Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Critical Thinking: Teaching Students To Seek the Logic of Things.

1999; Volume: 23; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

0894-3907

Richard Paul, Linda Elder,

Education and Critical Thinking Development

In this column we explore a powerful idea which, once learned, becomes a foundation for highly skilled, and highly practical, teaching and The idea is that of becoming adept at understanding of subjects, issues, and questions. We will follow this column with a series of other columns that illustrate idea in a variety of subjects. Initially, idea (the of things) may sound too ab stract to be realistic for classroom. Unfortunately, it is part of many teachers ' mind sets that students cannot learn abstract ideas and that abstract ideas are, therefore, not very practical. Not so. Absu-actions are often key to most powerful learning. For example, most important idea in all science classes is very idea of science itself (i.e., learning about how physical world operates through systematic study). Like idea of idea of things having a logic has unlimited, indeed lifelong, payoffs. It is an idea that continually helps us to synthesize, tie together, and better understand whatever we are trying to learn. It provides us with key guideposts, important questions, and insights in multiple directions if, when we think, we look for of what we are studying. This abstract idea, the of things, reminds thinker (who has internalized it) of a set of very important ideas about 1. Look for interrelationships (try to connect everything together). 2. Solidify your learning goals (what exactly is your purpose?) 3. Ask yourself what question (or problem or issue) is you are trying to answer. 4. Clarify what information you need (to answer question or solve problem). 5. Figure out what information is telling you (what inferences you can legitimately make). 6. Trace (and assess) implications of your thinking (what follows from thinking this rather than that). 7. Figure out key ideas that will help you answer question or solve problem. 8. Make sure you are adopting most reasonable point of view with respect to issue. 9. Check your assumptions (should you be taking this or that for granted?). Seeking of things reminds us continually to think of learning as being part of an organized and intelligible system (with everything fitting together and making sense like parts of a jig- saw puzzle) rather than as being fragmentary,jumbled, or helter-skelter (let's see, I must remember this and this and this; also, that and that and that. .. ) . Everything we learn is related to every other thing we learn and learning things in relation to each other makes each of things we learn more memorable, more intelligible, and more useful. For example, one understands science better if one understands it in relation to forming a hypothesis. One understands forming a hypothesis better if one understands it in relation to conducting an experiment. One understands all three better if one understands them in relation to seeking to answer questions about world through careful observation and systematic study of how world actually works. Understanding science is understanding system of scientific thinking. Understanding grammar is understanding system of grammatical thinking. In other words, there is a to science, a to grammar, and a to everything whatsoever! Science is about scientific thinking, grammar is about grammatical thinking, psychology is about psychological think ing, and so on. In grammar, nouns (having something to talk about) make no sense without verbs (saying something about them). At same time, to use nouns (and hence talk about something) successfully we need adjectives (to qualify them). To use verbs successfully we need adverbs (to qualify them). Each grammatical structure plays a logical role in a system of meaningful relationships, which students understand best as an interrelated system of ideas. …