Teaching Critical Thinking with Maps across the Disciplines
Kelli Lyon Johnson
Presidents Day Retreat
February 19, 2007
SLIDE 1: Teaching Critical Thinking with Maps
I. Introduction: Warm up
A. CAT: Minute paper
What is a map?
Share key words from answers.
B. Engaging Different Learners: Mapping
Draw a map showing me how to get from campus to your house without using
any words or numbers. Include at least two major settlements and two natural
features.
Share strategies for getting around the language problem.
Which way did you "orient" your map?
How did you substitute for words?
What symbols did you choose?
How are those symbols conventions?
C. Engaging Different Learners: Changing Perspectives
CUT UP WORLD MAP
[In the interest of time, I think this part is going to have to go.]
II. Critical Thinking
A. Defining critical thinking
In her work on critical thinking (or sometimes Better Thinking), she says that we all
know what critical thinking is but have a hard time defining (or agreeing on a definition).
A group of faculty at NYU observed that, as Louis Armstrong says about jazz, "Man, if
you have to ask what it is, you'll never know."
SLIDE 2: Defining Critical Thinking
She provides a number of definitions, and I like Penn State Faculty Senate's definition
because of the specific skills they put forth, so that learning objectives are more apparent
to me:
Critical thinking is a term used to refer to those kinds of mental activity that are clear,
precise, and purposeful. It is typically associated with solving complex real world
problems, generating multiple (or creative) solutions to a problem, drawing
inferences, synthesizing and integrating information, distinguishing between fact
and opinion, or estimating potential outcomes, but it can also refer to the process of
evaluating the quality of one's own thinking.
Everyone seems to agree that it will vary by subject, so critical thinking may mean
different things in your discipline.
B. Teaching Critical Thinking
Unfortunately, this is not how most students define critical thinking.
Miami did a study of students' beliefs about critical thinking. Most students believe that
being able to read and understand a critical article (secondary sources) constitutes critical
thinking. (These were graduating seniors.)
Research in the assessment of critical thinking has demonstrated that students need to be
taught critical thinking.
SLIDE 3: Assessing Critical Thinking
In my own research in assessing critical thinking, I found that we need to tell them what
it is and we have to show them how to do it.
Assessment of Critical Thinking
Substantially
Developed
Mostly
Developed
Somewhat
Developed
Undeveloped
Paper I
no rubric
3
4
5
4
5
6
4
3
4
1
2*
Paper II
rubric and
discussion
Paper III
rubric, directed
10
discussion, and
revised assignment
* Total does not include plagiarized paper.
As the table shows, I found some improvement with the use of the rubric and a general
class discussion about critical thinking, but the real improvement came with the third
paper.
Before students completed that paper, I led a more directed discussion of critical
thinking, giving both advice about and examples of the patterns and connections
that often characterize critical discourse in literary and cultural study. Moreover, the
design of the paper prompts led students to think critically and demonstrate their ability
to think critically in the construction of their papers.
My greatest achievement has been in the area of instruction and in assignment and course
design.
C. What We Know about Students as Critical Thinkers
SLIDE 4: Performance Patterns*
In her work on critical thinking, Susan Wolcott divides students into five groups with
progression, or improvement, with movement from left to right:
Level 0
Confused
Fact-Finder
Level 1
Biased Jumper
Level 2
Perpetual
Analyzer
Level 3
Pragmatic
Performer
Level 4
Strategic ReVisioner
Most undergraduate students are at the level of zero or one. She has found that "the
majority of students exhibit Biased Jumper characteristics at the time of graduation from
an undergraduate program" (3-10, my emphasis). That is, they rarely exhibit skills
beyond Level One.
