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TO THINK OR NOT TO THINK: THAT IS THE QUESTION

To Think Or Not To Think:That Is The Question

Cultural Inquiry Study

Hannah J. OberlanderEDUC 606

Spring 2015

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Abstract

Year after year, teachers recognize that many of their students lack critical thinking skills or resist critical thinking within the classroom. I wanted to find out why this phenomenon was occurring and what I could do about it. Studies indicate that critical thinking can be learned and that the demanding school culture, emphasizing one right answer is a huge reason for students not displaying this ability in the classroom. Critical thinking is not a measurable objective that can be assessed on standardized tests, and thus teachers often skip over these skills in an effort to cover all of the tested material. My goal was to turn around that school cultural structure and bring attention to the process of thinking rather than the remembering of content. I took the students in my classroom and used them as a test case to see whether I could observe any improvement in their critical thinking skills over the course of a series of critical thinking lessons. Within these lessons, I eliminated the objective of finding the one correct answer and focused on the students’ effort in taking risks, asking questions, and attempting trial-and-error on their own quests for answers. My findings revealed that the lessons I conducted in my classroom did affect my students’ overall awareness of themselves as thinkers. Many of my students who had at first either lacked or resisted critical thinking, showed signs of using critical thinking in other academic experiences after these lessons. Critical thinking skills can be learned, and the results of teaching critical thinking skills are invaluable. Teachers who strive to rise above the school’s cultural mentality of “teaching to the test” by teaching critical thinking skills and protecting valuable time for students to use and explore these skills are doing their students a far more valuable service to their overall learning experience.

Vignette and Puzzlement

Pencils scratch the paper as students busily work through a math packet of mostly word

problems with multiple-choice answers. The lesson has been taught. The models have been

given. Paired practice time is over. The independent work time has begun. But within seconds,

hands begin to shoot up into the air. As I run from one desk to another to answer the questions,

many students say similar things:

“Miss O., you never showed us how to do this one,” one comments.

“I don’t know what I am supposed to do,” another one whines.

“I tried to solve this one, but the answer I got isn’t there,” a third complains.

“This is just too hard,” another student sighs in frustration.

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Students want answers. They want the right answer--immediately. They want to be

shown how to do something so that they can copy it. Struggle is not part of their learning

process; trial-and-error is unheard of. Simply put, many of my students are unwilling to think on

their own. They are asking me—their teacher—to think for them. I agree that modeling and

teaching strategies are vital to student learning, but without students solving problems and

critically thinking on their own, they will never move past memorizing the right way to get an

answer. Our world needs thinkers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Why do so many of my

students not know how to critically think? And if they do know how, why do the majority of

them resist critical thinking in the classroom?

Background: Does a student’s culture affect their ability to critically think?

Paulo Freire (2000) states “knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention,

through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry [that] human beings pursue in the

world, with the world, and with each other” (p. 244). Thus my inquiry began with my

assessment of the students within my classroom. Through in-class observations and student-

generated questions as well as project-based assessments, I learned that I had three different

groups of students in my classroom: (1) those that critically think and often do when given the

challenge, (2) those that sometimes critically think but need motivating prompts and guided

support to do so, and (3) those that do not critically think because they either do not have the

critical thinking ability to begin with, or they choose not to think critically on their own.

These groups and subgroups were all evident in my fourth grade classroom of twenty-

five students from various backgrounds, home lives, cultural traditions, and languages. Through

a series of investigations over three weeks, that included in-class activities in which I could

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observe students responding to various challenges, I observed and made notes of what I

discovered.

Group One: Frequent Critical Thinkers

Of the twenty-five students, five could critically think based on how they interacted with

inquiry activities, problem solving, thinking discussions, questions, and responses in all subject

areas. I was curious about these five students to see if perhaps their background and culture

affected their ability to critically think in the classroom. Were there any characteristics that were

similar among these students that set them a part from the other members of our class? Of these

five, three of them are in our county’s “gifted program” and have been tracked and labeled as

such. Two are girls, and three are boys. Of these five students, four are bilingual. Of those four

students, one speaks Arabic; one speaks Spanish; one speaks Amharic; and one speaks

Mandarin. They are all reading above grade level and scored between 438 and 513 on the third

grade reading SOL test. All five of these students scored between 453 and 578 on the third grade

math SOL. One of these students is a twin with no other siblings; two of the students are the

youngest in their families of only two children; one is the second oldest of five children; and one

is the oldest of two children. Thus, they all have siblings at home. Their strengths included

working independently, being self-motivated and interested in what they were learning, and were

willing to assist others who may not have readily understood what to do. However, none of

these five students took initiative and were not overly eager to dominate conversations nor did

they volunteer to lead unless no one else stepped up. What stood out to me the most about this

group of students is that they already came having an understanding of the “new” material that

was to be taught, so when “new” information was covered, they were reviewing it—allowing

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them to have the freedom and the mental space to take the next steps with the concept and to

critically thinking about it.

Group Two: Somewhat Frequent Critical Thinkers

Of the twenty-five students, eleven students sometimes do critically think, but they often

need motivating prompts and guided support to accomplish deeper thinking tasks. My initial

investigation centered on my interest to learn why these students did not actively engage their

minds to think on this deeper level naturally. From there, my intended goal was to discover how

I could help these students recognize when they were critically thinking and to encourage them

to do this higher-level thinking more often and on their own—without prompting, modeling, or

guiding. I knew that social interactions and cultural influences affected critical thinking, and so I

was eager to collect data to identify what was holding them back from accessing this ability to

think more often, and how I could ignite this ability so that they utilized it more often on their

own initiative. Two of these eleven students were bilingual—one spoke Hindi and the other

spoke Kurdish. Five of these eleven students were girls, and six were boys. Two of these

students were labeled and tracked as “gifted” at our school. One of these students had an IEP for

speech. Four of the eleven students were reading above grade level; two of the eleven students

were reading on grade level; and five of these eleven were reading below grade level. These

eleven students scored between a 421 and 600 on their third grade reading SOL. These eleven

scored between a 379 and a 600 on their third grade math SOL. Most of the students in this

group come from upper middle class families. This group displayed the most diversity in

academic levels. Most of the vibrant and verbal students were among this group. The most

dominant personalities and most eager to volunteer were in this group. The most confident

students came from this group as well.

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Group Three: Infrequent Critical Thinkers

The third group of students had a total of nine students out of the twenty-five fourth

graders in my class. Six of these nine students were girls, and the other three were boys. One of

the students had an IEP for Speech, one had an IEP for an emotional disability, and another was

in the process of being tested for learning disabilities. None of these students were labeled as

“gifted.” Two of these students were bilingual—one spoke Arabic and the other spoke Spanish.

Eight of the nine students were reading below grade level, and the other was reading on grade

level. Many of these students had a sense of wanting to “please” in school, but rarely seemed

excited or interested in learning for themselves. The majority of these students liked to “help”

me in the classroom and felt a sense of pride when they could do classroom jobs rather than a

“schoolwork” accomplishment. Many of them—from a classroom survey—felt negative about

their learning and “their grades.” These nine students scored between a 347 and a 469 on their

third grade reading SOL and between a 393 and 537 on their third grade math SOL.

Findings and Methods

What I found compelling about this data was the fact that the first group of students who

critically thought on their own the most frequently were mostly bilingual, and none of them had

scored a perfect 600 on either the third grade Math or Reading SOL test. Another interesting

observation to me was the fact that most of these students were more reserved than others in the

class and did not dominate discussions nor did they volunteer as often as others to participate in

activities. The second group of students who sometimes critically thought was the most

perplexing to me as I studied my data, because very few patterns existed between the students

who fell within this group. The academic abilities of the third group—those who did not

critically think or chose not too—was definitely the lowest in both reading and mathematical

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ability. The test scores showed this as well as IEP “labeling” of the students who, by law, were

required to receive additional academic support.

From these three groups, I solicited student feedback through a series of in-class

questionnaires to discover whether I could note any patterns among these students that could

bring to light why they were or were not critically thinking in class. These questionnaires

included questions about their after-school activities, their day-care situations, their parents

involvement in their academics, their diligence to practice music or sports, household chore

responsibilities, family culture around meals, religious activities, and their own interactions with

their parents. I gathered information from these questionnaires about their parents’ influence on

how much pressure their felt about their grades, tests, confidence, independence, and homework

completion. These questionnaires enabled me to collect data about students’ feelings about

teacher-generated questions, student-generated questions, feelings about particular subjects,

projects, friendships, collaboration activities, and word problems. I learned a great deal about

my students and am grateful that these questionnaires helped me better understand who my

students were and where they were coming from. However, as I sorted through the data and

looked for meaningful trends, I found that the group of students who tended to critically think

and the groups who tended not to had no direct similarities. I began ruling out my original

hypothesis: that students’ cultures affected their ability or choice to critically think in the

classroom.

