Teaching an Applied Critical Thinking Course: How Applied Can We Get?
ABSTRACT: Encouraging students to apply classroom knowledge in their personal, everyday life is a major problem confronting many teachers of critical thinking. For example, while a student might recognize an ad hominem argument in a classroom exercise, it is quite another thing for him or her to avoid the same in interpersonal relations, say with parents, siblings, and peers. One approach to this problem is the creation of interaction software to which students can turn for input on the rationality of their own thinking. Students can then speak to computers rather than instructors about their private lives without having to share confidential information with any other human being, yet still receive relevant feedback. I discuss software technology that actually performs this function. The software in question is an interactive, artificial intelligence program that checks beliefs for faulty thinking ("fallacies"), including inductive and deductive errors. The system "scans" student essays for possible fallacies; asks questions at relevant junctions; provides individualized feedback on fallacies committed; provides summaries of fallacies found; diagnoses thinking problems; issues recommendations; and provides other pertinent information.
The current movement in "applied philosophy" has helped to re-awaken the Socratic notion that philosophy is a way of living and not merely an academic pursuit. The crux of this movement has been that philosophical theories and methods can make valuable contributions to practical life problems. One very visible area of applied philosophy has been that of ethics. Thus, applied ethics today includes applications of philosoph...
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... of fallacy commission in each of the five groups of fallacies addressed in the course. In a sample of about 150 community college students, the mean total score on the PLAI pre-test was 132.543, whereas the total mean score on the post-test was 113.647 indicating a overall improvement (across all five fallacy categories) of 18.896.
CONCLUSION
While, at this juncture, more data needs to be collected and its significance evaluated, there is reason to think that instructors of critical thinking can, with the assistance of computer technology such as that summarized above, effectively narrow the gap between classroom and students' "external" world. Without undue invasions of students' privacy, instructors can oversee and assess their students efforts in applying critical thinking to personal living. And they can do this without ever having to leave the classroom!
The article, “Critical Thinking? You Need Knowledge” by Diane Ravitch, discusses how in the past people have been deprived from the thinking process and abstract thinking skills. Students need to be given more retainable knowledge by their teachers to improve their critical thinking skills. (Ravitch).
Iwai, Shunji, Miho Nakayama, Etsushi Toyokawa, Miki Sakai, and Takashi Kashiwabara. Love Letter. Hong Kong: Panorama Entertainment, 2006.
Tuberculosis can be caused by one of the four different organisms belonging to the genus mycobacterium: Mycobacterium bovis, Mycobacterium africanum, Mycobacterium microti and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, the leading cause of tuberculosis in humans is due to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, 9 which was discovered in 1882 by the German physician Robert Koch.10
Paul, R. and Elder, L., (2008). The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking-Concepts and Tools, 5th. Ed., Foundation for Critical Thinking Press: Dillon Beach, CA
It is a source of education and a powerful resource in the life of every individual and in social life. Despite the fact that the identification and analysis of critical thinking skills are beyond the boundaries of a single discipline or subject, the learning and application of these skills require possession of certain knowledge. The value of critical thinking is lost if it is treated as a list of logical operations, and the possession of certain knowledge is regarded simply as a collection of information. The investigation of the relationship of a value judgment and the actual use may lead to a new assessment of the need for common concepts of critical thinking and the possession of certain knowledge in education (Paul,
The name Tuberculosis derives from ‘tubercles’, which are present in the lymph nodes of affected animals.
Halstead, J. (2005). Promoting Critical Thinking Through Online Discussion. Annual Review of Nursing Education, 3, 143-162. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&hid=17&sid=a1c31d83-a01d-4359-9098-089d5f29be6b%40sessionmgr4
The ability to reflect critically on one’s experience, integrate knowledge gained from experience with knowledge possessed, and take action on insights is considered by some adult educators to be a distinguishing feature of the adult learner (Brookfield 1998; Ecclestone 1996; Mezirow 1991). Critical reflection is the process by which adults identify the assumptions governing their actions, locate the historical and cultural origins of the assumptions, question the meaning of the assumptions, and develop alternative ways of acting (Cranton 1996). Brookfield (1995) adds that part of the critical reflective process is to challenge the prevailing social, political, cultural, or professional ways of acting. Through the process of critical reflection, adults come to interpret and create new knowledge and actions from their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary experiences. Critical reflection blends learning through experience with theoretical and technical learning to form new knowledge constructions and new behaviors or insights.
Primary tuberculosis is the initial infection of the host, usually being mild and asymptomatic. A healthy person recently infected with the mycobacterium may exhibit flu-like symptoms and has no reason to suspect tuberculosis. Left untreated, the bacilli infect and multiply within pulmonary alveolar macrophages, migrating to the hilar lymph nodes. An immune response is exhibited by the T-helper cells, and inflammation develops at multiple sites. A person may test positive in the tuberculin skin test at this point, and a chest x-ray may shows opacities in the lungs.
While critical thinking is important in all occupations, it must begin in childhood. Teachers must help their students to develop critical thinking modalities. Critical thinking helps considerably in problem solving. Without critical thinking, one must rely on old and outdated informat...
...t of the condition of the mankind, it involves learning, and the outcome is discovering the yet unknown. And it seems that progress is the highest when freedom is present, in other words we can not get the most out of ourselves if we have constraints. So by the definition of progress we are unable to say what good is it going to make us, but it will do something generally valuable.
Critical thinking involves the ability to weigh evidence, examine arguments, and construct rational bases for generally accepted beliefs. In order to establish a theoretical basis for studying critical thinking, a great quantity of research has been done. Critical thinking is not only the ability to reason and construct arguments, but also the ability to examine the reasoning processes involved and being able to evaluate their appropriateness and effectiveness. This “judgment” aspect is what makes critical thinking more than just problem solving. It is not sufficient to be able to apply problem-solving strategies to a particular problem; a true critical thinker must be able to choose appropriate strategies and even create new ones when necessary.
The current consensus in higher education is that critical thinking is important in order for students to think independently, but the question of who is responsible for teaching critical thinking is not so clear. Critical thinking skills are not generally the province of any one department on campus, but are purported to be taught across the curriculum at most universities. Traditional academic governance allows individual teaching faculty to determine the content of their syllabi, and whether or not they include critical thinking skills as an explicit or implicit part of the
As the world and technology evolves rapidly, it is becoming more and more essential to obtain critical thinking skills to bring about readiness to meet the impeding challenges. Within Yang and Chung experimental study they cite several articles on the teaching of critical thinking. They begin by defining the definition of Critical Thinking; Ennis (1998) defines critical thinking as a ‘reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do’ (Yang, 2009). Kuhn (1991) provides a more global concept in his definitions which deems CT as a ‘form of reasoned argument’ which helps to emphasize both metacognitive and reflective skills that are
The disease can be caused by different mycobacterium such as Mycobacterium bovis, M. africanum, M. canettii, M. microti, and most commonly, M. tuberculosis; although the five are highly similar and are together termed the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). Recently, two additional organisms. Mycobacterium pinnipedii and Mycobacterium caprae have also been implicated with the disease in humans. 6, 7 Members of the MTBC are gram-positive, long, rod-shaped bacterium with unique characteristics such as an exceptionally slow growth rate and a high content of lipids in their cell wall which provide protection against degradation and may account for their persistent survival in the environment even after the death of a host. 8