8 ms·

A successful strategy to get college students thinking critically

74 points by shawndumas 11y ago

stcredzero 11y ago
A friend of mine was attending Xavier, and one of his professors was also an old-school Jesuit priest. My friend told me that he this professor started to tell outrageous lies, just so he could stop the class and ask why no one was questioning him. Really, the purpose of that lecture was to set the stage so he could talk about critical thinking and telling truth to power. There's a Doonesbury about a college-prof character that's something like this. (Except the moral of the story never gets across to the students.)
- epalmer 11y ago
  N.G. Holmes participated in this study as a doctoral candidate. His thesis for partial fulfillment of the PhD program was on this topic. Note tl;dr https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/51363/ubc_2015_february_holmes_natasha.pdf?sequence=1 https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/51363/ubc_2015_f...
peter_l_downs 11y ago
My highschool physics class was set up like this. Every two or three weeks we had to perform a lab (with real, physical tools) and take measurements, then write up our findings. This meant including full derivations of the physics behind the lab, as well as analysis of the data itself. Most essentially, our teacher (if you're reading this, hi Mr. Schwartz!) graded harshly, and forced us to consider all potential reasons our data might have deviated from the theoretical outcome. Needless to say we all learned a lot, and everyone I still talk to who took that class in highschool has only positive things to say about its effect on their approach to learning. It was strange re-taking the course in college without having to perform any of the experiments; if I hadn't covered most of the material already I'm not sure I would have been able to pass.
unabst 11y ago
Here is a simple definition of critical thinking: Be critical of what is being said until it can be validated tangibly. It only has two requirements. The courage to question what is in front of you, and the tools to test and validate statements objectively. What people trip on is often the "thinking" part. It plays on the myth that thought and logic is what solves problems, but in reality we need to be able to refer to something tangible -- such as evidence. If you don't have enough information, stop thinking and do your research (or experiments). Most evidence is rather obvious once found. Anecdotally, fear and anti-science are the enemy of critical thought, and those who claim moral authority and depend on spin to achieve their goals have used these weapons time and time again. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking."[0] -- George Carlin Amen. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ
- dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  A good rule of thumb for evaluating the merit of groups (political factions, interest groups, whatever) is whether or not they encourage critical thinking (education).
  - SiVal 11y ago
    By that measure, "education" includes many of the worst offenders. The most intensely political of the departments on campus tend to be the ones who talk most about "critical thinking". The loudest proponents of "critical thinking" tend to be the most ideologically monocultural. They tend to be the most adamant supporters of "speech codes" designed to silence their critics. They tend to be ones who most closely scrutinize others for ever smaller deviations ("micro aggression! he used the wrong word!") from the enforced, orthodox dogma before going back to class to teach their students about "critical thinking". The Marxist "English" professor who tells you that what she wants most from your paper is "evidence of critical thinking" means she will judge your paper on how persuasively it argues in favor of her political agenda. Real-world evidence that casts doubt on Marxist theory will most likely be punished and labeled "lack of critical thinking". The social justice warriors in the ed school go on endlessly about their commitment to "critical thinking" and its supposed superiority to "mere facts", yet nobody in electrical engineering ever uses the term, "mere facts". Nobody in the physics department who is trying to make sense of puzzling data from some space probe ever consults the critical thinkers in the ed school to get the benefit of their better-trained reasoning powers. When Larry Summers, president of Harvard, suggested that a natural, statistical phenomenon (fatter right tail due to greater variance, not higher mean) might be a major reason for more male than female math professors, he lost his job. In attempting to defend himself, he clearly felt that evidence of his political conformity ("I'm a lifelong liberal with a long record of...") mattered more to the decision makers than empirical evidence of the phenomenon. If the top leadership at Harvard, arguably the world's leading educational institution, believes that other top leadership at Harvard is more persuaded by argument from political identity than argument from empirical evidence, what is it they are really promoting when they so vociferously promote "critical thinking"?
dsfyu404ed 11y ago
