Episode 125: Closing the Critical Thinking Gap in Education

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Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim J. Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This battle tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of Mother Wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about current information and issues in the public education that could affect you and your children and the action steps that you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. In this episode, I'll be discussing the need for critical thinking and the Critical Thinking Gap. Have you noticed the quality of help in most retail stores these days? You can ask the clerk for information about products or where certain items are located and they seem to have no idea, nor do they seem to have any interest in helping you. And don't let them have to make a decision about whether to override an incorrect code on a coupon presented to the cashier. Good luck in getting that resolved. Am I the only one experiencing this? I submit that these experiences are just a reflection of a lack of critical thinking exhibited by this younger generation. I revisit what critical thinking is and I explore the critical thinking gap and its implications in this episode. Let's untangle this in episode seven, I took a deep dive into the topic of critical thinking. Basically, critical thinking is what you do when you're listening or reading for information. The main skill that's involved is engaging in an internal dialogue that tests what you are hearing or reading. It's about asking yourself, what's the source of this information? Do I agree with this position and how do I feel about it personally? By engaging in this type of internal dialogue, you're demonstrating important skills such as raising questions rather breaking up complex ideas into components, drawing on your own prior experience and knowledge, and translating complicated ideas into examples. This is the process of critical thinking that can be taught to students. Critical thinking is vital for participation in the knowledge economy and society is often viewed as rational and analytic thinking. Children overall don't seem to be learning anywhere near enough curricular content and they don't seem to be learning how to think. Children are acquiring a lot of information in school, some of which is not useful, but don't get sufficient application of or reflection of on the knowledge. This is what happens in most public and private schools. Teaching analytic thinking involves encouraging students to analyze, critique, judge, compare and contrast, evaluate and assess. In order for children to be able to function successfully in a highly technical, knowledge oriented society, they must have structured thinking skills and habits of lifelong learning. A critical thinker does not accept things without careful examination. They have a certain manner to approaching information, which is more analytical and synthetic as well as skeptical. They use reasoning to form opinions, to settle some question, to solve some problem and its implications and consequences. Reasoning uses data, information and evidence and is expressed through and shaped by concepts and ideas. A plan suggested in the research that will help students learn critical thinking is comprised of five parts. 1. Content instead of just memorizing information, a student should learn to use cognitive strategies to facilitate the learning of the subject matter, the verbal information, concepts, rules, principles, and logic and structure that comprise the subject. Content is merely a mode of thinking, a way of figuring something out, a means of understanding something through thought. There's no way to learn a body of content or subject matter without learning the concepts which define and structure that content. The content is logically interrelated and the content should be approached as a mode of thinking, a system of thought. When content is approached as information to be routinely covered, there's no solid basis for for intellectual growth, no basis for long term grasp and control. 2. Attitudes and dispositions A student should develop positive attitudes about learning a subject. This includes personal responsibility, persistence, mastery, self efficacy, and autonomy. A child's dispositions about learning are usually formed in the home in the early stages of life and are more influenced by parents than by teachers. After all, parents are their child's first teacher. 3. Intellectual Standards Intellectual standards include mastery and analysis of information, things such as clarity and objectivity, relevance, depth, breadth, significance, and things along this line. Standards require practice. Most students don't develop a solid standpoint concerning clarity of thinking, precision and relevance.

4.

Learning strategies A student needs to be aware of what and how he or she is learning, when and how to use cognitive learning and specific strategies, when to review, rehearse, and evaluate what's being learned, and how to think about applying knowledge. This is known as metacognition or what you know about what you know. It's critical in controlling motivations and dispositions and 5. Problem solving in order to solve a problem, a student needs to apply what he or she has learned through retrospection, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis in order to resolve a problem. Have you had a chance to check.

