident. Hedged about by constraints
on available options. by limitations of capability,
and by the uncertainty of even the best-available
foresigl1t, human choice proceeds nevertheless
to stake out paths in the jungle of possibilities,
building habitations of varied structure and adornment
to house its loves and works.(p. 33, Of Human
Potential, Israel Scheffler)
CriticalThinking Skills
On the next page is a chart showing the five main
components of intelligent action and attempting
to distinguish which aspects of each of these
components is generic and transferable, hence
a "critical thinking skill", which are
are attitudes, and which are domain-specific (i.e.
skills or knowledge or attitudes specific to a
given domain or field of human endeavor and hence
dependent upon specific experience with that field).
It may be useful in defining
objectives for a course or in designing situations
that test these abilitiesOn the two pages
following is a double-chart organizing intelligent
actions in the order of difficulty. Moving from
top to bottom, it becomes more difficult to explain
to students what is required and more threatening
to students to carry them out. For the most part,
those actions called for toward the bottom of
the page presuppose the ability to do those occurring
earlier on the page.The two sides of the double-chart
attempt to show the roughly parallel development
in hands-on and/or technical tasks, on the one
hand, and the more academic, verbal tasks on the
other. These charts may
be useful in identifying and sequencing content-based
tasks that call for critical thinking Skills
at increasing levels of
difficulty. While transfer horizontally
across these two classes of activities, on the
double chart, even at the same level, rarely occurs
spontaneously, there is some evidence that explicit
efforts to bring about such transfers can reap
marked benefits to students.One such effort to
encourage transfer of critical thinking skills
across the split between "verbal" and
"visual"(follow the char) is an effort
to use the visualizing, graphing techniques typical
of "problem-solving" to carry out the
essentially verbal task of writing an answer to
an essay examination
*8 1987
Excerpted from an article under preparation for
publication where arguments and references are
offered for the points summarized here. Permission
is granted for reproduction of this excerpt for
non-profit use by California Community College
personnel implementing the new regulations on
academic standards.
Some Thinking Skills
Critical To Comprehension, Communication, &
Problem-Solving
Components
of Intelligent Acts
Generic
Thinking Skills
Attitudes Critical to Thinking
Domain-Specific Thinking Skills
1.Problem-Posing
Perceiving
and defining a problem (or potential);
Asking a fruitful question Defining an effective
theme
*Understanding
what a problem or a theme is, in general,
and having some schemata or search strategies
for anticipating or disceming problems or
developing a theme
*Ability
to sift through multiple variables and "put
one's finger on the real problem" or
the "real point"
*Ability
to shift perspective, to redefine problem
or theme from different perspectives
*Ability
to articulate a problem or theme in different
terms
*Initiative
*Habit of
'scanning', of looking out for problems
or significance
*Both caution
and confidence in setting aside other variables
or themes to focus on the one more promising
*Tolerance
for "cognitive dissonance" and
uncertainty
*Recognition
that problems must often be redefined, or
ideas reworked, before a solution or a structure
can be found
*Overriding
desire to find the best solution or structure
*Knowledge
of the types of problems or issues constitutive
of this discipline or familiarity with the
types of problems that typically show up
in this field or situation.
*Understanding
of the vocabulary peculiar to this field
and of the range of terminology that can
be used to define problems or state ideas
that will be comprehensible to others in
the field
*Experience
with successfully reformulating problems/ideas
in the past; familiarity with the different
viewpoints in the field
2. Inquiry
Determining what information is necessary and obtaining it
*Understanding
when its necessary to ask each of the following
questions
*Ability
to evaluate the distinct kinds of evidence
for each:
a. What do you mean?
b. How do you know?
c. So What?
*Disposition
to seek answers before acting and to check
the validity of crucial information where
it may be suspect
*Willingness
to take responsibility for the truth of
one's claims
*Honesty
*Understanding
of the modes of inquiry constitutive of
a discipline or of the techniques for finding
out used in a field
*Skill in
following these modes or using these techniques
3. Standards
Understanding
what is at stake in the situation, what
are the objectives, or the standards of
the endeavor
*Understanding
of when and how these standards apply
*Techniques
for testing when these standards have been
met
*Appreciation
of what it means to meet standards
*Willingness
to subject one's ideas or efforts to critical
scrutiny
*Understanding
of the standards constitutive of a discipline,
or the objectives constitutive of a field
*Experience
applying these standards to actual situations;
*Judgement
regarding the relative importance of standards
and when they may be safely set aside
4. Creative
Thinking
Generating
alternatives
*Ability
to "break a mind-set"
*Familiarity
with strategies and schemata that could
be varied to fit new situations
*Brainstorming
& insight-generating techniques
*Tolerance
for uncertainty
*Playfulness
*Courage
*Patience
and persistence
*Understanding
and respect for one's own creative processes
*Capacity
to work with others
*Familiarity
with all of the usual alternatives available
in the field
*Experience
solving a wide array of problems and generating
additional alternatives when the usual ones
wouldn't work
5. Reasoning
Accepting a conclusion;
making a plausible decision for sound reasons
Assessing one's own work correctly
Intelligent acts require
general cognitive skills, the disposition
to use these skills, and knowledge peculiar
to a given domain. "Critical Thinking"
can be viewed as covering all of these general
cognitive skills or as limited to a special
sub-set (the evaluative). The ability of
someone to "think critically"
is not just the sum of these skills but
how they are applied
Assessment of critical
thinking skills must be based upon a careful
analysis of how they were used, with the
relevant 'domain-specific' knowledge in
such actual applications as grades in content-based
courses or on-the-job effectiveness.
