Critical Thinking via the Abstraction Ladder
1991; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 80; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/818752
ISSN2161-8895
Autores Tópico(s)Education and Critical Thinking Development
Resumoing is becoming worse and worse. And they [the English department] want us to assign more of it? Overheard, on the same day, among students who had just been given their grades on an essay exam: studied a lot, and I thought I did really well on this but obviously she didn't. don't see how she can take off points here; it's my interpretation. How easily teachers and students alike slip into the familiar lines of complaint that their expectations have not been met. One way to get at a key aspect of effective thinking, writing, and evaluation which underlies all these complaints is to use S. I. Hayakawa's image of the abstraction ladder in Language in Thought and Action (1972, ch. 10), based on the work of Alfred Korzybski. Lately, under the rubrics of critical thinking and writing across the curriculum, we have generated a great amount of discussion and constructive change in classroom practices, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, we would do well to take a new look at this image, which can help both faculty and students move beyond such complaints to effective action.
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