Cultural Questions

3.1. How might my beliefs be contributing to the puzzling situation?

I began linking these observations to my own life story as a thinker and began to realize

that within one family that shares a culture, one child may show signs of critically thinking and

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another one may not at all. I am a female teacher, and I know that when I was growing up, I

struggled significantly with understanding what word problems in math were asking me to do. I

also had a difficult time explaining my reasons if I had to write them out. I loved talking and

enjoyed giving reasons on a verbal level in all of my subjects, but my thoughts rarely went

deeper than just my own creativity and imagination. I had trouble with logic and understanding

how to analyze and evaluate based on certain criterion rather than my own opinion based on

emotion. My brother, on the other hand, excelled at critical thinking, and it appeared to be

almost natural for him—even though he was three years younger than me. Thinking was fun to

him whereas thinking was hard and challenging for me. I just wanted the right answer—and I

did not enjoy “working” to solve a problem through trial and error. I wanted someone to tell me

what the answer was so that I could memorize it and appear successful for the test. It wasn’t

until late high school and early college that I came to understand how to critically think for

myself and learn to find a sense of triumph in “working” to find the right answer through

multiple attempts of mental gymnastics.

My puzzlement was based on how I could help my own students in an area that I had a

personal connection to, and I recognized that I was inspired to investigate this as I did not want

my own students to “suffer” the way that I had regarding not having the ability, the stamina, nor

the motivation to critical think on my own without the assistance of someone to guide me and to

“think for me.” My brother and I were both homeschooled by my mother. We both had the

same pressure on us to perform to very high expectations as to our academic abilities. Yet, my

brother was the poster child of a natural critical thinker, and I was the portrait of the “not so

smart” sister.

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I did not enjoy learning until later, because as a young girl I would rather play and do my

own thing—which consisted mainly of make-believe, imaginative stories with dress up clothes

or dolls. On the other hand, my brother’s play involved experimenting with models blocks,

water, plants, rocks, machines, etc. I remember that he had an old microscope in his bedroom,

and he loved looking at those slides (and even breaking a few slides) trying to figure out what

little animal(s) was under the lens. He liked to make messes and to ask questions. He was

hungry to learn facts. I was quieter and enjoyed playing alone with my own “stories” that I

found comfort in that were similar to my own life or to historical events that I pictured in my

head. My brother would attempt to come into my stories and try to play with me, but I always

felt frustrated because he could not meet me on my “play-level.” Instead, he would want to

apply some piece of his new knowledge to our play; and in my mind, he would “ruin” what I was

doing—for instance, he would wreck my beautifully manicured dollhouse with the dropping of a

nuclear bomb that he had read about.

Because of my personal experiences with critical thinking, I found it comforting to merge

these beliefs about my own upbringing with the inconsistencies of the cultural data I had

collected about the student groups in my classroom. I started to wonder whether critical thinking

was a natural or learned ability. My brother seemed to grasp critical thinking skills at an early

age, whereas I did not master that ability on my own until I had reached adulthood. Was he

perhaps “born” with the ability? Was I myself perhaps an inhibitor to my acceptance that all

students have the ability to critically think, because for so many years I believed I could not?

Did culture, home life, and upbringing really have anything to do with whether or not a child

could critically think? And beyond these questions, what could have prevented me, as a young

child, from critically thinking?

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I realized that I could be teaching the students the way that I had learned as a young

student. As a child, I had assumed I was learning something if I was able to memorize it and

regurgitate it on a test. Many of my creative projects and activities were focused on helping

students memorize information to be successful and not quite how to think about the material

critically. The culture I bring to the table is a force that has been preventing my own students

from truly learning to think on their own.

3.2 How might aspects of the school’s culture be contributing to the puzzling situation?

My research took a unique turn as it began evolving away from an emphasis on students’

cultures and instead shifted towards investigating the school’s culture and how it may affect

students’ abilities and their choice of critical thinking in the classroom. First I gauged my

school’s culture through a School Culture Survey from School Culture Rewired, which assessed

student achievement, collegial awareness, shared values, decision making, risk taking, trust,

openness, parent relations, leadership, communication, socialization, and organization history. I

learned that our school’s culture percentages fell between the ranges of “toxic” and

“fragmented,” both being the lowest types on the survey’s scale. This categorization opened my

eyes to the fact that our school’s negative culture may have an impact on our students in their

lack of critical thinking in the classroom.

From there, I took my research to a more personal level and interviewed thirteen

classroom teachers at our school to collect their perceptions, observations, and experience

regarding their students and these issues. The interview consisted of a series of multiple-choice

and open-ended questions that included what they felt their students most needed, how many of

their students critically thought, how often they taught or facilitated critical thinking

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investigations, and what they felt was preventing students from reaching this higher level of

thinking.

What I discovered was profound! Out of the thirteen teachers interviewed, twelve spoke

of the need for their students to be able to critical think or problem solve as the most important

skill to be successful in the 21st century. Eight of the thirteen identified that few of their students

could critically think without support in their classrooms. All thirteen teachers I interviewed

referenced time constraints and too much emphasis on testing as the biggest obstacles that they

observed were preventing their students from critically thinking.

All of the teachers knew what types of lessons and activities would best engage their

students and help them learn and access their critical thinking skills, but all of them spoke of the

impossible challenge of giving the students time to explore with these types of activities, because

of the demands of curriculum pacing with deadline testing. Six of the thirteen teachers had

attended classes and development training that gave them resources for how to teach critical

thinking in the classroom, but they admitted that they rarely use these tools because of the

amount of time it takes to prepare them and execute them in the classroom. Twelve of the

thirteen teachers interviewed linked the problems about students’ lack of critical thinking to the

current educational system. Many of them mentioned that the emphasis on testing inhibits

critical thinking, because it eliminates multiple correct answers and forces students to fear being

wrong and thereby to avoid taking risks.

As I reviewed the interviews and reflected on the responses I received, the most

significant answer was emerging to the question of why most students were not critically

thinking on their own. Students are taught not to critically think, so that they can get test

question answers correct and “succeed” academically. Teachers rush through curriculum to

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teach as many facts to their students as possible, asking them to study, when in fact, their version

of studying is really mere rote memorization (Villegas & Lucas, 2007, p. 30).

Many of the teachers I interviewed would like to teach differently than they currently do

so that they could focus on really imparting their students with skills, rather than mind-numbing

facts, yet teachers do not teach they way they want to because they are complying with what

their superiors have deemed as most important for their teacher evaluation. Over the past two

years I catalogued the CLT meetings for our school’s fourth grade team, and these “minute

meetings” reveal the startling truth: over 70% of our sixty minute, principal-led discussion every

two weeks centers around student testing, scores, and teacher evaluation in connection to student

progress on tests. This final piece of evidence confirms that the culture of our school is focused

on student achievement through test scores rather than student achievement through the ability to

critically think for oneself.

Reviewed Literature

Critical Thinking Needed in the 21st Century

To be successful in today’s world, a person must utilize his or her

critical thinking skills all the time. Marin & Halpern (2011) acknowledge that

critical thinking is the number one thing that students should be getting out

of their school experience as it is essential in our “contemporary world where

the rate at which new knowledge created is rapidly accelerating” (p. 1). As

teachers, our goal is to prepare our students for the real world and that

means that they need to grow up to be able to evaluate, hypothesize,

analyze, clarify, determine, and problem solve as they make decisions in

their daily lives. Kreitzeberg (2010) asserts that we cannot predict how

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radically our society, technology, and business will transform as the 21st

century marches on, “but what we really need at this time in history is

critical thinking” (p. 3). Employers in today’s world are searching for those

who can critically think by sorting through mass amounts of information,

evaluating new technology, and managing their time efficiently in the

workplace, maximizing an employer’s profits. Research shows that students

who learn at an early age to critically think can build upon a solid foundation

from the onset of their education and rapidly reach a sense of confidence

and control over their learning. The students who learn and practice critical

thinking are much more likely to acquire the love of learning and to reach

the goals of achievement that best prepare them for college and the

workforce (IMACS, 2010, p. 3).

Critical Thinking Skills Must Be Taught

Research shows that critical thinking skills must be taught and that

children are not born with this skill without direct instruction through

modeling and practice (Snyder & Snyder, 2008, p. 92). Even though some

students may naturally show signs of critical thinking, explicit teaching of

these skills is necessary for students to grab hold of critical thinking concepts

and begin trying them out on their own (Snyder & Snyder, 2008, p. 93).

Research also supports that when students are taught how to think about

their thinking in the process of metacognition, they are able to apply their

critical thinking skills with more positive results (Marin & Halpern, 2011, p.

2). Teachers cannot just assume students to walk into their classrooms with

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the ability to critically think, because if they do, they will be sorely

disappointed! Quite plainly, critical thinking is a skill that must be learned,

and as teachers take the time to brief their students on these transforming

concepts, students will begin to show progress in their ability to apply the

skills as they learn the content of the curriculum (Snyder & Snyder, 2008, p.

93). When teachers scaffold their critical thinking lessons in a way that

introduces a new skill and then provides experiences in which students

actively engage in the process, students benefit the most. Without being

taught how to critically think, few students will pick up these skills on their

own, so it is crucial that educators insert these skills into the core of the

curriculum they teach. Some researchers point to the need to start teaching

critical thinking skills at the onset of a child’s education. “According to Yeh,

critical thinking is frequently conceptualized as argumentation, a skill that

the students failing the comprehension test could not display. By

kindergarten, children know how to argue their side in a debate, and critical

thinking could be introduced in that context very early” (Berube, p. 3).

Needless to say, critical thinking is an essential scholastic skill that must be a

part of the elementary student’s learning experience.

