(Download) "Expert Teachers' Beliefs About Use of Critical-Thinking Activities with High- and Low-Advantage Learners." by Teacher Education Quarterly # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Expert Teachers' Beliefs About Use of Critical-Thinking Activities with High- and Low-Advantage Learners.
- Author : Teacher Education Quarterly
- Release Date : January 22, 2006
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 223 KB
Description
In a middle-school science class, a teacher asks students to interpret a graph indicating that the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere has increased in recent decades. Then the teacher asks students to think through what will likely happen should this warming trend continue for another century. After some brainstorming and discussion, aided by the teacher's guidance, the students come up with a set of detailed predictions concerning the impact of global warming. Such a lesson instantiates the concept of critical thinking (CT): "cognitive skills and strategies that increase the likelihood of a desired outcome ... thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal-directed--the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions" (Halpern, 2003, p. 6). The teacher could have opted to share her knowledge of the topic in a lecture format (an approach comparatively low in CT), but the high-CT lesson had the benefits of making students active in their learning and requiring them to reason as scientists do. Research has shown such lessons to be educationally effective (for a review see Alexander & Murphy, 1998; see also Brown & Campione, 1990; Lambert & McCombs, 1998; Pogrow, 1990, 1994; White & Fredrikson, 2000). Many educational psychologists and teacher educators regard CT-oriented activities as essential to optimal educational practice (e.g., Browne & Keeley, 2001; Ennis, 1987; Halpern, 2003; Henderson, 2001; King & Kitchener, 1994; Kuhn, 1999; Raths et al., 1986; Resnick, 1987; Torff, 2003). Moreover, contemporary testing procedures increasingly require performances emphasizing CT skills (Yeh, 2002); for example, the SAT now includes an analytic essay--a task posing greater CT challenges relative to earlier formats featuring only multiple-choice questions. Similarly, a recent high school biology exit examination in New York State charged students to write essays describing an experiment that would test a particular theory--a task requiring learners to engage in scientific reasoning.
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