Never Stop Asking: Teaching Students to be Better Critical Thinkers 9781119887546, 9781119887553, 9781119887560, 1119887542

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Critical Thinking Defined
Concise Definition of Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking Is Not All Procedural
Chapter 2 Why Is Critical Thinking So Hard?
Obtaining Truth
Fallacies and Biases
Misconceptions
Misconception Identifying Tools
The Forer Effect
Rationality
Chapter 3 Cognitive Hierarchy
Framework for the Establishment of Factual Knowledge
Systems of Thinking (Systems 1 and 2)
Cognitive Tasks
Claims Creation and Defense
Enjoy the Process of Thinking
Anticipatory Consideration
Learning Styles Debunked
Chapter 4 Inquiries of a Higher Order
Use of Paradoxes and Thought Problems to Elicit Thought and Conversation in Others
Ship of Theseus Thought Puzzle
The Birthday Paradox
The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise
The Banach–Tarski Paradox
Shuffling the Deck Paradox
Elementary Math Example
Create Your Own Experiments in Thought
Intuition
Questioning Skills and Collaborative Discussions
Developing Critical Thinking through Literature
Decision Journal
Chapter 5 The Answer Isn’t in the Back of the Book
Process of How One Builds a Case
Truth and Skepticism
What Kind of Kit Do You Need to Test for Baloney?
Scientific Process in Every Classroom
Scientific Method Anywhere Protocol
Paideia Seminar
Paideia Seminar’s Basic Structure
Examining Mistakes
Chapter 6 Collaborative Argumentation
Argumentation Vee Diagrams
Conformity and the Anti-Venom: Debates
Argument Talk Protocol
Chapter 7 The Real World
Examples of Essential Questions for Projects
The Paradox of Nonreading Literature
Group Work Isn’t Always Effective
Language Learning
Problem-Solving Ownership
Chapter 8 Creativity’s Connection with Critical Thinking
Inspiration for Creativity and Critical Thinking
There Is Nothing New under the Sun
Subtraction
Creativity via Narrative Theory
Chapter 9 The Learning Environment
Spacing and Chunking
Incorporation of Music
Leading a Learning Culture to Nurture Critical Thinking
Learning Pathways
Meditation
Meditation in the Classroom
Remove Cognitive Filters from the Environment
Conclusion
References
Index
EULA

Citation preview

Lang-Raad887546_ffirs02.indd iv

17 Feb 2023  07:59:15 am

Praise for Never Stop Asking

“Dr. Nathan Lang-­Raad clearly has the background, research, and experience to detail why our modern education system was never designed to create critical thinkers. Never Stop Asking is the book educators have been looking for, with insights and strategies that ensure students today will be the skilled thinkers of tomorrow.” —­Barbara Bray, podcast host, speaker, author, story weaver “Essential reading for any educator wishing to elevate their understanding of critical thinking in the classroom. Nathan Lang-­Raad draws from years of experience, elegantly breaking down powerful learning concepts in a unique and clear-­sighted way. His ideas and methods come together to form an accessible, rational, and important guide for 21st-­ century teaching—­a crucial companion piece for the spirited educator.” —­Misbah Gedal, head of engagement, Wakelet “Never Stop Asking performs the real service of giving teachers and administrators a positive and bold vision of what supporting students as critical thinkers really looks like, along with exciting and easy ways to implement it. What if your staff read this book and came together in critical thinking dialogue circles to process it and act on it in the classroom? Highly recommended!” —­Laura Gilchrist, vice president and teacher, ParentCamp; professional development consultant and coach, Kansas City, Missouri “A thorough introductory treatment of how to teach critical thinking filled with fun, humility, and facts that create a grounding in what is often an elusive concept. What’s more, it properly grounds those facts in an acknowledgment of the importance of knowledge in learning to think critically—­all of which makes this a valuable resource for educators.” —­Michael Horn, author of From Reopen to Reinvent

“One of the greatest skills necessary for growth and achievement is to view the world through a critical thinking lens. Nathan Lang-­Raad’s book Never Stop Asking inspires readers to reflect on thoughts and actions as they empower students to embrace curiosity, ask questions, and push boundaries of common understanding.” —­Tamara Letter, instructional coach and author of A Passion for Kindness: Making the World a Better Place to Lead, Love, and Learn .

“This book is a must-­read for any teacher who cares about creating a critically thinking classroom and society! Nathan synthesizes research and suggests innovative ways to support critical thinking in a refreshing, captivating, and informative way.” —­David Palank, author of Classhacker and principal of San Miguel School “In the world of disinformation and decentralization, the world needs students and citizens who can critically think and ask questions and find answers using decision-­making mechanisms that are research-­ based and not based on anecdotes, ad hominem, or opinions. Dr. Nathan Lang-­Raad takes the research body of how we critically think and creates not only a philosophical argument, but provides strategies of how teachers, schools, and individuals can build and practice critical thinking skills. Dr. Lang-­Raad allows us to rethink how we think about critical thinking and gives us all a call to action to bring forth strategies to implement it within the schools and institutions we serve in.” —­Matthew Rhoads, EdD, tech integrationist, professor, and author “It’s never been more important to consider what students need beyond the foundational skills and academics our schools prioritize. Never Stop Asking invites educators at all levels to contemplate why and how critical thinking should become a higher educational priority, then equips them with the ideas, scenarios, and frameworks to make it a reality in their classrooms or courses—­all in one well-­researched volume overflowing with actionable insights.” —­Carri Schneider, EdD., head of editorial and publishing, XQ Institute

Never Stop Asking

Never Stop Asking Teaching Students to Be Better Critical Thinkers

Nathan D. Lang-­Raad

Copyright © 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada. Except as expressly noted below, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-­copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-­8400, fax (978) 750-­4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-­6011, fax (201) 748-­6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permission. Certain pages from this book (except those for which reprint permission must be obtained from the primary sources) are designed for educational/training purposes and may be reproduced. These pages are designated by the appearance of copyright notices at the foot of the page. This free permission is restricted to limited customization of these materials for your organization and the paper reproduction of the materials for educational/training events. It does not allow for systematic or large-­ scale reproduction, distribution (more than 100 copies per page, per year), transmission, electronic reproduction or inclusion in any publications offered for sale or used for commercial purposes—­none of which may be done without prior written permission of the Publisher. Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-­2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-­3993 or fax (317) 572-­4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lang-Raad, Nathan D., author Title: Never stop asking : teaching students to be better critical thinkers / Nathan D. Lang-Raad. Description: First Edition. | San Fancisco : Jossey-Bass, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022053749 (print) | LCCN 2022053750 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119887546 (Paperback) | ISBN 9781119887553 (Adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119887560 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Critical thinking—Study and teaching. Classification: LCC LB1590.3 .L346 2023 (print) | LCC LB1590.3 (ebook) | DDC 370.15/2—dc23/eng/20230104 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022053749 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022053750 COVER DESIGN: PAUL MCCARTHY AUTHOR PHOTO: © GETTY IMAGES | PAVLO STAVNICHUK

To every learner, be curious, relentlessly curious.

Contents

About the Author

xi

Acknowledgmentsxiii

Introduction

1

Chapter 1

Critical Thinking Defined

Chapter 2

Why Is Critical Thinking So Hard?

19

Chapter 3

Cognitive Hierarchy

37

Chapter 4

Inquiries of a Higher Order

55

Chapter 5

The Answer Isn’t in the Back of the Book

79

Chapter 6

Collaborative Argumentation

105

Chapter 7

The Real World

117

Chapter 8

Creativity’s Connection with Critical Thinking 135

Chapter 9

The Learning Environment

ix

7

153

x

Contents

Conclusion181 References191 Index201

About the Author

Dr. Nathan D. Lang-­Raad is an educator, speaker, and author. Throughout his career, he has served as a teacher, elementary administrator, high school administrator, and university adjunct professor. He was the Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, as well as education supervisor at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. He was also the Chief Education Officer at WeVideo. He serves as a US State Ambassador for the Climate Action Project, a collaboration between the United Nations, World Wildlife Fund, NASA, and the Jane Goodall Institute, and an advisor for TAG (Take Action Global). Nathan is also the author of Everyday Instructional Coaching, The New Art and Science of Teaching Mathematics (co-­authored with Dr. Robert Marzano), WeVideo Every Day, Mathematics Unit Planning in a PLC at Work, The Teachers of Oz (co-­authored with Herbie Raad), The Boundless Classroom (co-­authored with James Witty), and Instructional Coaching Connection. Nathan received a Bachelor of Arts in general science-­ chemistry from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas; a Master of Education in administration and supervision from the University of Houston-­ Victoria; and a Doctor of Education in learning organizations and strategic change from David Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. xi

Acknowledgments

T

hank you to Richard Dawkins, the late Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the late Bertrand Russell. Your work has a tremendous impact on furthering inquiry and critical thinking for generations to come. Thank you to Ashante Thomas, my Wiley acquisitions editor; your commitment, smarts, and ambition have been beyond helpful. As usual, my greatest gratitude goes to my husband, Herbie, who reads and gives me feedback through the writing process, and who is wise, brilliant, supportive, and loving.

xiii

Introduction

I

was sitting in the seat of the flight director at the Mission Control Center (the one used in the Apollo missions) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. I was the only one in the room, and I looked up at the screens, imagining what life must have been like in the 1960s, the graphs and plots that were compiled and displayed as scientists and engineers were pioneering feats never before accomplished in space flight. I thought about Katherine Johnson’s curiosity and brilliance with mathematics that led to the successful space flights of Alan Shepherd and John Glenn. I thought about the tremendous amount of teamwork and critical thinking involved right here in this room as Apollo 13 went from lunar mission to rescue mission. The water conservation, the carbon dioxide syphoning, the navigational decisions, and the multistage burns all 200,000 miles from Earth. The gravity of the moment (pun intended) sparked the pure awe and wonder of how much we’ve accomplished as humans, and all this possible through science. And while we’re on the topic of possibilities, I hadn’t known it was possible that a teacher could work at NASA. But I am here to tell you that they can, and I did. I was a high school chemistry and physics teacher when I was asked to lead student design challenges at the NASA Johnson Space Center during the summer. And then one day they asked me to work full time at NASA. I eventually led a team of 1

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educators, called NASA’s Digital Learning Network. This role gave me opportunities to work alongside scientists, astronauts, and engineers with the purpose of inspiring students to pursue STEM-­related fields, but most importantly, to develop critical thinking skills. I also had the honor of leading the protocol team that escorted VIPs through Mission Control, and so I spent many hours immersed in science history. Sitting in the flight director chair, thinking about the accomplishments of humankind that got us to this moment, I had an epiphany: my purpose as an educator is to help students think independently and critically, assess the evidence, and disagree with me. Not only will this endeavor help promote critical thinking that will lead to more innovations and better solutions, but I have confidence in my students, and I know that if they are given the proper encouragement to think for themselves about all of the information that is currently available, they will be in the best position to lead lives that are happy, satisfied, and free. One of the most disheartening things to be learned from history is that if we are fed false information for a sufficiently long period of time, we have a tendency to disregard any evidence that points out the falsehood. We lose interest in learning the truth about the situation. The trickery has us in its grip to the point where we don’t want to admit that we’ve been taken advantage of in any way. Even as new methods and evidence emerge, people often continue to use the old ones, rooted in the comfort of their unchanging perspective. We are now living in the digital age, which has brought about an abundance of information. According to the findings of various studies, the brain enjoys taking shortcuts. This can, at times, make it difficult to differentiate between what we feel and what we know. Why engage in laborious thought when we can simply avoid effort and look something up on Google? Why bother reading a book when all we need to do is scan the headline of a post that’s been circulated on social media?

Introduction

3

We live in an age where it is common to hear, “I researched it.” Most people do not “research” in the true definition of the word. How many people check the source of a social media post to find out who wrote it and whom they wrote it for? How often do we critique the article for inaccuracies and misinformation? Research entails compiling a full literature review, triangulating sources and data points. Research in universities involves testing your hypothesis, collecting a random sample of sources, and performing independent probability statistics on the reported results. How often do we scroll down to the bottom to look at footnotes and references and apply the same source of scrutiny to them? The answer to these questions is probably “rarely.” The process for most of us usually follows the same predictable course: we are exposed to something in our algorithmic, manipulated social media feed that resonates with our implicit biases; we then, subconsciously, apply the layers of our own experience and emotional filters, and call it evidence. We are flooded with information, and at the same time find ourselves in a thinking drought. With all of this information, we’ll have to do much more than seek to attain knowledge. To be successful and flourish in this life, we’ll have to be better at synthesizing, recognizing patterns, and creatively piecing together the right information at the right time, thinking critically about it, and making important choices with more wisdom. It takes science to prove that observable patterns are linked. We look at factors and circumstances repeatedly and look for other factors to disprove the link between patterns. This is the foundation of science. We begin with observable data and measurements, analyze possible explanations, and systematically confront each explanation with the facts. When we do science, we engage in critical thinking. When a new idea arrives on the scene, we scrutinize it with science, with our brains via critical thinking. In the words of Carl Sagan, “Critical thinking is the means to

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construct, and understand, a reasoned argument and recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follows from the premise or starting point and whether that premise is true” (Sagan, 2011). If the thinking process must be capable of changing both the thinker and the context around the thinker, then critical thinking is vital. Thought calls into question our presuppositions about what is possible and creates the roadmap for reasoning, logic, and creativity. Critical thinking is a prerequisite for decision-­making. Does it matter what realm of critical thinking one is engaged in? Does it always have to be a problem rooted in science or math? It doesn’t. What matters is that information, facts, surprises, and data are considered, and a decision is made to change the course of our direction or decide on a new approach. Critical thinking doesn’t limit us with rigid or prescriptive steps but instead paves the way for freedom and progress into the world of human decision-­making. As an informed citizen or teacher, you know critical thinking is vital. But as our attention spans shorten and the need for immediate gratification increases, some of the skills necessary to elicit the most excellent quality and quantity of information are waning. Since the early 1960s, educators and politicians, from local schools to Congress, have been emphasizing the significance of graduating students who are capable of engaging in critical thinking. The volume of knowledge that teachers once had to cram into their students’ heads can now be accessed with the swipe of a finger on a smartphone, but in order to make sense of the data, one must be able to think critically about it. To be fair, our modern education system was never designed to create critical thinkers. The current system is a slightly updated version of the postindustrial education system, built on scalability, efficiency, and productivity. It was built to train a large workforce, which

Introduction

5

favors an education system centered around compliance, grades, and passing tests. Over the course of the past half-­century, there has been undeniable advancement in the teaching of critical thinking. Courses specifically devoted to the topic can be found in the catalogs of a number of different colleges and universities, while the most recent generation of academic standards for grades K–12 places an emphasis not only on the subject matter but also on the skills necessary to think critically about the subject matter. Despite this progress, 75 percent of employers claim that the students they hire after 12, 16, or more years of formal education lack the ability to think critically and solve problems. This is the case despite the fact that nearly all educators claim that they place a priority on assisting students in the development of these very skills. Is there a tool or framework we can employ to support students with critical thinking? The purpose of this book is to help you in this endeavor. We will begin with the heuristics our brains create to shortcut critical thinking. Then I’ll equip you with the strategies needed to support all learners in critical thinking effectively. How will you know that your students are successful? • They will be able to identify their own biases. • They will question their own belief systems. • They will be able to evaluate their own ideas. • They will be able to confidently ask open-­ended questions. • They can parse data and classify it as reliable and credible. • They develop the intrinsic desire to research based on their own curiosity. • They will employ the proper channels of research. • They will be able to see a throughline in their problem-­ solving and reasoning ability.

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• They will be able to clearly see cause-­and-­effect relationships. • They will learn a sense of being present and content. As you review the list above, you might ask yourself why these things are not already part of the educational experience. Why are these considered lofty goals? Because of the way classrooms are currently structured, there is a push for speed, consumption, productivity, standardization, and grades. These facets of education don’t inherently create conditions for critical thinking. There is a misalignment between what critical thinking demands and the current structure of our school systems. Given the increasing dangers, many of which are attributable to insufficient critical thinking about the topics that are most important, it is abundantly clear that we need to do more to ensure that the students of today will be the skilled thinkers of tomorrow. We are, fortunately, in a position to do so without having to completely overhaul the existing structure of education. It begins with you. It begins in your classroom, or with the principal leading the school building. I wrote this book for you, to support you in your journey of cultivating critical thinkers and problem solvers.

CHAPTER

1

Critical Thinking Defined

A

s an educator, you may have had a professional development session or graduate course on “critical thinking.” Or perhaps the most exposure to the term you’ve had is the inclusion of the term in the “4Cs”—­Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and, yes, Critical Thinking. The term “critical thinking” is commonly used interchangeably with other words, such as “student engagement,” “creativity,” or “higher-­level learning.” And let’s not forget that active engagement alone is not a good qualifier—­one could be actively engaged in misconceptions or irrationality. A jumbled reference to Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) terms (analysis, synthesis, and assessment) is typically seen as evidence of critical thinking ability. The perception that we still do not understand the concept well enough to determine how teaching critical thinking skills can be integrated into the curriculum is one obstacle that has kept us from making more progress in critical thinking education 7

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over the past several decades. This paralysis can be traced back, at least in part, to debates that have taken place within the academic community of critical thinkers regarding how the term should be defined. However, even though these discussions are well-­intentioned and helpful, they should not obscure the fact that there is widespread consensus regarding the skills that constitute critical thinking, as well as substantial research regarding how those skills can be taught effectively. For instance, critical thinking requires a more organized way of thinking than other types of thinking. “Logic” is the term that is most used to describe this type of productive and structured thinking; however, logic actually describes a number of different systems for reasoning systematically. There are two kinds of logic: formal and informal. Formal logic comprises words and concepts, which are reduced to symbols that can be manipulated in the same way that numbers and symbols are manipulated in mathematics. Informal logic is a form of logic that allows us to consider the meaning of words rather than reducing them to symbols that fit into a structure. Formal logic is extraordinarily powerful; just ask any computer programmer about its capabilities. However, we can also systematize our reasoning by using informal logic. There are also a number of graphical systems that can be used to map out logical relationships. Some of these systems are simple enough to be picked up by young learners, and they can be utilized in any subject area. People who are skilled at critical thinking must also be adept at translating spoken and written language into precise statements that can be built into a logical structure. This is because the majority of the communication we need to think critically about involves everyday human language as opposed to machine code. With enough practice, students will be able to perform this type of translation on anything from historical or literary documents

Critical Thinking Defined

9

to scientific ideas and mathematical proofs, although this translation process involves an element of art as well as science. Systematic efforts to integrate critical thinking skills into our schools have come up short. Additionally, there is a lack of understanding regarding how to assess it, as well as whether schools wish to prioritize assessing critical thinking. If educators believe they already know how to teach critical thinking in their classrooms, a newly constructed assessment or evaluation will be viewed as a pointless exercise that should be carried out with extreme caution and consistency. Some educators conflate critical thinking with active participation, engagement, or “cooperative learning.” Others will claim that familiarity with Bloom’s Taxonomy or Howard Gardner’s notion of multiple intelligences equates to the ability to grasp critical thinking. Some educators will equate it with a focus on learning styles, concept maps, or any other tool, aspect, or dimension of learning. Still others will associate critical thinking on the whole with a subset of it. As a result, some will promote different points of view (and take that to be the whole of it). Some will emphasize the need of realizing one’s own assumptions. Certain individuals will emphasize the importance of verifying information sources. Some will place a premium on conceptual analysis. We really need a holistic view or at least a realistic understanding of how to build critical thinking while teaching the concepts of a particular discipline. I believe it is prudent to begin with a definition of critical thinking. In Peter Facione’s 1990 work, he was able to extract a handful of definitions. I’ll summarize them here, then we’ll settle on one concise definition. To begin, here is a lengthy excerpt of Facione from the California State Universities and Colleges website: The link between language and logic . . . the capacity to evaluate, criticize, and advocate for ideas, to reason inductively and

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deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on good inferences made from clear expressions of knowledge or opinion . . . (or develop) the ability to discern truth from judgment, belief from knowledge, and elementary inductive and deductive reasoning skills, including an awareness of language and thought’s formal and informal fallacies. (Facione, 1990)

In 1990, the American Philosophical Association sponsored a Delphi research study to determine key critical thinking skills based on the consensus of experts from the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and education in the United States and Canada. According to the APA Delphi Report, critical thinking is defined as “the act of deliberate, self-­regulatory judgment. This procedure took evidence, context, conceptualizations, techniques, and criteria into account” (Facione, 1990). Facione recognized six critical thinking abilities as essential: • Inference: To identify and secure the elements necessary to arrive at reasonable conclusions; to formulate conjectures and hypotheses; to consider pertinent information and to mitigate the consequences of data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation • Explanation: To articulate the conclusion of one’s reasoning; to justify that conclusion in terms of the evidentiary, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which the conclusion was based; and to offer one’s conclusion in the form of convincing arguments • Evaluation: To determine the credibility of statements or other representations that are accounts or descriptions of an individual’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to determine the logical strength

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of actual or intended inferential relationships between statements, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation • Self-­regulation: The conscious monitoring of one’s cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results generated, most notably by applying analytical and evaluation skills to one’s own inferential judgments with the goal of challenging, confirming, validating, or correcting either one’s reasoning or one’s results • Interpretation: The capacity to perceive and communicate the meaning or significance of a diverse range of experiences, circumstances, data, events, judgments, norms, beliefs, rules, procedures, or standards • Analysis: To ascertain the intended and actual inferential links between statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of expression intended to reflect belief, judgment, experiences, justifications, information, or views

Concise Definition of Critical Thinking Most scholars agree that critical thinking comprises an interpretation or analysis, typically followed by evaluation or judgment. It implies that learners must have mastered some subject matter before engaging in critical thinking, implying that critical thinking cannot occur in a vacuum. This type of thinking is challenging and unnatural, and it requires time and effort to master (Nilson, 2011). Teaching can be structured without focusing on mechanization of education. We must disentangle these two conceptions. We can improve education’s quality by avoiding an obsession with knowledge and skills. More on this later.

