Critical Thinking Skills Driving and Connecting Learning

Much class work observed or described in this study involves the development of critical thinking skills mostly through collective learning between students and teachers. Faculty model a passion for reasoning and for ongoing, highly collaborative work. This kind of learning is often blurred and gray, and can be trying. As one teacher explains, “Recently, I heard on the radio that ‘democracy is a noisy conversation.’ Well, teaching is messy and noisy—and what teacher wouldn’t want it to be that way?”

Connection: On the face of it, an emphasis on higher-order thinking skills would not seem to guarantee opportunities for ethical development. But unlike tasks of recall or identification (typically bound by prescribed answers), higher-order opportunities to analyze, to evaluate, or to create bring to the surface the diverse and singular thinking of each student, and throw wide open the path to “correct” or “true.” As one faculty member puts it, “The message is that the individual is valued, and that ‘I have confidence that you can figure this out’.”

Description: “Inference, hypothesis, deconstruction, differentiation, premise—each of these elements can have a variety of takes, not like a date or a fact,” one suburban day-school teacher explains in defense of these messier, sometimes less conclusive realms of learning. Another teacher notes that “We want these critical thinking skills raised to a conscious level: how to communicate, how to think, and how to discern. It pervades the culture that everyone has a voice and an analytical mind, and that learning is a path.”

The general approach to building students’ identity and ethics involves pressing them toward independent thought. “Critical thinking is a key component—teach them to think for themselves,” a teacher at a suburban boarding school advocates. In these successful learning environments, independent thought is clearly valued and standards for clear and conscientious reasoning are high. “The school permits discussion,” one student comments. “You don’t have to agree, but you have to figure out what you believe.”

“One way to describe the role of ethics, I guess, is as a link to reality,” one faculty member explains. Teachers indicate that investigating values and ethics stimulates rich, relevant, and personalized thinking and discussion, and sets up a strong synergy with academic goals. Instructors consistently insist on clear, substantive reasoning, and expect students to engage their minds not only in discerning what is but in justifying what should be. A teacher states with pride that “our kids are always questioning, ‘Why? Why? Why?’” Equally proud, a student echoes: “We’re taught to question everything.”

Replication: Class work that promotes interpretations and differences of opinion can sometimes challenge the comfort level of teachers. At the schools in this study, administrators describe building a love of critical thinking into the selection process for new teachers.

A school head at a suburban single-sex boarding school explains what she’s looking for in new teachers. “When hiring, I ask ‘What do you think we need our society’s leaders to be able to do?’ There are four specific areas I’m looking for in the answer, all of which I believe underpin the best learning our students can do. I’m looking for words like trustworthy, compassionate, discerning, critical thinkers.”

This emphasis at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy also more effectively supports these schools’ goals of honoring and meeting the needs of each learner. Many of the schools we visited actively integrate examination of individual differences into class work. These examinations can cover a range of questions:

Students at these schools seem very aware of the qualitative difference resulting from critical-thinking-based teaching approaches. “Even in normal history class you get, ‘what is the decision he should have made?’” One student explains, “You get a greater understanding of decisions.” Says another, “It isn’t the teacher lecturing to us. The teacher poses the questions and we have at it—even in math!”

Assessing critical thinking skills is challenging, and doubly so when these skills are applied to ethics. Teachers in our study typically have specific criteria and means to judge levels of learning, and to communicate progress to students. Here are a few ideas:

Copyright 2007 The Institute for Global Ethics

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1. Ethical Literacy® Learning Community » Coaching Session Summary (12.2.2010) – Berkeley Hall School says:

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