Tasks Calling for
Critical Thinking Skills
Exposition Primarily verbal skills essential to
success in the liberal arts, professions, management,public
policy, and the making of complex personal decisions
Levels
of Teaching
Methods
of Teaching and Assessing
Examples
of Assignments
Not Critical Thinking
Answering Questions Answering
''what'', "when", "where"
"who" and "how" questions;
giving definitions; listing, summarizing
or describing information from the course;
completing a forte on the job.
Go over the test and notes
from your own lectures in class, asking
aloud and getting answers to the question:
"What question
is answered here? The accuracy and
types of questions asked in response is
an indicator of comprehension.
Have students look at
their notes or texts and generate their
own question by asking themselves "To
what question is this passage an answer?"
Initially they will typically produce primarily
informational questions.
Critical
Thinking
Using information presented
in the course, or data already available
on the job, to appropriately answer questions
posed regarding "Why" or questions
that require analysis, synthesis, comparison,
evaluation, or justification
When a student generates
a "why" question, take particular
note and get students discussing what questions
are the most powerful and why. Explain the
structure of analytical questions using
familiar material (and visualizations. See
following pages for some examples.)
In quizzes, use student-generated
questions and pose analytical questions,
explaining ahead of time how answers to
such questions can be structured. (Requiring
them to use visual analogues for each of
the usual essay questions arc helpful. (See
examples on back of next page)
Asking Questions Obtaining
and then analyzing, comparing evaluating,
synthesizing information and ideas not presented
in the course or already available on the
job. Material from other classes can be
used to let students experience the transferability
of thinking skills.
Once students have become
comfortable working with more powerful
questions and answering them from material
already available in the class similar questions
can be posed that require finding additional
material on one's own using techniques explained
In class.
Use of structures (see
next chart) will generate many questions
that go beyond the material. Set-breaking
exercises (see DeBono) brainstorming techniques
and other "creative thinking"
exercises can be combined with self~criticism
techniques (See below) for specific assignments
Questioning Answers Critically
assessing the material in the course, or
material generated by oneself. (This should
be taught partly to engender a healthy scepticism,
but primarily as the parallel process to
creativity: insight vs. verification, "right-brain"
vs. "left-brain"; global vs. linear,
intuition vs. analysis)
Material presented in
the text can be analyzed to determine which
of the inquiry techniques (presented above)
generated it. Instructor may criticize the
text and may carefully go over the criticisms
to point out relevant criteria. Above all,
the instructor must subject his own views
to scrutiny and be willing to modify them
publicly during a discussion.
Students may be asked
to read criticisms of their text or readings
that conflict with it. After criticism has
been modeled and analyzed by the instructor,
or generated in class discussions, students
could attempt their own carefully argued
criticism, based where possible upon their
own experience. This kind of learning is
threatening and is best internalized in
| a supportive class
Questioning Questions
Rethinking the frame of reference, the underlying
assumptions in the material taught, with
an emphasis on conceptual, normative, and
theoretical analysis
Comparisons of divergent
views or theoretical anomalies may be presented,
then discussed, with the instructor actively
posing questions that lead students to perceive
that the differences in viewpoint stem from
differences in terminology or even in the
questions being answered. Instructor may
model reformulating a problem and then explain
that process.
To criticize ones own
work or to have a frame of reference questioned
or shifted is disturbing and is thus often
resisted. Important but not intractable
emotion-laden topics are best assigned initially
until the realization of the universality
of reinterpretation and redefinition begins
lo dawn, when more threatening topics might
be attempted. (In short, debating "abortion"
is NOT the place to start)
Tasks Calling for Critical
Thinking Skills
Copyright 1984 Nancy Clover
Glock Problem SolvingPrimarily
spatial, reasoning, and quantitative skills essential
to the performing and other arts and to house
holding, various occupations, technical fields,
research and management.
Level
to be Emphasized in Teaching
Methods
of Teaching and Assessing
Examples
of Assignments
Solving Problems Posed
Solving problems posed by others using a
given formula or a step by step procedure
(including word problems with procedure
given)
Consider not using a textbook,
at least initially, and having students
take complete notes with full written explanations,
diagrams and charts they draw themselves,
and their own marginal comments.