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Worth noting is that all five of these activities interact. A person can't think without content, so learning new information and ideas is important. If a student doesn't have a positive disposition or attitude about thinking, then he or she will not be a good thinker. A good attitude and a lot of knowledge will not be enough if the child has not learned the rules of intellectual standards such as what is and what is not good information, logically organized and available in a precise and accurate form at the appropriate moment. Self awareness and good cognitive strategies are also required and solving problems requires all of these things. Critical thinking is considered to be one of the higher order thinking skills needed for 21st century employment. The public education system has a vital role in supporting students acquisition of higher order thinking skills or hotss hots higher order thinking skills because these skills can be enhanced through student centered instruction and are transferable after they exit the K12 education system. Higher order thinking skills include evaluation or judgment, problem solving, creative thinking, and decision making. Unfortunately, not all students receive adequate education to acquire higher order thinking skills. Research indicates that students of color and low SES students are likely to be placed in basic classes, not classes that develop higher order thinking skills and these basic classes focus on mastery of low level skills skills and limited instructional time. Additionally, students from low SES families have fewer opportunities to be exposed to higher order thinking activities. Even conversations between students of color and their parents tend to be directed and authoritarian which provides students with less time to engage in higher order thinking activities. The impact of of not being in appropriate learning environments either at school or at home results in test score gaps in higher order thinking skills. These gaps exist when children enter kindergarten and are even present among toddlers and preschoolers in terms of vocabulary and language development. For example, toddlers raised by low SES families are six months behind toddlers from higher SES families in language proficiency. During their first two years, low income children are exposed to fewer vocabulary words than high income families, which contributes to the language Critical thinking is one of the most important indicators of student learning quality. To develop successful critical thinkers, critical thinking must be incorporated into the curriculum content and teaching approaches and sequenced at all grade levels. Some of the strategies that could be used to teach critical thinking include problem based learning, collaborative learning disability, discussion methods, writing exercises, reading, questioning techniques, and peer review. Teachers should choose a strategy that encourages students to understand and apply these skills. Technology can also be used to enhance critical thinking skills. Another idea that teachers can adapt to enhance critical thinking is a reading strategy that utilizes read reading between the lines in an attempt to understand messages and arguments. In the classroom setting, students might be asked to read a brief article that makes certain claims and then be tasked with suggesting ways of investigating the validity of those claims, implementing their suggestions, and then reaching a conclusion about the validity of the article. Reading comprehension is foundational for developing critical thinking skills. It's a stepping stone that's necessary for cognitive development. Critical thinking builds on reading comprehension by enabling the reader to go beyond surface level understanding. Once reading material is understood, critical thinking requires the reader to evaluate the validity of a selection, to question assumptions, to recognize biases, and to make connections to broader concepts. Critical thinking helps students navigate cultural differences with empathy and understanding. Several factors have led to a decline in critical thinking skills. One factor is a focus in public education on rote memorization, basic literacy, and content knowledge. Another factor is the push for standardized testing, which has led to a culture of teaching to the test. This culture doesn't allow students to think deeply about concepts presented in class. The last factor is the current technology and information overload that students experience daily. The Internet exposes students to an overwhelming amount of information and as students engage digital media and educational materials, they are faced with increasing interruptions from competing media and social platforms. Fragmented reading leads to less concentrated reading and could result in fragmented thinking which could take the form of disrupted or disturbed connections between thoughts and actions, fostering an engaging and collaborative classroom through text based discussions. The questioning technique and student selected texts is essential for enhancing reading comprehension and critical thinking skills as well. These approaches empower students to become independent thinkers who can analyze complex issues and communicate effectively. Despite decades of targeted intervention and whole school improvement programs, achievement discrepancies among U.S. students remain persistent and troubling teachers really do need to address the underlying problem to make real gains in student achievement, and that underlying problem is the critical thinking gap. Most academic interventions focus on core knowledge areas or basic skills such as practicing two digit addition, reviewing parts of a cell, learning new vocabulary words, etc. These kinds of exercises can help students make small gains in reading, math, and general knowledge, but they don't address the root cause of the problem. Learning how to Think and how to Learn Students need to activate higher order thinking skills to effectively master and retain new content knowledge, synthesize it with prior knowledge and and apply it to new scenarios and domains. The sad truth is that most students aren't explicitly taught how to do this. Teaching students how to activate critical thinking will enable them to learn more efficiently and effectively, and it can be done within the context of existing curricula. There are five critical thinking strategies that can help close this critical thinking gap. 1. Integrate critical thinking with the content Critical thinking shouldn't be something that's separate from everything else that the teacher is doing in the classroom. It should be fully integrated with the content that's being taught. For any given assignment, teachers can help students by explicitly calling out the type of thinking that's required. For example, the thinking required could be defining, classifying part to whole relationships, sequencing, and thinking. Along these lines, then the teacher just needs to make sure that students know what kind of thinking is necessary and what that thinking looks like. 2. Give students a framework for thinking when students understand the type of thinking that's required, they need a framework to support that. A visual framework is valuable in supporting the development of critical thinking skills. Making thinking visible and concrete helps students activate the type of thinking required by an assignment and helps them organize their ideas effectively. Even better is to have a consistent framework for thinking that spans grade levels and content areas as this supports the growth of automatically activating cognitive skills.