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This is our concise and abbreviated definition: interpretation or analysis, followed by evaluation or judgment.

Critical Thinking Is Not All Procedural At this point you might be already thinking that critical thinking is very rote and methodical, and that we might minimize and damage creativity by imposing too many constraints on thinking and inferences. I admit that if we are urged to investigate all relevant hypotheses, the influx of options may make judging what is going on more difficult. We may not have enough bandwidth to gain insights if we spend our time tracking assumptions and uncertainties, reviewing the lineage of sources, and checking for logical contradictions. When people are required to justify their judgments, they are more prone to focus on signs that they can verbalize than the tacit knowledge that is at the heart of expertise. Following the requirements for double-­ checking assumptions, preserving internal consistency, and so on may foster a passive mindset of avoiding mistakes rather than an active mindset of seeking out new information. With an active mindset, we can do more to make sense of events than we can by blindly accepting others’ views and passively following directions. We can be on the lookout for weak signals that others aren’t picking up on. Coincidences and probable links can pique our interest. We can be sensitive to things that should have happened but didn’t. We could be more mindful. Curiosity appears to be a common denominator in all these components of critical thinking. A shift in attitude from a procedural to an investigative mindset is one part of critical thinking. All we must do is follow the protocols, according to the procedural mindset. Certainly, we must learn the procedures in most

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jobs. However, there are situations when the rules and processes do not apply or would result in flawed outcomes. Procedures are important, but they aren’t enough. We must learn the procedures but must not get engrossed in them. We must also look around, not blinding ourselves to common sense and glaring observations. This transition in thinking from procedural to investigative might be difficult. Procedures provide the foundation or framing for critical thinking. After an event or a report of potential danger, we are accountable to the facts. When there is a tornado heading your way, you act by getting to a safe location. We receive training and even checklists on how to deal with these circumstances. We must think beyond the routines to anticipate what can go wrong and what dangers might arise. Critical thinking drives us to examine the objectives that have been set for us. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the stated aims and objectives set forth by an authority. In complex and shifting contexts, however, events may overtake these objectives. Alternatively, we may be confronted with difficult situations that lack clear objectives, forcing us to revise our objectives as we go. We must adapt and improvise not just the strategies for accomplishing the goals, but the goals themselves. Thus, it is unhelpful and possibly incorrect to speak about critical thinking “abilities.” Critical thinking is an integral aspect of most disciplines and subject areas, and if you ask subject matter experts to define critical thinking, you will likely discover much overlap between the responses from mathematicians and historians, and likewise for creativity. Creativity is not a single process, but rather a collection of related but distinct ones. Mathematics creativity is distinct from visual arts creativity. If a student decides to be creative in mathematics by determining that 2 + 2 = 3, this is not creativity; it is just inaccurate, as the learner is

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no longer performing mathematics (unless we’re talking about quantum physics, and 2 +2 = 5, but that’s for a different book). Creativity entails operating on the outskirts of a field while remaining within it. Similar arguments might be made for other future skills for success, including problem-­ solving, communication, critical thinking, creativity, and metacognition. There is some indication that students who learn to collaborate effectively in one setting may be more effective in another; thus some transfer of skills is almost certain. Some argue that if we want students to be creative in mathematics, we must explicitly teach creativity in the mathematics context. Or if you want students to think critically about history, you must educate them how to think critically about history. Rather than viewing critical thinking as a generic talent that can be taught in any discipline or subject, schools should utilize it as a “tool for auditing the breadth of the curriculum supplied in any discipline or subject.” This entails ensuring that all disciplines are taught in an epistemically broad manner, as Guy Claxton defines it (Claxton,  2014). Thus, rather than teaching history “as if it were about facts and dates,” it should be taught as an epistemic apprenticeship into the discipline of history, which includes facts and dates, as well as an awareness of bias in historical sources, chronology, and cause and effect. Education is an apprenticeship in thinking, learning, and knowing. It is “epistemic” because it is mostly about these things. We could say that it has to do with developing an epistemic mentality, which is a set of ways to deal with complexity, uncertainty, and difficulty. It also helps people develop an epistemic identity, which is a set of beliefs and attitudes about their own rights and abilities as thinkers, learners, and knowers. Given the various strategies and opinions surrounding pedagogy, it’s surprising how much agreement exists on the necessity of teaching disciplines as single subjects, each with its own

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structure and standards, language and logic, views and habits of thought. There have been many attempts at integration, especially with STEM (or STEAM), but in large part our subjects are segmented. Howard Gardiner said, “Mastering disciplines, developing good communication skills, and engaging in polite debate and argument—­these have been, and should continue to be, at the forefront of all education. The ancients emphasized the necessity of knowing what is true (and what is not); what is beautiful (and what is not); and what is good (in terms of being a worthy person, worker and citizen). These educational objectives should be long-­term” (Gardiner, 2008). A quick note about Gardiner’s statement: he encapsulates the essence of the trivium, the three arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics that Martin Robinson FRSA argues provide the foundation for what John Milton once described as a “complete and generous education.” Additionally, he provides his perspective on what is true (academics), what is beautiful (aesthetics), and what is right (ethics). Gardiner encapsulates the essence of what you might have heard of as the “brain, hand, and heart” of education. The only way to reform societal, educational, economic, and political systems is through critical thinking. This, I believe, is an eternal undertaking regardless of the place or the period in which we live. Since the dawn of humanity, we have encountered a plethora of issues ranging from trivial to sophisticated. As a result, we require precarious and sophisticated answers. Given the absence of a deductive method to societal advancement, our only alternative is critical thinking, which begins in our classrooms. This book will examine human psychology principles such as confirmation bias, faulty logic, and fallacies. After setting the backdrop for how the brain works, we’ll discuss how to avoid the errors that frequently lead us to ignore critical thinking. We’ll look at critical thinking through the lens of instructional design for your students. Additionally, we’ll discuss techniques to assist

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you in regularly and explicitly teaching critical thinking and how to incorporate it into your daily classroom activities. Additionally, we’ll examine what distinguishes thinking, a fundamental human faculty that we take for granted, from thinking well, what it takes to train ourselves in the art of thinking, and how we can channel our natural curiosity in a productive manner when confronted with an onslaught of information. I’ve already offered numerous critical thinking conceptualizations. Critical thinking is about making decisions based on a systematic review of data about an issue or topic, rather than on gut instincts, unsupported assertions, views, or emotions. Remember the concise version I offered earlier: interpretation or analysis, followed by evaluation or judgment. Klein produced an essay covering two waves of critical thinking, providing a broader viewpoint and a form of critical thinking history (Klein, 2011). The first wave concerns our mental processes. The second wave is all about discovering new things. Each wave has its own worth. We might be able to identify better techniques to improve critical thinking and attain a more balanced picture of it if we can untangle them. The first wave focuses on reducing mistakes and faulty reasoning. Critical thinking should be complete and methodical, as well as rigorous, consistent, and logical. It should also be based on solid data. The second wave refers to critically thinking about what is going on around us rather than accepting what others tell us is going on. It’s about exercising our critical thinking skills and asking oneself, “Is this explanation plausible?” So yes, critical thinking is rooted in logical reasoning at its core, but has far-­reaching impacts on imagination, creativity, intuition, and insight. While the concept of critical thinking dates back to the fifth century BCE, the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk, which detailed decreases in national academic performance as assessed by

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standardized testing, sparked renewed attention. Even since the renewed focus on critical thinking since the 1980s, our education system has been sluggish to respond. To be fair, more than just educational systems are to blame. The machinery and processes of education are led by people who are held back by their own cognitive biases. Critical thinking is hard—­it’s in the name.

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Why Is Critical Thinking So Hard?

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was a student teacher, and my supervising teacher was a high school biology teacher. To protect her anonymity, I’ll call her Ms. Darwin (you’ll see why I chose this name in a bit). As a part of a traditional teacher training program, every student teacher has the opportunity to teach under an assigned mentor, a teacher who doesn’t mind sharing their classroom with you for a semester. Before you teach lessons under the supervision of the mentor teacher, you typically sit in their classroom and observe how they teach, what we educators call “pedagogy.” The students seemed to really like Ms. Darwin. I would characterize her pedagogical practice as somewhat monolithic, didactic, and teacher-­centered. Ms. Darwin stood at the front of the room spouting facts, concepts like the phases of mitosis and the parts of a cell, while students were expected to take copious notes. She’d occasionally 19

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call on students who were raising their hands. I was sitting in the back observing. Based on interactions in the teachers’ lounge, I gathered that Ms. Darwin was a respected teacher. And being a science teacher, I assumed not many questioned her content knowledge. From my initial observations, I saw that she had a grasp of the concepts expected to be taught in a high school biology course. One particular lesson, though, stands out. As a matter of fact, it’s really the only detailed memory that stands out from my student teaching experience in this particular classroom. It was a lesson on evolution. As might be expected, the lesson started with definitions of adaptations, heredity, and natural selection. And then, suddenly, with an uncomfortable look on her face, Ms. Darwin quickly forced out the following sentence while throwing me a quick side glance: “Now, you all know my beliefs about how the Earth is only 6,000 years old, so you can take all of this with a grain of salt.” She then proceeded with the lesson, never to return to her ideology again. What just happened? Were we supposed to think that everything after Ms. Darwin’s declaration was now superfluous or fallacious? Were the students supposed to disregard this lesson or did they even think twice about what she said? Being a science teacher in training, I assumed most science educators would take great pride in being practical, pragmatic, and logical people. As scientists, we’re supposed to have a zeal for postulating testable hypotheses, and proceed to carry out experiments that confirm or deny ideas and premises. And yet anthropological and psychological pseudoscience paired with misinformation has flourished in the United States. Ms. Darwin’s declarative was an attempt to undermine evolutionary theory—­ the most foundational and integrating idea in all of life science, and essential for other sciences ranging from astronomy to chemistry. Why didn’t Ms. Darwin have a willingness to abandon

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ideas that weren’t based on logic or science? Of course, we have limitations, but isn’t the point of science to be aware of our own rules, to be relentless in asking more questions, continually seeking further data, respect peer-­reviewed evidence, and to be unwavering in our search for the truth? You receive a daily dose of superstitions and pseudoscience, and you probably don’t even recognize them because they’ve become such a part of the anthropic way of life. Maybe you get your daily zodiac reading. If you’re Virgo, you might fall in love with a Cancer today. If you’re feeling some lousy juju, burn some sage. The TV isn’t working, so it’s probably Mercury in retrograde. Knock on some wood if you say something negative that you don’t want to happen to you. These might have been said or acted upon in good fun, but taken seriously, they impute our progress toward science and critical thinking.

Obtaining Truth Critical thinking may sound cliché to you. There may even be some ambivalence surrounding the concept. In one respect it may seem simple and linear, and in another it may seem ambiguous. Is there a subset of skills or qualities that are categorized as critical thinking? The capacity to sit and have a conversation, high-­level questioning, active listening, and the flexibility to adjust and adapt are just some of the actions that fall under and connect to critical thinking. Critical thinking is essential to analyze the boundary (permeable and fluid) between fellow inquirers. Everyone carries some level of implicit bias, and this bias informs past experience and future decision-­making. We must intentionally seek to understand these things about others and our own beliefs and assumptions. Consequently, the evolutionary process has

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produced brains that like to take shortcuts in the form of confirmation bias. This act is the antithesis of critical thinking. What are we shortcutting? When we skip critical thinking, we are saving time, effort, understanding, and reason. Critical thinking is the only medium to obtaining truth. And if that isn’t worth the time and effort, I’m not sure what is. Don’t we all want to choose the best decisions and actions? Think about it—­most of the suffering we’ve experienced in life is hinged on a decision or a circumstance we chose to remain in. Think about those negative states of mind: sadness, depression, hurt, betrayal, and the like. We aren’t defined by these emotions, but many times we live as if we are. Critical thinking empowers us to deal appropriately with failure, disappointment, and negative emotions. Critical thinking is the most important skill students should be learning and applying. Therefore it must be a priority skill. I argue that it must be the foundation for which content is ingested or acted upon. As information is constantly hurled at us, we must learn to cut through the noise and form reasoned, well-­thought-­ out conclusions and judgments. Schools were designed after the factory model in the industrial revolution. Modern schools still use the standardized context for teaching and learning, so we still see a lot of monolithic delivery of facts and figures. Today we can google about any fact we want and will ever need. Education must focus on how we can take that information and analyze, apply, synthesize, evaluate, and create. The ability to ask questions and probe with intention into any area of knowledge—­whether in humanities, the arts, science, math, politics, and ethics—­is key to expanding our critical thinking as individuals and as a society. We must think deeply about the knowledge we obtain, but we must also be able to discern which information is credible and reliable and which is not. This kind of progress in a society can only happen with critical

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thinkers who have developed and applied the skills and tools to use information effectively to create insights. We can be certain that our future depends on our ability to effectively practice and teach critical thinking skills.

Fallacies and Biases We’re not to blame for being human. Because we are all human, we are all susceptible to a categorical bias known as cognitive bias. These are things you believe to be real but aren’t and can be proven to be false. There are many different types of cognitive biases. If you’re trying to figure out what is objectively true, there are a few that are extremely cunning. You want to feel exceptional, which is one of the cognitive biases. The need to be unique knows no limitations. Simply pause if something happens around you that makes you want to think it’s significant. Most likely, it isn’t. This is due to the fact that the human brain is not wired to think in terms of probability and statistics. It’s just not the case. What’s the harm in feeling special? In theory, I suppose nothing. But it isn’t a complete picture of the world. And believing you are special is entirely up to you. Do you want to live in the delusion of what you believe to be true, or in the reality of what is true? Our students should also have the opportunity to spot fallacies and biases. Wherever possible, our brains like to take shortcuts. Mental shortcuts, also known as heuristics in psychology, allow the brain to save energy and perform more efficiently. We must make a slew of quick yet sound judgments and decisions every day. Because our working memory capacity and duration are limited, and we cannot comprehend all of the information available to us, we must rely on heuristics (i.e., mental shortcuts) to speed up our thinking (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974). Heuristic reasoning is

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usually very functional and insignificant—­consider what cereal you eat for breakfast—­but it can also lead to illogical and biased decisions—­I have better days when I eat Cheerios (i.e., decisions that deviate from ideal normative standards derived from logic and probability theory)—that can have a significant impact. Critical thinking is necessary to decrease or eliminate biased decisions and to perform successfully today. If we’re not careful, cognitive shortcuts can lead to major errors in thinking and irrational decision-­making. The following list provides a summary of common fallacies and biases that often keep us from engaging in logical reasoning and critical thinking. False Cause Fallacy Cherry-­picking data or looking for patterns to support your claims is known as the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. It was named after a marksman who shot at barns at random and then painted bullseye targets around the location where the most bullet holes appeared, giving the impression that he was an excellent shooter. This is known as the “false cause” fallacy. Clusters appear by chance, but they don’t necessarily mean that there is a link between them and a specific cause. An example of this fallacy is that you see a cluster of data (shark attacks, cancer cases, plane crashes, etc.) and assume that this cluster is significant. Status Quo There is no way to overcome one’s natural tendency to favor the status quo. Because you’ve been programmed to see the world in this way, everything seems so banal and uninteresting. You wouldn’t be able to cope with the information overload if you

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weren’t. A new apartment, home, or car can be a good analogy for this. Every detail is important at first, so you spend hours tweaking things like lighting and furniture arrangements to get precisely the right look. Once you’ve settled into a routine, you’ll be able to let go of things. There’s a good chance you won’t notice certain features of your new house unless a friend or family member brings them to your attention. If you don’t get used to your surroundings, you won’t be able to tell when something goes wrong. Introspection Illusion Asking individuals why they like or dislike something requires them to go through their own thoughts and feelings in order to come up with an answer that makes sense to them in terms of words, phrases, and paragraphs. We may not be able to reach or understand these hidden parts of our minds. In taste testing, food and drinks are scored inconsistently by the participants who were compelled to reflect and had a wide range of preferences depending on their reasons. The taste is difficult to describe in words, therefore the explainers focused on other features including texture, color, and viscosity. The non-­explainers didn’t seem to notice any of it at all. The introspection illusion refers to the belief that you understand your own motives and desires, as well as your likes and dislikes. You think you understand who you are and how you came to be. There is a belief in your mind that knowing this information will guide your actions in all future scenarios. Contrary to popular belief, this has been proven false after extensive research. Experimental evidence shows that introspection is not a method of accessing one’s innermost thoughts, but rather a fallacy.

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Dunning-­Kruger Effect The Dunning-­Kruger effect occurs when people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general. For example, there are times when the Dunning-­Kruger effect isn’t working in your favor. Comparing yourself to others becomes easier as your skill level increases as a result of the amount of time you’ve spent practicing and gaining experience. As you endeavor to better yourself, you become more aware of the areas where you still have work to do. You begin to see the nuances and subtleties of your craft; you discover the masters of your trade and recognize where your skills fall short of theirs. On the other side, your ability to compare yourself to others on specific activities decreases as your skill level decreases, your practice time decreases, and your experience decreases. Because they don’t know as much as you do, or because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, your peers don’t speak out against you. Because of your slight advantage over beginners, you begin to believe that you are an expert. Ignorance often breeds confidence more than knowledge does, Charles Darwin noted. Amateurs are significantly more prone to assume they are experts than true professionals are when it comes to anything from speaking to a crowd to making jokes to speaking a new language. It’s as much a matter of expanding your knowledge as it is of learning new things. Apophenia Have you ever looked up at the sky and seen a cloud that looked like a cat or a bunny, or seen faces in inanimate objects, like

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the moon or a patch of mold? This is called apophenia, which is the inclination to see connections between unrelated things. The Texas sharpshooter fallacy and pareidolia fall under the umbrella concept of apophenia. Because of this fallacy, you form a circle around some random events and conclude that they have some significance that isn’t really there. Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive patterns out of randomness, such as seeing shapes that suggest faces in clouds, shadows, or even slices of bread. In apophenia, one refuses to believe in clutter and noise, in chance and randomness. Synchronicity is the most common trigger for apophenia. Even if you know events are random, synchronicity still has the power to make you feel better. As an example, 8/9/10 is an interesting date all by itself, but, depending on whom you talk to, it can also launch a thousand myths. It’s not surprising we all fall victim to apophenia at some point. Most of us naturally think in images and stories, and we likely enjoy watching actors and performers on television or on stage because it is a natural outlet for our imagination. Some people find mathematics dull because math is often perceived as linear and stepwise. When it comes to television and film, your memory tends to omit the boring sections and focus instead on the most important aspects of the story—­the narrative elements. When you’re immersed in a mystery story, you’re more likely to assume that the events depicted are actually taking place. These kinds of mysteries have clues popping up that turn out to have some sort of bizarre connection to one another. Observing the patterns that are gradually forming is a fascinating experience for everybody. Your curiosity keeps you from putting down the book or turning off the TV because you want to see how everything comes together at the end. You want to know “Who did it?!”

