Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.
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Defining Critical Thinking - 0 views
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Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior. It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their results.
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Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor.
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Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest. They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society. At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so. They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others. They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement. They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living, because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world. ~ Linda Elder, September, 2007
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Universal Intellectual Standards - 0 views
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Universal intellectual standards are standards which must be applied to thinking whenever one is interested in checking the quality of reasoning about a problem, issue, or situation. To think critically entails having command of these standards. To help students learn them, teachers should pose questions which probe student thinking; questions which hold students accountable for their thinking; questions which, through consistent use by the teacher in the classroom, become internalized by students as questions they need to ask themselves. The ultimate goal, then, is for these questions to become infused in the thinking of students, forming part of their inner voice, which then guides them to better and better reasoning. While there are many universal standards, the following are some of the most essential:
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CLARITY: Could you elaborate further on that point? Could you express that point in another way? Could you give me an illustration? Could you give me an example? Clarity is the gateway standard.
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ACCURACY: Is that really true? How could we check that? How could we find out if that is true? A statement can be clear but not accurate, as in "Most dogs are over 300 pounds in weight."
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PRECISION: Could you give more details? Could you be more specific? A statement can be both clear and accurate, but not precise, as in "Jack is overweight." (We don’t know how overweight Jack is, one pound or 500 pounds.)
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RELEVANCE: How is that connected to the question? How does that bear on the issue? A statement can be clear, accurate, and precise, but not relevant to the question at issue.
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DEPTH: How does your answer address the complexities in the question? How are you taking into account the problems in the question? Is that dealing with the most significant factors? A statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant, but superficial (that is, lack depth).
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BREADTH: Do we need to consider another point of view? Is there another way to look at this question? What would this look like from a conservative standpoint? What would this look like from the point of view of . . .? A line of reasoning may be clear accurate, precise, relevant, and deep, but lack breadth (as in an argument from either the conservative or liberal standpoint which gets deeply into an issue, but only recognizes the insights of one side of the question.)
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LOGIC: Does this really make sense? Does that follow from what you said? How does that follow? But before you implied this, and now you are saying that; how can both be true? When we think, we bring a variety of thoughts together into some order. When the combination of thoughts are mutually supporting and make sense in combination, the thinking is "logical." When the combination is not mutually supporting, is contradictory in some sense or does not "make sense," the combination is not logical.
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FAIRNESS: Do I have a vested interest in this issue? Am I sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others? Human think is often biased in the direction of the thinker - in what are the perceived interests of the thinker. Humans do not naturally consider the rights and needs of others on the same plane with their own rights and needs. We therefore must actively work to make sure we are applying the intellectual standard of fairness to our thinking. Since we naturally see ourselves as fair even when we are unfair, this can be very difficult. A commitment to fairmindedness is a starting place.
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Conversation vs. Connection - Which do You Prefer? | Business 2 Community - 0 views
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About The Licenses - Creative Commons - 0 views
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Machine Readable Human Readable Legal Code Our public copyright licenses incorporate a unique and innovative “three-layer” design. Each license begins as a traditional legal tool, in the kind of language and text formats that most lawyers know and love. We call this the Legal Code layer of each license.
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All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators — we call them licensors if they use our tools — retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially.
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Distance Learning at Empire State College - 0 views
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The Evolution of Technology and the Human Race - YouTube - 0 views
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http://www.realtechsupport.org/UB/MRIII/papers/CollectiveIntelligence/Levy_CollectiveIn... - 0 views
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Internet is a truly Surrealist mode of communication from which 'nothing is excluded,' neither good nor evil, nor their many forms, nor the debate which would vainly attempt to separate them. The Internet represents the unmediated presence of humanity to itself since every possible culture, discipline and passion is therein woven together. The fact that everything is possible on the Internet reveals mankind's true essence, the aspiration towards freedom.
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There is the dimension of power-sharing along the lines of Cyber-democracy. There is the dimension of productivity and prosperity along the lines of Information Capitalism. Then there is the dimension of spiritual and artistic grace in which the multiplicity of virtual worlds and games contributes to the comprehension of the sacred world.
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Cyberspace is in the process of becoming the ecosystem for the world of ideas, it is a bustling no?sphere which is transforming rapidly and which is beginning to take control of the biosphere, directing its evolution towards its own ends. Life in its entirety is rising up towards the virtual, towards infinity, through the door opened by human language.
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Online Human Touch (OHT) Instruction and Programming: A Conceptual Framework to Increas... - 1 views
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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow | Video on TED.com - 0 views
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Teachers' Domain: A Cold Reception: Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the United States - 0 views
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"Guns, Germs and Steel": Jared Diamond on Geography as Power - 0 views
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The physical locations where different cultures have taken root, he claims, have directly affected the ability of those societies to develop key institutions, like agriculture and animal domestication, or to acquire important traits, like immunity to disease.
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Malcolm Knowles, informal adult education, self-direction and andragogy - 0 views
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1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12).
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1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12).
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Describing the Habits of Mind - 0 views
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h, cultivate, observe, and assess. The intent is to help students get into the habit of behaving intelligently. A Habit of Mind is a pattern of intellectual behaviors that leads to productive actions.
