Questions About Critical Thinking

What questions might one ask about critical thinking if one is about to embark on critical thinking research? Please add, subtract, divide or multiply and share your thoughts. Here are a few questions that came to me while I was sleeping:

1.     Is there a generally accepted definition of critical thinking?

a.     Does a definition differ depending on the discipline?

b.     For example, do psychologists, philosophers and educators have similar definitions of critical thinking?

2.     Is critical thinking one thing or a collection of things?

a.     If it is a collection of things, what are those things?

b.     What skills and abilities are associated with critical thinking?

3.     How have people measured critical thinking?

a.     Do the measures vary with subject area?

b.     With age?

4.     How is the phrase ‘critical thinker’ used?

a.     Does it indicate more than approval of a person’s ideas?

b.     Is being or becoming a critical thinker generally regarded as desirable?

5.     If one is regarded as a critical thinker in one domain, does that ability tend to transfer to another domain?

a.     Are some critical thinking skills domain neutral?

b.     If so, which ones?

6.     Can critical thinking be learned?

a.     Some argue that creativity cannot be learned although others argue that in some sense and to some degree everyone is creative.

b.     If critical thinking can be learned, how can it best be taught?

c.     Can critical thinking be learned in a single lesson or course?

7.     At what age can someone develop critical thinking skills?

a.     Is becoming a critical thinker a developmental process?

b.     When is an optimal time for that process to begin?

c.     How might the early stages of becoming a critical thinker be supported?

8.     The so-called 21^st century skills are sometimes referred to as the 4 Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. How are those four skill areas related?

a.     “Most people have the ability to communicate. Many people engage in collaborative endeavors from time to time. Some people manage to engage in critical thinking on occasion. A few people are regarded as creative.” Do those four claims sound reasonable?

b.     If one accepts the fundamental principle of a constructivist epistemology (i.e., people create internal representations to make sense of things they experience), then it follows that everyone is in some sense creative.

c.     Moreover, if one accepts the notion that people quite naturally engage in what Wittgenstein calls language games, then people not only create those internal representations, they communicate them to others. So communication, collaboration and creativity all seem to be abilities that each person have to some degree, and those abilities are a natural result of being a person living in a society. Does that line of thought make sense?

d.     On the other hand, Ludwig Wittgenstein wanted language to be clear and lead to coherent and meaningful thought (e.g., “we picture farts to ourselves”); Plato had a similar notion (see The Cratylus).  Oets Kolk Bouwsma noted that language often leads one astray (i.e., sometimes we picture things that are not factual to ourselves). Bouwsma argued that philosophers were among those who seemed particularly prone to being misled by language. Perhaps the sphere of those easily misled might be widened to include politicians and the general public. The question here is simply this: Is being a critical thinker as natural as the abilities to communicate, collaborate or create? How challenging is it to become a critical thinker?

9.     I am aware of becoming more pedantic than critical in this note, so I end it with a final question: What questions do others have with regard to critical thinking?

Helping teachers design effective instruction

How to help teachers design effective instruction?

First, what counts as effective instruction? Instruction that more often than not helps students attain intended goals. So there should be both before and after measures pertaining to those goals if one intends to claim that instruction has been effective.

Second, there are general strategies that seem to work for many students at the lesson level. For example, there are Bob Gagné’s (1985) nine events of instruction:

1.     Gain and maintain attention

2.     Inform learners of goals and objectives

3.     Stimulate recall of prior learning

4.     Present the content

5.     Provide learning guidance and ongoing support

6.     Elicit performance and provide opportunities for practice

7.     Provide timely and informative feedback

8.     Assess performance along the way

9.     Enhance retention and transfer to other problems and situations

There are also Dave Merrill’s (2002; 2013) first principles of instruction:

• Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems.
• Learning is promoted when existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge.
• Learning is promoted when new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner.
• Learning is promoted when new knowledge is applied by the learner.
• Learning is promoted when new knowledge is integrated into the learner’s world.