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Argument-­from-­ignorance fallacy Mystical New Age props such as crystals and dowsing rods capitalize on people’s natural proclivity for pattern recognition. You seek cause-­and-­effect relationships, but when the cause is unknown, you commit a logical fallacy by assuming all possible causes are equal. Could the strange sensation you get when you enter an old house be a haunting? Are those odd creaks and bumps attempts by the spirit realm to communicate? Are the strange lights in the sky aliens on the verge of probing unsuspecting farm families? Was it a friendly, misunderstood Sasquatch who left those tracks in the forest? The majority of what is classified as paranormal occurs as a result of people committing the argument-­from-­ignorance fallacy. Simply put, this is when you determine whether something is true or false based on the absence of evidence to the contrary. Because you aren’t sure of what the truth is, you assume that any explanation is equally valid. Perhaps those lights were from alien spacecraft, perhaps not. You don’t know, and thus believe it is just as likely that they were intergalactic visitors as that the lights were from a distant helicopter. You cannot disprove something about which you have no knowledge, and the argument-­from-­ignorance fallacy can lead you to believe that something is possible simply because you cannot prove it is not. You are aware that you are reading a book right now, but you cannot be certain that it will not try to eat you like the Monster Book of Monsters from Harry Potter. Despite this, you’re not tempted to lock this book away at night lest it gather sufficient strength hiding under your bed. Being unable to disprove that this book secretly craves flesh does not increase the likelihood that it does. The same is true of fairies, gnomes, or the Blair Witch. These things are not more

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probable simply because you cannot prove their nonexistence. Absence of proof does not confirm or deny a proposition, it just tells us the likelihood of something happening or not happening. The Earth will always revolve around the sun and this book in your hands will fall down and not up. The wonderful thing about science is that it’s about evidence and proof. Some people believe humans never walked on the moon, but there is ample evidence that it happened. Individuals who refuse to believe such things assert that they require additional evidence before changing their minds, but no amount of evidence will suffice. They can argue from ignorance if there is even a smidgeon of doubt.

Misconceptions Misconceptions are common outcomes of learning, not unique instances. Students may develop misunderstandings as a result of incorrect knowledge, faulty reasoning, or misinterpretation of material they read, hear, or observe. Here is a list of common misconceptions your students may have: • Clouds have holes in them, and rain falls from them. • Things weigh less or feel lighter when you measure a gas. • On the Celsius system, one degree of temperature is smaller than on the Fahrenheit scale. • Dinosaurs and cavepeople coexisted for a time. • Humans are the apex and culmination of evolution. • Every night, the stars and constellations emerge in the same spot in the sky. • As it circles around the Earth, the Moon does not rotate on its axis.

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• A star’s brightness is solely determined by its distance from the Earth. • A telescope is required to see planets. • The sun will never run out of energy. • A microscope can be used to see atoms. • Atoms are similar to cells in that they have a membrane and a nucleus. • When molecules are heated, they expand. • The pupil of the eye is a dark patch or object on the eye’s surface. • Only one color of light is produced by a white light source, such as an incandescent or fluorescent bulb. • Sunlight differs from other sources of light in that it is colorless. • The same laws apply to blending colored paints and crayons as they do to mixing colored lights. • Electricity is contained within batteries. • Energy is “consumed” by things. • The terms “acceleration” and “speed” mean the same thing. • Objects that are lighter than water float in water. • Because objects are heavier than water, they sink in water. • Temperature is a characteristic of a material or thing; for example, metal is naturally cooler than plastic. • Except for its crust, the Earth is molten. • On mountaintops, the gravitational influence of the Earth is greatly decreased. • All radioactivity is created by humans.

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• A magnet is attracted to all metals. • Gases are devoid of mass. • Solid particles have no motion. These are just a few examples and I’m sure you would discover a lot more if you implemented a process to detect misconceptions. You might be shocked by how many of these misunderstandings persist into adulthood! So how do we identify and remedy these misconceptions? I’ll share a few tools below.

Misconception Identifying Tools Concept Inventory  Teachers must be aware of the various types of misconceptions that students hold. A concept inventory is one diagnostic tool that assesses students’ grasp of essential concepts in a variety of subjects. A concept inventory fulfills two purposes. For starters, it assists teachers in determining the nature and frequency of student misconceptions in their lessons, bringing to light places where the instructor may need to clarify. Second, teachers can utilize concept inventories to analyze misunderstandings before and after a unit or semester to see how they’ve changed. This can aid in determining the efficacy of their instructional methods. T-­Chart  Create a table that compares students’ misunderstandings to commonly held beliefs for misconceptions that lend themselves to direct comparisons. Compare and contrast the two in as many ways as possible, including assumptions, predictions, applications, ramifications, evidence for and against, and so on. The table is a graphic depiction that helps students see the distinctions between the two ideas more clearly.

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Predict-­Observe-­Explain (POE)  In this three-­ step process, the teacher gives a problem or situation to the class and asks them to guess how the scenario will turn out (predict). After that, the teacher presents the actual results (observe), and finally, the students are asked to describe the findings and resolve any conflicts between their predictions and the observed results (explain). According to research, students who predict outcomes before seeing the results of a problem or a class presentation are significantly more likely to grasp the problem’s underlying concepts or principles (Brod, Hasselhorn, and Bunge, 2018). Furthermore, when students estimate outcomes, they may indicate misconceptions about the related ideas, allowing the teacher to provide prompt feedback and schedule additional education on the subject. Students try to explain or justify their reasoning, choices, conclusions, and opinions in the final phase of a POE episode, and reconcile these with the scenario’s real outcomes. Explaining one’s understanding is a powerful approach for elaborating and revising it (Chiu and Chi, 2014). Teachers can also provide tailored feedback to emphasize key topics or provide extra examples to help students understand the ideas. POE is a versatile method that students can use in and out of the classroom. Individually, in couples, or in small groups, they can work. The teacher obtains insight into how students think about the issue and is able to provide feedback and further explanations as needed. Refutational Teaching  Students read refutational literature that explains and contradicts their misunderstandings before attending a refutational discussion where the teacher openly refutes the misconception. Refutational texts can sometimes cause students’ misconceptions to shift. However, refutational texts alone may not be enough to effect conceptual transformation.

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The instructor’s lecture and explanation, which confirms the material and refutes the mistake, is the second part of the method (Taylor and Kowalski, 2014). Understanding a complex notion or theory is not a one-­size-­fits-­all approach. Students may have a shaky grasp and only a partial knowledge of basic topics throughout the course, and it is not unusual that preconceptions that seemed to vanish throughout a course reappear once the course ends. Instructors can help students maintain longer-­term conceptual change by giving them frequent opportunities and adequate time throughout the term to use accurate knowledge to help reinforce newly discovered ideas.

The Forer Effect The Forer effect is part of a wider phenomenon known as subjective validation, which is a fancy way of stating you’re considerably more susceptible to suggestion when you’re being talked to. Because you’re always in your head, you spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be you. Despite certain cultural differences, most people aspire to be unique and exceptional individuals with their own ambitions, dreams, concerns, and doubts. And beyond that, we all seek to assert our uniqueness and express our individuality. We even personalize everything: • Cell phone covers • Luggage colors, tags, and shapes • Phone wallpapers • Decorative items for our desks • Music playlists for every conceivable mood and activity • Home interiors • Fashion choices and statements

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However, we are all considerably more similar than we realize, somewhere between nature and nurture. You and your friends are nearly identical genetically. Those genes produce the brain, which in turn produces the mind, which is the source of your consciousness. As a result, your mental life is genetically identical to everyone else’s, just like the feet in your shoes. We are culturally distinct, and our diverse experiences in diverse contexts mold us. Even so, we are all very similar deep down, and our failure to notice this can be exploited. If a remark is uncertain and you believe it is directed at you specifically, you will eliminate the ambiguity by matching the information to your own characteristics. You recall all the time you spent finding out who you are and separating your attributes from others, and you apply the same rationale. Subjective validation is essential for mediums and palm readers who speak for the dead or glimpse into the afterlife for a fee. Remember that your ability to deceive yourself is greater than that of any conjurer, and conjurers come in many shapes and sizes. You are a creature who is driven by hope, and it is that very specific, precious hope that can so often be the target of people who may not have your best or highest interest in mind. As you try to make sense of the universe, you concentrate on what fits and ignore what doesn’t—­and there is plenty that doesn’t fit in life. When you come across a collection of horoscopes, read them all to expose the generality behind the smoke and mirrors. When someone claims to be able to see into your heart, remember that our hearts are all very similar. When we ask students to evaluate their unique experiences and backgrounds, it’s also important to ask students to find similarities. One of my favorite morning meeting routines is to ask students to partner up and find 10 similarities between them. This activity brings awareness of the Forer effect, and also fosters critical thinking. Students at first think it might be difficult

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to identify similarities, but once they begin this routine, they quickly start to identify quite a few.

Rationality “They’re being irrational.” How many times have you truculently lobbed that attack against someone else, to defend your perspective? Psychologist Steven Pinker once said that rationality is merely a way of achieving our goals, thus even the craziest people can make sensible decisions. When our brains, which have evolved to seek mental shortcuts, lead us astray, things become difficult—a fate that befalls even the sharpest of minds on a frequent basis. We’ve looked at some common traps and fallacies that demonstrate our propensity to take mental shortcuts. Here is one more to end this chapter, relating to rationality. You probably remember the infamous three-­door option, which is popular in American gameshow culture. A new car is parked behind one of the doors, and a goat stands behind the other two. After the contestant chooses a door, the host then opens one of the remaining two doors, showing a goat. The contestant is then given the option of changing his or her door preference. What would you do? Would you stick with your original pick, figuring it was a 50-­50 chance? This is a popular assumption; however, it is a mistaken one. The contestant’s chances of winning the car increase from one in three to one in two by switching to the opposite door. We have a hard time calculating that simple probability fact. But imagine if you had a thousand doors to choose from, and 998 of them were opened to show goats. Would you still choose to go with your first pick over the other unopened door? How might a brain-­teaser from a game show be used in real life? We rely on habit and intuition, and we are afraid of change.

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We make mistakes all the time because we concentrate on relatively rare occurrences (fear of a plane crashing or of getting eaten by a shark when swimming in the ocean) while ignoring the far more typical effects of doing certain activities. Although we are far more likely to die while driving than while flying, this fact offers little, if anything, to alleviate fearful flyers’ worries. But, in the end, logic is the only thing that can save the world from devolving into chaos. You can’t argue with it—­unless you use sensible arguments, which would be futile. However, it would be unreasonable to dismiss the allure of the irrational. People attempt to bridge any gaps in their understanding with intuition, and yet it is science that has the propensity to fill those gaps properly. And we ought to have the guts to believe that science, through critical thinking, will eventually close the gaps. We can leave this chapter with the awareness of how the brain works, and with the confidence that we can become better thinkers and question askers.

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Cognitive Hierarchy

M

ost educators begin thinking of cognition and cognitive abilities through the lens of a classification system—­a conceptualization illuminating the various levels of thought. Benjamin Bloom famously fits this category (Bloom, 1956). We want students to be able to analyze and make sense of abstract concepts. He framed cognitive performance in terms of areas or domains of functioning. These domains are arranged in a hierarchy, with the bottom of the pyramid referring to more basic sensory and perceptual processes and the top part of the pyramid to parts of executive functioning and cognitive control. Domains are not separate from each other, and executive functioning influences how basic processes are used. Taxonomy is beneficial because it provides us with targets. Other experts have done their own classification of cognition. For example, Linda Elder and Brookfield focused much of their work around self-­awareness processes. John Dewey would also fit into this camp. These experts believe 37

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everything has a cultural and societal context. The pinnacle of human thought would be represented by an integrated human being who reflects on their actions. They frame cognition in the following manner: Where do I fit into my future behavior in the world? Why am I thinking in this manner? Different disciplines have distinct and various definitions of critical thinking. Variance exists because it is difficult to define this in the concrete sense of eliciting students’ critical thinking. In this section we will explore the development theories around critical thinking—­that is, are there are stages that individuals go through as they develop critical thinking? Cognition relates to what we intellectually develop over time and critical thinking is a skill that develops over time and with experience. The timeline is a much broader scale—­we’re not talking about a particular lesson, unit, or even school year, but referring to the idea that we learn over the course of a lifetime, with a great deal of time and practice. Critical thinking is occasionally referred to in many circles as higher-­level or higher-­order thinking due to its connection to a preexisting framework called Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). Bloom’s taxonomy is frequently depicted as a pyramid, with knowledge at the base (low-­level thinking) and comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation at the apex. Although convenient, categorizing thinking in this way is not entirely appropriate, because thinking is not hierarchical in nature. Rather, the ability to recall and retrieve information reinforces existing knowledge, which serves as the foundation for all subsequent learning.

Framework for the Establishment of Factual Knowledge According to the original Bloom’s taxonomy, the “foundation of factual knowledge” framework implies that we must first focus

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on and reinforce students’ fundamental factual knowledge before we can foster higher-­order learning. However, Agarwal (2021) challenges this notion in her research. She found that long-­term learning is aided by retrieval practice. For instance, remembering the answer to a science question increases learning more than searching for it in a textbook. And having to remember and write down an answer to a flashcard increases learning more than just assuming you know the answer and flipping the card over. Struggling to learn is far more effective than rereading, taking notes, or listening to lectures since it involves “practicing” what you already know and memorizing information. We exercise and develop our memory by employing retrieval practice as a learning approach. According to research, memory and long-­term learning can be improved in a variety of ways, including: • Students’ complex thinking and application skills • Students’ information organization • Students’ knowledge transfer to new ideas In other words, retrieval exercise does more than merely help with memorization; it also helps with comprehension. Students can adapt their knowledge to new scenarios, fresh questions, and relevant contexts because they have a deeper understanding of course material and have practiced using it. To guarantee that students are not only remembering but rather applying material flexibly, you can utilize a range of question kinds (fact-­based, conceptual, complex, higher-­ order, etc.). Metacognition—­ thinking about thinking—­ is a critical advantage of retrieval practice. For example, some students study hard for tests yet do poorly, owing to the fact that they focused on what they already knew rather than what they didn’t. Students can analyze what they know and don’t know by engaging in retrieval practice, and then make better study decisions as a result. Teachers benefit from improved metacognition as well: knowing what students

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know and don’t know allows teachers to adapt lesson plans to ensure that all students are on the same page (similar to formative assessment). Feedback, or supplying pupils with information about whether or not they did something right, is a crucial part of metacognition. Students will not know how they performed if they do not receive feedback. As a result, pupils should always receive feedback after retrieval practice. In terms of instruction, what type of retrieval practice will assist students in attaining the highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy? Surprisingly, fact-­based retrieval practice enhanced only fact learning, whereas mixed retrieval practice (fact-­based mixed with higher-­level synthesis) enhanced higher-­ order learning. If we want to reach the top of Bloom’s taxonomy, establishing a foundation of knowledge through fact-­based retrieval practice may be less effective than initiating higher-­order retrieval practice, a significant finding for future research and classroom application.

Systems of Thinking (Systems 1 and 2) Intellectual capacity combined with a willingness to engage in objective critique of one’s thoughts are the hallmarks of critical thinking. Cognitive psychologists refer to thinking about how we think as metacognition. When people claim they’re practicing mindfulness, they’re usually referring to this. The difficulty is not only how to do something, but also how to decide what to do. This is not a simple task. Because many of our decisions are based on hard-­ wired, intuitive pattern-­ processing that never makes it to the prefrontal brain for intentional, analytical reasoning, that degree of awareness is difficult to achieve. Daniel Kahneman, an economist and psychologist, distinguishes between slow, analytical thinking (System 2 Thinking)

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and fast, intuitive thinking (System 1 Thinking) in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman, 2011). Essentially System 1 is decision-­making without the use of analytic thinking, and is based on the brain’s instinctual portions, which are older in evolutionary terms. It’s both reflexive and reactive in nature. This is where the majority of cognitive biases reside. As we talked about in Chapter 2, biases aren’t always harmful; they just exist. It is harmful and detrimental to disregard the fact that you are biased. Biases are well-­established and regarded as adaptive. Our brain relies largely on intuitive decision-­making that is correct most of the time to save brain capacity for other processes. Humans would spend all of their time analyzing information rather than acting if this were not the case. When performing everyday chores, System 1 decision-­making is incredibly efficient. It is, however, more prone to mistakes. Where it excels in speed, it falls short in precision. This is especially true when confronted with novel conditions. System 1 must be monitored and regulated by System 2 during decision-­making. Keep in mind that intellectual aptitude combined with a willingness to engage in objective analysis of one’s thoughts are the hallmarks of critical thinking.

Cognitive Tasks It is not easy to engage in cognitive tasks (or System 2 Thinking, as Kahneman calls it), so we must equip students with resources and scaffolds to assist them in processing their learning and recognizing how their level of understanding has changed. Teacher guidance should be straightforward and organized enough to encourage students to reflect on their learning when they otherwise would not.

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Concept maps are a good way to help students figure out how they think, which will help them with more difficult cognitive tasks. Because students’ participation in thinking is based on their knowledge and beliefs about how thinking occurs, deconstructing what it means to think will help students become more self-­directed learners and better critical thinkers. Students can use concept maps to get insight into their disposition (their attitude toward learning) and to develop an understanding of the intricacies of thinking and learning. An understanding map was created by Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison (2011) and adapted via Harvard’s Project Zero. When implementing an understanding map, make it clear to students that the places on the understanding map are thinking processes that aid in our efforts of building understanding. When you witness students engaging in certain forms of thinking, name what they’re doing. Make connections between the map and what they already know, and do this frequently. In many circumstances, we begin with a question. This is usually the first thing they notice in themselves. We also encourage kids to value that sense of wonder and curiosity by emphasizing it as a critical thinking step on the path to learning. Assist students in developing connections between their daily thinking and the types of thinking depicted on the understanding map. Perseverance is essential! It can take months of constant use of the language and promotion of the importance of a thinking culture in the classroom, regardless of age. Figure  3.1 indicates actions learners would take to assess their own grasp of a significant idea or concept(s) linked with a challenging cognitive job. Tell students that as their understanding grows and changes, they will refer back to this map.

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Cognitive Hierarchy Consider Different Viewpoints What’s another angle on that?

Reason with Evidence Why do you think so? WMYST?

Make Connections How does this fit?

Uncovering Complexity What lies beneath the surface of this?

Understanding Describe what’s there What do you see and notice?

Build Explanations What’s really going on here?

Capture the heart and form conclusions What’s at the core or center of this?

Wondering What am I curious about here?

FIGURE 3.1  An understanding map. Source: Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison (2011).

Claims Creation and Defense Creating and defending assertions is at the pinnacle of cognitive complexity. That is why it is critical to give students a scaffold on which to mount their thoughts and discoveries so that they can progress to higher levels of cognition. Students will struggle with the process of creating and defending claims, including the sequence of defending their claim (the order in which the claim evolves), the diversity of evidence to include, and finding mathematical ideas that are strongly connected to their claim defense. Teachers must be prepared to guide students in order for them to properly display this level of understanding. The following list is a tool intended to assist students in better planning how they will produce and defend their claim. Four Cs to Defending Claims 1. Why should I and others be concerned? Consider or draw out how the topic being explored (i.e., fractions, or chemical changes) could be applied in the real world.

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Questions to ponder: Why do I have to defend this claim? What problem am I attempting to solve? What am I trying to say in the end? Is there any emotion evoked by it? Is it personally significant to you? Is it thrilling? 2. What are your criteria? Determine the criteria you’ll use to align, measure, and critically evaluate your claim. Question to ponder: How will I know if I’ve effectively defended my claim? 3. What are the connections? Identify the critical pieces that, when combined, will produce the finest possible sequence for visually expressing the assertion I’m making. Question to ponder: What are the connections between these elements and successful criteria? 4. What constraints did this claim have? Determine the limits that apply to this claim. Examine the materials, resources, and time available to you. Question to ponder: How will I use restrictions to best argue my claim?

Enjoy the Process of Thinking In education, we have the opportunity to cultivate lifelong learning. Not only do we have the opportunity, but isn’t this really our primary goal of education—­to celebrate our students’ curiosity and to equip them to think and learn for themselves? Our students should never stop asking questions. We want them, as adults, to spend their free time doing creative and problem-­ solving activities—­ performing music, learning new languages, completing puzzles, and playing board games. Not only will these activities sharpen critical thinking, they will

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also promote better executive functioning and mental acuity as they get older. How do we improve our problem-­ solving skills? It first starts simply with the intrinsic desire to learn and to love the process of learning. Lifelong learners, too, are frequently interdisciplinary thinkers. They see the value of the intricacies and nuances of various concepts, discerning when ideas from one area may provide a solution to a problem in another. That isn’t to say that lifelong learners must become specialists in all fields. On the contrary, they are significantly more likely to recognize where their knowledge ends and where it begins. However, those self-­perceived frontiers can also reveal when collaboration is required and when it’s best to follow someone else’s lead. In this approach, lifelong learning can help us solve problems in both our professional and personal lives. It encourages us to improve ourselves, teaches us how things function, hints at what’s possible, and, most importantly, allows us to tune out and focus on what counts.