SLIDE 5: Some Characteristics of the Confused Fact-Finder
 proceeds as if goal is to find the single, 'correct' answer
 fails to perceive uncertainties / ambiguities and complexities
 insists that professors, textbooks, or other experts should provide 'correct' answer
 appears unable to read carefully
 denies ambiguity
(Wolcott 2-3 – 2-5)
SLIDE 6: Some Characteristics of the Biased Jumper
 proceeds as if goal is to stack up evidence and information to support conclusion
 recognizes the viability of multiple perspectives but ignores contrary information
 equates unsupported personal opinion with other forms of evidence
 views experts as being opinionated or as trying to subject others to their personal
beliefs
 often discounts or ignores alternate viewpoints
(Wolcott 2-6)
Her explanation: "Assignments and classroom discussions often encourage students to
just state and defend their opinions, so they look only for evidence that supports their
opinions" (3-10).
In working with our Assessment team at Miami, Wolcott also suggested that when
students work with a topic in which they have an emotional investment, they actually
move backward one step or one stage.
III. Maps across the Disciplines
A. Conventions of Mapmaking: Truth v. Fact
1. Despite the words sometimes associated with maps—words like scientific and
objective—maps are, of course, distillations of information, reductions of information
And of course, maps are not always accurate.
SLIDE 7: California as an island.
Nicolas Sanson's 1662 "Audience de Guadalajara, Nouveau Mexique, Californie, &c."
continues an already forty-year-old belief that California was an island, rather than a
peninsula,
which Eusebio Kino's map "Passage par terre A la Californie" disproved just after 1700.
Despite the royal decree of King Ferdinand VII of Spain in 1747 outlawing its
representation as an island, California continued to appear on maps that way until the
latter part of the eighteenth century.7
This is how mapmaking worked in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century
a. Maps were copied
b. Mapmakers had not been to the places they were mapping.
Maps thus show us the way that knowledge is constructed, invented
SLIDE 8: von Humboldt's mismappings of Mexico City
C. CONVENTION 1: PROJECTION
SLIDE 9: Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the German
geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in 1569
Like in all cylindric projections, parallels and meridians are straight and perpendicular to
each other. But the unavoidable east-west stretching away from the equator is here
accompanied by a corresponding north-south stretching
Like all map projections, attempting to fit a curved surface onto a flat sheet, the shape of
the map is a distortion of the true layout of the Earth's surface. The Mercator projection
exaggerates the size and distorts the shape of areas far from the equator. For example,
Greenland is presented as being roughly as large as Africa, when in fact Africa's area is
approximately 13 times that of Greenland as shown by Tissot's Indicatrix.
As with any other map projection, scale varies from place to place, distorting the shapes
of geographical objects.
The two properties, conformality and straight rhumb lines, makes this projection
uniquely suited to marine navigation: courses and bearings are measured using windroses or protractors, and the corresponding directions are easily transferred from point to
point, on the map, with the help of a parallel ruler or a pair of navigational squares.
SLIDE 10: Peters Projection
The equal-area Gall-Peters projection has also been proposed as an alternative to address
these concerns.
This presents a very different view of the world: the shape, rather than the size of areas is
distorted.
Areas near the equator are stretched vertically; areas far from the equator are squashed.
A 1989 resolution by seven North American Geographical groups decried the use of all
rectangular coordinate world maps, including the Gall-Peters projection
SLIDE 11: West Wing Clip
D. CONVENTION 2: ORIENTATION
Positioning north at the top of the page has, over time, become conventional on maps.
The primacy of this north-up orientation on most maps likely originated with the
recognition of the absolute direction of Polaris, and, after 1450, the prevalence of
compass use, focused northward. But not all maps are oriented in this tradition.
SLIDE 12: Newberry T-O map
The 1532 Mappamundi of Isidore of Seville has an east-up
orientation, emerging out of the tradition of “T-in-O” maps.
Numerous medieval Christian maps used this orientation to
reinforce the Old Testament division of the post-flood world
into three parts. The east-up orientation also allows the
positioning of the Christ figure with the head “oriented” to
the east.
SLIDE 13: Al-Idrisi Map (1192) —oriented toward
Mecca
Al-Idrisi was a muslim scholar in the court of King Roger II of Sicily.