Merrill’s principles easily map onto Gagné’s events and might be stated in terms of telling, asking, showing and doing. Merrill argues that too little emphasis occurs on showing and doing in many cases, which amounts to under-emphasizing events 5 through 9.

Gagné also characterized instruction as having three main phases – a set-up phase (events 1-3), a primary presentation phase (event 4), and a resolution phase (events 5-9). All too often instructional designers focus on event 4 and conduct a breakdown of the content into discrete things to be learned. Gagné and Merrill (1990) collaborated on exactly one paper in which they argue that what people do is to engage in enterprises which involve many different kinds of things (e.g., concepts, principles, problems, objects, etc.) – that is to say that what needs to be learned is an enterprise (as in the effective application of knowledge to solve problems and perform tasks). Given that perspective, the set-up phase is important, especially with regard to motivation and establishing a meaningful context, and the resolution phase is especially important so as to ensure that what is learned can be effectively applied later.

Tools to help? The mind is an important tool – especially the learner’s mind. Activate a mind, help a mind visualize a problem, get the mind engaged, and good things are likely to happen. That is my simple-minded instructional design advice.

The teacher’s job is not to tell students what to think. The teacher’s job is to help students learn HOW to think. Getting students to have questions, to visualize problems, to devote time and energy to refine visualizations and find possible answers, to question assumptions, to consider alternatives, and to reflect on the process is the teacher’s job. Is it not?

Some remarks on cognitive load

Suppose you are planning a long hike and overnight stay, say to a destination that is about 15 kilometers away. A friend has advised you not to take more than you need in your backpack and to try to keep the weight under 20 kilograms, as that is probably a manageable load. You pack what you think you will need and weigh the backpack. This is tricky because your only scale is designed to weigh a person standing on it, but the backpack keeps falling off and resting partly on the floor. How will you weigh the backpack and determine if the load exceeds 20 kilograms? [This question is designed for any third graders who happen to be reading these notes.]

Okay, you determine that the load is just about 20 kilograms. Good packing, you tell yourself. You then lift the backpack and put it on your back. It feels quite heavy. You wonder if you can walk 15 kilometers carrying such a load. You tell yourself that your friend is younger and stronger than you – such a load may be manageable for her but not for you. Perhaps 10 kilos is a better target.

I started with this story about the load in a backpack to point out a few things about cognitive load. First, John Sweller is an outstanding scholar and has made many important contributions to educational psychology and instructional design, including his analysis of cognitive load in terms of intrinsic load (that which is inherent in a problem or situation), extraneous  load (that which may be eliminated from the problem or situation and can distract some learners), and germane load (that which is likely to help a learner focus and be successful in solving a problem or resolving a situation). At least that is my rough and ready interpretation of components of cognitive load theory.

Now, I want to compare cognitive load with the load of the backpack in the initial example. First, the backpack could be weighed so there was an independent and relatively non-subjective measure of the load. Are there independent and non-subjective measures of cognitive load? Could there be such measures? In any case, in spite of the actual weight of the backpack, the perceived weight or perceived load can vary. For my friend who is younger and physically fit, the perceived weight of 20 kilos is moderate and manageable. For me – an older person in not such good physical condition, the 20 kilo backpack seemed quite heavy and not manageable. Perceived load is not the same as actual load when it comes to backpacks.

Then, when I think about someone trying to solve a complex problem or resolve a challenging situation, the perceived load can also vary significantly. A highly experienced person in solving similar problems may find the problem easily manageable whereas someone with much less experience may fine the same problem quite challenging. Moreover, what might be distracting in terms of extraneous load for an inexperienced person may not be distracting for an experienced person. Likewise, what may be germane to successful problem solving for an experienced person may be too sketchy or too incomplete to help a much less experienced person. So, It seems that cognitive load and the constituent parts of cognitive load vary or can vary from one person to another; what matters is perceived cognitive load.