Anticipatory Consideration Anticipatory thinking is future-­oriented feature sensemaking, anticipating and preparing for challenges, many of which are not fully comprehended until they are faced. Sensemaking is frequently expressed as a retroactive process of explaining events and diagnosing problems (e.g., Weick,  1995). But we can also use it to make predictions about what will happen in the future (e.g., Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001). In almost all fields, the capacity to think forward is a sign of expertise. For example, DeGroot (1946) offered guidelines for grandmasters examining chess positions and attempting to determine the best move to make. Many of their comments represent rapid emotional reactions

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to a potential move, such as acknowledgment that a move is promising or not. We create patterns of meaning and response, both directly and indirectly through stories, that might be used or combined to deal with an uncertain and unknowable future. Combining multiple thoughts, experiences, and stories is an important aspect of human intelligence because it allows us to cope with greater degrees of uncertainty and ambiguity. Think about when you first learned to drive. You were hyperaware and laser focused on staying in your lane. Now that you’re an experienced driver, you subconsciously monitor for potential threats while you’re driving. The eye movements of skilled and inexperienced drivers were researched by Pradhan and colleagues (2005). Unlike new drivers, experienced drivers are always on the lookout for possible dangers. Skilled and inexperienced drivers move their eyes differently when they drive. Skilled drivers focus on places that could be dangerous. New drivers, on the other hand, don’t pay attention to these trouble spots. Instead, they tend to keep their eyes on the road to make sure they stay in their lanes. Experienced drivers don’t expect or try to predict the dangers, but they are paying attention in the right way. The right patterns have been made through experience and training. So they are more sensitive to “weak signals” (inconspicuous factors not noticed by a novice), which less experienced people would miss. They are better at figuring out what’s wrong. The proper patterns have emerged as a result of experience and instruction. As a result, they have increased sensitivity to faint signals that may otherwise be overlooked by those with less experience. They have an advantage in detecting difficulties. Prediction is an externally driven process that usually involves estimating future world states. Anticipatory thinking, on the other hand, includes preparation to respond. We are sensitive to the situation’s affordances, which are a result of our

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self-­perceptions of our own skills. We are also training ourselves to react when we anticipate situations. Consider a sporting event. When we are unconcerned, we may anticipate that the favorite team will win the game. When we do care, and our team is the underdog, we say we’re expecting a loss—­we’re mentally preparing for defeat. Lanir (1986) demonstrated this in his book Fundamental Surprise. The military officers were taken aback because they overestimated their own reaction time. We, like them, fail to anticipate when we do not prepare ourselves, either because we are unaware of the signs or because we are unconcerned about them and do not try to prepare. Anticipatory thinking is based on our ability to plan forward, not only our ability to foretell future events. Indeed, excessive planning around a “predicted” set of events may limit our ability to use our anticipating, adaptation, and pattern blending skills. Unfortunately, the list of obstacles to anticipatory thinking is quite long. For starters, they include taking a passive rather than aware position, fixation/pattern entrainment (de Keyser and Woods,  1990), knowledge shields (Koschmann et al., 1994), and overconfidence in one’s own talents. We also have to deal with team and organizational impediments, such as organizational regulations that filter out weak signals, skewed incentives, disconnects between data collectors and data integrators, and challenges directing someone else’s attention. At the team/organizational level, Klein (Carini et al., 2006) identified a number of impediments to problem discovery. A pilot research study was conducted to determine if we could increase anticipatory thinking in small groups (Snowden, Klein, Chew, and Teh, 2007). The researchers aimed to overcome difficulties in anticipatory thinking caused by attention entrainment, fixation, garden path thinking, and dismissing of alarms provided by group members recognizing weak signals, and mission intent misunderstandings.

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In Lanir’s military and intelligence scenarios, weak signals were provided in each scenario to see if and when the team recognized them, as well as their ramifications. Each team member took separate notes about what was going on at designated break points. Researchers also listened in on the team meetings. They looked at a number of approaches for improving performance, including having team members explore attractors and barriers to their purpose, using a crystal ball method to consider alternative interpretations for events, ritualized dissent, and prospective hindsight. Narrative capture and a method for calibrating situation awareness were used to collect data. According to the individual notes, at least one person in each group observed the weak signals and their consequences, and on average, half of the group noticed the weak signals. No one, however, took these early warning flags seriously. They weren’t usually discussed at all. They were dismissed if they were mentioned. As a result, the groups did not “consciously” take up or respond to the signals. Consequently, the problem moves from helping people spot weak signals to assisting their groups and organizations in utilizing individuals’ anticipatory thinking. The research points to the power of helping students to predict and anticipate based on evidence. Anticipatory thinking is more than a buzzword. It’s a type of sensemaking that focuses on the future rather than the past. It’s not the same as forecasting. It connects with almost all neurocognitive functions (e.g., decision-­making, planning, and coordinating), yet it is distinct from each of them. Anticipatory thinking is essential for both individual and team performance. An anticipation guide is one technique that engages students’ past knowledge, piques their interest in a new topic before learning about it, and then assesses comprehension once the topic has been presented. Students listen to or read many statements

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regarding key concepts in the new subject before beginning the class and choose whether they agree or disagree. Students reread the anticipation guide after the lesson to evaluate if they still agree with their first judgments. 1. Anticipation Guide Process to Create a structure for anticipation: Write four to six brief, declarative, thought-­ provoking assertions, some true and some false, regarding the new topic. Before and after each assertion, include two columns. One column should be labeled “Agree” and the other “Disagree.” 2. Showcase: Read or display the statements to the class. Allow students an opportunity to react individually, with a partner, or as a class to each assertion. They should mark whether they agree or disagree in the columns to the left of each statement. 3. Have a discussion: Before introducing the new content, have a brief class discussion regarding the assertions. Inquire of students why they agree or disagree. 4. Take another look: After presenting the new content, go back to the guide and have students utilize the columns to the right of each statement to indicate whether they now agree or disagree with the statement based on what they’ve learned. Comparing changes with a partner is a good idea. If their answers differ, have them see if they can persuade their partner to alter their opinions.

When Should You Use the Anticipation Guide?  Use an anticipation guide to help students have meaningful conversations that review what they already know and engage them in critical

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thinking about the topic they’ll be discussing. You can use an anticipation guide to help you prepare: • To dig into prior knowledge before/after providing new content • Before and after watching a video to see how students react • To start a discussion, read a short text before/after

Learning Styles Debunked There is an erroneous belief that we learn more effectively when instruction is tailored to our preferred method of learning. Yes, you might have even said, “I’m an auditory learner, I really learn by listening.” If I argued with you, you’d defend your position. Actually, we have learned that we all benefit from multiple learning styles and modalities. Why is this myth so prevalent? Well, it is promoted not only through hundreds of popular books, but also through international conferences and associations, and teacher education programs. You’ve probably heard (and maybe said yourself) this cliché many times: Students will be more successful if you match your teaching style to their learning styles—­ this includes being right-­or left-­brained, analytical or dynamic, and visual or auditory. For decades teachers were trained on preferred learning styles. Why is this concept so well-­liked? Understandably, parents want to believe that their children are receiving a customized education. Teachers, understandably, want to believe that they are sensitive to the needs of each child, and many are clearly motivated to learn more about how to accomplish this goal. It’s more reassuring to our ego to believe that a class was difficult due to a teaching style we disliked than to believe that we weren’t paying attention or that we didn’t have enough foundational knowledge. Is there evidence to support

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the concept of learning styles? While there is some evidence, experts on the subject such as Harold Pashler and Doug Rohrer (2008) point out that the majority of this evidence is insufficient. Convincing evidence for learning styles would demonstrate that individuals with one preferred learning style learned better when material was taught in their preferred manner, whereas another group with a different preference learned better when the same material was taught in their preferred manner. Nevertheless, surprisingly few studies using this format have produced evidence in support of learning styles; far more evidence (such as Pashler and Rohrer study) contradicts the myth. What frequently occurs is that both groups perform better when taught in a consistent manner. This makes sense because, while we are all unique, the most effective way for us to learn is usually determined by the nature of the material being taught—­just try learning French grammar pictorially or geometry entirely verbally. Is there any other flaw in the myth? Another significant issue is the multiplicity of possible ways to describe people’s preferred learning styles. Indeed, a 2004 review identified over 71 distinct styles discussed in the literature. As Paul Kirschner and Jeroen Merriënboer (2013) explained, if we consider each identified learning style to be binary (e.g., visual versus verbal), there are 2 to the power of 71 combinations of identified learning styles—­ more than the total number of people on the planet! Additionally, even if we accept a particular scheme for measuring learning styles, evidence indicates that learning style questionnaires are unreliable and that people’s self-­reported preferences correlate poorly with their actual performance. In other words, an individual may believe they learn better visually than verbally, but their performance demonstrates otherwise! The reality is that the more accurate predictor of how well a person will perform on a math learning task is most likely not the degree of match between their preferred learning style and the

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teaching style, but rather their previous performance on math tests. Therefore, should we completely abandon the practice of tailoring our teaching styles? No. While we may struggle with determining which teaching methods are most effective for us, and while there is little evidence to support the benefits of matching teaching style to preferred learning style, this does not preclude tailoring teaching style to improve learning. As Kirschner and Merriënboer (2013) point out, novices learn best by studying examples, whereas experts learn best by solving problems themselves. Other research demonstrates how, for the vast majority of people, combining different activities improves learning. Numerous prominent experts believe that the myth of preferred learning styles is more than a harmless misconception; they believe it is likely causing harm. According to Scott Lilienfeld and colleagues in 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (2011), this approach “encourages teachers to focus on students’ intellectual strengths rather than their weaknesses.” They add, however, that “students must correct and compensate for their deficiencies, not avoid them. Pashler and colleagues (2008) write, “The lack of scientific evidence for learning styles should come as welcome news to educators at all levels.” Because the learning-­styles framework can be detrimental, how do we proceed from here? We can implement broader strategies that encourage students to reflect on their thinking and learning rather than trying to fit it into an ambiguous classification system. Active Learning and Metacognitive Strategies • Because learning necessitates a variety of developmental phases, such as building on existing information, constructing conceptual frameworks gradually, and engaging in a

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variety of repetitions, students benefit from a variety of instructional approaches. • You can help your students comprehend the distinction between memorizing and learning by pointing out the similarities and differences between the two. However, these techniques are distinct from deeper cognitive processes such as “chunking,” drawing on existing knowledge, constructing conceptual links, and transmitting information. • Encourage your students to use their full potential through the use of active learning, group work, and the use of multimedia creation (videos, slides, graphics, etc.). • Ask students about how they made connections or processed knowledge or arrived at conclusions. • Use metacognition, a technique that encourages students to reflect on their own thoughts in order to improve their critical thinking skills. • Mix up your modes—­for example, writing assignments benefit greatly from a strong verbal component, math tasks benefit greatly from a visual component, and science labs benefit greatly from an experiential component.

CHAPTER

4

Inquiries of a Higher Order

O

ne of the most famous philosophers of the 20th century was Bertrand Russell. In his writings, he stressed how important it is to have free and open inquiry (Russell, 1992). He emphasized the importance of creating educational systems that encourage the objective pursuit of knowledge and how dangerous dogmatic ideologies are. If it became common to base convictions on evidence and give them only the level of certainty that the evidence warrants, it would solve most of the world’s problems. But, as I’ve argued, most schools around the world weren’t designed to teach these skills, and standardization doesn’t do this by itself—­ the goal is to consume knowledge and demonstrate proficiency on a test. Russell made this point clear in 1957  when he said, “The world needs open hearts and minds, which can’t come from strict systems, old or new.” Higher-­order questioning can become the catalyst for critical thinking’s transformation and evolution of our world. What 55

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qualifies as a higher-­order question? I’d like to respond to that question by discussing one of my all-­time favorite Disney characters, Forky from Toy Story 4. Forky is inquisitive and frequently questions his friends. What is cheese? What is love? What is the definition of time? What exactly is a friend? What is the definition of a leader? His friends all make good-­natured attempts to answer his questions, but rarely does this satisfy his hunger for knowledge. At first glance, the questions seem a bit trivial and simple. However, when you attempt to respond to them, the answer becomes significantly more complicated. How would you describe love to a stranger? Your definition would be heavily influenced by your own experiences and what you consciously experience (i.e., your past experiences culminating in your current thinking). Our responses to Forky’s questions would vary according to our personal experience and prior knowledge of these concepts. Forky, these are higher-­level inquiries! Higher-­order questions enable us to cast doubt on the status quo and conceive of more complete explanations for how the world works. Think about how solutions to “what if” questions have induced change in our lives. Every invention or technological advancement during our lifetime occurred as a result of someone asking a “what if” question. If you study history, it’s almost irresistible to consider what might have happened if someone had taken a different path? What if Henry VIII’s older brother, Arthur, had not died young and had actually inherited the throne, instead of having it pass to Henry? What if Newton hadn’t observed the apple in free fall? There are numerous questions to ponder. So many seemingly random events could easily have taken a different path, altering the course of human history significantly. It’s natural to consider questions like these because we are an intelligent species and inquiry is the bedrock of our advancement.

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Science is founded on inquiry. Science works so well in part because of its built-­in error-­correcting machinery. In science, there are no forbidden questions, no sensitive or delicate subjects to investigate, and no sacred truths. This receptivity to novel ideas, coupled with the most rigorous, skeptical examination of all ideas, separates the wheat from the chaff. It makes no difference where we were raised or what experiences we’ve had; our capacity for inquiry and critical thinking should be cherished. Opinions should be encouraged to be argued, substantially and exhaustively. Thomas Jefferson contended that the cost of education is insignificant in comparison to the cost of ignorance, of handing over government to the wolves (Jefferson, 1903–4). One of citizenship’s responsibilities is to resist being intimidated into conformity, and to routinely question everything our leaders tell us. That would be entirely consistent with Thomas Jefferson’s position. “I commit to exercising my critical faculties. I promise to improve my mental independence. I promise to educate myself so that I am capable of making my own decisions.” As teachers, we ask questions all the time in class. But are all questions created equal? We know this answer is no. Certain types of learning experiences naturally incorporate inquiry more than others. Class discussions, debates, structured controversy, targeted journaling, mock trials, inquiry-­guided labs, POGIL-­ style (Process-­Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) worksheets, and debriefings of complex cases, simulations, and role plays are just a few of the most impactful inquiry promoting activities. By employing these techniques, you can pique their curiosity, encourage their inquiries, and ensure students are capable of explaining and justifying their claims. But how will you have enough time to implement these activities in the classroom? Yes, some of these learning protocols take longer than lectures on the same subject, but as educators, we should focus on outputs (what

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is learned), not inputs (what is covered). Typically, topics contain several related concepts; students who grasp a single critical concept frequently find it much easier to grasp related concepts.

Use of Paradoxes and Thought Problems to Elicit Thought and Conversation in Others Making content engaging for students is one of our key obligations as teachers. We know that when students are engaged and interested, they will interact authentically. Mathematicians, engineers, and highly academic experts in particular frequently struggle to characterize the subject as inherently fascinating. Most people are uninterested in equations or operations, but would be fascinated by the stories of how these equations came to be, or enthralled about an unexpected outcome. An approach for increasing engagement is to present unexpected and counterintuitive information. What attracts people to ideas? People get excited about ideas when something contradicts conventional wisdom or differs from what we previously believed about a topic. Thought puzzle paradoxes are an excellent way to get students thinking critically. Here are some thought puzzles and paradoxes you can use in your classroom to foster critical thinking.

Ship of Theseus Thought Puzzle The “Ship of Theseus” form of the thought puzzle was initially mentioned in Greek tradition by Plutarch. This was the ship (which had thirty oars) on which Theseus and the Athenians returned from Crete; the Athenians preserved it until the time of Demetrius by removing decaying planks and replacing them with new, stronger ones. This ship became a model for philosophers

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debating the nature of growth, with one camp claiming that the ship remained the same and the other that it had changed. As a result, Plutarch wondered if the ship would be the same if it were rebuilt from the ground up. What if the original planks were collected and used to build another ship? Which ship was the original ship? Over the course of our lives, we gradually shift our thinking and hold new opinions. What makes you and the person you were in your childhood “the same” person, even though you’ve gone through a lifetime’s worth of changes in everything from your cells to your values? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

The Birthday Paradox The birthday paradox is a probability concept that states that if there are 23 people in a room, there is a more than 50 percent chance that two people have the same birthday. It seems counterintuitive because the probability of having a birthday on any particular day is only 1/365. Explain how the birthday paradox works. ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise is one of Zeno of Elea’s many theoretical debates on movement. This fifth-­ century BCE puzzle starts with Achilles, the legendary hero, challenging a tortoise to a footrace. To keep things even, he

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offers to give the tortoise a 500-­meter head start. When the race begins, Achilles begins to run far faster than the tortoise, so that by the time he reaches the 500-­meter mark, the turtle has only walked 50 meters further than Achilles. However, by the time Achilles reaches 550  meters, the tortoise has traveled another 5  meters. When Achilles reaches 555  meters, the Tortoise has moved another 0.5 meter. This pattern continues over an infinite number of smaller and smaller distances. In this paradox, the turtle is always staying ahead of Achilles by an increasingly smaller distance. How is it that Achilles overtakes the Tortoise? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

The Banach–Tarski Paradox The Banach–Tarski paradox is a theorem in set theoretic geometry that states that a solid ball in three-­dimensional space can be split into a finite number of nonoverlapping pieces, which can then be put back together in a different way to yield two identical copies of the original ball. Explain how this is possible. ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Shuffling the Deck Paradox If you shuffle a pack of cards properly, chances are that exact order has never been seen before in the whole history of the universe. Explain. ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

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Elementary Math Example Kevin and Shannon just became friends with Chris, and they want to know when her birthday is. Chris gives them a list of 10 possible dates: May June July August

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16

19 17

14 14

18

16 15

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Chris then separately tells Kevin and Shannon the month and the day of her birthday, respectively. Kevin:

I don’t know when Chris’s birthday is, but I know that Shannon doesn’t know either.

Shannon: At first I didn’t know when Chris’s birthday is, but I know now. Kevin:

Then I also know when Chris’s birthday is.

So when is Chris’s birthday? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ It’s important that students not only get exposure to fun, interesting, and unusual paradoxes and thought puzzles, but more important that they have the opportunity to conjecture about possible solutions and discuss why a scenario might be particularly baffling to them. To ensure students are thinking critically about these prompts, ask these three questions: • Why is this intriguing? • How do you explain it? • What does it make you wonder about now?

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Create Your Own Experiments in Thought Philosophers are fascinated with thought experiments. They utilize these imaginative instruments to solve issues, test theories, debate one another’s ideas, and forecast the outcomes of various actions. Consider the infamous trolley problem, which is a moral dilemma. This thought experiment was designed by ethics philosophers to test people’s moral intuition and reasoning. You are on a trolley, faced with a hypothetical dilemma. The track will fork; at one end of the fork are five people and at the other end of the track is one person. Is changing the track a moral obligation? It is less terrible to kill one person than it is to let five people perish. Or should you do nothing? You may save five lives by flipping the switch, but you are also responsible for one death. It’s not just philosophers who are affected. Thought experiments are frequently used by scientists, psychologists, and historians to think through difficulties or explain difficult-­ to-­understand concepts. In physics, Einstein’s twin paradox is a well-­known example. Thought experiments can benefit our teams as well. A thought experiment is a hypothetical scenario used to elicit a rational response to a difficult subject. The purpose of thought experiments is to get our students to think critically and to investigate a notion or put a claim to the test. Create thought experiments to support your students in gaining a better understanding of the problem’s contours: What logical problems arise? What conflicts arise between ideas? There are a few things to keep in mind if you want to add thought experiments to your team’s tool kit. Some tips for creating your own thought experiments: • Become principle driven: To begin with, thought experiments differ from roleplaying. When you roleplay, you take on a position that may or may not be your own—­team

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leader, politician, sales leader, environmentalist, and so on. You then act out that role in a fictitious setting to improve performance and muscle memory, which you may then apply in a real-­life circumstance. However, the purpose of thought experiments should be to generate principles rather than actions. These principles can then be used to influence your mission, beliefs, and, yes, practices. • Create authentic experiments: You could, for example, create a thought experiment in which a new lunch option is introduced at school. The new lunch provider has many more options for lunch, but the principal has now decided to allow students to go off-­campus for lunch. Another example could be allowing students to make rules about the dress code. Questions students would consider might include: What would be lost? What would be gained? What are viable alternatives? How? Think about how things would play out and what the potential outcomes would be. • Remember that thought experiments are instruments of the imagination, and imaginations can be fickle. The trolley problem mentioned earlier, although very good at eliciting thoughtful conversation, is not exactly the real world. The scenario is so far removed from reality that it can tell us nearly nothing about how people make choices. • Think like a game designer when creating thought experiments: Designers develop environments that present players with challenges, such as saving the world from an asteroid, managing your space station properly, and creating your farm while earning gems. Because these issues have never been encountered before, the designer gives the player only enough knowledge to get them started. The challenge must be difficult (but not impossible) and give room for intuition, inquiry, and imagination.