SLIDE 14: Florida south up
SLIDE 15: Mapa Sigüenza
Aztec "cartographic history"
dated to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century and named for the man
who held it in his collection, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora.
SLIDE 16: Detail of Aztlán
This map depicts the Aztec migration from their place of origin, Aztlán, to
Tenochtitlán, the site of present-day Mexico City, which was founded in 1325.
On the Mapa Sigüenza, time begins when the Aztecs leave Aztlán. As their
migration proceeds across 400 years, the orientation of the map changes, following them
from place to place in their pilgrimage to Tenochtitlán, guided by the words of their god,
Huitzilopochtli.
SLIDE 17: Detail of Chapultepec
It is not until the Aztecs reach Chapultepec, represented by a grasshopper atop a
hill glyph, that the map begins to depict accurately the physical geography of the area
surrounding Lake Texcoco;
SLIDE 18: Detail of Lake Texcoco
the places that precede Chapultepec on the footprint-marked path represent the
historical events that led to the Aztecs' arrival in the Valley of Mexico rather than to
geographical locations as portrayed in the European mapping tradition.
SPACE IS STORIED SPACE
PLACE AND TIME (HISTORY) CANNOT BE SEPARATED
E. CONVENTION 3: REPRESENTATION
SLIDE 19: Cortés's Map of Tenochtitlán (1524)
SLIDE 20: Codex Mendoza Map of Tenochtitlán
SPACE IS SOCIAL SPACE
PLACE AND TIME (HISTORY) CANNOT BE SEPARATED
SLIDE 21: Lone Wolf's Map
This map shows Lone Wolf's trip from Fort Berthold to Fort Buford, along the Missouri
River, a trip that he took in order to steal a horse from the Dakotas.
To show the way to Fort Buford, Lone Wolf uses dashes to indicate his footprints.
After his theft of the horse, however, his return to Fort Buford is marked by hoof prints.
The map tells a story, shows an event; it is not meant as a mere geophysical
representation of the area.
SLIDE 22: Auchagach's map
Based on at least three different maps created by Cree informants and dated to about
1728,
this map shows connected waters--both lakes and rivers--that run from Lake Superior to
the "mer de l'ouest"--the western sea--which did not exist but which Europeans thought to
lie on the other side of the continent, accessible by "la Fleuve de l'Ouest" or, alternately,
"la Riviere de l'Ouest."
In addition to the rounded lakes and aligned waterways, this map also reveals a primary
focus on relationships (topography), and, probably, the emphasis of culturally significant
geographical locations and features. It may be that the varying sizes of these lakes, for
example, represent how many days it might take to walk between them or which were
most important to these particular Crees at that time.
We know that places with cultural significance were often represented larger in relation
to other features  A lake with cultural significance, for example, may be rendered
larger than other bodies of water on the map in order to emphasize its importance. Or a
creek that plays no part in the reason for the creation of a map may be omitted
completely.
SLIDE 23: Carte Physique des Terreins Les Plus Elévés de la Partie Occidental du
Canada
This 1754 map by Phillipe Buache shows a further transformation of La Verendrye's
map, including the Mer de l'Ouest and the belief that, perhaps, a river may run to it.
IV. Conclusion: Helping Students Move to the Next Stage
A. Why maps?
1. point back to words from their minute papers
2. ENGAGING DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES: allowing students to use
multiple skills sets or ways of thinking (not just students who learn best
from linear lines of text on a page)
3. CRITICAL THINKING AND EMOTIONS: students generally do not have
emotional investments in maps
4. ACTIVE LEARNING: instructors can use activities that engage students in
active learning, not merely reading
SLIDE 24: STUDENT RESPONSES
• One student reported that she enjoyed the workshop because she is a more visual
learner.
• It is important for students to understand that symbols have meaning and
construct meaning.
• By using maps, the students were more willing to discuss theory and to try to
understand it.
Sarah Shockey, Student Associate
SLIDE 25: Comments and Questions