Developing Critical Thinking Skills

Lori Oren, EdS candidate

Principles of Distance Education

EDUC 7102/8842

Walden University

January 10, 2010: version 1

Learning without thoughtis labour lost

~ Confucius

The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens.

~ William Graham Sumner, Folkways, 1906

Blooms’ Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives

Cognitive processes relate to one anotherLower level skills are a prerequisite for higher order thinkingKnowledge is a prerequisite for comprehensionComprehension is a prerequisite for applicationApplication is a prerequisite for analysisAnalysis is a prerequisite for synthesis and evaluation

Image source: http://www.you-can-teach-writing.com/bloom-taxonomy.html

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http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/critthnk.html

Edward Glaser

An attitude of being disposed (state of mind regarding something) to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences,

Knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning,

Some skill in applying those methods.

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"We should be teaching students how to think. Instead, we are teaching them what to think."

~ Clement and Lochhead, 1980, Cognitive Process Instruction.

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[Critical thinking is a] desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.

~ Francis Bacon (1605)

ReferencesBloom Benjamin S. and David R. Krathwohl. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of

Educational Goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York, Longmans, Green, 1956.

A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing — A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives; Lorin W. Anderson, David R. Krathwohl, Peter W. Airasian, Kathleen A. Cruikshank, Richard E. Mayer, Paul R. Pintrich, James Raths and Merlin C. Wittrock (Eds.) Addison Wesley

Longman, Inc. 2001