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Intuition Where does intuition fit into critical thinking? Based on where we’ve been thus far, you might think there isn’t a place for “gut feelings.” Let’s turn to one of history’s most prominent psychologists, Daniel Kahneman. He has a talent for revealing fascinating aspects of the human mind, many of which have become textbook classics and accepted knowledge. His work has influenced social psychology, cognitive science, the study of reason and happiness, and behavioral economics, a field he co-­founded with Amos Tversky. The release of Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) is a significant milestone. What happens when we need to make a big decision and have a lot on the line? He says we have no reason to believe that the quality of intuition will improve as the problem becomes more critical. Perhaps the opposite is true: high-­stakes issues are more likely to elicit intense emotions and actions, making intuition less reliable as a guide. However, if you don’t have time to think, intuitively directed action may be preferable to freezing or paralysis, especially if you’re a seasoned decision-­maker. Slowing down is likely to be a good choice if there is time to reflect. The amount of work put into “doing it right” should be proportional to the significance of the decision. Is there ever a time when thinking is dubious and we should rely on our gut instincts? True experts—­those who have had enough expertise to recognize the regularities of their environment—­may fare better when they follow their intuition than when they engage in complicated analysis, as Gary Klein (2011) has stressed. Most people are likely to fare better when choosing between two ornamental things if they trust their instincts rather than deliberating over the pros and drawbacks. The key question in the experiment is how much they will like the chosen thing after spending time with it.

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Affective forecasting based on current emotions appears to be more accurate than methodical analysis that ignores emotions. When aware of our own consciousness, we think in terms of the “remembering self” and “experiencing self.” What’s the difference between the “remembering self” and the “experiencing self”? The experiencing self is the one who responds to questions like “Does it hurt?” or “What were you thinking about right now?” The remembering self is the one who responds to questions regarding the overall assessment of events or periods in one’s life, such as a hospital stay or the years since graduation. It entails recollection as well as temporal integration of various experiences. The happiness of the experiencing self is measured in studies of subjective well-­being by integrating momentary enjoyment through time (the economist Francis Edgeworth (1897) spoke of “the area under the curve” in the 19th century). Happiness that you have experienced refers to your feelings and how pleased you are in your daily life. The gratification of the remembering self, on the other hand, refers to how you feel when you reflect on your life. Yes, you have the opportunity to reflect on your life. However, it’s important to distinguish these relatively infrequent occurrences from your daily emotional quality. Because the determinants of experienced pleasure and life satisfaction are significantly different, the distinction is especially essential when evaluating an individual’s well-­being. How do we approach potential self-­deception? Assume you really like someone. Then, thanks to a well-­known halo effect, you’ll be inclined to believe many positive things about that person—­you’ll be predisposed in their favor. Most of us think highly of ourselves, which helps to explain self-­evaluations that are skewed in one direction. Whether the prejudiced judgments are about you or about someone else, you will believe them. We

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fight evidence that contradicts our good perceptions of the people we care about. And it’s possible that we love ourselves more than most (or all) others. How do we address intuition in the classroom? It behooves us to explicitly teach what intuition (quick gut level, Systems 1 decision-­making) is and to be cognizant of when we’re using it. When you have your students working in groups, do some primer activities before they begin working by allowing students to ask these questions (as the experiencing self): • How does the way I think affect how much effort I put into working with others in my group? • How does the way I think affect other people? • Do I tend to decide things quickly or slowly? • How does my mood affect what I think and what I do? • Do I tend to focus on the positive or negative things about other people? • What specific behaviors of other people inspire me? • Do I find it hard to say that I was wrong? Why is that? Human psychology has significant implications on how we work with each other, especially in the school setting. How we experience ourselves affects how we manage our behavior, communicate in social situations, and interact with others. Students (and we as teachers) often go through the school day reacting and acting, never really thinking about how or why we respond the way we do. But you can develop self-­awareness by asking questions to get to the crux of how and why we respond the way we do. The answers to these questions can give great insight into your own self-­awareness. This process of studying our own intuitions helps us determine the representative buckets that shape how we see ourselves as critical thinkers. We also know that

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experiences over time will contribute to an evolution of personal beliefs and attitudes. When students have a deeper understanding of their self-­awareness and intuition, they can better plan for collaborative discussions and debates.

Questioning Skills and Collaborative Discussions Asking good questions is truly a skill. As an educator, one of the most crucial things you can do for your students is to improve their questioning abilities. But the first thing we can model for students is this: never stop asking questions. A person who asks and reflects the most is the one who is learning the most. When modeling collaborative discourse, you are providing examples of how to ask good questions that push students’ thinking and require deeper levels of contemplation. The tips below will support students in how to question you, the teacher. Yes, we want students to question us! • Routinely ask students to react to your comments, and reflect back their thinking with evidence that backs up their reasoning. • Encourage students to ask follow-­up questions, and not just accept the answer as final. • Ask students to listen carefully to others’ responses to a question before responding. If they have any further queries, ask them. • If a classmate or teacher reveals a point that you agree with or disagree with, name it for them, and explain why you believe it is so or not so. • If a classmate or teacher mentions anything that sparks an idea in you, highlight it as well, and then continue asking questions to keep the conversation going.

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• You should travel back and forth in this manner as long as the learning and reflection process is progressing. It is far more effective for us to engage in two-­way dialogues that result in a plethora of fantastic ideas than it is for us to accept what is shared or to be silent when you have contrary evidence. During these interactions, the students may discuss a problem they are having or an idea that makes them uneasy or that they aren’t sure how to navigate. First, express your gratitude to them for revealing the challenge and affirm they are engaged in critical thinking. Then, as a group, brainstorm solutions (in the manner above). Encourage students to implement one of the new ideas that arose from your discussion. The purpose of collaborative discussions is to encourage practice. That’s why we constantly try to introduce a safe layer of accountability by asking the students, “So, what do you think you’ll do next?” “When do you think you’ll try that?” or “I’d love for you to let me know how it goes!” Better yet, inquire as to when they plan to put it to the test and offer to drop in and provide support and feedback.

Developing Critical Thinking through Literature Self-­discipline, self-­awareness, creative problem-­solving, empathy, learning agility, adaptiveness, flexibility, positivism, logical judgment, generosity, and kindness, to name a few, are some of the most challenging skills for teachers to analyze or quantify. How do we know if our students will possess and cultivate these skills? Reading literary fiction can help people develop empathy, theory of mind, and critical thinking skills. When we read, we hone and build a variety of cognitive muscles that are at the heart of our EQ. In other words, reading is the activity that, when done correctly, may help build the qualities, attributes, and

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characteristics of the world we want to see. When it comes to reading, we may assume that the best reason to take up a book is to gain knowledge. However, research suggests that reading fiction has significantly more important benefits than reading nonfiction. Reading fiction, for example, is linked to enhanced social sensitivity and a better understanding of other people’s motivations. While reading nonfiction is beneficial for gaining knowledge, it does little to enhance emotional intelligence, which is a far more difficult goal to achieve. Characters, stories, and locations in unfamiliar places help anchor uncomfortable discussions, which is one reason fiction is an effective strategy. The subtle machinery and sweeping architecture of a story helps people to work with delicate and intricate themes openly and honestly. Literature permits students to understand various perspectives of characters from different backgrounds. We all too often fail to see others’ points of view, and all of us could benefit from being better listeners. The goal of this type of reading is to improve cognitive agility and acuity. It’s all about reading in order to hone those much-­needed emotional skills. According to research, reading literary fiction is an excellent approach to improve the brain’s ability to have an open mind while processing information, which is an important talent for good decision-­making. In a study, researchers looked into what’s known as the urge for cognitive closure, or the need to “reach a speedy conclusion in decision-­making and an aversion to ambiguity and confusion” (Djikic et al., 2013). People who have a strong desire for cognitive closure rely largely on “early information signals,” which means they find it difficult to change their thoughts as fresh information becomes available. They also generate fewer individual hypotheses regarding alternative explanations, indicating that they are more secure in their own (possibly erroneous) opinions. Individuals with a high desire for cognitive

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closure gravitate toward smaller amounts of knowledge and fewer points of view. Individuals who resist the desire for cognitive closure are more thoughtful, creative, and at ease with conflicting narratives, all of which are traits associated with high EQ. Djikic and team discovered that those who read short stories (rather than essays) have a lesser requirement for cognitive closure. This is hardly surprising, given that reading literature demands us to slow down, absorb large amounts of data, and then alter our thoughts as we read. In literature, there are no easy answers; instead, there is only perspective-­taking. As readers, we’re likely to find Voldemort’s monologue (for you Harry Potter fans) repulsive, but we’re forced to experience how he thinks, which is a useful exercise in reducing our desire for cognitive closure. Furthermore, the researchers point out that we do not feel forced to defend ourselves while discussing someone else’s activities. We can have discussions that would not be possible in any other setting, at least not with the same amount of candor. While there is no precise scholarly data on how introducing guided literary study into workplace training and development programming affects employees, literature study is one of the finest strategies for developing empathy, critical thinking, and creativity, according to reading studies. According to Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive scientist and author of Reader, Come Home (2018), “the quality of our reading” is “an indication to the quality of our thinking.” We must develop better readers if we want to develop better thinkers. Students will assess facts, draw conclusions, make inferences, and construct a line of reasoning if they approach fiction from a problem-­solving viewpoint, according to Riecken and Miller (1990). “Literature . . . is the sole academic area that can come closest to embracing the whole range of mental qualities now recognized to define critical thinking,” according to Lazere (1987).

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The following model was created by Bobkina and Stefanova (2016) using the New London Group’s four curricular components for addressing the complete range of literacies. Four stages make up the model: 1. Situated Practice 2. Overt Instruction 3. Critical Framing 4. Transformed Practice This is a fairly generic model. As a result, it could be quickly changed to fit any classroom setting or any piece of literature. It is important to note that the goal of incorporating critical thinking into the teaching-­learning process is not to teach students about critical thinking, but to allow them to apply their thinking skills to the learning process. To demonstrate how the model works, the scenario utilizes the study of George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. Situated Practice Stage The purpose of the Situated Practice Stage on Animal Farm is to stimulate students’ schemata. Students are given the opportunity to recall significant experiences and information throughout this stage. In this stage, the teacher might start activities by asking the following questions, and the students should exchange their responses with one another. 1. Have you read a fable before? What exactly is it about? What do you take away from it in terms of ideas? 2. Can you give two or three examples of hoaxes? 3. Why do you suppose certain people are so readily duped by hoaxes? 4. Have you ever read about the history of despotic regimes? 5. Have you ever seen a revolution-­themed film?

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Letter writing or searching for and sharing short articles relevant to the topics in Animal Farm and discussing views about them are examples of other activities that can be done at this time. Explicit Order Stage This stage is set up to achieve two objectives. The first step is to have a general understanding of the novel. The novel must be read quickly by the students. The teacher can lead a discussion of some of the novel’s important topics or offer a quick check to verify their understanding. Because the work has been made into films, allowing pupils to watch one of them may boost their motivation. The second goal is to gain deep comprehension by having students use close reading to decipher the novel’s internal logic. Through close reading, students should be able to figure out why Snowball adopts the puppies and raises them covertly. They should also be able to deduce why Orwell makes the pigs the most talented or why, at the end of the novel, the animals are unable to distinguish between the pigs and the humans. Students can be requested to build knowledge to illustrate the close reading. Encourage students to take notes while performing the close reading and compare them to their classmates’ thoughts later. This allows them to comprehend the viewpoints of other students. Critical Framing Stage The Critical Framing Stage aims to increase students’ awareness of the connections between linguistic forms and social-­ cultural settings. For example, they should be able to explain what the “sugar candy mountain” in the story means, and why the guy who propagates it is named Moses. Students are encouraged to question and evaluate the text, as well as to explore the writer’s attitude, goal, and viewpoint through the examination of the lexical and structural choices the author makes, to get a more accurate conclusion about the novel’s topics, characters, and events. This stage could be scaffolded through teacher inquiry.

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Transformed Practice Stage The Transformed Practice Stage is concerned with students’ creation of novel-­related writing. The actions in this stage, according to Bobkina and Stefanova (2016), can include paraphrasing the original texts into a different mode (e.g., rewriting the lyrics of “Beasts of England” into one or more paragraphs). Writing articles related to the work, devising tale continuations, translation, and characterization are activities that help to transform practice. Using literature to promote critical thinking can be very effective, engaging, and beneficial. It works because the nature of fiction gives the reader numerous opportunities to comment, question, and critically examine. It’s intriguing to utilize fiction as a medium for critical thinking development because it’s a literary genre that kids are familiar with. It is advantageous due to two significant factors. First, because students actively use their critical thinking skills and work individually and in groups during the learning process, they not only build skills, but also build reading comprehension. Second, because the conclusions they reach are based on critical analysis of literary works, they may be applied to the students’ everyday lives.

Decision Journal A decision journal can be very helpful not only in applying critical thinking skills, but also in evaluating our use of them. When you’ve made a decision, write it down, describe it, and record what you believe its impact will be. The decision journal can be a record of all your previous decisions. It allows you to analyze the decisions you’ve made without getting caught in the typical trap of cognitive justification in retrospect. Many times, when a negative outcome resulting from a previous decision occurs, we explain it and even justify it on other

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related patterns and then create a predictable excuse for it. Think about a new initiative that you implemented that just flopped in your classroom. After it flopped, maybe you tried to explain it and concluded that a lack of fidelity to a consistent and sound framework explained why the program was unsuccessful. Or maybe you concluded that there wasn’t an ongoing support structure of professional development, which allowed the plan to fizzle. Therein lies the fragility in our reflective processes: we think that we’ve created a sturdy plan only to change the narrative when an unexpected event occurs. A decision journal allows you to predict outcomes right after you decide and then compare the prediction to what actually happens. This practice also contributes to learners being willing to admit mistakes and think about future growth areas. Farnham Street (2021), a mental-­models group, created a decision template that can be a helpful starting place. I’ve included a blank version here, and also an example of how a student could use these. Decision No.: Date: Time: Decision: Mental/physical state: Energized Focused Confident Tired Accommodating Anxious Frustrated Angry Relaxed Accepting Resigned The situation/context:

Inquiries of a Higher Order The problem statement or frame:

The variables that govern the situation include:

The complications/complexities as I see them:

Alternatives that were seriously considered and not chosen were:

Explain the range of outcomes:

What I expect to happen and the actual probabilities are:

The outcome:

Review Date (six months after decision date):

What happened and what I learned:

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The complications/complexities as I see them:

Decision No.: 6 Date: September 1, 2022 Time: 9:00 a.m. Decision: Having a conversation with someone in my class who I don’t enjoy working with. I am going to attempt to work with them again in this group. Mental/physical state: Relaxed, Accepting, Resigned The situation/context: Working in a group with Bob The problem statement or frame: The last time we worked together, Bob didn’t do any of his agreed upon work. I felt like I had to carry extra work because he didn’t put in effort. The variables that govern the situation include: Bob’s attitude toward group work My attitude toward him and the situation What my teacher is going to do to help The complications/complexities as I see them: As I see things, Bob has an aversion toward me because I have expressed my frustration to Bob before. Alternatives that were seriously considered and not chosen were: Ignore Bob’s behavior and not confront him Explain the range of outcomes: Bob could become angry and more resistant. Bob could become apathetic and just not engage. Bob could eventually become a friend and we could work together well. What I expect to happen and the actual probabilities are: After I have a conversation with him about my past frustrations and allow him to respond, I think we could find ways that he feels like he could make valuable contributions.

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The outcome: He was very quiet and distant during the beginning of our conversation, but once I opened up about some of my own fears and frustrations, he began to open up about his. He felt I was too bossy and also felt I didn’t value his contributions. Review Date (six months after decision date): January 1, 2023 What happened and what I learned: Six months later, Bob has been much more willing to contribute to our group projects. I needed to be aware of how bossy I could be perceived, and he needed to feel his contributions were valuable.

Highlighting past decisions and making connections to students’ current reality can provide a powerful context for new ideas, creativity, and critical thinking. It allows students to accept the unpredictable nature of other people and the world we live in, and we learn to adapt to this truth by taking risks and thinking in new ways. The decisions we make can have a lasting impact and improving the process of decision-­making and reflection can push our practices even further.

CHAPTER

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T

his chapter is devoted to the process of thinking critically. We all remember going to the back of the book for an answer to our homework problems. There was no thinking involved in this, and even those who claimed they were just “checking their answer” were given no credence because there was typically no justification through evidence given or reference to the process used to discover the answer. It was a means of compliance, not of learning or thinking—­just get the right answer to get a good grade on the assignment. To counter this, I’ve codified and themed the instructional process to best lay the foundation for critical thinking.

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Instruction must be: • Collaborative: Instruction is a partnership between the teacher and the students and focused on maximizing critical thinking and transfer. • Individualized: Instruction isn’t about making all students the same or about getting students to some arbitrary sense of sameness. It’s about appreciating each student for who they are and what they bring to the table and supporting them on their unique journeys to grow as thinkers. • Relevant: Instruction is planning for the many strategic everyday decisions that connect with students’ intrinsic interests. • Grounded in critical thinking: Instruction is ensuring we are growing critical thinking so that students can evaluate and defend claims at the highest, most objective levels. • Open and responsive: Instruction is a dedication between two oscillating needs—­decisiveness to ensure an objective process and, at the same time, a great openness to new ideas. • Focused and well planned: Instruction is about creating structures to ensure that there is a consistent rhythm for the everyday moments and to provide an anchor of stability when there is bewilderment and confusion. • Systematic: Instruction is interconnected. One component affects another. The quality of research impacts the quality of evidence that impacts the conclusions we can accurately draw. • Complex: Instruction is highly complex because humans are complex. Even though we can study facts and objective truths, all students come to the classroom with various views of the world, making our instructional decisions complex.

