What's So Critical about Critical Thinking? Strategies
for Fostering Disciplinary Thinking in Your Course
School of Public Health and Information Sciences
June 24, 2011
Patricia Payette, PhD
Executive Director, i2a
Associate Director, Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning
University of Louisville
patty.payette@louisville.edu
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Session Objectives
 Participants will be guided in exploring the concepts of critical thinking
and applying them to promote disciplinary thinking.
 Participants will review and discuss Nosich’s construction of
fundamental and powerful concepts and central course questions and
draft examples of these in their respective teaching contexts.
 Participants will reflect upon critical thinking instructional strategies,
and discuss current examples of critical thinking “infusion” into UofL
courses.
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Key Assumptions
 You are an expert and critical thinker in your field
 You are open to thinking in new ways about teaching content
that is very familiar
 We are sharing ideas, strategies, and insights as teachers and
learners
 SPHIS is now formally part of the Ideas to Action initiative
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Ideas to Action: The basics
 Ideas to Action or i2a 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 culminating undergraduate experiences.
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i2a structure: Scaffolded curricula
Sharpen our
existing focus on
building critical
thinking skills in
the general
education
program…
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…..continuing
through
undergraduate
major courses with
an emphasis on
applying and refining
those skills…
…resulting in a
culminating
undergraduate
experience (CUE),
such as a senior
thesis, research,
service learning
project, internship,
or capstone project
that fosters
engagement
i2a Team
housed in
Delphi Center
Dr. Patty Payette
Dr. Cathy Bays
Executive Director, i2a
Associate Director, Delphi Center
for Teaching & Learning
i2a Specialist for Assessment
Dr. Nisha Gupta
i2a Specialist for Culminating Experiences
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Dr. Edna Ross
i2a Specialist for Critical Thinking
Associate Professor Psychology
Judi Murray
Program Coordinator
For more information on i2a:
Home Page:
http://louisville.edu/ideastoaction
i2a Institute: May 23-25, 2011
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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Thinking about your “thinking
goals” for students
Think of a specific course that you teach, or a specific
learning context in which you teach and/or mentor
students to think critically.
WORKSHEET: 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).
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Fostering the critical thinking you value
most: 4 E’s
Make
explicit the
thinking
you want.
Engage
students in
the thinking
you want.
Class activities,
Assignments,
Informal assessments
Outcomes,
Goals
Course description
Hold students
responsible
for the
thinking they
do (evaluate)
Exams,
Homework,
Grading expectations
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“Sage on the Stage” or “Guide on the Side”?
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Fostering the thinking you value most
Make
explicit the
thinking
you want.
Engage
students in
the thinking
you want.
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Outcomes,
Goals
Course description
Class activities,
Assignments,
Informal assessments
Hold students
responsible
for the
thinking they
do.
WORKSHEET: where is this thinking
explicitly indicated as part of your
course?
Exams,
Homework,
Grading expectations
 The words ‘critical’ and ‘criteria’ come from the same
root word meaning judgment.
 “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process that
results in a guide to belief and action.”
Scriven and Paul (2003)
Critical Thinking
Definitions
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Faculty Perspective
“I think that for decades I have given my students many
opportunities to engage in critical thinking, and I have
modeled critical thinking in class discussions. But I don’t
think I can claim ever to have taught critical thinking in a
systematic way. The model gives me a way to share a
critical thinking vocabulary with students and to chart their
progress. I know and can tell my students exactly what I
am looking for.”
Spring 2008 Pilot Program Participant, Department of English
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Fostering the thinking you value most
Make
explicit the
thinking
you want.
Engage
students in
the thinking
you want.
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Specific to your
discipline
Hold students
responsible
for the
thinking they
do.
Expert vs. novice thinkers
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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 in your field or
discipline.
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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 a course:
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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“A fundamental and powerful concept is one that
can be used to explain or think out a huge body of
questions, problems, information, and situations.
All fields have f&p concepts, but there are a
relatively small number of them in any particular
area. They are the most central and useful
ideas in the discipline. They are to be
contrasted with individual bits of information, or
with less general concepts.”
Gerald Nosich, Learning to Think Things Through (2011)
F&P concepts: Public Health
 A population is a network of individuals, not a single entity
or system.
 The P.E.R.I. approach of problem, etiology,
recommendations, and implementation is the basis of public
health practice.
 Population health is the sum of healthcare, traditional public
health, and social policy.