U.S. Students Lack Critical Thinking Skills

Research indicates a frightening reality: the majority of elementary

school students who reach high school are not able to critically think! Marin

& Halpern (2011) assert that the number one identified competency that

students in the United States lack is critical thinking (p. 2). Bernstein (2013)

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exerts that students are walking into today’s high schools lacking the critical

thinking skills necessary to do the kinds of higher-level assignments that are

needed for them to prepare for college entrance (p. 2). Most of the students

in our country are unable to reason and question for themselves, so it is no

wonder that elementary teachers, like myself, a fourth grade elementary

school teacher, repeatedly wrestle our students’ resistance to learning these

skills even at such a young age. Snyder & Snyder (2008) admit the reason

for this, is because “when students are accustomed to being passive learners

by merely memorizing and recalling information, it may be difficult at first to

engage them in active learning situations that require critical thinking skills

(p. 96.) The sad reality is that the United States has poured billions of tax

dollars into the public education system in the hopes that students will be

better off. Yet, “whether you ask at the university level or at the K-12 level,

teachers lament the declining level of competency that students gain during

their school experience” (IMACS, 2013, p. 2). Simply, the question that must

be asked is: why do our students continue to lack critical thinking skills?

U.S. School Culture is at Odds with Providing an Environment for Students to Learn Critical Thinking Skills

Repeatedly throughout my research and investigation, the instigator of

this problem emerged and reemerged: the culture surrounding the American

education system considers academic achievement synonymous with

passing the test. From that socially assumed narrowly focused mantra, the

trancelike testing hypnosis has moved out of focus any room for teachers to

teach critical thinking skills to their students in the classroom without

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fighting against a larger cultural and systemic problem. Bernstein (2013)

acknowledges that the testing centered school culture is the reason why

students reach high school knowing lots of facts about history but unable to

explain or understand any of them (p. 4).

What matters to government evaluators, and therefore often translates

to what matters to American popular culture, is that massive amounts of

material be covered from K-12th grade to ensure students’ test scores rise to

prove that our students have acquired knowledge. This is a school culture

that pervades American society and as Berube notes “public perceptions

view test scores as conclusive proof that achievement is attained. Tests are

seen as symbols of order, control, and attainment. However, if important

decisions—jobs and governmental funding—rely on the outcome of high-

stakes tests, then teachers will only teach to the test, allowing test content

to define the curriculum” (2004, p. 3). Unfortunately, the very essence of

covering a plethora of information in a short amount of time to produce the

desired outcome of a “pass-advanced” grade on a standardized test actually

eliminates the ability for an educator to enrich students with the skills of

critical thinking (Marin & Halpern, 2011, p. 2). Marin & Halpern (2011)

reference an ADP study that reveals “mandated high-stakes testing forces

teachers to overly concentrate on lower-order thinking skills” (p. 2). Marin &

Halpern also quote Plitt (2004) who addresses that “adhering to state-

mandated curriculum can ‘shortchange essential skills, such as analytical

thinking or the ‘habits of mind’ that students need for success in college, in

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the workplace, and in their lives as responsible citizens” (Marin & Halpern,

2011, p. 2). Snyder & Snyder (2008) place the blame of the current inability

for many American students to critically think on “the current educational

trend to standardize curricula and focus on test scores” (p. 92).

Critical thinking requires the time for instruction, modeling, practice,

and application (Greene, 2015, p. 1). Critical thinking requires time––period.

When looking at the facts, time is the number one thing teachers do not

have, and since, critical thinking is not a skill that can adequately be

objectively assessed, standardized tests cannot measure student growth in

this area (Yanklowitz, 2013, p. 2). There is no time for teachers to provide the

necessary time in their lessons to allow students to explore, analyze, and

apply information, because there are so many new concepts they must

introduce that will “be on the test” (Snyder & Snyder, 2008, p. 92). Hands-

on activities, reflecting, evaluating, and analyzing are all key components of

the critical thinking process, but all of these skills take time to learn and take

time to apply and are therefore judged to take too much time for American

school teachers to implement into their lesson plans (Greene, 2015, p. 1).

Even though “teaching to the test” is something no talented teacher wants

to do, all teachers must comply with the realistic expectations placed upon

them, which include little time, compounded by massive content, large class

sizes, and frequent high-stakes tests. Thus, shortcuts, including the

elimination of critical thinking lessons and activities, are the only way to

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reach the “superficial goal” that America’s educators are held accountable

for.

The school culture in the United States is at odds with providing an

environment for students to learn critical thinking skills (Greene, 2015, p. 3).

Critical thinking is not on the standardized tests, and never will be, because

asking questions that require critical thinking are not assessments that can

be mass produced and graded on an assembly line (Greene, 2015, p. 3).

Greene (2015) shows that “given a wide variety of different perspectives,

different histories, and different values, intelligent people will use critical

thinking skills and arrive at different conclusions” (p. 2). With this in mind,

answers to critical thinking questions will be different and no “one right

answer” will exist. Thus, designing a standardized test that measures critical

thinking that assesses the student population’s academic growth is nearly

impossible, because of the myriads of answers that are possible. Berube

(2004) wrote that “although multiple-choice standardized tests claim to

measure every level of learning, they really only test knowledge recall” (p.

1). Gerald Conti (2013) professes that the beauty of teacher creativity has

been strangled and that as the testing culture continues to eat away at

teachers who hold their ground for teaching critical thinking, they will not

survive the institutionalized beast that will steam roll them into subservience

or death (p. 2). Why have the United States and many American educators

convinced themselves that high-stakes tests prove that students have

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learned the required content when all they really have proved is rote

memorization?

One critical thinking advocate, Claire Berube, assistant professor of

education at Wagner College, put her theory to the test when she assessed

groups of students who had taken standardized tests with a comprehension

test of her own that required the students to explain what they knew about

the tested material. Her discoveries from this investigation were astounding:

“71 percent of the students who passed the state mandated, multiple choice

test failed my comprehension test. [The students] either could not explain

their answers or gave bogus explanations. It seemed they could pass the

SOL but did not understand the subject matter” (2004, p. 2). Her research

also “the influence of the test is greater as the stakes increase, with 40

percent of teachers in high stakes states, such as Virginia, reporting that the

tests influence their teaching on a daily basis” (Berube, 2004, p. 2). When

teachers feel the pressure that their students’ performance on tests reflects

their teaching ability and their potential livelihood, they are more likely to

“teach to the test,” which is completely void of critical thinking application

and use of skills (Berube, 2004, p. 3). Her findings “suggest that tests often

affect instruction in ways that directly contradict the state educational

reform policies intent to raise standards” (Berube, p. 3)

The culture surrounding high-stakes testing has been in place for over

two decades, and “[Child development experts] say the ever-growing

emphasis on academic performance and test scores means many children

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aren’t developing life skills” (Parker-Pope, 2011, p.1). High-stakes testing

creates an immense amount of pressure on young students, which inhibits

them from taking risks and exploring given they are afraid of being wrong

(Yanklowitz, 2013, p. 1). Research shows that young students in the 21st

century suffer from more anxiety than they ever have before and that

unfortunately high-stakes testing is a large proponent of this negative

phenomenon affecting our younger generation (Yanklowitz, 2013, p. 2).

School is no longer enjoyable to many students because of this pressure they

face about failure and teachers are not able to intervene in most cases,

because their jobs performance is linked to student achievement on these

same tests that are impeding true and dynamic learning from taking place

(Yanklowitz, 2013, p. 2). Berube notes that “achievement should not be

measured by how well we train our students to take multiple-choice tests. If

we are not careful, we could become a nation of people who score high on

standardized tests but who cannot understand, analyze, synthesize, and

evaluate what we have truly learned” (2004, p. 3).

Action Plan

My action plan commenced with a series of thought-provoking questions that kept my

students as the plan’s focus. How could I prepare the next generation of thinkers and move them

past their natural resistance to think on their own and to dig down within themselves to find their

strength to wrestle out an answer through getting a problem wrong and trying again from a

different angle? How could I teach students to critically think and push them beyond their

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comfort zone of repeating back the right answer or the taught method? How could I breathe into

them the confidence to be wrong and the perseverance to keep at it until they succeed?

First, I implemented my action plan by following some of the ideas of Action

Research Study from a Masters student in Cedar Rapids, IA from 2006. For

her thesis, Debra Connerly targeted fourth grade “gifted and talented”

students and tried out critical thinking skills with them, so I applied what Falk

& Blumenreich (2005) suggested in using “studies that have already been

done on [the] topic and what has been learned about it and other related

issues” instead of “reinventing the wheel” (p. 41). Obviously, my focus was

on my fourth grade students as a whole—not just the ones tracked as gifted.

It was important to identify a starting point from which I could measure

potential student growth in the area of critical thinking. This study enabled

me to launch my investigation, and I used a self-assessment from her

Appendices for each of my students to gauge where they thought they were

in regards to their abilities to critically think. The self assessment asked the

students to circle their usual behaviors or responses on a scale of 1 to 5 to

given situations like what kind of thinker they are, looking for better ways to

do things, their willingness to try, explaining their ideas to others,

questioning things, staying on topic, and how much they think about their

decisions and actions.