Given the usual way of eliciting perceived cognitive load on a likert scale, it seems useful to collect other indicators, such as the time a person spends on a particular task or which part of the task is the focus of attention or what kind of assistance a person seeks or the level or neuronal activity or a galvanic skin measure and so on. Having multiple measures that converge can help one develop confidence in a reported level of perceived cognitive load. Perhaps.

Then, because I am so prone to distraction, I wonder if there are non-cognitive indicators that might also be relevant to cognitive load such as moods, attitudes, and so on. Just as it is a person carrying the backpack that matters, it is a person trying to solve a problem or resolve a situation that matters – a person, not a disembodied mind. That reminds me … it is almost time for lunch. Taking a break …

One Party Country

It seems to me that the USA has become the DSA - the Divided States of America. Worse still is that the movement is in the direction of a one party country, like those in China, Cuba, North Korea, Russia and elsewhere. That movement is not unique to the DSA as it seems to be happening in Turkey and other countries as well.

Indicators that are worrisome include attacks on the press, restricting access to information to the party in power or the person in power, denying facts well established by scientists (i.e., climate change) and other researchers and investigators, and using ad hominem arguments and tactics of distraction and denial to denigrate those who ask questions or who want clarification. 

Basic values are being lost. No more love thy neighbor as thyself but send your neighbor away without his or her children. No more bring me your tired and huddled masses but bring on the privileged few. No more a chicken in every pot but a can of chicken soup for all, before taxes of course. No more facts and logic ... just spin and vitriol. Whatever became of those 21st century skills that included critical thinking, collaboration and creativity? When did the age of reason disappear?

When Logic and Reason Fail

Thinking is not merely having thoughts. Thinking involves reasoning about those thoughts and adjusting them so that the thoughts are coherent and form a logical nexus. Thinking involves logic and reasoning.

There are some obvious limits to meaningful thought and meaningful statements and collections of statements. Logicians might say that the extreme boundaries of sense are formed by contradictions (statements that cannot ever be true, as in “I just ate the last cannibal”) and tautologies (statements that are always and can only be true, as in “Never before have things resembled the present as they do now”). The problem is that sometimes contradictions and tautologies arrive in disguise. For example, “there is a person on this planet who loves all and only those persons on this planet who do not love themselves.” Surely such a person exists! Surely not. Either that person loves him/herself or not, assuming one accepts the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM). I understand a new LEM is circulating around the capital of these divided states called the Law of the Exclusive Muddle (as in “there were some good people on both sides, including the ones carrying torches and wearing swastikas” and “I did not collude with the Russians during the election and even if I did it was not illegal”). Long live the new LEM.

I just learned that the new LEM is in competition with yet another one emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – namely, the Law of the Excluded Middleclass. The new tax laws will eventually put the middle class in the category of the forgotten class along with those already there. Long live the newer LEM.

Oh yes. Back to logic. It is so hard to concentrate these days. As I was saying, or tying to say, contradictions and tautologies often come in a disguised format, making them harder to identify. An example of a disguised tautology is this one: “We - the president’s legal team and the special prosecutor’s legal team - are in agreement about questions to be asked in an interview IF the special prosecutor’s legal team agrees with us”). This one is harder to identify as a tautology empty of meaningful content as it almost sounds reasonable. However, closer scrutiny reveals the following logic – we are in agreement if you agree with me … or, more blatantly, if you agree with me, then we agree .. as in, if we agree, then we agree. Language can provide meaning and build understanding but it can surely lead us astray.

Those without trained ears are easily led astray. To minimize attempts to lead us astray, we need to be teaching logic and reasoning to our children. When I read De-voh-reem (Deuteronomy) 6.7, I interpret “thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” to be about teaching inquiry and critical thinking and not just the love of G-d. I guess that reflects a personal bias, but it seems consistent with much of what follows in that 5^th book and what I was taught by my father, an orthodox rabbi, about doing what is right and what is good.

Teach kids to think for themselves. What harm can come from that?