 Public health measures are responsible for the major share of
the increase in life expectancy and decrease in [known]
communicable disease.
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Fundamental and Powerful Concepts
Try writing one or more f&p concepts from your
field/discipline that are essential to a course you are
teaching.
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
and are central to the discipline
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Fostering the thinking you value most
Make
explicit the
thinking
you want.
Engage
students in
the thinking
you want.
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Outcomes,
Goals
Course description
Class activities,
Assignments,
Informal assessments
Hold students
responsible
for the
thinking they
do.
Worksheet: where does your
course allow students to practice
working with F&P concept(s)
explicitly?
Exams,
Homework,
Grading expectations
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 Questions: Public Health
Public Health 101 (introduction to Public Health) central course question:
"What are the outcomes of public health and its concepts, techniques,
applications, and practice?"
Public Health 101 central question for module on principles of public
health:
“What are the principles for understanding and applying public health?”
Public Health 101 central question for class on the population health
approach:
"How can and does public health affect our daily lives?"
Public Health 101 central question for class on evidence-based public
health:
"How does the evidence-based public health process function?"
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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?
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Your central course question
Worksheet: 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:
Write 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
Model the
thinking
you want.
Engage
students in
the thinking
you want.
Hold students
responsible
for the
thinking they
do.
Revisit your central course question
again and again as you introduce content.
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Critical Thinking Framework Adopted for i2a
Richard Paul-Linda Elder framework
 Agreed upon by all reviewers (virtually perfect inter-rater
reliability)
 Most comprehensive (many ‘models’ merely narratives)
 Discipline neutral terminology
 Provides a common language/terminology for discussing,
modeling and measuring critical thinking that can be readily
applied to all disciplines
 Has a wealth of discipline specific resource materials
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http://www.criticalthinking.org
Intellectual Standards
Accuracy
Clarity
Relevance
Logical
Sufficiency
Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework
Precision
Depth
Significance
Fairness
Breadth
Which leads to deeper
Intellectual Traits
Humility
Autonomy
Fair-mindedness
Courage
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Must be applied
to
Elements of Reasoning
Purpose
Question
Point of view
Information
Perseverance
Empathy
Integrity
Confidence in reasoning
Inferences
Concepts
Implications
Assumptions
to develop
p. 3-6
Using the Elements of Thought
 “Going around the wheel” means that we are
thinking things through (thinking critically) with
an explicitly reflective approach
 This process become a way to making critical
thinking visible for novice thinkers
 Using the Elements of Thought can be a tool for
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routinely analyzing and assessing our own thinking
and the thinking of others
Dental Hygiene Case Study for Critical Thinking
Interpretation &
Conclusions:
What are the judgments that
will allow me to know if I’ve
been successful?
Point of View:
Which points
of view do I need to consider?
Implications &
Consequences:
What are the implications of my
proposed solution?
Assumptions: What am I
taking for granted?
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Key Question:
What
problem am I addressing?
Information:
What
information do I need?
Essential Concepts:
What concepts do I need to
apply to correct the problem?
Example of before and after:
Social Work Practicum
BEFORE: Identify an
ethical issue or high risk
incident and analyze how
you responded to it this
month.
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Elements of Thought
AFTER:
“Briefly describe an ethical problem or high risk incident that you
responded to this past month. How did you conclude this is a high
risk incident? Provide at least two examples of evidence or pieces of
information that informed your response or reaction. What were
possible solutions, what were the consequences, and what did you
decide to do? Based on your reflection, how could you have
responded differently? Are there other points of view or
perspectives that did—or might have—influenced your decision?”
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Core Concepts: teaching critical thinking
Model the
thinking
you want.
Engage
students in
the thinking
you want.
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Hold students
responsible
for the
thinking they
do.
Ask students to make visible the thinking they do for you;
guide them to demonstrate the process of critical thinking,
not just the product.
“Go around the wheel” with your course
Disciplinary thinking:
•Fields and disciplines embody distinctive ways
•of looking at the world.
•Practitioners know the concepts that structure
information and content.
•How parts of a discipline fit together creates “the
logic of a discipline”
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The Logic of Your Course
Worksheet
“Go around the wheel” with
your course in mind using the
single worksheet.
Which Elements represent the
thinking you value most in your
course?
How can you explicitly engage
students in these thinking skills &
assess their ability to master
these skills?
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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.
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