“Will this Thinking be on the Test? Using Critical Thinking to
Engage Students in Thinking Deeply in Your Discipline”
Dine and Discover Series
Delphi Center for Teaching and learning
Patricia Payette, PhD
Executive Director, i2a
Associate Director, Delphi Center
Patty.payette@louisville.edu
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Session Objectives
• Explore concepts and definitions of critical thinking
• Examine and articulate the fundamental concepts and central
questions that “live inside” your courses and assignments, but
often seem elusive to students
• Revise or revisit your teaching activities to more effectively
engage students in original inquiry, and to think critically
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Focused Listing:
What is critical thinking?
Think of a specific course that you teach, or a specific
learning context in which you teach and/or mentor
students to think critically.
Describe in a short list the changes in students’ mindset
(or “mental models”) you want to see in them at the end
of your time with them in the classroom, lab, etc. (e.g.
ask relevant questions).
Page 2 of your worksheet packet
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Focused Listing:
What is critical thinking?
Let’s share our “focused listing” regarding the
changes in students’ thinking, or thinking
abilities, we want to see our students achieve.
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For your Teaching Toolbox:
Focused Listing
• Focuses student attention on a single
important term, concept, name, idea
from a class session and asks them to
list several ideas
• Helps students recall the most
important points related to a topic
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For your Teaching Toolbox:
Focused Listing
• Helps faculty assess what students retain about a
concept OR unearth assumptions or preconceptions
students bring to the class
• Use in groups;
• or as individual prompt to help students recall
information ;
• or as a prompt class discussion or review for an exam
• It is a “low stakes” way to assess students’ thinking
Question: How could you use “Focused Listing” to engage students?
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One definition of critical thinking
Critical thinking is
the intellectually disciplined process
that results in
a guide to belief and action.
Understanding
Concepts
Appreciation
Decisions
Synthesize
Application
(Scriven and Paul, 2003)
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Ideas to Action: The Basics
 Ideas to Action (i2a): Using Critical Thinking to Foster Student
Learning and Community Engagement is our Quality
Enhancement Plan (QEP).
 Part of our accreditation report to SACS-COC to demonstrate our
ongoing commitment to student learning
 Our 10-year initiative we created to renew our focus on critical
thinking and community engagement and the undergraduate
experience.
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i2a: connecting classroom, campus
and community
Sharpen our
existing focus
on building
critical thinking
skills in the
general
education
program…
…..continuing
through
undergraduate
major courses
with an emphasis
on applying and
refining those
skills…
…resulting in a
culminating
experience, such
as a senior thesis,
research, service
learning project,
internship, or
capstone project
that fosters
engagement
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For more information on i2a:
Home Page:
http://louisville.edu/ideastoaction
Faculty Exemplars:
www.louisville.edu/ideastoaction/resources
Faculty Speak Video:
www.louisville.edu/ideastoaction/resources/media
Assessment
http://louisville.edu/ideastoaction/what/assessment
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Making critical thinking visible:
A Well-Cultivated Critical Thinker
 Raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly
and precisely
 Gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas
to interpret it effectively
 Comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them
against relevant criteria and standards
 Thinks open mindedly within alternative systems of thought,
recognizing and assessing, as needs be, their assumptions,
implications, and practical consequences
 Communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions
to complex problems
The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking, 2008, page 2
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How do you make critical thinking
“visible”?
• Choose one critical thinking skill/behavior from the list
of the “well-cultivated” critical thinker that you teach (or
mentor) students to do well.
• Paraphrase it in your own words and elaborate on that
behavior as it relates to a specific teaching context.
“In other words…”
• Give an example of how you teach this skill or an
assignment that helps students master this skill.
“For example….”
• Try to describe the teaching/learning dynamic in terms of a
metaphor, an illustration, a concept , or a diagram.
“It’s like…”
Page 3 of your worksheet packet
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For your teaching tool box:
SEE-I
S: State it
E: Elaborate
E: Exemplify
I: Illustrate
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Why use SEE-I?
• Using a SEE-I prompt requires you to clarify
your thinking about an idea, concept or
problem
• See page 44 in “Aspiring Thinker’s” Guide
• Communicating about your ideas or thinking
using the SEE-I can be a tool for checking the
accuracy of your thinking
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Gerald Nosich on the SEE-I
“If you can accurately S,E,E,
then I a concept or principle in a
course, it means you almost
certainly have a good grasp of
it, that you understand it to a
much greater degree than if you
are merely able to state it.”
Nosich, G. “Learning to Think Things Through: A Guide to Critical Thinking
Across the Curriculum.” (2009). p. 35.
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When to use a SEE-I
• As a prompt for courses or other learning contexts
when teaching a new concept or when checking for
understanding
• As a prompt for going deeper during a discussion:
“Can you elaborate on that?” “Does someone have
an example of this?”
• As a homework assignment /exam review/exam
question
• Other?
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Examples of SEE-I in action
Dr. Lynn Boyd
College of Business
Question: When could you use the SEE-I to prompt your
students’ critical thinking about a concept, idea, or topic in
your course?
Page 4 of your worksheet packet
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Teaching Toolbox: Fundamental
and Powerful (F&P) Concepts
• explain or help us think about a huge body of questions,
problems, information, and situations.
