Self-Study Course

Task List 6: Critical Thinking from the Teaching Side

From Last Time

We covered how we should cover only 1-2 ideas per 15-20 minute segment of your lesson. We covered how to prepare your lessons. This time we will extend the materials from lesson 2 to teaching as well as learning.

Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking can be thought of as:

  1. Being skeptical, but open- minded. That is being willing to accept those things for which there are either evidence or clear thinking from known facts, or both.
  2. Not accepting argument by authority.
  3. Always asking, "Does it make sense?"
  4. Testing the validity of ideas for yourself.

Why Critical Thinking?

We learn by doing not by passively listening or reading. Knowing something without understanding the context or validity of the knowledge is not true learning.

We learn in three primary ways:

  1. Measurement and observation, this is the basis of all science.
  2. Facts and conjecture, this is the process of theory.
  3. Methods and skills, this is the process of practice.

Specific Skills to Encourage Critical Thinking

  1. Ask every question you can think of: How? Why? What? Where? When? Who?
  2. Always ask why something is accepted as fact.
  3. Develop a working idea of what a term means.
  4. Develop an understanding of your learning style.
  5. Choose your learning materials in accord with your learning style.
  6. Demand justification from others for the facts they present.

How Does This Relate to Teaching?

  1. Often the fundamentals are not well understood. What are they?
  2. Lecture is not an activity, it is passive. This is why it is popular with students, they do not have to do anything but listen.
  3. We learn by doing, asking, and thinking. Asking and thinking can occur in lecture, but rarely can we do anything in a lecture.
  4. Encourage students to ask questions.Encourage independent study, always give additional sources of information for such study.
  5. Show the relevance of material from multiple contexts, spiralling in towards a more sophisticated understanding of the material.
  6. Proceed from idea to what the idea is called.
  7. Always provide the justification for what you are presenting.

To return to the Self-Study Course Homepage click here.