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Answers are important, right? Doesn’t science focus on getting answers? Yes, science is committed to objective truth; after all, science’s greatest achievements are made possible by objective truths. Based on evidence, something either is or isn’t, on or off, true or false, accurate or inaccurate, and so on. But there is still a lot we don’t know, and because of that we continue to search for truth and unravel great mysteries. The fact that the earth is round, not flat, and that it orbits the sun, will almost certainly never be challenged. Although the details of chronology may alter, our conviction that we share ancestors with chimps and more distant predecessors with monkeys can never be disproved. Many of our ideas, on the other hand, are still best thought of as theories or models whose predictions have so far proven accurate. Meanwhile, because there is so much that we don’t yet understand, we should proudly announce what we do know in order to draw attention to the issues that need to be addressed. Scientists, more than anyone else, impress their peers by acknowledging their faults. The scientific method is to do whatever it takes to avoid deluding yourself into believing something is real when it isn’t, or to believe something isn’t true when it is. Whatever it takes, that is the scientific approach. And that path isn’t exactly straight. There are forks, detours, on-­ramps, off-­ ramps, hills, and valleys. Sometimes it leads to a new path and sometimes we get to a dead end. A lot of trial and error happens when we problem-­solve and search for answers. In fact, it is exactly what an experiment is for. And the answer isn’t in the back of the book when you’re doing research, and sometimes it’s not in a google search, either. What’s an example in history when we had to update our answer? To answer that question, enter famed astronomer William Herschel, who is credited with discovering the planet Uranus. Newton’s laws of motion and gravity were well established when Herschel discovered Uranus. Newton’s laws explain how planets

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orbit the sun, how moons orbit planets, and how the mutual pull of gravity between them keeps them in their orbit. Specifically, if you applied Newton’s law of gravitation to Uranus, you would have been able to forecast how it should have been traveling at every point in its orbit. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all exactly followed the Newtonian forecast, but when it came to Uranus, which had been observed for roughly 60 years by the middle of the 19th century, something was awry. Houston, we have a problem. And while the first and third laws were applicable to Uranus, the second was not! Uranus initially looked to travel too swiftly relative to its estimated speed, slowed to the expected pace, and then slowed much further, to below its predicted speed. Moreover, this appeared to contradict Newton’s theories. Do Newton’s laws break down if we travel too far from the sun? Did we discover a boundary to his laws? Up until this point, Newton’s rules had been explaining everything about planetary motion. Was there something else out there, a planet whose gravity is tugging on Uranus in a way that we haven’t taken into account in our calculations? Mathematical calculations were performed and scientists reasoned that if Newton’s laws were being followed everywhere, there must be a planet tugging on Uranus in the sky, causing us to believe it is not following Newton’s rules. So they went on a hunt for it. When observers discovered Neptune in the predicted location in 1846, it appeared to be yet another colossal success for Newtonian gravity. So all was well with Newtonian gravity until scientists detected a minor glitch with Mercury’s orbit. All planetary orbits precess a little, which means that when they make ellipses around the Sun, they don’t always return to the same starting point. Much of this is anticipated by Newtonian physics, but there was a little part of Mercury’s orbit that Newtonian physics couldn’t account for—­an extra 43" per century out

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of a total of 5599". What caused Mercury’s orbit to precess at the rate it did? Three different hypotheses were proposed: 1. Perhaps an inner planet was causing Mercury’s perihelion advance. 2. Newton’s law of gravity might need to be significantly amended. 3. Newtonian gravity might need to be replaced by a more comprehensive theory of gravitation. Scientists leaned toward hypothesis 1. It was assumed so strongly that it was given the name Vulcan. Urbain Le Verrier, the man who had correctly predicted Neptune, figured out the math to determine where Vulcan would need to be, and a massive amount of observing resources went into locating this new world. However, despite extensive searches for a new mass near the Sun, no planet has been discovered. The minuscule disparity between Mercury’s anticipated orbit and the ever-­improving measurements prompted some to speculate that Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation might be incorrect. Gravity, according to Newton, is governed by mass and separation distance. Everything was attracted by a force he referred to as “activity at a distance.” However, between 1909 and 1915, a new theory emerged, proposed by Albert Einstein, who discovered the photoelectric effect, special relativity, and E=mc2. Instead of “activity at a distance” caused by mass, this new theory claimed that the presence of matter and energy bends space, causing everything—­ including massless objects—­to bend and deform under what we call gravity. This new notion was intriguing for several reasons. To begin with, it explained the extra 43" (0.011 degrees) each century that Newton’s gravity failed to account for. Second, it predicted the

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existence of black holes as a straightforward answer. Finally, it predicted something very intriguing and testable: that gravity would bend space itself—­and so anything that passed across it, such as light. Newton’s supporters might argue that this isn’t a big problem. If you use E=mc2 and know that light has energy, you can simply swap E/c2 for “mass” in Newton’s equations and get a prediction that Newton’s gravity will bend light as well. Were Newton’s and Einstein’s predictions the same, however? When small masses are separated by a large distance, gravity is weak. When you get close enough to huge masses, the projections start to diverge. So the most obvious place to go was the greatest mass in the universe: the Sun. Fortunately for us, a total solar eclipse isn’t a common occurrence, and during totality (total obscuration of the sun during an eclipse), we witness the extremely rare phenomena of stars visible during the day. Sir Arthur Eddington, the director of Cambridge Observatory, led an expedition to Africa to witness the complete solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, and coordinated a second mission to Sobral, Brazil, to conduct comparable observations. Eddington set out to track the positions of the stars while they were close to the Sun, as well as observe how the Sun bent light. When the observations arrived, it was discovered that Einstein’s predictions had been confirmed. Following eclipses and other testing, the contrasts between Newtonian and Einsteinian gravity have become clearer, with general relativity emerging victorious in every circumstance. I am certain that how you think, not what you know, determines the most crucial moments of your life. What should you do if you’re confronted with a challenge you’ve never encountered before? Do you tell yourself, “I’m not a math person,” or “I’m not trained for this”? You might think to yourself, “Wow, that’s a problem I’ve never seen before. Let me try to figure it out.” Science literacy isn’t so much about what you know as it is about how your brain is wired for thought, how your brain is wired to

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ask questions, allowing you to investigate the world’s knowledge and information in search of what is objectively true. Personally, I’d rather live in the reality of what is true since it gives me a better opportunity of arriving at a solution when I make judgments based on it. That is why scientific procedures and instruments are so vital to our growth as humans; they allow us to progress from a state of ignorance to an understanding of what’s going on, eventually leading to an established objective truth, not only to find objective facts, but also to explain to others how to get there. Teaching critical thinking is only half of the battle. The first half is learning how to do it ourselves. It is intellectually lazy not to think critically, and as educators, we can be the model for how to solve problems with great precision and accuracy.

Process of How One Builds a Case Dewey reveals the foundation of reflective thought in his work How We Think (1974). Reflection is more than just a list of thoughts; it’s a train built on the foundation of those ideas that came before it. There is a relationship between each link in the chain and other links in the chain. Is there a way to make each link in the chain more complex and profound than the one before it? According to Dewey, the foundation of all thought is the belief in one’s own self. He contends that a relational framework defines the connections and validations between various knowledge relationships. That is why it is necessary to create valuable connections to think clearly. Ask higher-­order questions to determine whether or not the linkages are well-­structured. When we think of higher-­order questions, we tend to think of the instructor planting questions at the right time to encourage creativity or curiosity from the student. But there must be more to the teaching process than this. Students must have a strong

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desire to ask themselves more complex questions. The human species has built-­in mechanisms for encouraging uncertainty and welcoming the unknown, which most of us give up by the time we are in our forties or fifties. As Dewey indicates, our capacity for depth impacts our ability to think complexly and creatively. It takes time to get to the bottom of the pool while you’re diving in. Not a rapid two-­ footed leap, this is an intentional jump. Ideas, impressions, and perceptions should be allowed to stew for a while. We must internalize them. Ideas must be constantly stimulated to thrive. To keep our minds active and stimulated, we need to be continually reminded of the need to do so. Intellectual curiosity can be unquenchable in a few people, but it is readily dulled and muted in the majority. This general rule applies particularly to those who are sensitive to uncertainty and doubt. Inconsistency is a byproduct of thoughtfulness that goes beyond the surface. Numerous thoughts and ideas may arise, but the best results come from concentrating them into a single, forward-­moving pattern. Taking inputs at face value is against our natural desire to engage in reflective thinking. The ability to consciously accept all of life’s intricacies and possibilities requires effort and focus. People tend to make snap judgments when they are familiar with a subject or the person delivering the message. Being a thoughtful, self-­reflective person necessitates putting judgment on hold as one investigates further. The cornerstones of deep thought are skepticism and perseverance in the pursuit of knowledge.

Truth and Skepticism What is fascinating about the scientific method is that it possesses within in it an error-­correcting process that keeps us honest in the face of our chronic proclivity to react emotionally, project

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our own reality, misunderstand, and deceive ourselves and others. One of the best ways to hone your skepticism skills is to first decide that your priority is to seek truth rather than trying to eliminate or numb your concerns. It is less crucial to trace the origins of those biases than it is to examine their significance to the body of knowledge under investigation. When we utilize evidence to support our position, we must be certain that the evidence has demonstrated, to the independent thinker, that there are grounds to trust some aspects of our intellectual stance and reasons to reject others. Evidence does not just reveal what is; it also reveals what is not. It is critical to know and possess “independent confirmation,” as Carl Sagan (2011) put it. Today, where many information seekers rely on Google, Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit aids in the process of analyzing remarkable claims and being actively suspicious. Both knowledge and skills are required but insufficient components of learning. That sounds surprising, doesn’t it? Here is what I mean: to knowledge (the “what”) and skills (“how to do it”), we must add affective changes (“desire to do it”), which results in changes in practice and inspires the repetitions necessary for students to integrate what they have learned. Examples include developing an appreciation for something, increasing one’s curiosity or engagement, and increasing one’s confidence. When students incorporate what they’ve learned into their thinking, behavior, and self-­definition, they actively and permanently alter who they are. According to Sagan, his Baloney Detection Kit equips readers with productive, dependable “tools for skeptical thinking.” The kit outlines a series of intellectual actions that equip every thinker with “the ability to develop and comprehend a reasoned argument, as well as, more importantly, the ability to recognize a faulty and fraudulent argument.” Sagan advocates for this form

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of study as a counterbalance to living in a world filled with half-­ truths, sloppy reasoning, false claims, and pseudoscience.

What Kind of Kit Do You Need to Test for Baloney? Sagan’s kit promotes thinking in analyzing remarkable claims and being actively skeptical in the current environment when Google reigns supreme for many information seekers. The kit helps our ability to evaluate unusual claims and maintain skepticism in the information glut of the twenty-­first century, which is nothing short of survival skills for our kids (Robinson, 2013). The Baloney Detection Kit provides all thinkers with a helpful starting point for difficult and challenging processes at the heart of critical thinking: evaluating data and making judgments. The core essential practices of thinking, of vetting assertions for truth, actively exploring divergent points of view, and understanding the limits of established authorities help demystify the process of critical thinking and bring it into classrooms in practical ways. They will continue to do so in the future. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that there is no authority in science; at most, there are experts. Sagan reminds us that our world is an ever-­changing intellectual construct. By consistently criticizing the products of our own thinking with a position of ongoing inquiry, committed critical thinkers create an open intellectual field for themselves and others. Here are the nine components of Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: 1. Verify the facts. 2. Debate the substance. 3. Experts take precedence over authority. 4. Multiple hypotheses are in use.

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5. Remove yourself from your concept. 6. Make your hypothesis measurable. 7. Every link in the chain must function properly. 8. Occam’s Razor is a principle that states that the simplest solution is most likely the best one. 9. Disprove your hypothesis. 1 Verification of  the Facts  Right off the bat, teachers can get started with the kit by guiding students through a series of inquiry-­based questions: • Do I have adequate knowledge of a subject to fairly evaluate this claim? • What proof do I have? • Have I found a credible source of information on this subject that I believe will give me objective, unbiased judgments? You introduce students to the concepts of investigating truth and evaluating evidence in the field when you, as the teacher, demonstrate how to think through a concept or problem. Beginning the inquiry process with a focus on evidence prepares students to dig for truth before moving on to greater levels of thought on any topic. Independent validation of the facts must be sought whenever possible. Beginning the inquiry process with a focus on evidence prepares students to probe for truth before moving on to more advanced levels of thought on any topic. The thinker’s initial task is to determine why something should be believed. To determine whether a claim is worthy of further inquiry, thinkers should look into the source’s possible assumptions and biases. Textbooks are the most logical place to begin this journey. Additionally, you should provide access (online and offline) to

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primary source documents: archives, manuscripts, diaries, journals, video recordings, newspapers, government publications, written and oral speeches. Use these sources and examine them for relevance to the piece of knowledge under consideration. When we utilize evidence to support our position, we need to know that the evidence has shown us, the individual thinkers, that there are reasons to believe some things and reject others regarding our intellectual stance. Evidence reveals what is, but it also shows what isn’t. It’s critical for us to know for ourselves and have “independent confirmation,” as Sagan puts it. 2 Debate of Substance  Encourage competent proponents of all points of view to engage in substantive debate on the evidence. Part of how thinkers learn is through comparison. We should encourage ourselves to think through issues and topics as critical thinkers by seriously contemplating how others think about them. As rigorous critical thinkers, we must suspend our deeply held ideas, biases, and conclusions to make room for listening to—­and considering—­ opposing points of view and evidence. Conflicting opinions and evidence push people to think in new ways. Instructors can start by assisting students in becoming more comfortable with bringing multiple perspectives on the same issue into the same room. As critical thinkers, we should continually revise our beliefs as our disciplines evolve and the world around us changes. Students learn how to take a variety of contradictory opinions seriously by working through these many points of view and the diverse values they represent as a class. Students require explicit practice in trying on these multiple stances through assignments, class discussion, and research projects that require setting aside preferred perspectives to seek out and consider, without bias, a range of legitimate evidence and claims about an idea to see it in all of its

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complexities, resulting in more integrated and relevant thinking. Students learn how to take seriously a variety of contradictory opinions by working through these many points of view and the diverse values they represent as a class. Students require explicit practice in trying on these multiple stances through assignments, class discussion, and research projects that require setting aside preferred perspectives to seek out and consider, without bias, a range of legitimate evidence and claims about an idea in order to see it in all of its complexities, resulting in more integrated and relevant thinking. In today’s polarized political climate, bombast and bluster frequently shut out critical thinking. Students need to see you, the teacher, have the bravery to evaluate your own views and values, the awareness and fortitude to authentically reflect diverse perspectives, and the openness to give opposing viewpoints their due. Share with students that you are using critical thinking in these situations. Mel Seesholtz and Bryan Polk frame parts of their lectures as disputes between the two of them. They consciously model civil discourse, critical thinking, and the accompanying dispositions for their students (Seesholtz and Polk, 2009), showing an alternative to the loud, blustery, belligerent wrangling so common on talk radio and some news channels and shows, while sincerely trying to advance their point of view. Students may not see another way to disagree otherwise, but they must in order to productively defend facts and truth. 3 Experts Take Precedence over Authority  Authority arguments have limited weight because “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. Our universe is a living, breathing intellectual construct. Committed critical thinkers create an open intellectual field for themselves and others by regularly questioning the products of

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their thinking. Academics, legislators, and entrepreneurs, all of whom take intellectual risks by pushing the boundaries in their fields, should be able to illustrate how they are questioning and updating their thinking processes. Teachers can help students develop a more nuanced understanding of “expertise” and “authority,” so their mental models of these ideas shift from absolute to relative. One way to accomplish this is to ask students to trace a claim, notion, or judgment that has changed significantly over time, such as the bacterial theory of disease, or voting rights. Encourage students to adopt the stance of a critical thinker who questions authority and seeks confirmation that “truth” changes over time by having them seek out the shifting cultural context and scholarly evidence that was widely accepted on a topic or issue, and then practice transferring that way of thinking to a current issue. 4 Multiple Hypotheses in Use  Create multiple hypotheses. Consider all the numerous ways you could explain something if it needs to be explained. Then consider tests that may be used to disprove each of the alternatives in a systematic manner. What survives in this Darwinian selection among “many working hypotheses,” the theory that resists disproof, has a considerably better chance of being the correct answer than if you simply went with the first notion that came to mind. 5 Remove Yourself from Your Concept  Don’t become too wedded to a notion simply because it’s yours. It’s only a pit stop on the road to knowledge. Consider why you appreciate the concept. Compare it to the alternatives fairly. See if you can come up with any reasons to reject it. What are the counterarguments? Others will if you don’t. Think about what your critics would say, because they may find something if you don’t. Encourage

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students working in groups to do this with their own ideas, to find reasons to reject. 6 Make Your Hypothesis Measurable  Where does the preponderance of evidence point to? Teach your students to compare science to solving a crime. Criminologists have to piece together the evidence and build their case. You’ll be far better able to distinguish between competing hypotheses if anything you’re explaining has a measure, a numerical quantity associated to it. What is ambiguous and qualitative can be explained in a variety of ways. Of course, there are truths to be found in the numerous qualitative concerns we must address, but identifying them is more difficult. 7 Every Link in the Chain Must Function Properly  If there is a chain of argument, each link (including the premise) must work—­not just the majority of them. 8 Follow the  Principle of  Occam’s Razor  Occam’s Razor states that the simplest solution is most likely the best one. When faced with two hypotheses that both explain the data equally well, this handy rule of thumb tells us to go with the least complicated one. 9 Disprove Your Hypothesis  Always ask if the hypothesis can be falsified, at least in theory. Untestable, unfalsifiable propositions aren’t worth much. Consider the great idea that our universe and everything inside it is nothing more than a fundamental particle—­say, an electron—­in a much larger cosmos. Isn’t the theory unable to be refuted if we can never obtain information from outside our universe? You should be able to verify

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assertions. Stubborn skeptics must be given the opportunity to follow your logic, to repeat your experiments, and to see whether they receive the same outcome.

Scientific Process in Every Classroom Hypothetico-­deductive reasoning is the foundation of today’s internationally accepted scientific method, which is applied in science labs everywhere. Iterative empirical testing of theories that have been generated and tested is how research evolves (formulated through inductive reasoning). The principle of falsification states that a tested hypothesis can be refuted (falsified) by empirical evidence. Ideas and hypotheses are initially formed. Then they’re put to the test in experiments. The hypothesis stands if the body of evidence fails to refute it. It stands till and unless it is refuted by another (even single) empirical observation. Hypothetico-­deductive reasoning, like inductive reasoning, is not without flaws: assumptions put into hypotheses can be proven untrue, nullifying previously unrejected ideas. In the end, science does not seek to prove anything about nature. Instead, it constructs hypotheses to describe the natural world, then seeks to uncover the flaw in the logic (i.e., it works to disprove things about the natural world). So how can we apply what we’ve learned from science to our daily lives? We can use a conversation framework. (I adapted mine below from Simone Redaelli, 2020.) The scientific method has the advantage of giving a reference system with clear standards and protocols to adhere to. Remember that tests must be repeatable, which means that when given the identical equipment, tools, and techniques, independent scientists in a separate laboratory should produce comparable results. In order to discuss the same topic, productive dialogue

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and conversations require precise language, a form of reference vocabulary that everyone should agree on. Even among our colleagues at school and among our students in class, we should always agree on premises and define them in a thorough manner, so that they are the same for everyone. This is something we often forget. I remember the first time a student realized her birthday was the same day that she was born. She always thought it was the day you got presents, and that was it. The biggest light bulb lit up when she realized it was celebrating the day of her birth. The first step in guiding a conversation is to ensure that we comprehend the meaning and context of the terminology used in the argument. There is another disadvantage that a scientifically informed discussion would prevent. The error is in not framing the debate in such a way that all its aspects, except the one under inquiry, remain consistent. This is especially evident when people are attempting to draw parallels between groups to prove their point. Students might, for example, try to define success by comparing the achievements of different people throughout their lives: “Steve Jobs is a superb example of success because he created the iPhone.” This statement does not contribute to the definition of success because it only focuses on one aspect of his contribution to society. If we really want to get close to a definition of success, we should have a discussion about how we’re framing success. Are we framing it in terms of leadership, financial stability, or innovation? Was Steve Jobs influenced by others? How did his upbringing, education, and career opportunities compare to others with similar credentials? We must evaluate one element at a time. In simple terms, we should aim to compare groupings of items that demonstrate identical, or substantially comparable, traits when disputing, just as scientists do in the lab. As previously stated, all variables must be held constant, with the exception of the one under inquiry.

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We can use a framework for applying scientific method (and thereby promoting critical thinking) in everyday talks.

Scientific Method Anywhere Protocol To recap how to conduct a scientifically rigorous process in everyday conversation: 1. Introduce the reference vocabulary, and then talk about the discussion’s subject. Consider a scientist who is drafting an experimental protocol that will be utilized by thousands of other scientists across the globe. If the protocol is well-­ written, all scientists who follow it should achieve similar results. In research, this refers to repeatable knowledge; in everyday life, it refers to fruitful dialogues in which everyone is on the same page. 2. To back up your claims, use “controlled” arguments. Visualize two blank circumstances while doing group comparisons. You have two possibilities when you begin to add details to both of them. If you want to hide a specific detail, you should create the two scenarios in completely different ways—­in other words, you should multiply the variables. However, if you want to aid the observer in isolating a certain aspect, it’s best to create identical scenarios, with the exception of the intended element—­ keeping the majority of the variables constant. This is how scientists come up with appropriate experiments to isolate new pieces of knowledge, and how individuals should choreograph their thoughts in order to test them and make them more understandable to others. Not only should the scientific method provide humans with an elitist approach to study reality, but it should also provide them with an accessible tool for properly reasoning and discussing it.

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Let’s practice with another scenario to emphasize the framework: 1. Identify the claim. For example: “XYZ musician is the best musician of all time.” 2. Determine reference vocabulary. Define “best.” Best = number of sales, number of hits, number of awards? 3. Define a framework. What elements are we keeping constant? What elements should we control when making the comparison? Time period? Contemporaries? Similar backgrounds?