(here's my $0.02 in no particular order) "Interestingly, the researchers tracked the same students into the sophomore physics course that a third of the freshmen had advanced into. Even there, they still saw improvements, despite the fact that none of the critical thinking instructions were repeated in that course." I think "Interestingly" should have been "predictably." A mechanical engineer, lawyer, physicist and EMT encounter a dilapidated stairwell railing and all have very different thoughts about it. People everything through the lens of the intelligence they've acquired throughout their lives. "Critical thinking" just makes a better buzzword than "applying stuff that's been learned in different contexts". Physics to physics is a pretty low hanging fruit for studying this kind of effect (which isn't a bad thing). Math to physics or economics to history would be a more interesting point to study. For example, the history of North America from 1600-1700 is much more interesting to study if you know about the economics of Europe at the time which itself is much more interesting if you know that chunk of European history. Knowing physics makes studying basic calculus much more interesting and beneficial and vise-versa .
- tbabb 11y ago
  "Critical thinking" is a term with more specific meaning than just "apply what you know". Critical thinking means asking yourself how you know what you think you know, mistrusting casual intuition, and examining how your own thinking process could lead you to a wrong conclusion.
- rcthompson 11y ago
  It is a low bar, but it's still one that is not consistently hurdled by most education programs. So many students just want to get their A grades and then purge the entire semester from their memories. (Or maybe they don't explicitly want this, but it's what they get by cramming instead of learning.)
ajuc 11y ago
I've got 2 years of physic & electronic exercises on CS university course (they had too much physic teachers and too few CS teachers :) so why not). It was fun, but the thing that stuck with me the most was how rarely the results agreed with theory. Usually it was off by orders of magnitude (and we had access to the laboratory for 45 mintues each week so once you've done your experiments you had to stick to the data you've got). Usually it turned out at home that the data makes no sense. I don't think it was useful for my job, but it certainly made me appreciate practical physics more.
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  When I did my lower division physics coursework our instructor relentlessly browbeat us about our data, and whether or not it was good. This was to the point that he taught us a separate data and error analysis course at the same time.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
angdis 11y ago
I really like this idea, but honestly, isn't it basically a reformulation of the Socratic method? A really good teacher will naturally use dialectical techniques to engage their students. Is this just some way to structure that in a way that can be measured?
ergothus 11y ago
My primary complaint with the article is that it makes the implicit connection that "critical thinking" is something that tied to science. Good science needs critical thinking, true. Dealing with life ALSO needs critical thinking, and I suspect that's a more direct impact to the average person. (Witness your most/least favorite political discussion, see any bit of TV news, heck, the recent Amazon brouhaha, and see what people not having enough critical thinking does to life) College is quite late to try and teach* the skill, but better late than never. I can think of only one class I ever had that I felt covered critical thinking. It was a junior high school home ec class, and for one single class period, they passed out magazines, had us pick out ads, and then list at least 5 ways these ads manipulated us. Turns out 5 is a significant number: to say wealth, sex, and happiness feature in the ads is easy...but 4 & 5? That requires thought. Thought about how we are being misled, how there is something non-obvious but true. To this day one of the lessons sticks in my mind. "Bayer: 4 out of 5 doctors recommend" But who picks the 5 doctors? It was mind-blowing to young me, and I think it filters in to how I consider information I'm getting to this day. *Teaching critical thinking isn't really teaching, so much as repeatedly providing the opportunity and motivation and hoping for the lights to turn on. It's the best system we've got, and we don't do it enough, but I'll acknowledge that it is harder than teaching a more passive, observable skill.
- dublinben 11y ago
  Media literacy is one of the most underappreciated subjects in school these days. I remember only one or two classes ever teaching this kind of critical thinking. Put up against the $50b advertising industry, is it any wonder why young people make such bad economic decisions?
  - seansmccullough 11y ago
    And financial literacy! I think the bottom line is that you need to take almost everything everyone says with a grain of salt.
charlieflowers 11y ago
That description of what the teachers did differently has to be one of the most vague descriptions I have ever read. Can anybody do a decent job of articulating what they actually did that worked so well?