The second step in my action plan was to design lessons that implicitly taught my

students critical thinking skills. After researching many books, articles, and online lesson

suggestions, I decided to adapt eight lessons from Bellanca, Fogarty, and Pete’s How to Teach

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Thinking Skills Within the Common Core. These particular lessons taught the students through

modeling, guided practice, collaborative experiences, and independent practice how to critically

think. My plan was to be my own “test case” to see whether or not students can make steady

progress in their abilities to critically think if a teacher teachers specific lessons to her students

about how to actually do the following critical thinking skills: the ability to (1) analyze, (2)

evaluate, (3) problem solve, (4) hypothesize, (5) clarify, and (6) determine by using the lesson

plan structures laid out from the book How to Teach Thinking Skills Within the Common Core. I

created specific Power Points for each lesson to outline the skills and lesson activities,

integrating each with the content from the fourth grade reading, science, history, and math

curriculum. My goal for each lesson was to get students to verbalize their thinking through

words and conversation, so that they had ideas to write down when they needed to show their

thinking through written responses. Each lesson ended with a reflection that the students would

think and write their “take away” from the experiences.

Lesson 1: Analyzing

The first lesson was on the critical thinking skill of analyzing. I began with a simple

“talk-and-turn” activity to have my students generate their background knowledge and

connections to the term. From there, we discussed as a class what it looked like and sounded like

to analyze something. I also provided the students with a picture of two figures with magnifying

glasses analyzing a word to brand a visual of what the term meant. After that, I used shark teeth

as a modeling activity and analyzed two different shark teeth in front of the students examining,

noticing, and comparing them with one another. The students then had the opportunity to work

with the group at their table to analyze two different shark teeth and to have a discussion using

the question prompts on the board. During the five minute analyzing activity, I went around and

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took observational notes about the comments and behaviors of the students in the group. Once

the activity was completed, students at each table chose a representative to share some of the

highlights from their analysis of the two shark teeth at their table. I used a fishbone graphic

organizer to record the students’ analyses. I then passed out a fishbone graphic organizer to each

of the students and asked them to analyze a chapter from our VA Studies textbook on the

Revolutionary War and record their findings on the chart with a partner. The final independent

activity was to analyze two different types of toothpastes and create their own graphic organizer

on a piece of notebook paper to capture their analysis of the products. Finally, I had the students

discuss with one another in a “talk and turn” what they used to think about what it meant to

analyze something and whether or not that had changed over the course of the lesson. Students

recorded their “takeaways” from the lesson in their discovery journals.

Lesson 2: Evaluating

The second lesson was on the critical thinking skill of evaluating. I began again with a

“talk-and-turn” activity to have the students brainstorm what they already knew or assumed

about evaluating. After that, we discussed as a class what it looked like and sounded like to

evaluate something. I then provided the students with a picture of a man in a tie and glasses with

a checklist on his clipboard to establish a visual of what the term meant. From there, I used a

former students’ VA Studies Weekly newspaper of articles to model for the students how to read,

examine, compare, make a judgment, and support the opinion with reasons about which article I

thought was the best in the newspaper. The students then had the opportunity to work with a

partner at their table to evaluate the six different articles from their newspaper and to have a

discussion using the question prompts on the board. During the ten minute analyzing activity, I

went around and took observational notes about the comments and behaviors of the students in

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the group. Once the activity was completed, students from each group stood up and awarded

their “winning” article with a blue ribbon and shared why they had evaluated it as the best from

the newspaper. We discussed by what measures we had evaluated the articles on and why.

Next, we had a Title War as a class, and each student evaluated which of the six article titles

from the newspaper they thought was best based on some of the measures we had discussed as a

class. Then all the students who had voted for the same title grouped themselves together in a

different corner and side of the classroom. The groups had three minutes to discuss and write

down on a white board their reasons for why they had evaluated their title as the best one from

the newspaper. Then I facilitated a debate among the groups, and each group designated a

spokesperson to “argue” their reasons from the white boards, “warring” against the other teams.

The final independent activity was to evaluate three different history websites about the

Revolutionary War using a worksheet I had produced using the evaluation measures of

organization, information, activities, and appealing to kids. The worksheet asked the students to

explain for each of their evaluations, what had made them choose that site for the best in that

category and to provide an example to support their evaluation. The students also had the chance

to create their own evaluation category and to defend their reasoning there as well. Students then

used the evaluation measures to rank the three websites from best to worst, providing the

evaluation measures as evidence, proving their position. Finally, I had the students discuss with

one another in a “talk and turn” what they used to think about what it meant to evaluate

something and whether or not that had changed over the course of the lesson. Students recorded

their “takeaways” from the lesson in their discovery journals.

Lesson 3: Problem Solving

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The third lesson was on the critical thinking skill of problem solving. I started with the

“talk-and-turn” activity to have my students brainstorm about what they already knew about the

term and what context they had used it in before. From there, we discussed as a class what it

looked like and sounded like to problem solve. I also provided the students with a picture of a

figure scratching his head as he gazed at a pile of puzzle pieces to offer a visual of what the term

meant. After that, I used a pretend shopping trip and showed the students various items that I

could buy for different prices and the amount of money I had in my purse. I then began using

trial and error as well as addition to figure out how many items I could buy and not go over the

dollar amount I had in my purse. I used volunteers to help me and wrote out my thinking on a T

Chart beside my imaginary store. We discussed as a class how I did not immediately know how

many items I could buy with the money I had in my purse, but that trial and error was needed for

me to decide how many items I could buy. The students then had the opportunity to work with

the group at their table to problem solve with a bucket of water and a dish full of different size

and weighted objects. Students were asked to create a weight with their objects that did not sink,

and did not float, but stayed relatively between the surface of the water and the bottom of the

bucket in the water. During the seven-minute problem solving activity, I went around and took

observational notes about the comments and behaviors of the students in the group. Once the

activity was completed, students at each table chose a representative to share some of the

highlights from their problem solving experience. I used a T Chart to record the students’

attempts and outcomes, listing how many did not work before they came across the attempt that

did. I then passed out a T Chart to each of the students and asked them to problem solve with the

games from a website about critical thinking called KidsPsych.org. Students individually had an

opportunity to record how many attempts they tried before being successful on a particular

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problem solving game from the website. The final activity was to integrate problem solving into

our current STEM project. Students are working with a partner to design an exhibit for a class

museum, and each exhibit is to answer a particular question that each team was assigned.

Students identified their problem as: how do we make an exhibit that answers our question?

Each team used a T Chart in their STEM packet to record what their attempts were over the

course of the next week before they reached a solution to their exhibit problem. Finally, I had

the students discuss with one another in a “talk and turn” what they used to think about what it

meant to problem solve and whether or not that had changed over the course of the lesson,

especially in regards to what types of subjects or situations it could be applied to. Students


Lesson 4: Hypothesizing

The fourth lesson was on the critical thinking skill of hypothesizing. I began with a

simple “talk-and-turn” activity to have my students generate their background knowledge and

connections to the term. From there, we discussed as a class what it looked like and sounded like

to hypothesize. I also provided the students with a picture of a girl rubbing her chin as she

studied a science beaker with a solution inside to link a visual of what the term meant. After

that, I showed the students a small bag of sand, a small bag of iron filings, a small bag of salt,

and a small bag of baking soda. I modeled how to make a hypothesis about what I think will

happen to each substance once I pour them into a jar of water. I used background knowledge

and what I know to help me in making each of my “educated guesses.” I recorded these reasons

on a web graphic organizer connected to the hypothesis I had made in the center circle of the

web chart. The students then had the opportunity to work with the group at their table to

hypothesize about what would happen with various objects that may sink or float in a tub of

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water. Students used reasons to prove their thinking for each hypothesis they made with their

teammates. During the ten-minute hypothesizing activity, I went around and took observational

notes about the comments and behaviors of the students in the group. Once the activity was

completed, students at each table chose a representative to share some of the highlights from

their hypothesizing activity. I used the web graphic organizer to record the students’ hypotheses

and reasons for support. I then passed out a web graphic organizer to each of the students and

asked them to hypothesize with a partner about how a particular chapter book will end based on

the “preview” from the back of a given book that they have not read before. The final

independent activity was to play the game “20 Questions” and formulate a hypothesis about what

was inside of the bag based on the yes and no responses from playing the game with a partner.

Finally, I had the students discuss with one another in a “talk and turn” what they used to think

about what it meant to hypothesize and whether or not that had changed over the course of the

lesson. Students recorded their “takeaways” from the lesson in their discovery journals.

Lesson 5: Clarifying

The fifth lesson was on the critical thinking skill of analyzing. I began with a simple

“talk-and-turn” activity to have my students get the students thinking about where they had heard

this term and what picture they had in their minds about what it meant. From there, we discussed

as a class what it looked like and sounded like to clarify something. I also provided the students

with a picture of a bulletin board with spotlights shedding light on particular words to help

validate the term visually for the students. As a class, we discussed how clarifying meant that

we went from “confused” to “understanding,” and I used two faces to demonstrate the process of

clarifying with these two images. After that, I used the phrase “Give me liberty or give me

death” from our most recent history lesson as a phrase that needed clarifying. I showed the

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students how to define terms that are complicated or unfamiliar first and then to generate context

for the phrase or words to better “shed light” on what it meant. The students then aided me in

sharing what they knew about who had said the phrase, why he had said it, where and when he

had said it, and to whom he had said it. I enabled the students to also give me a picture of how

they thought Patrick Henry had said it through “acting out” demonstrations. I modeled for the

students how the last piece of clarifying was to write the phrase in your own words so that it is

more easily understood for others. Then the students had the opportunity to work with the group

at their table to clarify a phrase from the Declaration of Independence that we are memorizing

together. Students worked together using iPads and dictionaries to look up the unfamiliar words

and the context for what their five to seven word phrase meant. Students filled out a simple table

with three categories: (1) unfamiliar or complicated word meanings, (2) context, and (3) in our

own words. At the end of the twelve- minute activity, the student groups shared what their

phrase meant in their own words. Once the activity was completed, students at each table chose

a painting depicting a scene from the Revolutionary War to clarify using a similar table with a

partner. Students worked to clarify what the painting meant and what takeaway the artist may

have wanted his or her viewers to have after viewing the artwork. At the end of this activity,

students shared what story their artwork was telling with the class. Finally, I had the students

discuss with one another in a “talk and turn” what they used to think about what it meant to

clarify something and whether or not that had changed over the course of the lesson. Students


Lesson 6: Determining

The sixth lesson was on the critical thinking skill of determining. I began with a simple

“talk-and-turn” activity to have my students formulate connections and background to the term.

