critical thinking in the academy

I'm part of a task force that was asked to start a conversation at Minnesota State University, Mankato, about student learning outcomes. These are my notes and what I submitted.

My notes:

http://www.sjsu.edu/ugs/docs/GE/Area_A3.doc
http://www.sjsu.edu/ugs/assessment/ge/materials/
The following Content Objectives are specific to Area A3
Reasoning about issues appropriate to the subject matter of the course shall also be presented, analyzed, evaluated, and constructed.
All critical thinking classes should teach formal and informal methods for determining the validity of deductive reasoning and the strength of inductive reasoning, including a consideration of common fallacies in inductive and deductive reasoning.
Courses shall require the use of qualitative reasoning skills orally and for written assignments. Substantial writing assignments are to be integrated with critical thinking instruction. Writing will lead to the production of argumentative essays, with a minimum of 3000 words required

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
The capacity to evaluate skillfully and fairly the quality of evidence and detect error, hypocrisy, manipulation, dissembling, and bias.

http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/gce/critical_thinking_new.php
Assessment Objectives
The Assessment objectives are common to AS and A Level.
AO1 - Analyse critically the use of different kinds of reasoning in a wide range of contexts
AO2 - Evaluate critically the use of different kinds of reasoning in a wide range of contexts
AO3 - Develop and communicate relevant and coherent arguments clearly and accurately in a concise and logical manner.

Other valuable resources:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/define_critical_thinking.cfm
http://www.cie.org.uk/qualifications/academic/uppersec/alevel/subject/aleveldetails?assdef_id=765_804

Critical Thinking student learning outcome definition:
Students will learn to determine the validity and strength of reasoning and the quality of evidence to identify fallacies, and to demonstrate these skills orally and in writing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

simple update

Well, Margy got out of the hospital after only three days. Not that she was well. She'd gotten rehydrated, the pain was more or less under control, and she was eating again. That's a lot to be thankful for; and we were. Today, almost two weeks after her release from the krankenhaus, she had her first real treatment of her back/neck problem. She went to Dr. Jeff, a doctor of osteopaty in Madelia, who put her on a monster machine called a DRX9000 for about 30 minutes. Her head was placed in a special molded form connected to a strap that exerted up to six pounds of pressure designed to decompress her herniated discs. When we drove home, she said she was free of pain in her left arm for the first time in three weeks. Praise God! If she continues to improve with this treatment, she'll probably be visiting Madelia twice a week for the next eight weeks. And then we hope she never has to return again!
Read more

behold, a puppy

Image
The conversations with Jasmine and Margy have been going on for months and months, but taking care of Pouncer and Lucy brought it all to a head: they wanted a dog... badly. And there were lots of good reasons for their argument. Jasmine would benefit from the added responsibility, companionship, and after the dog grows up, protection. A nine-year-old girl in today's world needs some protection if she's going to walk down a street, even a safe midwestern street. On my side, I pointed out all the downside challenges I could think of, knowing that one day each of them would wonder in her heart-of-hearts, "What was I thinking when I said I wanted a dog?!?" I made sure they heard my warnings, but the cry of their hearts was for a dog. Fast forward: adoption day for Esty, our new Brittany, was Thursday the 23rd. Nine weeks old, she's just getting into the gangling puppy stage. Margy and Jasmine were delighted with her. Before the sun had set, she had my heart, too. Jasm...
Read more

soon and very soon: a new address

Image
Yesterday I drove home from work and saw a "SOLD" sign on the For Sale sign on our house. What an amazing transition from the discouraged place Margy and I were at only two weeks before. She was in the hospital with terrible back/neck pain, and the prospect of cleaning up the house for showings at the drop of a hat stirred up even more pain. So we agreed we'd just take the house off the market and wait until we did all those things on our "to-do" list that was nagging at us. We got the deck done (thanks to Nic), and cleared out the storage room in the basement so it wasn't wall-to-wall junk (thanks to Josh--and us!), but the list included painting, recarpeting the family room, etc. Lots of work. And now we don't have to! But we do need to find another place to live. This weekend we'll start a marathon of looking at other people's houses in the vicinity of the university. Open doors... soon one of them might be ours.
Read more