74 points by shawndumas 11y ago

A friend of mine was attending Xavier, and one of his professors was also an old-school Jesuit priest. My friend told me that he this professor started to tell outrageous lies, just so he could stop the class and ask why no one was questioning him. Really, the purpose of that lecture was to set the stage so he could talk about critical thinking and telling truth to power. There's a Doonesbury about a college-prof character that's something like this. (Except the moral of the story never gets across to the students.)

epalmer 11y ago
N.G. Holmes participated in this study as a doctoral candidate. His thesis for partial fulfillment of the PhD program was on this topic. Note tl;dr https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/51363/ubc_2015_february_holmes_natasha.pdf?sequence=1 https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/51363/ubc_2015_f...

peter_l_downs 11y ago

My highschool physics class was set up like this. Every two or three weeks we had to perform a lab (with real, physical tools) and take measurements, then write up our findings. This meant including full derivations of the physics behind the lab, as well as analysis of the data itself. Most essentially, our teacher (if you're reading this, hi Mr. Schwartz!) graded harshly, and forced us to consider all potential reasons our data might have deviated from the theoretical outcome. Needless to say we all learned a lot, and everyone I still talk to who took that class in highschool has only positive things to say about its effect on their approach to learning. It was strange re-taking the course in college without having to perform any of the experiments; if I hadn't covered most of the material already I'm not sure I would have been able to pass.

unabst 11y ago

Here is a simple definition of critical thinking: Be critical of what is being said until it can be validated tangibly. It only has two requirements. The courage to question what is in front of you, and the tools to test and validate statements objectively. What people trip on is often the "thinking" part. It plays on the myth that thought and logic is what solves problems, but in reality we need to be able to refer to something tangible -- such as evidence. If you don't have enough information, stop thinking and do your research (or experiments). Most evidence is rather obvious once found. Anecdotally, fear and anti-science are the enemy of critical thought, and those who claim moral authority and depend on spin to achieve their goals have used these weapons time and time again. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking."[0] -- George Carlin Amen. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ

dsfyu404ed 11y ago
A good rule of thumb for evaluating the merit of groups (political factions, interest groups, whatever) is whether or not they encourage critical thinking (education).
- SiVal 11y ago
  By that measure, "education" includes many of the worst offenders. The most intensely political of the departments on campus tend to be the ones who talk most about "critical thinking". The loudest proponents of "critical thinking" tend to be the most ideologically monocultural. They tend to be the most adamant supporters of "speech codes" designed to silence their critics. They tend to be ones who most closely scrutinize others for ever smaller deviations ("micro aggression! he used the wrong word!") from the enforced, orthodox dogma before going back to class to teach their students about "critical thinking". The Marxist "English" professor who tells you that what she wants most from your paper is "evidence of critical thinking" means she will judge your paper on how persuasively it argues in favor of her political agenda. Real-world evidence that casts doubt on Marxist theory will most likely be punished and labeled "lack of critical thinking". The social justice warriors in the ed school go on endlessly about their commitment to "critical thinking" and its supposed superiority to "mere facts", yet nobody in electrical engineering ever uses the term, "mere facts". Nobody in the physics department who is trying to make sense of puzzling data from some space probe ever consults the critical thinkers in the ed school to get the benefit of their better-trained reasoning powers. When Larry Summers, president of Harvard, suggested that a natural, statistical phenomenon (fatter right tail due to greater variance, not higher mean) might be a major reason for more male than female math professors, he lost his job. In attempting to defend himself, he clearly felt that evidence of his political conformity ("I'm a lifelong liberal with a long record of...") mattered more to the decision makers than empirical evidence of the phenomenon. If the top leadership at Harvard, arguably the world's leading educational institution, believes that other top leadership at Harvard is more persuaded by argument from political identity than argument from empirical evidence, what is it they are really promoting when they so vociferously promote "critical thinking"?

