BRADFORD COLLEGE

1. BRADFORD COLLEGE Teaching Critical Thinking in Education

2. Programme • House rules – Keira? • Introduction –ESCalate and the afternoon programme • Workshop 1 – teaching critical thinking • Workshop 2 – module development

3. ESCalate • The subject centre for education • Events • Book reviews • Small grant research projects – up to £5 000 • External examiner project • CETL’s • Employability/ CPD/ WP etc.

4. Managing the student response to learning • Accepting student responses as “the reality” the data on which to work, the lived experience of student and teacher • Acknowledging shifts between adult, parent and child (adolescent) (transactional analysis) • Being explicit in our teaching about our response to student attitude about learning

5. Paradoxical responses to learning “The student will have a dual, ambivalent and paradoxical attitude to learning… A typical adolescent situation is one where the adolescent resents the parents if they are present and feels abandoned if they are not…” (Sapochnik 1997 in Wu 2002)

6. Workshop 1 • Focuses on developing critical thinking in the context of student ambivalence to learning • Uses one model for teaching critical thinking (community of enquiry) • Borrows a definition from Alec Fisher, UEA, evaluative judgement is at the heart of critical thinking • (requires knowledge of content, context, self and others and a range of higher order thinking skills)

7. HE qualifications – Level 1 Students need to have: • Knowledge of underlying concepts • Ability to evaluate and interpret these • Be able to present and develop lines of argument • make sound judgements

8. HE qualifications – Level 2 Students need to be have: • Knowledge and critical understanding of main principles • Application of underlying concepts outside original context • Knowledge of main methods of enquiry • Understand limitations of knowledge and impact of such

9. HE qualifications – Level 3 In particular, students need to demonstrate:  • Systematic understanding of key aspects of their field of study • Ability to deploy established techniques of analysis and enquiry • Conceptual understanding – allowing the student to devise and sustain arguments • Describe and comment upon aspects of current research • Appreciation of ambiguity, uncertainty and limits of knowledge

10. Workshop 2 • Work in small groups of 6-8 • Choose one module with which you are familiar • Choose a knowledge component that needs to be taught • Focus on meeting the module learning outcomes that are specified in the activity handout • Invent exemplar teaching activities, student learning activities and assessment opportunities that are fully aligned with the learning objectives

11. Summary What have we done today? • Described ESCalate and what it offers • Explored the student response to learning • Worked on models for teaching critical thinking • Looked at challenge of promoting critical thinking through module development • Explored Level 3 descriptors and the challenge for teaching and learning

12. Resources • This presentation is available at www.escalate.ac.uk/ • Teachers told not to preach against the war. Sunday Telegraph Nov 4 2001 – David Balmer – Home Affairs Correspondent • Thinking Writing Project Queen Mary University of Londonwww.thinkingwriting.qmul.ac.uk • Citizenship Foundation, Teaching about Iraq and other controversial issues: guidance to schools www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk • Daston, L. and Park, K. (1997) Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 MIT Press (Cover blurb) This book is about setting the limits of the natural and the limits of the known, wonders and wonder, from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment • Jiři Sliva (1996) OBRÁZKY PRO KAVÁRNU I DỦM : Prague • Dialogue Works www.dialogueworks.co.uk/