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From there, we discussed as a class what it looked like and sounded like to determine something.

For a visual representation of the term, I provided the students with a picture of a man holding a

key and explained to the students that this image was about finding the keys that were important

to a selection, problem, or scenario. After that, I modeled for the student how to determine the

importance of a short nonfiction paragraph by displaying it on the board, reading it aloud,

circling key phrases and words that had been repeated, and finally by creating a subtitle for the

paragraph. The students then had the opportunity to work with a partner at their table to

determine the importance of an assigned article from the Virginia Studies Weekly newspapers

from that week. Students used sticky notes to jot down key words and phrases that were “keys”

to the importance of the article. During the seven-minute determining activity, I went around

and took observational notes about the comments and behaviors of the students in the group.

After that, each team stood in front of the class and shared what they had determined as the most

important part of the article they had been assigned. The class took notes with a webbed graphic

organizer in their Virginia Studies notebooks to write a key word or phrase from each brief team

presentation. I then had the students apply the concept of “determining importance” to their

current STEM project and had students talk-and-turn to brainstorm what the takeaway from their

museum exhibit should be. Students then worked together to formulate an exhibit title for the

main idea they wanted to communicate to the visitors. The final independent activity was to

determine the importance of a short video clip about the battle of Yorktown that we watched

from the Yorktown Foundation’s website. Students viewed the video as a class and used a web

to capture key words and phrases that had been mentioned in the film. Students then wrote a title

for the clip in their own words that captured the most important takeaway as well as a subtitle to

explain it further. Finally, I had the students discuss with one another in a “talk and turn” what

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they used to think about what it meant to determine and whether or not that had changed over the

course of the lesson. Students recorded their own “takeaways” from the lesson in their discovery

journals.

Data Collection and Analysis

The students’ results from the self assessment that had them rank their behaviors and

responses toward critical thinking situations was the pre-assessment that I used to evaluate where

each student was starting from before the critical thinking lessons were taught. The self-

assessment was a series of eight questions, and what I found fascinating was the fact that many

of the students who I had identified through observations previously also identified themselves

with the behaviors and responses that lacked critical thinking ability. This made me consciously

aware that (1) my observations were affirmed by the students themselves without their awareness

of my evaluations and (2) the students themselves are in tune with their behaviors and responses

to critical thinking situations and were honest about where they fell on the rating scale.

The first question asked them to gauge themselves on their ability to analyze and

evaluate. Seven students identified themselves with a “1”—indicating they lacked this ability,

five students chose “2”; six students chose “3”—indicating they were beginning to use these

skills; five identified with “4”; and no students identified with “5”—indicating that they always

and independently used these skills. Out of the twenty-three students who took the

questionnaire, the scores averaged 2.39 for question #1.

The second question asked the students to evaluate how much they believed in

themselves to find an answer. One student identified himself with a “1”—indicating he did not

believe he could, ten students chose “2”; eight students chose “3”—indicating they sometimes

thought they could; three students chose a “4”; and no students chose a “5”—which indicated

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they always knew they could find the answer. Out of the twenty-three students who took the

questionnaire, the scores averaged 2.65 for question #2.

The third question asked the students to assess themselves on how often they attempted to

figure things out on their own. Eight students identified themselves with a “1”—which indicated

that they did not attempt to figure things out on their own; six students chose “2”; four students

chose “3”—which indicated that they sometimes attempted to figure things out on their own;

four students chose “4”; and one student chose “5”—which indicated he always tried to figure

things out on his own. Out of the twenty-three students who took the questionnaire, the scores

averaged 2.30 for question #3.

The fourth question asked the students to rank themselves based on their ability to

explain things in different ways. Three students identified themselves with a “1”—indicating

they did not have the ability to explain things in different ways; seven students chose “2”; ten

students chose “3”—indicating they sometimes could explain things in different ways; three

students chose “4”; and no students chose “5”—which indicated that they could always explain

things in different ways. Out of the twenty-three students who took the questionnaire, the scores

averaged 2.57 for question #4.

The fifth question asked the students to measure how much they believed everything they

heard or read. Five students identified themselves as “1”—indicating that they always believe

everything they hear and read; eight students identified themselves as “2”; six students identified

themselves as “3”—indicating that they sometimes believed everything they heard and read; six

identified themselves as “4”; and no students identified themselves as “5”—indicating that they

always check out what they read and hear before believing it to be true. Out of the twenty-three

students who took the questionnaire, the scores averaged 2.43 for question #5.

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The sixth question asked the students to identify how they stayed on track with what they

said in discussions. Six students identified themselves as never staying on track with relevance

during discussions; three identified themselves as “2”; eight students identified themselves as

sometimes staying on topic with relevance during discussions; four identified themselves as “4”;

and one student identified himself as “5”—indicating that he always stayed relevant and on topic

with his comments in a discussion. Out of the twenty-three students who took the questionnaire,

the scores averaged 2.70 for question #6.

The seventh question asked the students to judge how often they made an effort to see

how things work, make sense, or fit together. Three students identified themselves as a “1”—

indicating that they never make the effort to see how things work, make sense, or fit together;

nine students identified themselves as a “2”; six students identified themselves as a “3”—

indicating that they sometimes made an effort to see how things worked, made sense, or fit

together; four identified themselves as a “4”; and no students identified themselves as a “5”—

indicating that they always make the effort to find out how things work, make sense, or fit

together. Out of the twenty-three students who took the questionnaire, the scores averaged 2.60

for question #7.

The eighth question asked the students to evaluate themselves on their decision-making

and how often they think through the outcomes beforehand. Two students identified themselves

as a “1”—indicating they never think through the outcomes before making a decision; four

students identified themselves with a “2”; nine students identified themselves with a “3”—

indicating that they sometimes thought through the outcomes before making a decision; six

students identified themselves with “4”; and one student identified himself with a “5”—

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indicating that he always thought through the outcomes before making a decision. Out of the

twenty-three students who took the questionnaire, the scores averaged 3.08 for question #8.

Overall, the data from the pre-assessment disclosed that for all eight questions, the

majority of the class scored less than halfway toward the achievement of consistent practice and

application of critically thinking. The students in the class do not have the skills or lack the

confidence to implement these critical thinking skills on a regular basis in the classroom. The

class felt most confident in their ability to make decisions and think through the outcomes

beforehand. Yet most students identified themselves as somewhere in the middle for most of the

critical thinking skills they were asked about throughout the questionnaire. Very few students

chose to identify themselves with the most confident score for each question. The averages

indicate that the areas where the students rank themselves as least confident is in their ability to

find an answer, how often they attempted to figure things out on their own, and how often they

believed everything that they read and heard. For me, this reveals that the students need more

opportunities to search for answers on their own and to make a plan for how to attempt and

achieve an answer to their question. In addition, students need motivation to attempt to solve

problems and to understand things on their own without the assistance from a teacher.

Furthermore, students need to question what they hear and read by checking it out before

automatically believing something to be true.

Emerging Findings and Action Plan Monitoring

Through my teaching of critical thinking lessons, it became increasingly evident that

students are hesitant and resistant to exert effort in trying to critically think if they sense the

threat that they may be wrong. Conveying to my students through these lessons that I am

“grading” them based on their thinking and not on getting the right answer has been liberating

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for some of these students. Many of them have been conditioned to withhold trying because of

embarrassment or fear of failure or frustration by the way the school culture emphasizes right

and wrong answers in all subjects. Current questioning techniques for the most part are given in

rapid fire with short, quick one-word or one-phrase answers that rarely give the student an

opportunity to reflect before needing to produce a response verbally and publically. By

alleviating their anxiety, more students are attempting to complete activities with less need for

support, clarification of directions, and immediate feedback of their results. I have noticed an

overall independence in trying to complete a task or engage in an activity that I have not seen

before.

During the analyzing lesson, students were accustomed to making observations and

verbalizing what they noticed, because I had trained them to analyze primary sources from the

onset of the school year. Students readily applied the same practice to comparing the shark teeth

and the two different brands of toothpastes. I heard thought-provoking questions during the

discussions; students were using their senses including feeling and smelling and tasting to

analyze; students were also using comparisons like how big or small it was, sharpness, and what

it looked like that they were familiar with. Most of the students were comfortable with the

analysis activity when they were not required to write out their responses in a specific format.