Paideia Seminar You’ve almost certainly heard of—­or even implemented in your classroom—­the Socratic seminar, a structured class discussion that emphasizes the importance of inquiry in the development of common knowledge. A Paideia seminar is similar, but I believe it takes the Socratic discussion to the next level. According to the National Paideia Center, the Paideia seminar is “a collaborative, intellectual discourse encouraged by open-­ended inquiries about a text.” Paideia seminars provide students with the opportunity to participate in led discussions. Students must have abundant opportunities to participate in a range of rich, structured discussions, and this lays a foundation for success. It incorporates open-­ ended questioning about what a student has just read. Students should read intently to understand clearly what the text says and develop logical inferences from it; present specific textual evidence to support conclusions reached from the text when writing or speaking. The Paideia seminar is a framework for enabling a discussion about a complex text while simultaneously fostering crucial social skills that students need to succeed in life. It’s also

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worth noting that “text” can refer to anything from artwork to a word problem to a map to a chart to a scientific experiment to ordinary prose.

Paideia Seminar’s Basic Structure There is a pre-­seminar, a seminar, and a post-­seminar in a Paideia seminar. In the pre-­seminar, students are arranged in a circle so that they can all make eye contact. During this time you review standards and objectives, activate or provide important background information for the text, clarify important terminology, and invite students to participate in a self-­assessment. Students reflect on how they generally participate in group discussions during this self-­assessment and, with your help, set an individual objective for the session. “I will make eye contact and actively listen when he or she is speaking,” or “I will contribute at least twice and apply concepts from the text,” are examples of goals. You should also encourage students to set group goals like “We will build on one other’s ideas by linking to others’ thoughts.” Distractions and off-­task behavior that would prohibit students from engaging are reduced by having agreed-­upon norms for discussion. During seminar, you facilitate a discussion by asking open-­ ended questions about the text. As students respond, require them to use the text to support their points of view by giving particular details and quoting specific passages. During this session, you will ask students to personalize, or transfer and generalize, acquired knowledge to their own lives, by asking questions about the text’s main idea, and focusing and analyzing textual details. In the post-­seminar, ask students to reflect on their progress toward group and individual goals, as well as the standards. This type of reflection is frequently done in writing, but you can use

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a variety of tools to construct and compose your reflection. Provide students with options so they can reflect in ways that are personally relevant to them. You could ask students to reflect via a poem, a poster, a blog, a talk show script, a video or slide presentation, or a journal entry, for example.

Examining Mistakes For many years, our education system has penalized students’ mistakes. But examining mistakes can build cognition and deeper learning into a concept. Errors help the brain expand, according to psychologist Jason Moser (Moser et al., 2011). He says in his study that when people make mistakes, the brain senses conflict between a “right answer” and a mistake (when we’ve been made aware of an error), and an increased electrical activity has been measured. Errors in logic should be used as teachable moments in the classroom since they not only promote healthy learning motivation, but also deepen learning experiences by stimulating cerebral activity. “Reason alouds” (my adaptation of “think alouds”) are helpful strategies to help illuminate errors in logic.

Reason Aloud For a reason aloud, the emphasis is on thinking processes rather than explicitly giving step-­by-­step instructions on how to do something. This protocol is intended to focus on the path of how we arrived at a conclusion, answer, or claim. It’s also not to criticize our clumsy errors, but flawed reasoning (thinking process). A math issue is discussed aloud by the teacher, who deliberately introduces natural blunders in the cognitive process. For example, assessing 2 (6x – 12) is simple; I just multiply 2 by the exponentiation factor, and 12x  – 12 is my new expression. Am I understanding this correctly? Encourage students to share

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their opinions. Oh, I see. I appreciate you reminding me about the distributive property. I can divide integers into addends and multiply by the same factor, just like I’ve learned to do using the distributive property. We require two groups of 6x  – 12, thus. Knowing that 6 + 2 = 12, additionally, I must multiply 12 by the same factor. My expression is therefore 12x – 24. The flaw was in the distributive property. You can reason aloud during a grammar lesson, a science lab, or a historical text. The key is to introduce a flaw in the reasoning process, and allow students the opportunity to correct this flaw. Review of Solution Paths  Give students a task to solve, and instruct them to “make their thinking evident” as they do so. Students would typically do this by presenting visuals of their issues or a description of how they came up with a solution. Gather a sample of the issues (this can be done quickly through a collaboratively shared document). Ask the class to decide on the right response as a group. The solutions will then be grouped by the students according to the solution path rather than the right response. For example, students are solving a problem around climate change. Some students might focus on reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through planting trees, or some might focus on using carbon sequestration of shellfish. The solution paths would then be analyzed in class to see which approach would produce the most impactful results. This time would also allow the teacher to examine any recurring mistakes in a given method. For instance, some students might have forgotten that photosynthesis produces oxygen, and not carbon dioxide. Peer Reviews  Students should be sharing their solutions with their peers. Their classmates are looking for these blunders and faults in reasoning, not typos or areas of disagreement. Student

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reviewers would highlight errors and comment on flawed logic. This is made easier by using a shared digital document for collaboration. When students provide and receive peer feedback on a task in progress, they are able to remind one another of the assignment’s goals and requirements, get a sense of how readers might react to their writing when those readers aren’t marking their work, and then make specific changes to their assignments before submitting or presenting them. Students develop crucial workplace skills along the way, such as providing and accepting feedback without taking critiques personally. Through paired or small-­group guided critiques on an early draft or version of an assignment, peer review can be done in class or outside of class. You can give students a handout or set of instructions that are specific to the task at hand. Through instruction and practice, you can hone the ability to provide insightful criticism to peers. If you’ve ever had critiques of your own work that were, at best, vague or, at worst, vicious, you know that it takes skill to give constructive, honest criticism. Here are some suggestions for instructing students on how to give each other useful responses and how to apply the feedback they get: • Give students leading inquiries to support them on how to frame critiques. • When giving feedback on the assignments and projects of their peers, students rarely know where to start. Give students specific questions about one another’s work in order to encourage participation. • The best inquiries are direct but open-­ended. It can be quite helpful to ask questions that allow reviewers to reflect back to their peers what they have read or seen. Students can gain insight into how readers will understand their work—­or

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not—­by asking them questions like “What evidence do you have to support this claim?” or “What did you find most compelling in the article?” • Ideal inquiries should result in actions. Questions like “What areas in this text were unclear?” Or you may ask, “How would you improve this article?” or “What does this text prompt you to do next?” Students should be guided in their constructive criticism and encouraged to offer follow-­up steps for their peers. • Additionally, you may assign them the responsibility of creating an outline from one of their peers’ papers to show the author how a reader might grasp the paper’s organization or to utilize the rubric provided to perform a fictitious assessment of the project. • Students gain from direct work both as reviewers and as reviewees. In order to do this, advise students to take notes as they discuss their work with peers or to submit a memo along with their assignments that details the adjustments they made in response to comments from peers. • Again the focus is on reviewing instead of editing. Since sentence-­level editing is more effective as a final editing step, peer review that concentrates on the content and organization of an assignment in progress is most advantageous for students. Using a handout or set of questions to direct the process is crucial to teaching students how to offer insightful review comments rather than editing their classmates’ work. • Peer review sessions should be held in class whenever possible. When peer reviewing in person, substantive discussion of ideas or organizational structure is more important than superficial editing.

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• Mix it up or make intentional pairings. Consider anonymizing only the first round of peer reviews each semester until students gain greater comfort with the procedure and are able to have fruitful in-­person discussions about their unfinished work, because discussing ideas with peers is extremely helpful. • When students perform peer review for the first time, they will need a lot of direction and their input will be less helpful. By the third or fourth round, students are more at ease and more self-­assured, and as a result they give each other richer comments. Having numerous opportunities to give and receive feedback, students are also able to see for themselves the advantages of using their peers’ input when completing assignments; rather than viewing peer review as a compliance activity, they put their effort into what they now recognize to be a worthwhile endeavor. You see there might be answers at the back of the book, but how did the answer get there? What experiment or research provided that data that was then analyzed and evaluated to be finally accepted as a credible claim? And then what happens when there is new evidence; how do we update that answer in the back of the book? You see that we can’t truly comprehend that answer until we understand how it came to be.

CHAPTER

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Collaborative Argumentation

I

n speaking about conversation, Arthur Martine’s 1866 etiquette handbook advises, “Let your purpose be to come at truth, not to overcome your opponent in moral or scientific debates. As a result, you’ll never be out of luck even if you lose an argument and learn something new.” However, this isn’t what happens most of the time when we dispute, both online and offline, but especially when we use the weapons of our righteousness from the comfort of the computer. Mark Twain’s observation that “the critic’s symbol should be the tumble-­bug: he places his egg in somebody else’s dung, otherwise he could not hatch it” is applicable to this sort of “criticism.” Even if this were the case, there are methods to be critical while yet being charitable, of trying not to “conquer” but rather to “get at truth,” and of advancing the public understanding rather than just being right. Debate provides students with a unique opportunity to learn about 105

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real-­world challenges and themes impacting the world around them. Aside from the fact that debates help students think about themselves, they also help them learn from their peers. Arguments help students become more confident in discussing their ideas and interests with others, especially in this very polarized world we now live in. Collaborative argumentation aids in the development of critical thinking and evaluative abilities. A particularly useful project is to have students work together to produce diagrams that scaffold their critical engagement and argumentation skills. The term “argumentation” has a variety of meanings. An argument is (1) a series of propositions in which the conclusion is inferred from the premises, and an argument is (2) a dialogue between two or more people in which arguments are constructed. As a result, the second definition would be a classroom discussion in which students make and evaluate one another’s arguments. Students’ individual or group thinking can be manifested in the form of argument products, which are physical manifestations of their work. Students’ discussions or think-­aloud methods for individual reasoning can provide a more direct window into this type of reasoning. Because students don’t have to take sides or convince others, they have more freedom to examine different points of view and find compromises than in a traditional debate setting. Keefer, Zeitz, and Resnick (2000) found that in studies of small-­group discussions of literary texts, collaborative argumentation resulted in deeper arguments and a better understanding of literary themes than did adversarial argumentation.

Argumentation Vee Diagrams Argumentation Vee Diagrams (AVDs) is a novel prewriting technique used to write reflective opinion essays (Nussbaum, 2011). AVDs are based on the theoretical concept of argument-­

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counterargument integration, which entails weighing and integrating opposing viewpoints before reaching a final conclusion on a contentious issue. Students can specifically develop their ability to evaluate arguments by becoming familiar with the critical questions they should ask when confronted with various patterns of reasoning. While many teachers make an attempt to teach critical thinking and writing, they lack well-­defined instructional models outlining what these skills entail. AVDs can serve as the foundation for argument-­based critical writing instruction. In Figure 6.1, you can see that students develop counterarguments alongside their arguments and then evaluate the arguments based on the strength of the evidence. As a way to combat the tendency to “caricature one’s opponent,” Daniel Dennett offers some strategies formulated decades ago by the legendary social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport, best known for originating the famous tit-­for-­tat strategy of game theory, in Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (2013). It’s important to know how to write or articulate a compelling critical commentary, so Dennett’s steps are summarized here: 1. Express your target’s viewpoint again in your own words in such a vivid, accurate, and convincing manner that your target says, “Thanks—­that was a better way of stating it.” 2. List any areas that you and the reader can agree on (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. Mention anything you’ve picked up from your target’s interactions with you. Only then are you allowed to respond in any way, shape, or form. Dennett argues that this is actually a sound psychological technique that accomplishes one essential thing: it changes your opponent into a more receptive listener for your criticism or dissent, which in turn aids in the advancement of the debate.

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Argumentation Vee Diagram QUESTION:

ARGUMENTS

COUNTERARGUMENTS

Reason #1A:

Reason #1CA:

In filling out the argumentation Vee diagram, put your first argument reason here.

In filling out the argumentation Vee diagram, put your first counterargument reason here.

If you have a supporting argument, then indent.

If you have a supporting argument, then indent.

Reason #2A:

Reason #2CA:

Reason #3A:

Reason #3CA:

Integrate arguments CONCLUSION AND RATIONALE Which side is stronger, and why? Is there a compromise or creative solution?

Initial Argumentation Vee Diagram

FIGURE 6.1  AVD template. Source: Nusbaum, 2011.

Conformity and the Anti-­Venom: Debates In 1951, psychologist Solomon Asch conducted an experiment in which he gathered a group of people and showed them cards displaying lines of differing lengths (Asch, 1951). He would then pose the same questions to the group. Without force, approximately 2 percent of respondents replied wrong. In the subsequent

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run of the experiment, Asch added actors to the group who consented to answer his questions wrongly. If he asked which lines were identical, or longer, or shorter, or whatever, they would isolate one unfortunate issue in contention. You probably believe that you would deviate from the norm and shake your head in astonishment. You might ask yourself, “How could these folks be so ignorant?” I’m sorry to break it to you, but research indicates that you would ultimately break; 75 percent of subjects caved on at least one issue in Asch’s trials. They read between the lines, saw that the solution everyone else agreed on was incorrect, and went with it anyhow. Not only did they conform without being compelled, but they also appeared unaware of their own compliance when questioned later. When the experimenter informed them that they had made a mistake, they came up with justifications for their errors rather than criticizing the others. Intelligent individuals just like you succumbed, joined the group, and then appeared perplexed as to why. Asch tinkered with the experiment’s parameters, attempting it with varied numbers of actors and unwitting subjects. He discovered that while one or two persons had little effect, three or more were sufficient to compel a small percentage of people to conform. The proportion of people who conformed increased proportionately to the number of people who united in opposition to them. When all members of the group except the subject were replaced with actors, just 25 percent of his subjects correctly answered every question. Most of us prefer to consider ourselves individuals who march to the beat of our own drum. We value our uniqueness and regard ourselves as independently minded with distinctive tastes. How often do you clap at the end of a performance, say hello when answering the phone, or say excuse me when bumping into someone? To actually refuse to comply with your culture’s standards and the laws of the land would be a futile effort.

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We are acutely aware that conformity is a necessary element of life. Most likely, you pick your battles and overlook a great deal. When you visit another person’s home, you follow their lead. (Oh, you take off your shoes; okay, I’ll follow suit.) When you begin a new job, the first thing you do is seek out behavioral cues and norms. According to psychologist Noam Shpancer (1998), “We are frequently unaware when we are conforming.” It is our foundation of operations, our default mode.” Shpancer says you conform because social approval is ingrained in your brain. We understand that in order to thrive, we need allies. When you can get knowledge from a variety of sources, you have a more complete picture of the world. You require friends because outcasts are deprived of vital resources. Thus, while you are in the company of others, you look for indications on how to act and use the knowledge provided by your peers to make more informed choices. When everyone we know recommends a podcast app or a book we should read, we are swayed. Conformity is a means of survival. Stanley Milgram conducted the most famous compliance experiment in 1963 (Milgram, 1963). He had people sit in a room and listen to a scientist in a lab coat issue commands. He informed them that they would be teaching word pairs to another subject in the adjacent room, and that each time their partner gave an answer incorrectly, they were to shock them. A control panel clearly showed the shock’s strength on a complicated-­ looking apparatus. Rising voltages and a description were labeled along a single row of switches: “Slight shock” on the low end, “Severe shock” in the center, and at the bottom of the scale “XXX,” implying death. The man in the lab coat would instruct the subject to press the buttons in order to shock his companion in the other room. Screams erupted from next door with each shock.

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Following the screaming, the scientist would request that the subject raise the voltage. The screams became more loud, and the subject eventually heard the man in the other room crying for his life and pleading with the psychologist to stop the experiment. The majority of individuals inquired about their ability to continue. They were apprehensive about shocking the poor man in the next room, but the scientist urged them to proceed, assuring them that the man would not be harmed. The scientist stated, “There is no other option; you must continue,” or “The experiment requires that you continue.” To everyone’s amazement, 65 percent of people could be urged to go all the way down to the “XXX.” In truth, no shocks occurred, and the other individual was really an actor feigning pain. Milgram’s experiment was replicated numerous times with numerous variations. The percentage of people who complete the test can be reduced to zero simply by removing the authority figure, or it can be increased to the 90th percentile range by having another person administer the test while the subject is solely responsible for administering the shocks. Again, Milgram’s experiment did not involve any type of incentive or punishment—­ only plain obedience. Milgram demonstrated that when you view your acts as simply obeying directions, particularly from an authoritative person, there is a 65 percent risk you will cross the line into murder. When you factor in the possibility of punishment or self-­harm, the likelihood of conformity increases. Milgram concluded that his participants, and most likely millions more, viewed themselves as tools rather than as humans. When they became extensions of the person doing the atrocity, their own will was relegated to a place where it could stay free from blame. Thus, conformity can be generated by convincing others that they are extensions of a mission rather than human beings. Bear in mind that your instinctive drive to comply is powerful. At times, such as during a family dinner, the desire to

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please everyone and follow social customs is appropriate. It keeps you connected to the conventions that make collaboration in the modern world simpler. However, it’s important to be cautious of the flipside, that conformity can get us too comfortable in our traditional mindset. Conformity can also be detrimental to the classroom and stifle students’ critical thinking. Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School professor, conducted several research studies (Bellezza et  al.,  2014), all of which indicated that nonconforming actions boost students’ confidence, originality, and success. In one study, a few hundred employees from various companies were recruited and asked to behave in nonconforming ways at work for a few weeks, such as voicing alternative opinions to those of their coworkers, expressing their true ideas or feelings rather than the ones they were expected to have, or proposing ideas that their coworkers might find unconventional. For three weeks, she asked another group to behave in a certain way, such as remaining silent and nodding along even when they disagreed with a colleague’s decision. Finally, she instructed the control group to act normally throughout this period. Members of the first group reported feeling more confident and involved in their employment after three weeks than members of the other two groups. They were also more inventive when performing a task as part of a three-­ week follow-­up survey, and their supervisors gave them higher marks for both innovativeness and performance. Grant (2017) aimed to demonstrate how nonconformity fosters a culture of innovation in another experiment. Ben Kohlmann, a Navy pilot noted for being a troublemaker, dissenter, disrupter, heretic, and radical, was instrumental in the Navy’s establishment of the first rapid-­innovation cell, a network of creative thinkers who would collaborate to challenge long-­held assumptions and develop new ideas. To begin putting the gang together, he looked for members who were known to be nonconformists and

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insubordinates. He began with this tiny group and gradually grew his network. He enlisted members who had never expressed an interest in questioning the status quo and exposed them to fresh ideas. They went to places outside of the military like Google and the Rocky Mountain Institute that excel at innovation. They participated in readings about innovation and set up possibilities for regular debates about ideas. Soon after, they were the first to utilize 3D printers on ships and a robotic fish for covert underwater missions, and other rapid-­innovation cells sprouted up all over the military. What can we learn from friendly conflict and nonconformity? When they discover their voice, individuals and students acquire confidence and energy to learn and convey ideas. At some point in our lives, we’ve all been faced with a situation that required us to choose between conforming to expectations and confronting them head on. It may have been finding your place in school, being given a rigid set of rules, or being expected to follow social and cultural conventions. Conformity pressure can make it difficult to stand out, speak out, take chances, or lead change. When we reward the “one right answer” or standardize processes at the expense of originality, we unintentionally create and perpetuate environmental circumstances. By rewarding the most widely accepted opinions, we indicate that we don’t welcome serious, challenging views. This has to be changed! The purpose of education is to encourage our kids to be more creative and imaginative, to think critically, to communicate effectively in order to inspire change, and to collaborate in order to make a difference. Everyone has thoughts, ideas, and experiences, but not everyone develops a platform for them to be shared. Consider a period when your own thinking changed or you made a decision to change your mind. What elements aided your progress? Were you influenced by the story or voice of someone else? Debates are a great way for students to practice using their voices and battling conformity.

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The prompts listed below can be used to help start debates via the Argument Talk Protocol that I derived from the 4A protocol of the National School Reform Faculty (2018).