3.

Make learning active Learning models such as project based learning and inquiry learning have proven to improve learning outcomes. Building in time for debate and discussion as well as collaborative learning activities are simple ways to make learning more active and engaging. Instead of trying to implement a complicated model to make learning more active, the key is to incorporate learning activities that require students to go beyond simple recitation of facts and engage them deeply with the content as they solve a problem, develop and defend a point of view, or create something original. 4. Ask better questions and teach students to ask their own questions. Increasing the rigor of the questions that students are asking is another way to support critical thinking. This means asking questions that go beyond basic knowledge and comprehension to require higher order thinking skills such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. For more advanced engagement, educators can teach students how to ask their own questions. They can do this by pausing for a class brainstorming session after introducing new content. Brainstorming sessions allow students to come up with as many questions that they can, including basic clarification questions and higher order questions such as why, what if, and what else? Then students can work together to start answering some of these questions using active learning methods like debate or thinking maps and 5 get metacognitive metacognition is just a word that describes thinking about one's own thinking, and it's used quite regularly in educational environments. Students who are skilled at thinking about their own thinking are able to recognize how well they understand the culture, concept, where they need extra help or support, and how to apply and adjust learning strategies. Metacognitive skills include planning for learning, monitoring, understanding, and evaluating the learning process. These skills can explicitly be taught. The nice thing about these strategies is that they can be applied across all all grades and content areas. When students develop fundamental critical thinking skills, learning becomes easier and a lot more fun. Now let's move from listening to this discussion to applying it. With that in mind, how does what I've just discussed apply to you? Here are the action steps you can take regarding this topic. Critical thinking skills can be reinforced at home by having your child critique a story, a journal article, a magazine article, etc. And you can engage them with insightful questions that help them practice thinking skills like asking questions to look at an article from multiple perspectives, to question those perspectives, to determine if the author has sufficient evidence to back up their claims and to note if the author of the reading material is biased, presenting only one side of the discussion. These questioning techniques play an important role in building your child's higher level thinking skills such as self reflection, revision, and social debate. Of course, these types of activities need to be age appropriate. The key is to just get started. Helping your child develop critical thinking skills in age appropriate, simple activities will provide value for a lifetime. Here are this episode's takeaways. Teaching analytic thinking involves encouraging students to analyze, critique, judge, compare and contrast, evaluate and assess. In order for children to be able to function successfully in a highly technical, knowledge oriented society, they must have structured thinking skills and habits of lifelong learning. Critical thinking is considered one of the higher order thinking skills needed for for the 21st century employment market. The public education system has a vital role in supporting students acquisition of higher order thinking skills because These skills can be enhanced through student centered instruction and are transferable after they exit the K12 education system. Unfortunately, not all students receive adequate education to acquire higher order think thinking skills. Research indicates that students of color and low SES students are likely to be placed in basic classes, not in classes that develop higher order thinking skills and these basic classes focus on mastery of low level skills and limited instructional time. Several factors have led to a decline in critical thinking skills. One factor is a focus in public education on rote memorization, basic literacy, and content knowledge. Another factor is the push for standardized testing which has led to a culture of teaching to the test. This culture doesn't allow deep thinking about concepts presented in class. The last factor is current technology and information overload that students experience daily. The Internet exposes students to an overwhelming amount of information, and as students engage in digital media and educational materials, they face increasing interruptions from competing media and social platforms. Critical thinking helps students navigate cultural differences with empathy and understanding, something desperately needed in today's society. What's been your experience with critical thinking skills that you observed in your own children? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a text comment on my podcast website, k12education untangled.buzzsprout.com if you enjoyed this episode, remember to recommend my podcast to a friend directly on social media and tag my show in the post. Thanks for tuning in and listening to this episode. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.

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