However, when I asked them to fill out the fishbone graphic organizer about their

analysis of the chapter from the VA Studies textbook, students hesitated and struggled with

knowing what to do and how to fill out. They were fearful of filling it out “wrong,” and this

prevented many of the students from engaging in the analysis activity as much as they could

have. Even though I had modeled using the fishbone graphic organizer in the first activity with

them, it was still foreign to the students, since they had never used it before on their own. Many

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of the students asked me to repeat the directions; they shared with me that they did not

understand and were confused; still others, changed the fishbone organizer into another type of

organization structure that they felt more comfortable with and began filling it out instead. For

the next analysis activity, I adapted the fishbone organizer and had the students create their own

graphic organizer to list their observations and comparisons. This worked well, and the students

were eager to record their analysis in their own organized way on a piece of notebook paper.

The skill itself proved to be a concept most of the class was embracing; the only adjustment was

how the students should catalog their thinking.

With this being the first critical thinking lesson I had directed at the students, with the

emphasis of requiring open-ended responses that made them dig into what they were analyzing, I

experienced a lot of resistance from the students when they tried to complete the assignment of

analyzing the Social Studies chapter from the textbook. I think the shift from a high-interest

activity of the shark teeth with little to no writing and reading required to then the more

academic textbook analysis activity that did require some reading and writing bored and

frustrated a lot of the students. In fact, one student came to me with a tear-stained face and told

me that she just did not know what we were doing and that she felt really confused. Critical

thinking can be fun in certain contexts, and even though the fun is challenging—the challenge is

masked in some ways from the students, because they are enjoying the activity and feel excited

to engage in it. About half of students really embraced this lesson, and the other half struggled,

because of their unfamiliarity with the process and the requirement of reading and writing in

addition to the thinking process.

During the second lesson on evaluating, students were excited to discover that the skill

was not as challenging as they had first assumed! Many students connected evaluating with

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making an opinion about something. A few students struggled in the beginning with this

concept, because they wanted to choose the “right one,” and the idea that there could be multiple

“right” answers was something they did not quite trust. However, as the activities progressed,

and these more hesitant students worked with others who were eager to share their opinions

about the articles that they thought were best, students began taking the risk of choosing a “best”

article for themselves and feeling more confident in the process of evaluating. The “Title War”

was a huge success, because it forced students to make an evaluation and then actually move to a

different part of the room to make that judgment. This action associated with the thinking

process made their choice more official, and they were met with others who felt similar about

their evaluation. Collaborating as teams to provide reasons for why the teams felt that their title

was the best enabled students to hear how others were thinking and arriving at similar

conclusions to their own. Students with less writing ability were able to talk about why they had

made their evaluation without the intimidation of having to write out their reason, since there

was one white board for each team.

When it came to evaluating the three websites, students felt empowered, because their

personal opinions were seen as valuable as long as they provided evidence and an example of

why they thought so. Again, a few students came to me for support, because they were leery that

they were choosing the “wrong” website for each evaluation. Reinforcing that there were no

wrong answers, and that my goal for them was to show how they were thinking about their

evaluation freed them up to focus on the task and work independently. I recognize that it would

have been beneficial to have had the students had a “Website War” using the data that they had

collected on their worksheets as a way of validating their evaluations even more.

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About half of my students groaned when they saw the topic for the third critical thinking

lesson: problem solving. Students associated the term with math and word problems. Many

students who are intimidated by their poor grades in this subject began verbalizing their negative

feelings towards this skill, because of their “failure” with it. Pretending to go shopping and

modeling it as a real life scenario made a few female students less uneasy, because they wanted

to help me spend my money wisely with the items I bought at the store. But others were still not

convinced they could do the problem solving activities after the modeling, because of the money

aspect still connecting it with math. Taking numbers and computation out of it through the “float

but not float” activity really motivated students to work with their teammates to accomplish the

mission—completely forgetting their original angst with the topic. Still others were bothered by

the activity, because after a few attempts, they still could not get their object to stay “in between”

the surface and the floor. I made notes about how students reacted after their third attempt as a

team: two of the five teams seemed frustrated and were less motivated to try; one team had a

member who led the rest of the teammates to keep trying different combinations of objects; and

the other two teams were completely engaged until they had succeeded with the mission.

Depending on the student groupings, the frustration levels ranged. Groups that met their

frustration threshold sooner than others looked to what other groups were trying, and used their

ideas to reinvigorate their attempts.

Trial and error remains a practice that is unfamiliar to most fourth grade students and is

often not attempted, because of fear of failing and never reaching a final answer. I observed that

this is a crucial piece to why students are lacking critical thinking skills altogether. In our fast-

paced instantaneous communications world, students are met with immediate gratification and

instant feedback both in their daily lives and in their school activities. The idea of struggle is not

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something the students regularly face; and they see the idea of “struggle” as something that

prevents learning rather than part of the process of learning. I recognize that trial-and-error

activities need to be incorporated into many more lessons in all subject areas so that students

gain familiarity with the process and see the process as routine to them so that there is less

intimidation associated with it. The T Chart was revealing to many of the students, because it

recorded how many times the students tried and failed. In retrospect, I would have liked to have

given a prize to the team who had the most attempts, as this would have rewarded the effort

rather than success.

The fourth critical thinking lesson focused around the idea of hypothesizing, and several

of the “gifted” students had heard this word from their FUTURA program. Still others knew that

it was linked with science experiments. Once the majority of the class connected it with the idea

of making a “good guess with reasons,” many of them shared how they were eager to get started

with the activity, since they knew how to do it. Modeling how to hypothesize with the

dissolving activity definitely got the students interested and engaged. I now realize that this

activity may have been better for the students to do as a guided practice rather than through

modeling, because it was so appealing to them. Students shouted out their reasons for why they

guessed the different substances would dissolve in water—some with background knowledge

and some with their observation of how the substance looked or felt. Using the web to chronicle

the reasons for why the hypothesis was used was an unfamiliar concept to the students, because

many of them just assumed that the reasons should be known if the hypothesis was given.

Taking this extra step to write down my thinking while I modeled the skill enabled students to

slow down the process and identify what was proving the hunches. Some of the students

mentioned during the “Sink or Float” activity how hypothesizing was like the skill of predicting

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in reading. When I laid out the guidelines for the “Back of the Book” activity, students relied on

their partners to help them make guesses and predictions based on the few clues from the book’s

back cover. The web was difficult for a few students to fill out, because they struggled to

identify what clues had been given in the paragraph from the back of the book that was making

them think that. I encouraged these students to use phrases and words that had “jumped out” at

them and to identify the exact line when they had first thought their prediction as they read.

Using both a science activity and then the reading activity with this skill helped the students

recognize that hypothesizing was cross-curricular and not just a “science skill.” The final

activity for hypothesizing was the most revealing for the students, because it required the

students to ask yes or no questions about a hidden object in a bag to gain clues as to what it could

be and then to make an educated guess. After twenty questions, many students still had no idea

what the object was and asked if they could increase the number of questions to thirty. I agreed,

and this process continued—as some student pairs asked over fifty questions before making their

hypothesis, because they wanted so badly to guess it correctly. The reflections from this activity

showed that through asking the questions, students realized how hard thinking really was and

how thinking takes a long time and requires asking many questions. Some of the students asked

if we could “play this game” again in future lessons, because they liked the challenge even

though it had taken a long time to guess the right answer. I was impressed that this activity

stimulated those kinds of student responses! I am noticing patterns among the majority of my

students that they believe critical thinking is within their reach as we continue forward in these

lessons.

I taught the fifth critical thinking lesson on clarifying in the afternoon at the end of the

day, and I definitely noticed that my students were less excited and less engaged in the lesson

39


than when I have taught these lessons in the beginning of the day. It was more challenging to

keep the students focused while I modeled how to unpack the phrase: “Give me liberty or give

me death.” Perhaps it was because so many of the students already knew what the phrase meant

and were bored with the example being modeled for them. When it came to their turns to clarify

the meanings of their phrase from the Declaration of Independence, over half of my students

showed signs of frustration. Body language and facial expressions in my observations told me

that the assignment was too difficult for them, that they did not have enough context to provide

accurate or compelling background knowledge, and that they were not motivated to understand

what the eighteenth century language meant in the first place. I recognize too that my response

to their negative energy about the assignment frustrated me, and even though I tried to act

excited about what they were working on, I felt my reactions were contrived and not truly

genuine.

In addition, over the past two weeks I have had one of my students qualify for special

education services, and so now I have an aid that pushes into my classroom everyday to provide

support for this student now that he has an IEP. Having the dynamic of my classroom change

with her presence is an adjustment for both myself and the students as our “class family” has had

a new addition that does not quite understand yet how the class culture and the “organized

chaos” works. I have filled her in about the critical thinking lessons that I am doing with my

students, but she is somewhat silently resistant to my action plan, because the other teachers on

the fourth grade team are not doing this too. She watches my effort and planning for these

lessons and knows why I consider these lessons important for my students. Yet, she struggles

with the fact that I am “giving up” writing time or VA Studies time to do these activities with the

students. I prove the validity of teaching these lessons with actual SOL numbers and can show

40


how they directly meet the standards for Language Arts and VA Studies; however, there is a

discrepancy between how I am teaching and how the other teachers in fourth grade are teaching

—as the other teachers are using their time to prepare and review with their students for the

upcoming SOLs. There has been the introduction of a resistant energy within the classroom from

her since she has joined us during these lessons.

