Reflection

                Educators all seem to agree that critical thinking skills are important for students to learn, but how to do that is rarely ever clarified. I have often wondered exactly how they are expected to be taught. As I read the first couple pages of Richardson, Morgan, and Fleener’s (2012) chapter on the reflection phase of the PAR process, I found myself also wondering exactly how critical thinking skills are defined. Deciding how to teach a topic is difficult when it has never really been defined. I know that I used critical thinking skills every day in my former job in the navy. I know they are crucial for functioning in an adult world. I know that they demonstrate higher order thinking skills. None of these things, however, help to define what critical thinking skills actually are. Richardson et. al (2012) finally defined critical thinking skills. They define them as, “thinking for an extended period by linking recent experiences to earlier ones in order to promote a more complex and interrelated mental schema (Richardson et. al, 2012, p. 111).”

                This definition helps some. It now tells me what I’m trying to do and that I need to link topics to students’ past experiences in order to promote critical thinking. How to do that still remains a bit gray.  But these fantastic authors do not stop at a mere definition. They give some general guidance on how to do this, followed by pages and pages of strategies that may be used for this purpose. Generally, critical thinking can be taught by introducing students to multiple texts and, when possible, text that represent opposing viewpoints. Also, problem solving and decision making techniques can be taught in order to foster and build critical thinking skills. This involves giving students a problem that does not have one clear cut answer, but could be solved in a number of ways and teaching them how to work through it. they first need to identify the problem, come up with possible solutions, compare the positive and negative outcomes, and finally settling on a solution. Working through open ended problems helps students to think outside the box and get creative.

                Many of the critical thinking strategies involve cooperative learning. Working with others is especially important in today’s world. Most jobs do not employ people to work independently, but rely on their ability to work together as a team. In this way, the team sinks or swims together and each person is independently in charge of some part of the project. It works well because the old adage, “two heads are better than one,” almost always proves true. No two people think exactly alike and more possible solutions and strategies to accomplish those solutions can be dreamed up with more people involved in the process.

                One of these strategies is called, “numbered heads together.” This is a common review strategy that most people today have probably taken part in, even if it was called something else. The class is divided into groups. The teacher gives a question and each group consults before the selected individual gives an answer. The rallytable is a unique pair activity that is great for critical thinking and problem solving. An open ended question is posed and pairs of students pass a piece of paper back and forth writing down answers. Each time the paper is passed, the student writes down an answer until time is called. Pairs then share answers. Group summarizations serve to help readers to reinforce main ideas as well as look back over the text, giving the benefit of multiple encounters. There are many, many other strategies used for the reflection phase of learning. The common themes that show best results are typically group work, repeated reading of the content, and making students summarize main ideas in some way.

                Some students tend to resist group work. Commonly, this is because interdependence is not stressed and it seems that every group has one “freeloader” who just doesn’t do their share of the work. I want to look at it from the freeloader’s perspective. I have never heard anyone say that they love group work because they don’t have to do anything; they just let the group do its thing and they sit back and enjoy the ride. It may be that the “freeloader” really just does not know how to think outside of the box. They do not feel like they can contribute constructively to the group. How does the teacher help this student to become more involved in group work and how do we get those unsure students to have enough confidence in their ideas to share them with the group? Group work is more enjoyable for everyone when all parts feel like they are contributing, including those who are not pulling their weight.