Paul/Elder Critical Thinking Model
3 Components:
Ice Breaker - Serial Testimony
- Share your name, campus, and discipline.
- What kind of thinker are you (in your personal life / in your profession)?
- When does that thinking serve you well? When does it cause challenges?
What is critical thinking?
- elements of reasoning = ways of thinking about something; we might embed these into our learning/teaching activities
- intellectual traits = intellectual habits we want to help students cultivate
- intellectual standards = how we assess our own and students' thinking
Explore Intellectual Traits
Paul/Elder Model - Dr. Gerald Nosich
Outcome 2: Identify Intellectual Standards (Paul/Elder Model)
Used to Assess Thinking
- Robert Ennis: Critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.
- Matthew Lipman: Critical thinking is skillful, responsible thinking that is conducive to good judgment because it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting.
- Richard Paul (Paul/Elder Model): Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking, while you're thinking, in order to make your thinking better.
Ice Breaker - Serial Testimony
"Autocratic administration of time in the
service of the democratic distribution of time."
(Dr. Peggy McIntosh, director of the Gender, Race and Inclusive Education Project )
Outcome 1:
Identify Intellectual Traits
reasonable, reflective, skillful, involves standards and criteria,
is self-correcting
- Groups of 3-4.
- Each person gets 1 minute.
- No one interrupts (no questions/comments).
- If the speaker has finished speaking, maintain silence until time is called.
Explore Intellectual Standards
Used to Assess Thinking
Written Reflection (20 min.):
Today's Learning Outcomes:
Expert Groups - 20 minutes
Each expert group explores
2-3 Intellectual Traits:
Large Group Share
3 minutes per trait
Small Group Round Robin (8 minutes):
What intellectual traits/habits are important in your discipline and/or course? Why?
- Share your name, campus, and discipline.
- What kind of thinker are you?
- When does that thinking style serve you well?
- When does it cause challenges?
- Each expert states his/her trait and explains it to the group.
Think of student-constructed work (speech, lab report, essay, research paper, case study, experiment, etc.) you use in your course, and design/redesign your formative or summative assessment tool (e.g., a rubric) to incorporate 3-5 of the Intellectual Standards as descriptors/measures of critical thinking/learning.
Participants will be able to:
- identify intellectual traits/habits that you want students to develop
- identify intellectual standards used to assess critical thinking/learning
- What is the trait? How is it important in your discipline/course?
- Who is an exemplar of this trait in your field/discipline? Why?
- What activities are you currently doing that cultivate this trait/habit in students?
- What activities could you add to intentionally help students develop this trait/habit?
Not every standard needs to be assessed in every learning activity.
Sample rubrics:
http://www2.gsu.edu/~mstnrhx/457/rubric.htm
http://ed.fullerton.edu/seced/files/2012/11/EDSC_Writing_Rubric.pdf
Explore the critical thinking elements, standards, and traits further at:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/ctmodel/logic-model1.htm#
Intellectual Traits & Standards
workshop presented by
Michele Lima and Shawn Pollgreen
April 9 and 10, 2015