dsfyu404ed 11y ago

(here's my $0.02 in no particular order) "Interestingly, the researchers tracked the same students into the sophomore physics course that a third of the freshmen had advanced into. Even there, they still saw improvements, despite the fact that none of the critical thinking instructions were repeated in that course." I think "Interestingly" should have been "predictably." A mechanical engineer, lawyer, physicist and EMT encounter a dilapidated stairwell railing and all have very different thoughts about it. People everything through the lens of the intelligence they've acquired throughout their lives. "Critical thinking" just makes a better buzzword than "applying stuff that's been learned in different contexts". Physics to physics is a pretty low hanging fruit for studying this kind of effect (which isn't a bad thing). Math to physics or economics to history would be a more interesting point to study. For example, the history of North America from 1600-1700 is much more interesting to study if you know about the economics of Europe at the time which itself is much more interesting if you know that chunk of European history. Knowing physics makes studying basic calculus much more interesting and beneficial and vise-versa .

tbabb 11y ago
"Critical thinking" is a term with more specific meaning than just "apply what you know". Critical thinking means asking yourself how you know what you think you know, mistrusting casual intuition, and examining how your own thinking process could lead you to a wrong conclusion.
rcthompson 11y ago
It is a low bar, but it's still one that is not consistently hurdled by most education programs. So many students just want to get their A grades and then purge the entire semester from their memories. (Or maybe they don't explicitly want this, but it's what they get by cramming instead of learning.)

ajuc 11y ago

I've got 2 years of physic & electronic exercises on CS university course (they had too much physic teachers and too few CS teachers :) so why not). It was fun, but the thing that stuck with me the most was how rarely the results agreed with theory. Usually it was off by orders of magnitude (and we had access to the laboratory for 45 mintues each week so once you've done your experiments you had to stick to the data you've got). Usually it turned out at home that the data makes no sense. I don't think it was useful for my job, but it certainly made me appreciate practical physics more.

jschwartzi 11y ago
When I did my lower division physics coursework our instructor relentlessly browbeat us about our data, and whether or not it was good. This was to the point that he taught us a separate data and error analysis course at the same time.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

angdis 11y ago

I really like this idea, but honestly, isn't it basically a reformulation of the Socratic method? A really good teacher will naturally use dialectical techniques to engage their students. Is this just some way to structure that in a way that can be measured?

ergothus 11y ago

My primary complaint with the article is that it makes the implicit connection that "critical thinking" is something that tied to science. Good science needs critical thinking, true. Dealing with life ALSO needs critical thinking, and I suspect that's a more direct impact to the average person. (Witness your most/least favorite political discussion, see any bit of TV news, heck, the recent Amazon brouhaha, and see what people not having enough critical thinking does to life) College is quite late to try and teach* the skill, but better late than never. I can think of only one class I ever had that I felt covered critical thinking. It was a junior high school home ec class, and for one single class period, they passed out magazines, had us pick out ads, and then list at least 5 ways these ads manipulated us. Turns out 5 is a significant number: to say wealth, sex, and happiness feature in the ads is easy...but 4 & 5? That requires thought. Thought about how we are being misled, how there is something non-obvious but true. To this day one of the lessons sticks in my mind. "Bayer: 4 out of 5 doctors recommend" But who picks the 5 doctors? It was mind-blowing to young me, and I think it filters in to how I consider information I'm getting to this day. *Teaching critical thinking isn't really teaching, so much as repeatedly providing the opportunity and motivation and hoping for the lights to turn on. It's the best system we've got, and we don't do it enough, but I'll acknowledge that it is harder than teaching a more passive, observable skill.

dublinben 11y ago
Media literacy is one of the most underappreciated subjects in school these days. I remember only one or two classes ever teaching this kind of critical thinking. Put up against the $50b advertising industry, is it any wonder why young people make such bad economic decisions?
- seansmccullough 11y ago
  And financial literacy! I think the bottom line is that you need to take almost everything everyone says with a grain of salt.

charlieflowers 11y ago

That description of what the teachers did differently has to be one of the most vague descriptions I have ever read. Can anybody do a decent job of articulating what they actually did that worked so well?