  

Reminders

Timer goes off at

12:50pm

Brown Bag next week, 24.Oct

Next Learning Communities 

Teaching Excellence

Friday Nov 2 (please fill out the survey) 3:30 – 5:00pm, Founders 421 

Junior Faculty

Tuesday Oct 23 

Grants Group

Friday Oct 26 4:00 pm, Rockwell Seminar Room 3:30 – 5:00pm, BAC B-306   We need specific examples where feedback was evaluated and a course was modified, or where the feedback confirmed that Student Learning Outcomes

(SLOs) were being met

http://www.juniata.edu/services/sotl/calendar.html

powerpoints and audio recordings (Thanks Jay!)

Kate Clarke, Kathy Jones, Mark McKellop, Matt Powell, Carlee Ranalli, Wade Roberts, Jim Roney, and Jim Skelly Juniata College Huntingdon, PA

SoTL Themes for 2012-13

 Assessment 

Promoting a Discussion of Critical Thinking

 Sustainability  Continue strong attendance (averaged 31 2010-11, averaged 40 2011-12)  New projects model transition from passive observer to active practitioner…

First, a quick plug…

 Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT)  Piloting on campus this year (filling in for CLA)  Advantages: Face validity, Inexpensive, Administered in-class, Sensitivity…  Disadvantage? Faculty graded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVQ1ULfQawk

We almost all agree that Critical Thinking is the answer

“

With all the controversy over the college curriculum, it is impressive to find faculty members agreeing almost unanimously that teaching students to think critically is the principal aim of undergraduate education.

” Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look At How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Republican Party of Texas, 2012 Platform

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification),

critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply

a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student

’

s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html

But what do we mean by Critical Thinking?

Our Panelists

 Kate Clarke  Kathy Jones  Mark McKellop  Matt Powell  Carlee Ranalli  Wade Roberts  Jim Roney  Jim Skelly

Before we start the discussion, two definitions/approaches to Critical Thinking (each in 7 minutes or less)

 Humanities  Sciences Look for the commonalities…

Brief thoughts on critical thinking and Martha Nussbaum ’ s three aspects of liberal education, one “ worthy of free citizens ”

Thesis

 Thesis: If we accept Martha Nussbaum condition for a liberal arts education.

’ s three aspects of a liberal education (Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education), critical thinking is a necessary, but not a sufficient  Caveat: This is true only if we understand critical thinking in a strong sense; otherwise critical thinking runs the Iago-Machiavelli risk of privileging means over ends.

Nussbaum 1: Critical Self-Reflection

    Type One- asks what works to solve identified problems Such “ critical thinking ” seems like problem solving within a scientific paradigm (in the broad sense of formally organized knowledge), cultural tradition, or social ideology that leaves its own assumptions largely unexamined. Type Two- Thought about the purpose and nature of things, actions, people, and thought itself; normative evaluation of whether something ought to be done or is worthy of belief (moral, rational, and evidential criteria) The genealogy of “ critical thinking ” goes back to the modern, the Enlightenment, and liberalism; it appeals to the liberal managerial and professional class that dominates modern state, corporate, and educational institutions.

Word game: What have I replaced? How should we reply?

[Critical thinking] purports to offer a method of transcending both the merely social and the merely personal. And a critic of [critical thinking], believing such double transcendence to be impossible, may say either that what is being appealed to is really an aspect of the shared practices of one ’ s social, intellectual, or moral community (perhaps a particularly deep aspect) or that it is a deep but nevertheless individual feature of one unfounded.

” ’ s personal responses. In either case the claim to unconditional universal authority would be Nagel, Thomas (2001-11-01). The Last Word (p. 10). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Why teach students to be critical thinkers? Purposes of a liberal education?

1. Prepare students for a job or career 2. Satisfy the personal preferences of students and parents 3. Empower students to make conscious choices to achieve well-being 4. Prepare good citizens 5. Prepare professionals in a field Nussbaum chooses 3 and 4, although she assumes a liberal education will also lead to the other three, at least to 1 and 5.

Nussbaum 2: Global Citizenship

 Recognition and concern for others as humans (both minds and bodies), requiring both empathy and action  Requires critical (self-reflective) thinking: How can you choose good actions if you have not considered what effects an action will have and whether it is good?

 Long-term thinking about the interconnectedness of our own minds and bodies and of all things, including past, present, and future  Detailed knowledge of the natural world and of how our common humanity has been differently realized in different languages, times, and places.

Nussbaum 3: Narrative Imagination

 Hear others ’ stories as human (created by people with their own meanings and intentions) and imagine what it would be like to be living that story  See oneself as a teller of similar stories  We are not only reasoning beings; we live in bodies and have emotions, feelings, and other senses that are critically important to our life in the world (we are aesthetic, sensual beings).

 We live in language, and our senses and thoughts are, perhaps, inextricably interwoven with the linguistic forms in which we experience them.

 These are historical processes; we live in history.

Are we really talking about character, well-being, virtue, and citizenship?

“ College, more than brain-training for this or that functional task, should be concerned with character— the attenuated modern word for what the founders of our first colleges would have called soul or heart (…) students still come to college not yet fully formed as social beings, and may still be deterred from sheer self interest toward a life of enlarged sympathy and civic responsibility.

” Delbanco, Andrew (2012-03-22). College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be (p. 44). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

A definition to

“

critically analyze

”

http://www.tntech.edu/cat/home/

Critical thinking

 Seeking/searching for reliable evidence  Active listening skills  Willingness to share ideas – collaboration/discourse

Discussion

Appendices

 One: Comic strip response to the video  Two: Assumptions about the nature of study in the humanities

Response to the video

Humanities= Historical, Interpretative, and Evaluative Thinking

   We live meaningful, embodied lives in history as participants in traditions that shape our thought and choices, and we therefore need the ability to research and interpret the historical process and our place in it.

Such interpretation is ultimately based on a hermeneutic or dialogic ability to enter and be entered by others' thoughts and experiences (not only objective and critical, but also intersubjective and morally responsible or engaged).

The uncertainties of human existence require moral and aesthetic judgments not only on what is, but also on what ought to be, informed by a constant search for both universals and differences, and by the results of engaging the world on the basis of those judgments.

Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT)

 Face validity “ looks like a reasonable measure… ”  Inexpensive $6 / test vs. Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)  Sensitivity Fr – to – Sr, effects within a course, no ceiling or floor effects  Culturally fair no effects from gender, race, or ethnic origin  “ Reasonable to Moderate ” correlation to other measures of critical thinking (CAAP and CCTST) and academic performance (ACT/SAT)  Negative correlation with question 2a on the NSSE, Do the student's courses primarily focus on rote retention of information?

What

’

s the catch?

 Faculty grade it!

 Piloting an administration of the CAT this year  Pre/post design  Section of CWS, Upper-level Psychology course, Quantitative Methods  Six (hopefully seven) colleague graders