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Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they never quit. —Conrad Hilton
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Senge, Roberts, Ross, Smith, and Kleiner (1994) suggest that to listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words—listening not only to the "music" but also to the essence of the person speaking; not only for what someone knows but also for what that person is trying to represent
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They tolerate confusion and ambiguity up to a point, and they are willing to let go of a problem, trusting their subconscious to continue creative and productive work on it. Flexibility is the cradle of humor, creativity, and repertoire. Although many perceptual positions are possible—past, present, future, egocentric, allocentric, macrocentric, microcentric, visual, auditory, kinesthetic—the flexible mind knows when to shift between and among these positions
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Whether we are looking at the stamina, grace, and elegance of a ballerina or a carpenter, we see a desire for craftsmanship, mastery, flawlessness, and economy of energy to produce exceptional results
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Creative people are open to criticism. They hold up their products for others to judge, and they seek feedback in an ever-increasing effort to refine their technique. They are uneasy with the status quo. They constantly strive for greater fluency, elaboration, novelty, parsimony, simplicity, craftsmanship, perfection, beauty, harmony, and balance.
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Finding Humor You can increase your brain power three to fivefold simply by laughing and having fun before working on a problem. —Doug Hall
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Collaborative humans realize that all of us together are more powerful, intellectually or physically, than any one individual
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Working in groups requires the ability to justify ideas and to test the feasibility of solution strategies on others
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t also requires developing a willingness and an openness to accept feedback from a critical friend. Through this interaction, the group and the individual continue to grow. Listening, consensus seeking, giving up an idea to work with someone else's, empathy, compassion, group leadership, knowing how to support group efforts, altruism—all are behaviors indicative of cooperative human being
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Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in oneself, slowing the mind's hearing to the ears' natural speed and hearing beneath the words to their meaning
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They are invigorated by the quest of lifelong learning. Their confidence, in combination with their inquisitiveness, allows them to constantly search for new and better ways. People with this Habit of Mind are always striving for improvement, growing, learning, and modifying and improving themselves. They seize problems, situations, tensions, conflicts, and circumstances as valuable opportunities to learn (Bateson, 2004).
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Have you every heard of habitus? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitus_(sociology)
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The Legend of Cliff Young: The 61 Year Old Farmer Who Won the World's Toughest Race - E... - 0 views
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Latest Usain Bolt Breaks 200m World Record at Olympics Usain Bolt Wins Olympic Gold with 100m World Record Olympic Start Gun Gives Advantage to Runners on Inside Lanes
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When the race started, the pros quickly left Cliff behind. The crowds and television audience were entertained because Cliff didn't even run properly; he appeared to shuffle. Many even feared for the old farmer's safety
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All of the professional athletes knew that it took about 5 days to finish the race. In order to compete, one had to run about 18 hours a day and sleep the remaining 6 hours. The thing is, Cliff Young didn't know that! When the morning of the second day came, everyone was in for another surprise. Not only was Cliff still in the race, he had continued jogging all night.
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Today, the "Young-shuffle" has been adopted by ultra-marathon runners because it is considered more energy-efficient. At least three champions of the Sydney to Melbourne race have used the shuffle to win the race. Furthermore, during the Sydney to Melbourne race, modern competitors do not sleep. Winning the race requires runners to go all night as well as all day, just like Cliff Young
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Cliff kept running. Each night he came a little closer to the leading pack. By the final night, he had surpassed all of the young, world-class athletes. He was the first competitor to cross the finish line and he set a new course record.
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shared by Alicia Fernandez on 22 Jul 14
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Online Human Touch (OHT) Instruction and Programming: A Conceptual Framework to Increas... - 1 views
jolt.merlot.org/...betts_0908.htm
Module 4 assignment Online Human Touch (OHT) social presence teaching presence student retention
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Virtual Teas:
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Links to Online Campus Events:
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FILLING THE TOOL BOX - 0 views
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If on the other hand, they are used to information questions, they may ask, "Which states joined the Confederacy? What were the six main causes of the war? What happened at Shiloh? Who was the Union commander at Shiloh? When did the war end?"
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If you ask many tantalizing and divergent questions in your classroom, your students are likely to model after your behavior for example, "What would have happened if Lincoln was shot in the first month of the war? Why did Lincoln only free the slaves in the rebel states? How did it feel to be a woman in the path of Sherman's army?"
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The four rules of brainstorming: 1. all contributions are accepted without judgment; 2. the goal is a large number of ideas or questions; 3. building on other people's ideas is encouraged; 4. farout, unusual ideas are encouraged.
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And why do we bother with a time-consuming activity like developing a typology of questions? Because once students have the labels, you can lead them to practice each type of question thoughtfully. You can show a film and ask each student to think of three "why?" questions to share with the class at its conclusion. You may assign a story to read and ask for three "inference" questions. Suddenly the students can reach into their questioning tool box and carefully select the saw for sawing and the plane for planing.
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When questions are nurtured, admitting a lack of knowledge is rewarded. It is the first step in learning and problem-solving
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Unlike answers, questions carry little risk because the activity has made it acceptable to identify what it is that you do not know.
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Some questions deserve 10 seconds of thought. Others require days or even months. Great questions span centuries of human civilization (i.e., "why are we here?" "How do we know?" "Can we know?" "How can we know if we know?").
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Research into wait-time for American classrooms paints a distressing picture. Many teachers wait less than two seconds for the answer to each question and ask hundreds of questions per hour. These types of questions are generally recall questions demanding little thought.
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Unlike many textbook publishers, reporters like to ask questions that flow from or stimulate curiosity, because unlike schools, televisions do not have captive audiences. A reporter will ask the victim how he or she is feeling, the rock star why he or she used drugs and the politician why he or she betrayed his or her constituents. Sometimes we are offended by the boundary lines of decency that curiosity compels these people to cross, so a recent rock song portrayed the phenomenon as "We love dirty laundry." We should expect considerably more sensitivity from our students, yet the model can work powerfully for us as we explore the issues surrounding any human event being studied in a classroom.