• are attached to a course theme
• are to be contrasted with individual bits of information, or
with less general concepts.
• reflect the primary and essential thinking trait(s) you want
students to achieve at the end of an assignment/course.
Bottom Line: What you are aiming for is to make those f&p concepts part
of the way students think.
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Faculty Examples of F&P Concepts
• English: Texts construct culture; cultures are
complex sites of contest.
• Finance: Almost all decisions that corporations
make have to be made under conditions of
uncertainty.
• Psychology: Human thought and behavior can be
studied scientifically.
• Engineering analysis: Use the principles of
mathematics and science to obtain analytical
solutions to engineering problems.
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F&P Concepts for ELFH 690:
Internship in Postsecondary Education
• Higher Education Administration
– (skills, attitudes, behaviors, concepts of the field)
• Career Fit
– (goals, interests, abilities, values, experiences)
• Professionalism
– (leadership, interacting with others, choices, expectations)
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Fundamental and Powerful Concepts
(worksheet, p. 3)
Try writing one or more f&p concepts from your
field/discipline that are essential to a course you are
teaching.
Page 5 of your worksheet packet
Remember that f&p concepts are used in your
thinking about every important question or problem
in the course…..
…yet they also allow you to begin to think through
questions that lie beyond the scope of the course…
Question: how can you illuminate and revisit the f&p in your
assignments and course activities?
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Making F&P concepts take
root: Promoting Deep Learning
“Deep learning is learning that
takes root in our apparatus of
understanding, in the
embedded meanings that
define us and that we use to
define the world”
Tagg (2003)
Deep knowledge
Tagg, J. (2003). The learning paradigm college. Boston, MA: Anker.
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Teaching Toolbox:
Promoting Deep Learning
•Helps students go beneath the rote memorization of
an idea : to “think through” ideas and concepts
•Relies on making connections between ideas and
information (“connecting the dots”)
•Applies ideas and concepts to “real life”
•Fosters the integration and synthesis of information
with prior learning or knowledge
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Teaching Toolbox: Thinking
Through Important Ideas and Concepts
•
•
See page 46 in “Aspiring Thinker’s” Guide
Choose one F&P concept from your list of course concepts
1. State the meaning of the concept in one simple sentence (boil down its essence in everyday language)
“X is….” or “In other words….”
2. State the significance of the idea or concept
“This idea is important because….
3. Give an example of the concept (as it applies to real life)
“For example….”
4. Connect the concept or idea to other concepts in the subject
“This concept is connected to the following ideas/concepts within the subject…”
5. Give examples for number 4. above
“Some examples that show the relationship between this idea and other important ideas are….”
Page 6 of your worksheet packet
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Thinking Through Important Ideas:
Why and When?
Allows you to help students move beyond
memorization and “work with” new concepts
Promote deep learning by focusing on
•Integration
•Synthesis
•“Real life” relevance
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Central Course Question:
•provides the structure through which everything else
is understood and all components of the course are
connected.
•serves to unify your vision of the course and the
field.
•is an open-ended but specific question that is ripe
for exploration from a number of angles and has no
easy, central “answer.”
•functions like a “mission statement” for your course
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Faculty Examples of Central Course
Questions
English: In what ways and why did England change in the
transition from medieval to early modern, and what was the role
of texts in that change?
Criminal Justice: How does reading, understanding, and
critiquing scholarly research publications in the field of criminal
justice system develop a consumerism for criminal justice
research?
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Central Course Questions and F&P
Concepts
Almost all decisions that corporations make have to be
made under conditions of uncertainty.
Central Course Questions from Finance:
1. What are the major sources of uncertainty in doing business at
home and abroad?
2. How is the required reward affected by the level and sources of
uncertainty?
3. What are the compounding and mitigating sources of
uncertainty on the multinational level?
4. How do multinational enterprises adapt their activities to
manage uncertainty on the multinational level?
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Central Course Questions and F&P
Concepts
F&P Concept from Biology:
An individual human's survival depends on homeostasis: the maintenance of
relatively constant internal body conditions
which are favorable for survival and function of many specialized cell types.
Central Course Questions:
How do the forms of human body structures support their function?
How do the form and function of human body structures contribute to
the maintenance of homeostasis?
How can we monitor the function of such structures in order to
1) understand their response to challenges
and 2) determine whether they are working well enough to maintain homeostasis?
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Teaching toolbox: your central
course question
Try writing the central course question of one of
your courses. Write four versions of it.
Consider: Which one seems to capture the most
central question of your course?
Page 7 of your worksheet
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Your central course question
Question: How can you use your central course question to
foster and illuminate the critical thinking you want your
students to practice?
Try this at home:
Writing an answer to that question in a few paragraphs and
consider how your course currently responds and reflects
your answer.
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Core Concepts: teaching critical
thinking
Make
explicit the
thinking
you want.
Engage
students in
the thinking
you want.
Hold students
responsible
for the
thinking they
do.
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Let’s share 10 Insights
Let’s generate 10 ideas,
insights, strategies or new
concepts you are taking
away from today’s session.
Page 8 of your worksheet
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