Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is cultivating your students ability to look at an issue and understand it fully before passing judgement or taking action (Flew & Mcpeck, 1982).
Teaching strategies that facilitate engaging place include:
The Conceptual Change Model (CCM) facilitates critical thinking because learners must assess and critique new information in the context of their existing understanding of how systems work.
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Concept maps challenge students to think deeply about what they know by labeling that knowledge with prepositional connections. Concept maps also encourage students to make judgements of how to organize their factual knowledge and conceptual frameworks in a hierarchical structure to answer a focus question.
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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy facilitates critical thinking because it encourages students to consider multiple perspectives in order to understand their curriculum and community (Ladson-Billings,1994). Critical thinking is also applied by uncovering misconceptions about other cultures and world views.
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At its core, design thinking seeks to create products that come from a place of empathy (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). Learning and understanding are deepest when students have meaningful connections to the problem addressed, and when they engage with community members outside the school environment. Additionally, the solution is most successful when it is relevant in the real world.
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Inquiry creates a student-centered space where students are able to turn observations into questions. Often, in order to see results of these observations and questions, students must use critical thinking to understand data patterns, which in turn relates both inquiry as well as critical thinking (Flew & Mcpeck, 1982).
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Project-based learning starts with student interest in an issue or subject and, through group processing, develops into a solution-oriented project. The teacher guides and supports student learning, and students are given the space to work collaboratively to answer questions. Students must think critically and creatively about their choices, as there are often many answers to a single problem.
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References
Flew, A., & Mcpeck, J. E. (1982). Critical Thinking and Education. British Journal of Educational Studies,30(3), 352. doi:10.2307/3121218
Kwek, S.H. (2011). Innovation in the classroom: Design thinking for 21st century learning. (Master’s thesis). Retrieved December 12, 2016 from http://www.stanford.edu/group/redlab/cgi-bin/publications_resources.php
Ladson-Billings , G. (1994). What can we learn from Multicultural Education Research. Educational Leadership, 51(8), 22-26.
National Education Association. (2015). Partnership for 21st century skills. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/34888.htm
Kwek, S.H. (2011). Innovation in the classroom: Design thinking for 21st century learning. (Master’s thesis). Retrieved December 12, 2016 from http://www.stanford.edu/group/redlab/cgi-bin/publications_resources.php
Ladson-Billings , G. (1994). What can we learn from Multicultural Education Research. Educational Leadership, 51(8), 22-26.
National Education Association. (2015). Partnership for 21st century skills. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/34888.htm