I recognize that this teacher’s aid represents a force that I cannot fight, but that directly

opposes what I am trying to do with my students in teaching them how to critically think. The

literature that I have read, researched, and provided speaks of this exact issue, and because

teachers are held accountable with standards of learning, benchmark testing, pacing guides,

lesson plans, and ultimately the end-of-the-year SOL tests, there is little room in the schedule to

teach critical thinking skills and truly provide enough time for the students to try them out—no

matter how much I integrate them within the subjects and concepts I am required to teach. This

cultural force is bigger than me and bigger than the difference I may or may not be making in my

classroom. This is a force even bigger than my school. Teachers have been trained to follow the

rules of their superiors; their superiors have been conditioned to follow the rules of what the

government evaluators have told them. The government officials crafting educational laws

design them with the “testing culture” in mind, a culture that the United States has embraced and

the way that our educational system has evolved over the past fifty years. Testing has been a

way to measure success in our culture; and the more pressure for success on the test, the more

emphasis the actual test has become rather than the process of making the student successful in

and of himself or herself. What I am fighting through teaching my students to critically think is

the testing culture of America.

Conclusions and Implications

41


My biggest takeaway from this experience is that teaching critical thinking lessons has a

bigger impact on students than I ever thought that it would. Throughout the course of teaching

these lessons through the implementation of my Action Plan, the mixed reactions from the

students has given me mixed feedback about whether or not these lesson plans were truly

working. After each lesson, I had several students complain that the lesson had simply confused

them more. I wondered if my lessons were making any progress with the students at all. On top

of that, the negative stares and the skeptical criticism from the teacher’s aid in my classroom had

led me to doubt the effectiveness of what I was doing with the students, especially with the

weight of SOL tests looming just ahead in less than a few weeks. Until I gave my students the

post-assessment, I had planned to write how critical thinking lessons had little to no impact on

student thinking and behavior. But the numbers don’t lie, and when I compared the pre-

assessment to the post-assessment results, I was floored. These results reflect the reality: my

students definitely show significant gains from having been taught the six critical thinking

lessons laid out in my Action Plan. In responding to all eight questions in the self-assessment,

the answer average increased. Below is a bar graph indicating the differences between the

results from the pre-assessment compared with the results from the post-assessment.

Comparisons Between the Results of Student Pre and Post Assessments

42


Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q80

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Pre-Assessment Results

Post-Assessment Results

The first question asked the students about their ability to analyze and evaluate. Seven

students identified themselves with a “1”—indicating they lacked this ability in the pre-

assessment, but in the post-assessment, only two did. Six students chose “3”—indicating they

were beginning to use these skills in the pre-assessment, whereas only three chose this rating in

the post-assessment. Five had identified with “4” in the pre-assessment, and nine identified with

it in the post-assessment. No students identified with “5”—indicating that they always and

independently used these skills on the pre-assessment, yet the post-assessment revealed that two

students now identified with that rating. Overall, the pre-assessment scores averaged 2.39 for

question #1 and the post-assessment scores contrasted with that averaging 3.04.

The second question asked about how much they believed in themselves to find an

answer. In the pre-assessment, one student identified himself with a “1”—indicating he did not

believe he could, the post-assessment revealed that that one student no longer believes that,

because zero students chose a “1” in the post-assessment. Ten students had chosen “2” in the

pre-assessment, whereas now only four students identify with it. Eight students had chosen

43


“3”—indicating they sometimes thought they could in the pre-assessment, and five students

chose it in the post-assessment. Three students had chosen a “4” in the pre-assessment, but the

post-assessment revealed that thirteen students now identify with this, indicating that they are

well on their way to believing that they are capable of finding answers to their questions!

Overall, the pre-assessment scores averaged 2.65 for question #2, and the post-assessment scores

averaged 3.48.

The third question asked the students to about their attempts to figure things out on their

own. In the pre-assessment, eight students identified themselves with a “1”—which indicated

that they did not attempt to figure things out on their own, but in the post-assessment only two

students chose this. Six students had chosen “2” in the pre-assessment, whereas now three did.

Four students had chosen “3”—which indicated that they sometimes attempted to figure things

out on their own, and now two were identifying with this. Four students had chosen “4”con the

pre-assessment, but the post-assessment showed that seven students now scored this. The most

significant difference between the pre-assessment and post-assessment scores from question

three was that only one student had chosen “5” on the pre-assessment—which indicated he

always tried to figure things out on his own. Yet, now seven students were identifying

themselves with this critical thinking ability! Overall, the pre-assessment scores averaged 2.30

for question #3, and the post-assessment scores averaged 3.65.

The fourth question asked the students about how they explain things in different ways.

In the pre-assessment, three students identified themselves with a “1”—indicating they did not

have the ability to explain things in different ways, but in the post-assessment, only one student

did. Seven students had chosen “2” on the pre-assessment, and now only two did on the post-

assessment. Ten students had chosen “3” on the pre-assessment—indicating they sometimes

44


could explain things in different ways, whereas now five were identifying themselves with this.

Three students had chosen “4” on the pre-assessment, and now six did. None of the students had

chosen “5” on the pre-assessment—which indicated that they could always explain things in

different ways, however, now five did. Overall, the pre-assessment scores averaged 2.57

compared with the post-assessment scores averaging 3.7 for question #4.

The fifth question asked the students about how much they believed everything they

heard or read. On the pre-assessment, five students had identified themselves as “1”—indicating

that they always believe everything they hear and read, but the post-assessment showed that now

none of the students identified with that! Eight students had identified themselves as “2” on the

pre-assessment, whereas on the post-assessment four did. Six students had identified themselves

as “3”—indicating that they sometimes believed everything they heard and read, but now seven

did. Six identified themselves as “4” on the pre-assessment, but on the post-assessment, that

number doubled to eight students. On the pre-assessment, none of the students identified

themselves as “5”—indicating that they always check out what they read and hear before

believing it to be true, yet two students identified with this on the post-assessment. For question

#5, the pre-assessment scores averaged 2.43, and the post-assessment surpassed that average by a

whole point with 3.43!

The sixth question asked the students about how often they stayed on track with what

they said in discussions. In the pre-assessment, six students had identified themselves as never

staying on track with relevance during discussions, but the post-assessment showed that none of

the students do now. Eight students had identified themselves as sometimes staying on topic

with relevance during discussions on the pre-assessment, but the post-assessment showed that six

now do. Four had identified themselves as “4” and now six of them did. The pre-assessment

45


had shown that one student identified himself as “5”—indicating that he always stayed relevant

and on topic with his comments in a discussion, but now four students did. Again, the averages

between the two scores show that the critical thinking lessons had a positive impact on the

students’ outcomes as 3.39 compared with the pre-assessment average of 2.70 for question #6.

The seventh question asked about the effort the students made to see how things worked,

made sense, or fit together. In the pre-assessment, three students had identified themselves as a

“1”—indicating that they never make the effort to see how things work, make sense, or fit

together. But the post-assessment showed that only one student views himself as a “1”. Nine

students had identified themselves as a “2” in the pre-assessment, contrasting the three in the

post-assessment. Further, the pre-assessment revealed that six students had identified themselves

as a “3”—indicating that they sometimes made an effort to see how things worked, made sense,

or fit together, but that number decreased by half in the post-assessment. Four students had

identified themselves as a “4” in the pre-assessment, whereas eleven now identify themselves

with that! In the pre-assessment, none of the students identified themselves as a “5”—indicating

that they always make the effort to find out how things work, make sense, or fit together, yet

now three students do. The scores averaged 2.60 on the pre-assessment, but on the post-

assessment, the scores averaged 3.57 for question #7.

The eighth question asked about the students’ decision-making process and its outcomes.

Two students had identified themselves as a “1”—indicating they never think through the

outcomes before making a decision on the pre-assessment; but the post-assessment showed that

neither of these students see themselves that way anymore! Four students had identified

themselves with a “2” on the pre-assessment, and now only two do. On the pre-assessment, nine

students had identified themselves with a “3”—indicating that they sometimes thought through

46


the outcomes before making a decision; however, the post-assessment revealed that number had

decreased to only three students. Six students had identified themselves with “4” on the pre-

assessment, and now nine do. On the pre-assessment, one student had identified himself with a

“5”—indicating that he always thought through the outcomes before making a decision, but the

post-assessment revealed that number had gone up to eight students! The pre-assessment scores

averaged 3.08 for question #8 on the pre-assessment, but on the post-assessment those scores

averaged 4.09.

Critical thinking can be learned, and this data provides proof that explicit instruction of

critical thinking skills along with guided practice and hands-on experiences that engage students

in the process of thinking significantly affect student perceptions of themselves as thinkers

(Klemm, 2011, p. 1). As an observer of my students in the classroom, I see that this series of

critical thinking lessons provided thinking language that my students now use when they are

talking about their ideas with one another and when providing answers in the classroom (Zwiers,

2005, p. 62). I also have noticed that students view themselves as thinkers in a more positive

light—as I have stressed in all of the lessons how important putting forth the effort is rather than

just a quick, right answer that no thought was given to (Klemm, 2011, p. 2). In addition, I see

students beginning to embrace the “struggle” of thinking with less resistance, because they are

aware that this is linked with the learning experience.