Have students make up
their own problems and solve them, or each
others. Have them first read the problem
sets in their texts to see what they understand
or can guess-- then read the text to see
if they are right!
Not
Critical
Thinking
Solving problems set by
others by first formulating the problem
more precisely and then selecting from among
solutions of proven effectiveness (including
puzzles and word problems other than above)
Have students set word
problems or problem situations for you and
model solving them, slowly talking out possible
approaches, and thinking aloud about why
you reject some approaches and pursue others.
Have students work in
pairs and tank aloud their approach to solving
problems, stopping each other when a step
is skipped or wrong; have them use pictures
and/or write out their thinking (see attached
& Whimbey).
Critical
Thinking
Posing Problems On the
basis of experience and understanding of
a given set of objectives, standards, etc.,
perceiving or anticipating problems (or
potentials), defining and acting to solve
the problem (or realize the potential) by
known solutions, or by trial and error.
Analyses cases in class.
Observe students solving problems or carrying
out complex processes, in hands-on situations,
and later have them analyze what they did
and why. From these analyses, illustrate
principles and draw out rules of thumb appropriate
to the field.
Have them observe and
evaluate situations, act, and analyze their
own actions. Have them write up "Lessons
learned" from experience (as some companies
reward employees for doing).
Posing New Solutions
Generating new ideas,
approaches, solutions, or techniques; making
new uses or new combinations of old ideas:
risking solutions of unknown value.
Specifically explain and
practice brainstorming and other "right-brained"
or "creative thinking" techniques
intended to help students break through
a mind set. Encourage "meta-cognition",
i.e. watching how one's own cognitive processes
work and learning to work with them and
to appreciate the wide diversity of effective
styles of problem solving. Teach techniques
for cooperative problem" solving.
Require students to deal
with situations novel enough that the solutions
they are accustomed to using won't work
reliably thus forcing joint efforts, risk-taking
and persistence. Require them to explicitly
try out techniques taught and to discuss,
and possibly record, the processes they
went through and to share such records with
other students looking for ideas.
Redefining Problems Recognizing
when the way the problem is posed is getting
in the way of a solution, or is not the
"real" problem. Redefining what
counts as a solution or the very terms in
which the problem is described.
Same as above. Also provide
historical and other examples of cases where
viewing the problems differently was the
first step to solving them. Model formulating
the "problem" in many different
ways. When explaining different theories,
show how each would view the same problem
differently and what would be gained thereby.
Require students to take
the same "problem" and define
it in several different ways. perhaps in
each of the ways suggested by different
theories discussed in class. Reward risk;
i.e. 'award students for redefining the
problem even when they sometimes are less
effective because of having tried to apply
something new learned in class or to have
done something more difficult
COPYRIGHT 1984 Nancy Clover Glock
Comparison/ Contrast
Pro/Con
Typical
Essay Question:
"Explain the similarities
and differences
between contemporary Britain
and America"
Typical
Essay Question:
"Discuss the issue
of immigration"
England
America
Limiting Immigration:
+
_
Same 1anguage
Preserves jobs for Americans
Keeps cost of labor artif
cially high
Parliament
Royal family
Import most
food
Congress
No inherited
offices
Grow most
food
Makes it possible to serve
the needy already here
Keeps out the needy and
the endangered
Both democracies
Both world powers
Both industrialized
Country can only hold
so many
Almost all Americans -
were once foreigners
Etc.
Family members get priority
Etc.
Separates families
Typical Essay Question:
"Discuss the
Italian, French, and English Renaissance"
Italy
France
England
Dates?
Center(s)?
Political Leaders?
Key Events?
Key Discoveries?
Scientists/inventors?
Writers?
Artists?
Art Works?
Philosophers?
If you were setting
a question like this for yourself ahead of time
while studying for your exam, you could make up
the list of topics (left hand column) from your
comments in the margins of your class notes and
the sub-headings in your textbooks. Answers in
the boxes could be page numbers or lecture dates.
(Avoid questions that would have a simple yes
or no in the boxes)
Works Consulted
American Association of Community and Junior Colleges.
Humanities Policy Statement: The Study of the
Humanities in Community, Technical, and Junior
Colleges. Washington, D.C.: AACJC, April, 1966.
Bennett, William
J. To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities
in Higher Education. Washington, D.C.: National
Endowment for the Humanities, November, 1984.
Bloom, Allan. The
Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1987.
Hirsch, E. D.,
Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every Amencan Needs
to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.
Ravitch, Diane
and Chester E. Finn, Jr. What Do Our 17-Year-Olds
Know? A Report on the First National Assessment
of History and Literature. New York: Harper &
Row, 1987.
