Implementing Critical Thinking in
the Classroom
Faculty of LCOB
Presented by Robin McCutcheon
Getting Started
First: My deepest appreciation to all who
offered idea donations to this CT Guide
Bruce Conrad (Accounting)
Jean Price (Accounting)
Amanda Thompson-Abbott (Accounting)
√
Richard Agesa (Economics)
√
Robin McCutcheon (Economics)
√
Scott Denning (Finance)
√
Jackie Agesa (Finance)
√
Deepak Subedi (Management)
√
Charles Braun (Management)
David Spudich (Management)
√
William Canterbury (Management)
Dale Shao (Management Info Sys)
Ricky Weible (Management Info Sys)
Anil Gurung (Management Info Sys)
√
Rex McClure (Marketing)
√
Woodrow Berry (Legal Environment)
Christopher Cassidy (Management)
Deanna Mader (Marketing)
•
√
√
We wish to acknowledge our Divisional and Dean’s Office Staff – without whose assistance this CT Guide
would not exist: Teresa Marcum, Suzann Workman, Sharon Jenkins, Molly Robertson, and Sandy
Hutchison.
2
Yes, I am the Masochist who Volunteered
 My job was to ask for and coordinate all the
donations to our CT Guide
 Each person, in each discipline, has their own unique
was of teaching critical thinking
 The biggest hurdle: taking the critical thinking from a
discipline and putting it in common language
 The scary part: being criticized by exposing how I
teach
3
Doing the Asking
It’s like ‘cold calling’ – no one wants to do it
But curiosity got the better of me
How do other professors teach students how to think
critically?
The biggest hurdle for me –asking questions in a
manner that the other person can understand.
The biggest hurdle for my fellow academicians:
putting critical thinking in common language, ex:
From Accounting or Business Strategies verbiage into
common English
4
“I didn’t know that’s all you wanted!”
 Taking our classroom lingo and putting it into common every-day English
 It’s easier & harder than we make it out to be
 To get at the heart of teaching critical thinking, we have to ask, “in your class,
what is the fundamental idea you want your students to remember?”
 It almost always turns out to be a form of thinking critically
 Ex: David Spudich & Business Strategy, page 32 in CT Guide
 Turns out, Business Strategy is a form of critical thinking
 Once the person explains to me what critical thinking means to them, I ask,
“what examples do you use in class to teach that?”
 What examples do you use in class to teach that process of step-by-step thinking?
 Ex: Richard Agesa, page 25 in CT Guide
 The final question, “how do you test your students to see if they got it?”
 Now that you’ve taught the step-by-step process, how do you test your students?
 Ex: Anil Gurung, page 33 in CT Guide
 My request of each person, “would you put what we talked about in a brief
paragraph, please, and email it to me?”
 “That’s all it is?! That’s all you wanted? That was easy!”
5
CT Guide v2.0, Moving forward
Please take a quick moment and jot down
your own CT idea (on your 3x5 card) you’ve
gotten from today’s presentation
Pass it to Robin, who will make sure it gets into
the CT Guide
Pass to Robin your 3x5 card (w/ your name on
it) if you’d like her to contact you personally
for your contribution
This CT Guide is OURS!
6