My teaching practice has been affected by these critical thinking lessons as well, because

I have now trained my own mind to think in terms of how to integrate critical thinking practices

into the curriculum I teach and the lessons I prepare with my students. Even simple questioning

techniques—like asking students to compare and contrast—come more readily to mind after

having taught these lessons. Through this study, I have convinced myself of the importance to

47


teaching critical thinking skills to fourth grade students in a safe, learning atmosphere that

encourages risk taking, trial-and-error, and making mistakes. For teachers, making the focus of

the lesson about the students making an effort to actually think as the objective rather than

produce a correct answer to a given task frees the students up to ask questions, explore, and

attempt to go deeper with the material. My role as a teacher is to inspire students to think, and

one way that I can do that is by choosing the questions that I ask carefully. Elder and Elder

acknowledge that thinking starts with questions not answers, and with that in mind, educators

need to ask thought-provoking questions instead of feeding our students answers to regurgitate

back on tests (1999, p. 1).

Reflection

What I observed from the lessons I taught was how long they really took. For any true

thinking to be taking place, students had to wrestle with their thoughts about a topic from many

angles and that took time. One of the books I got my ideas from and I chose because its title

reflected the prevalent school culture of standards-based learning in schools today was How to

Teach Thinking Skills Within the Common Core. However, what I discovered was that I had to

modify all of the lessons within the book to accommodate my fourth graders; and all of the

meaningful experiences that were outlined in the text took significantly longer than what the

authors had intended. The irony is that even though teachers can integrate critical thinking

within the standards of learning, they cannot successfully do it within the required time frame

that the “standards enforcers” demand. The standards are not the problem. The problem is the

massive amounts of standards in a limited amount of time with a high-stakes test holding us

teachers alone accountable to teach the material fast enough so that we can cram everything in

before the test is given. Despite the writer’s good intentions of How to Teach Thinking Skills

48


Within the Common Core, the amount of time needed to conduct the critical thinking lessons and

the pacing of the content are at odds with one another.

Reflecting on the Cultural Inquiry Study experience makes me aware of my

insignificance as a single teacher of a single classroom to fight against the tidal wave of school

culture that is currently preventing, and in many ways prohibiting, students from mastering

critical thinking (Jacob, 1999, p. 1). As long as the high-stakes, standardized testing band wagon

continues to convince well-meaning citizens, law makers, and even educators that the results of

those tests indicate an ability to learn, students will continue to lack these skills. The current

school culture is a strong and powerful force to reckon with, and now even more so with the

federal government’s enactment of the Common Core in most states. Changing school culture

within schools is a daunting feat that few teachers feel able to take on, especially alone. That is

why we as educators cannot wage this war on our own.

Developing professional capital and trust among teachers based on common values we

share as educators is where we must begin. When interviewing the teachers at my school, I

recognized similar desires within us for our students. As teachers, we all recognized that our

students lacked critical thinking, and we wanted to do something about it, but we felt trapped by

the system and the school culture. Time constraints, standardized tests, pacing guides, and

accountability measures were documented as huge stumbling blocks to the teachers I

interviewed. Yet, what truly makes up educational culture? Teachers and educators just like us.

No matter how challenging it may be to bring the truths to light that testing is not the answer to

making our students learn more or teachers teach better, teachers need to develop professional

capital so that we can join forces in a valiant effort to shake the school culture that is truly

holding us back.

49


Teachers are dignified and qualified individuals, but we must work together to transform

the scholastic cultures within our own school systems and among the academic community we

are a part of (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012, p. 151). One way that I can do this on a personal level

is by getting my teacher’s aid on board with what I am doing with my students, so that she is a

member of the “critical thinking team” that I want to create. Instead of her criticizing and

questioning what I am doing in the classroom, which may deviate from what other teachers are

doing, instead I can show her the meaningful value of these lessons and use positive peer

pressure to influence her to join my approach and further this impactful cause. On a larger scale,

grade level teams could form critical thinking communities to share strategies with one another

and plan units around central questions and experiences that teach critical thinking skills.

Furthermore, teachers should come together to advocate for more time within the teaching

calendar to provide meaningful opportunities for the students to test out their newly learned

critical thinking skills in groups and on their own so that they can build confidence in these

skills. Teacher communities could further endorse teaching critical thinking skills by sharing

their ideas through professional development training sessions and collaboration meetings.

Principals who recognize the need to teach and promote critical thinking within their schools

could offer incentives to the teachers in their schools who actively teach critical thinking skills

and integrate these skills in their curriculum.

What I have taken away from this experience is the fact that my students are not opposed

to thinking critically, and once they discover what it is and feel free to do so, many students

enjoy it! Students are not the problem; teachers are. Teachers have allowed the “testing

mindset” to handcuff them, so that they are not teaching the skills that will make the future

citizens of our country successful. The threat of losing their job, the fear of losing their salary,

50


and the menace of teacher evaluations based primarily on student progress on a test is what has

teachers in chains. Our worth has been trampled by the culture, and the majority of teachers

accept it as victims. Teachers need to band together and advocate for themselves as

professionals and as experts in our field (Datnow & Park, 2015, p. 53). We know our students

need to critically think on their own. Many of us know how to teach our students how to think.

But when a curious question pops up in a class discussion, we teachers shut it down, because

heaven forbid the principal walks in and our discussion is not “on topic” to what is stated in our

lesson plan that is connected to a strand of the SOLs! Kids are curious. Teachers deserve the

safety to be curious and enable our students to see that their curiosity is the inspiration that will

motivate them to search for answers through the meaningful process called critical thinking.

References

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Berube, C. T. (2004). Are standards preventing good teaching? The Clearing House, 77(6), 264-67.

Connerly, D. (2006). Teaching critical thinking skills to fourth grade students identified as gifted and talented. Masters Thesis Graceland University, Cedar Rapids, IA.

Conti, G. (2013). Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession. . . no longer exists.’ Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/

Datnow, A. & Park, V. (2015). Data use for equity: meaningful use of data in school means giving all students the opportunity to achieve at high levels. Educational Leadership, 72(5), 49-54.

Elder, L. & Paul, R. W. (1999). Critical thinking: Basic theory and instructional structures handbook. Tomales, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking.

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Gruenert, S., & Whitaker, T. (2015). School culture rewired: How to define, assess, and transform it. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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IMACS staff writer (2013). Undoing the damage of standardized testing. Institute For Mathematics & Computer Science. http://www.eimacs.com/blog/2013/04/undoing-the-damange-of-standardized-testing/

Jacob, E. (1999). The cultural inquiry process. Retrieved from http://cehdclass.edu/cip/

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201110/teaching-children-think

Kreitzberg, A. & Kreitzberg, C. (2015). Critical thinking for the twenty-first century: What it is and why it matters to you.

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Marin, L.M. & Halpern, D.F. (2011). Pedagogy for developing critical thinking in adolescents: Explicit instruction produces greatest gains. Thinking Skills and Creativity 6(2011) 1-13.

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Appendix A: Teacher Interview Questions

1. What do you think is the most important skill our students need to be successful in school/life in the 21st century?

2. How many students in your class can critically think without support?A. almost all of themB. some of themC. few of themD. non of them

2. What do your students typically do/say when a question requires them to critically think?

3. What do you think the biggest obstacles are for preventing students to critically think?

4. What is your favorite/most effective way(s) to teach your students a new skill (if time was not a factor)?

5. Have you ever been trained (classes/professional development) how to teach critical thinking to your students?

6. Do you know of or have any instructional materials about critical thinking that you use in your lessons or with your students?

8. How much time do you have to integrate critical thinking skills into the classroom with the content you are required to teach?

A. noneB. a few minutes a weekC. a few minutes a dayD. an hour or more a day

9. Do you feel the current educational system supports you in teaching your students how to

critically think on their own?

10. Why or why not?

11. How do you feel as a 21st century teacher in today’s educational system?

12. What improvement(s) would you make (if you could change anything) to make our school system better?

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Appendix B: SELF-ASSESSMENT

Directions: Read each row and the behaviors it describes. Then circle the number below the behavior that best describes your usual behavior. Circle 2 or 4 if your behavior is halfway between two boxes.

I think mainly on the knowledge level and generally accept others' ideas and opinions.

I am beginning to analyze and evaluate my own ideas and those of others at times.

I am an independent thinker who always analyzes and evaluates my own ideas and those of others.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

I am always satisfied with the way I do things.

I sometimes think I need to look for better ways to do things.

I often think there must be a better way to do things and believe I can find it.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

I usually have to ask others how to do things I don't already know how to do.

Sometimes I think I can figure things out on my own. Other times I don't even try to.

I believe I can figure out anything I need to figure out.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

Lots of times I have to explain things to people several times. I'm not very good at finding several ways to explain things.

I can explain things so people understand them most of the time. If they don't, I have trouble finding another way to explain things.

People usually understand what I am trying to tell them. If they don't, I can usually find another way of explaining it.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

I believe everything I hear or read from trusted sources. I don't have any trouble sharing it with others.

I am beginning to question things from trusted sources. I might check it out before telling it to someone else.

When I tell people things, I am pretty sure it is true. I like to be accurate in everything I say.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

In talking with others about a problem, I find myself talking about different problems or ideas.

I try to stay on track with what others are saying. My ideas are sometimes relevant to the discussion.

In a discussion with other people, I stay on the topic. What I say relates to what others are saying.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

I am glad to be done with a project. If it makes sense to me, that is good enough.

I sometimes make an effort to see if my work makes sense and fits together.

When I finish a project it all makes sense to others. The ideas fit together.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

I make decisions and don't really worry about how they might affect others.

I am beginning to think about how my actions and decisions affect others.

When I make a decision, I think about if it is fair to others. I ask myself how it might feel to others. Sometimes I need to change my actions.

1----------------2------------------3-----------------4----------------5

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