Argument Talk Protocol Students are put into groups and each student shares their response to a problem or scenario. After the presenter shares, each of the group participants will share the response to the question prompts below. Continue the rounds for one prompt at a time. Then move to the next prompt. 1. What assumptions does the presenter hold? 2. What do you agree with in their argument? 3. What do you want to disagree with in their argument? 4. What parts of the argument do you aspire to act on? Kialo Edu is a classroom-­ specific version of Kialo (kialo .com), a mapping and debate platform. Its straightforward, visually appealing format makes it simple to follow a discussion’s logical framework and encourages intellectual engagement. Kialo’s purpose is to foster well-­informed online discussion, and it is free to use for instructors. Kialo can be used to assist students in getting to the heart of the problems they’re debating: • To apply what they’ve learned • To improve their critical thinking abilities • To demonstrate their comprehension • To communicate positively with one another • To organize classroom debates

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Kialo (n.d.) helps take your class discussions online, and simplify complex topics for students. What I like about Kialo is that you can create opportunities for your students to apply their knowledge, establish their own perspectives on course concepts, and consolidate what they’ve learned through dialogues. Every student has a voice in a conversation; there is no talking over one another, and students are free to investigate arguments at their own pace. Kialo’s collaborative platform invites students to work together to find the most effective approach to present their ideas. Additionally, Kialo’s assessments are more authentic. Instead of writing an essay, students could write a discussion, or utilize debate topics to design larger writing assignments. Students use Kialo’s argument-­tree framework to think about counterarguments, create a logical outline for their argument, and visualize how their ideas fit together. The tree allows students to perceive talks and disputes as an interactive medium of pro and con arguments. The thesis, which is supported or disputed by pro and con assertions, is at the center of every discussion. Each of these claims can lead to additional claims that either support or refute it. Create a debate for your students to participate in, and organize the content in a clear and simple manner. Challenge students to contribute arguments or question notions by linking to further sources and reading. Each claim has a comment space underneath it that allows you to provide input, make suggestions, and ask questions without cluttering the debate. Students can also readily collaborate with one another to improve their ideas, examples, and wording. You can quickly share and arrange the content you want your students to see by creating teams for each of your classes. All content on Kialo-­Edu.com is private, and only the individuals you share it with have access to it.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, “You can’t use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn’t use reason to get into.” This is why correct argumentation is important. If one side is using logic and reason but the other isn’t, it’s difficult to have a rational argument-­counterargument debate. Another method of engaging others who hold different perspectives is not to attempt to persuade them, but rather to let them persuade themselves. The Paidiea and Socratic approach promotes exactly this. Finally, teach your students to accept that a successful argument is not one that is won by one side, but one that is carried out thoughtfully, with reason and informed logic, and one that is heard by both sides.

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ne of my heroes of benevolence and science is Jane Goodall. Her work is an impactful example of the intersection of learning, drive, and real-­life situations. Wisdom is the ability to reflect about the repercussions of our acts and consider the entire community’s well-­being. As a fast-­paced society, in many ways we’ve lost sight of the big picture and are instead fixated on short-­term gains at the expense of the long-­term interests of a world with finite natural resources, which is harmful and concerning. “Humanity is challenged as never before to prove its maturity and its mastery—­not of nature, but of itself,” Goodall (2000) commented more than half a century after Rachel Carson’s (2011) passionate plea: “What impact will my action have on future generations?” is a sign of wisdom. True wisdom necessitates the ability to think and feel at the same time.

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In the classroom, we might find ourselves asking students to engage in real-­world projects and problem-­solving. Unfortunately, many times these projects might do a great job of eliciting application of various concepts, but at the expense of a project idea that elicits no emotion. Implementation of projects that contain cognitively complex tasks helps reveal how students reason through mathematics and understand the culture of the community they are supporting. It also allows students to critique and revise their work, and provides a more engaging way to present their final product to a relevant audience. One of my favorite projects is the Kiva project. The following is a project idea that incorporates the use of the Kiva site, media, skills, and math content integrated into a collaborative and engaging project. Scenario Students, in the role of financial advisors, are challenged to find the best use of $25 so that the funds make the most impact in a community. They will select a project from the organization, Kiva.org, with which to provide a $25 microloan. Students, teachers, and community members will be the investors. To help students determine the best use of the funds, they will conduct interviews with a banker, to learn how lending works, and with the investors, to learn about what projects they are passionate about. Students will also factor in repayment schedules, as well as delinquency and default rates, for the given project and microlender. Students will oversee taking the funds and investing them in Kiva.org so the borrowers can begin their project. The end product is a presentation (student-­created video, slides, narrative, etc.) that will be shared with all the investors, as well as the school and the local community, to get their Kiva projects fully funded.

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Learning targets/standards: • Students can use operations with decimals to solve a real-­ world problem and explain their reasoning through models. • Students present opinions, sequencing ideas logically and using appropriate facts and relevant descriptive details to support main ideas. Assessment/Product Students would first collaboratively develop a plan for their presentation by creating a storyboard. In this scenario students decided to create a video that will include media (photos, music, etc.) and interview clips from the borrower’s community. Students have a choice of who they interview and can determine how to sequence the story to generate the most impact. The video will include the students’ own thoughts and opinions predicting the future success of the community. It will also explain why they believe this project will make the biggest impact on the community. This was adapted from pblworks.org, (PBLWorks,  2018), which provided this as a “gold standard” example of a project. The original was developed by national faculty members Angela Marzilli and Erika Jordan.

Examples of Essential Questions for Projects An effective strategy for introducing projects is the use of an essential question. The following are some examples of essential questions that require critical thinking. • How do we solve the food crisis globally? • How do we reduce crime?

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• How do we help people overcome poverty? • How can we be happier and more present in our daily lives? • How do we use technology in an ethical and safe way? Finding the answers to these questions will go beyond a Google search or a quick skim through the text. It will require a thorough and thoughtful review of information, and then the application of critical thinking skills to create innovative solutions to these problems, and to concisely present your conclusions and recommendations to others. Critical thinking is essential because it allows students to make logical deductions. When a student truly wants to learn something, they must understand the concepts at a foundational level and at a deep level to promote alternative solutions and problem-­solving. Most students automatically ingest information that is presented to them without questioning the source. Teachers should be providing access to primary source documents and highly credible sources, but we also must teach students not to blindly accept information presented to them. This skill is vital today in the age of information overload. Students must be equipped with a system of objective evaluation and analysis of a problem.

The Paradox of Nonreading Literature Many in academia believe that we must constantly be reading to fill ourselves with lots of knowledge. I’m an avid reader myself, and I understand the drive to consume as much information as possible or to gain additional perspective. But do we have to read every piece of literature—­the bestsellers, the classics, the newest fads—all the way through to be enlightened, cultured individuals?

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Psychoanalyst and University of Paris literature professor Pierre Bayard (2007) offers a compelling perspective on this topic, arguing for reading as a spectrum of engaging with literature in a variety of ways: books we’ve read, books we’ve skimmed, books we’ve heard about, books we’ve forgotten, and books we’ve never opened. This categorical approach shifts literature from being a repository of absolute knowledge to a compass for orienting oneself to and within the world and its various settings. In this perspective books cease to be separate objects and start to function as a system of relational understanding. Culture is fundamentally a matter of orientation. Being cultured (and a critical thinker) is not a matter of having read a specific book, but of being able to navigate among books as a system, which demands an understanding of how they fit together and the ability to locate each piece in relation to the others. However, Bayard says that our culture is tangled with obligations and prohibitions that have resulted in a restrictive system rife with hypocrisy about the books we have read—­and our fabrications tend to be proportional to the book’s perceived worth. How are we then to negotiate that system and its attendant expectations? A book is a component of the vast ensemble of the collective library, which we don’t need to understand thoroughly to appreciate any of its elements. The trick is to define where a book stands within that library, which imparts meaning on it in the same way that a word acquires meaning through its context. To engage meaningfully with literature—­and, by extension, with the world—­Bayard says that we must first comprehend the relationships between works and their placement within the collective library. Rather than any one book, it is these connections and correlations that the critical thinker should focus on, just like a railroad switchman

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should focus on the relationships between railroad cars (their crossings and transfers) rather than on the contents of any given convoy. Nonreading is not synonymous with apathy, ignorance, or inactivity. It is a genuine activity, one that entails taking a position in reference to the vast wave of literature that keeps you afloat. Bayard proposed the following codifying labels for the various levels of nonreading and subjective interpretation: • This is an unknown book to me. (UB) • I’ve skimmed the book. (SB) • I’ve heard of the book. (HB) • I’ve forgotten about the book. (FB) Opinions: • Extremely favorable opinion • Favorable opinion • Contrary opinion • Highly critical view The book is an imprecise object that can only be discussed in imprecise terms, an object that is perpetually skewed by our own experiences. Taking Austin Kleon’s (2012) observation that “you are a mashup of what you allow into your life”: in reality, we never discuss a single book in isolation; rather, a collection of books always enters the conversation via the doorway of a single title, which acts as a transitory metaphor for a whole notion of culture. Each time such a discussion occurs, our inner libraries come into contact with the inner libraries of others, posing the possibility of a discussion. However, beneath the debate of books, a bigger discussion of information’s systems and paradigms of creation and

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consumption comes to the surface. Bayard finishes by drawing a contrast between the networked information and wealth of background required for criticism and the subjective expression at the center of art: criticism necessitates an endless amount of culture in comparison to artistic creation. What is truly at stake in this case, and why should any of it matter? A text’s mobility is enhanced whenever it enters a conversation where it is animated by the subjectivity of each reader and his or her interaction with others, and to truly listen to it requires developing a special sensitivity to all the possibilities that the book takes on in such circumstances. Many times, students are asked to read and memorize events in a piece of literature. This communicates that it’s more about what the literature contains than it is about the students’ experience with the piece. Before assigning students a piece of literature, ask them to classify the level of their subjective interpretation before diving into the book, and then allow them to have a conversation. This will enhance the level and depth of conversations had in conjunction with the text. An extension to this activity would be to challenge students to weave together the books into a single networked literature. Challenge students to build a social graph (these look like those big bulletin boards you see in those detective movies containing potential suspects with yarn connecting them), a timeline, or a networked map of influence for a collection of books. Students will discover that no work or story exists in isolation but all are a part of a network of connected components in a grander context.

Group Work Isn’t Always Effective Collaboration is touted as an important life skill. I agree, and many experts also agree that education needs to do a better job at teaching collaboration. But as teachers, students, and colleagues,

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we’ve all been in groups when not everyone is working toward a shared goal. We’ve all had our share of trying to motivate others to put in a high level of effort when working in a group. There is a study that shows that group work tends to produce more loafing than if group members worked alone. The basis of this statement is that, if you are aware that you are not being judged on an individual basis, your natural inclination is to blend into the background. To demonstrate this, psychologist Alan Ingham (1974) permanently wrecked tug-­of-­war. In 1974, he instructed participants to put on blindfolds and grab a rope. The rope was hooked to a somewhat medieval-­looking apparatus that imitated an opponent team’s resistance. The subjects were informed that numerous other individuals were also holding the rope on their side, and he quantified their effort. Then he informed them that they would be pulling alone, and he measured once more. They were alone both times, but when they believed they were in a group, they pulled 18 percent less forcefully. This type of social loafing is occasionally referred to as the Ringelmann effect, discovered in 1913 and named after French engineer Maximilien Ringelmann (Simms and Nichols, 2014). The idea is that when individuals pull on a strain gauge in groups, their combined efforts equal less than the sum of their individual strength measurements on the same instrument. Ingham and Ringelmann’s work established social loafing as a concept in psychology: when working in a group, you exert less effort than when working alone on the same project. When the lead singer at a concert instructs you to scream as loudly as possible, and then repeats, “I can’t hear you! You can do better than that!” have you ever noticed how much louder the second time is? How come no one was screaming at the top of their voices the first time? This was actually tested in 1979 by some researchers at Ohio State University. Bibb Latane, Kipling Williams, and Stephen Harkins (1979) had participants shout as

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loudly as they could in a group and then alone, or vice versa. Indeed, the collective loudness of a small group of people was less than that of them individually. We can even plot this on a graph. The more individuals you add, the less effort each one makes. It curves away in the manner of a beautiful ski slope. You do this constantly, but it is not intentional—­except when you simply mouth the words to the tune everyone else is singing. The objective in all of these tests was to keep the subjects unaware of what was happening. When you believe you are a group member, you unconsciously exert less effort. Nobody is aware of it, and no one admits it. This habit is more likely to manifest itself when straightforward work is done. It is typically very easy to determine who is not pulling their weight when complex duties are involved. Once you realize your lethargy is visible, you make a concerted effort to improve. You do this as a result of another psychological phenomenon known as assessment apprehension, which is a fancy way of saying you care more when you are singled out. When you know that your efforts will be combined with those of others, your anxiety levels will reduce, and you coast. Over the years, sports scientists have educated coaches about this habit, and as a result, most major organizations now isolate each player when evaluating them, even going so far as to record them separately with a different camera to ensure the athlete does not fall victim to social loafing. This tendency has been found in virtually every circumstance that requires cooperative effort. Communal farms are always less productive than privately held farms. Factories where employees perform repetitive activities unsupervised are less productive than those where each employee has a personal quota to meet. The same is true for sales reps meeting quotas and waitstaff working for tips. In the classroom setting, teachers can reduce the impact of social loafing by assigning individual grades instead of team grades. This is an extrinsic motivator and doesn’t change behavior

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outside of that group project. Teachers can combat social loafing by clearly articulating the goals of the team, emphasizing the role that each student plays toward reaching the team goal, providing feedback individually, and ensuring groups have accountability measures in place.

Language Learning While writing this book, I felt it was important to increase my own critical thinking skills. I thought about skills I’ve always wanted to hone, and I decided that I would choose to learn French. I think the language is beautiful, and I love Parisian culture. Not only does critical thinking improve language learning, but language learning is improved by critical thinking! It has been proven in several circumstances that incorporating tasks that involve critical thinking improves language learning. This occurs because students apply their prior knowledge to a real-­life issue in addition to using it. As a result, the information students learn throughout these activities will be more memorable. Furthermore, when a student engages in such activities, they become an “active participant,” since they interact with other students while building knowledge. Students understand the knowledge learned at the time in own their way due to this process. This knowledge is retained—­and used—­more easily as a result (learning stops being too theoretical and is applied in practice). Overall, critical thinking enables students to process and understand a language in their own unique way. Language acquisition influences critical thinking, and critical thinking impacts language learning. Learning a language necessitates the ability to absorb a completely new ideology, a very different culture, and in many cases a language that is not your own. When we learn a new language, we acquire a set of grammatical and syntactic norms that aren’t necessarily the same as those

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in our native tongue. Learning a language necessitates a wide range of abilities that aid in acquiring a new mindset. As you compare and contrast your native tongue with another language, bilingualism tunes up your critical thinking skills. The benefits of bilingualism go beyond being able to communicate with a larger spectrum of people. It can significantly impact your brain, enhancing cognitive abilities that aren’t related to language and even protecting you from dementia as you become older. This perspective on bilingualism differs dramatically from what was known about the subject for much of the twentieth century. For a long time, researchers, educators, and policymakers viewed a second language as a cognitive impediment to a child’s academic and intellectual development. They weren’t wrong about the interference: there’s plenty of evidence that both language systems are active in a bilingual’s brain even when he or she is using only one, resulting in situations where one system obstructs the other. But, as researchers are discovering, this interference strengthens the mind’s cognitive muscles. Bilinguals, for example, appear to be better at solving certain types of mental puzzles than monolinguals. A 2008 study by psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-­Rhee (2008) asked bilingual and monolingual children to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins—­one designated with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle. When the youngsters had to sort the shapes by color, both groups were able to accomplish this with relative ease. Next, the researchers instructed the youngsters to sort by shape, which was more difficult because it required them to place the photos in a bin with a different hue. Bilinguals completed this task faster. According to the findings of multiple research studies, learning a second language appears to be beneficial to one’s executive function. When we plan, solve issues, or perform other intellectually demanding tasks, this command system directs the attention

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processes that we utilize to accomplish those tasks. It is possible to memorize information by ignoring distractions in order to remain focused, changing attention from one item to another on purpose, and recalling knowledge while driving, for example. Why does the competition between two active language systems improve certain features of cognition? Until recently, scientists believed that the multilingual advantage arose mostly from an aptitude for inhibition refined via the practice of suppressing one language system; this suppression, they reasoned, would help teach the bilingual mind to disregard distractions in other situations. However, studies have found that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in tasks that do not require inhibition, such as threading a line through an ascending series of numbers spread randomly on a page. The most significant distinction between bilinguals and monolinguals may be a more fundamental one: a greater ability to monitor the surroundings. Bilinguals have to switch languages frequently (also known as translanguaging). You might read a story out loud in one language and then write your reflections of the story in another language. Albert Costa (2014), a researcher at Spain’s Pompeu Fabra University, says, “It necessitates monitoring changes in your environment in the same manner that we watch our surroundings when driving.” Mr. Costa and his colleagues discovered that bilinguals not only performed better on monitoring tasks than monolinguals, but they also did so with less activity in regions of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it. From childhood through old age, bilingualism appears to impact the brain (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life). Researches compared seven-­month-­old babies exposed to two languages from birth to peers raised in one language in a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovács of the International School for Advanced Studies in

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Trieste, Italy. The newborns were given an audible cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen in the first trials. To see the puppet, both infant groups learned to gaze to that side of the screen. However, when the puppet appeared on the opposite side of the screen in a later series of trials, the babies raised in a bilingual household quickly learned to shift their anticipatory attention in the new direction, whereas the other babies did not. Bilingualism’s impacts can be felt far into old age. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-­English bilinguals, researchers led by neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan (2008) of the University of California, San Diego, discovered that those with a higher degree of bilingualism—­as measured by a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language—­were more resistant to the onset of dementia and other Alzheimer’s disease symptoms than others: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the onset age. I don’t think we’ve ever denied language’s power, but who’d have guessed that the words we hear and the sentences we speak could leave such an indelible mark? As a result, it is worth emphasizing that language learning improves critical thinking skills. Language learning and critical thinking complement each other. For example, critically examining a scenario and its character—­during which you must speak with someone in a specific language—­has already provided you with the essential tool that ensures the communication’s efficiency. Problem-­solving and conflict resolution can also help to strengthen critical thinking skills. Proper language selection is required, for example, in a dialogue where you must support your case without being influenced by the other participant’s potential disagreement and dissatisfaction (during a language-­ learning-­related exercise). This can be accomplished by using your critical thinking abilities and applying your information. Furthermore, while learning a language, a person can engage in a variety of activities that encourage different types of critical

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thinking. As a result, critical thinking takes on a more spherical shape. Language learning gives critical thinking a lot more aspects as a necessary and valuable process. What kind of connection exists between critical thinking and language acquisition? Critical thinking and language learning complement and influence one another. It is crucial to recognize that applying and using critical thinking can make language learning considerably more efficient and entertaining. Because of the diversity of exercises and activities that this process contains, critical thinking skills can be developed and enhanced while learning a language. Their bond is entirely productive. They both contribute to each other’s efficiency in a favorable way. Nonetheless, critical thinking is a talent that we employ on a regular basis. Learning a language is a process that necessitates critical thinking. In other words, critical thinking is independent of language acquisition in terms of development and formation, whereas language learning necessitates critical thinking to achieve maximum efficiency. Taking everything into account, the relationship between language learning and critical thinking is mutually advantageous. Students face difficulties in the real world that are complex, poorly defined, and lack a clear answer and approach. They must be able to recognize and apply various techniques to tackle these issues. Problem-­solving abilities, on the other hand, do not always emerge organically; they must be expressly taught in a form that can be applied in a variety of situations and scenarios. Our goals as educators go beyond the classroom, as we want our students to succeed in the real world. Consciously use language and activities that serve to develop a classroom culture of problem solvers from the first day of school. We want to produce students who can think about and manage their mental processes in order to achieve a specific goal. This is known as metacognition, and studies demonstrate that metacognitive skills help pupils solve problems more effectively. You can start by “normalizing” the

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classroom’s problems. Peter H. Johnston emphasizes the significance of normalizing difficulty, of defining, acknowledging, and referring to it as what it is: a sign of progress. The idea is for pupils to see challenges and failure as opportunities to learn and improve.

Problem-­Solving Ownership Take advantage of every opportunity to discuss problems and show how students, not teachers, solved them. Of course, there is guidance along the road. For example, a science class that is debating who gets to build a vehicle will almost certainly want the assistance of a teacher to find a method to balance the work in an equitable manner. Following that, make it a point to return it to the class and say, “Do you see how . . .” Students can be more independent and productive when applying and adapting their thoughts to future complicated assignments if they name what they did to solve the challenge. After a few weeks, the majority of the class realizes that you, their teacher, aren’t there to answer problems for them; rather, you are there to equip them in solving difficulties on their own. Now that that crucial aspect of our classroom culture has been established, we can focus on the strategies that students may require. You’ve probably seen the video of the broken escalator. A few people are riding an escalator, which suddenly stops. The people on the escalator start calling for help. They end up just sitting on the escalator, oblivious to the fact that they could just walk up, now that the escalator was a staircase. Anyone who watches it finds it hilarious and instantly yells, “Just get off! Walk!” Many of us—­perhaps all of us—­are like the man in the film shouting for help when we become trapped. Instead of embracing the problem and exploring different ways to work through it, we stop and say “Help!” when we get stuck. Just because students are aware of the tactics does not ensure they will utilize them appropriately.

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As a result, I make an effort to create opportunities for students to openly experience learning how, when, and why to employ certain tactics to become self-­directed learners. When giving your students problem-­ solving opportunities, tell them, “Allow yourself to be stuck on this problem, and then work your way through it, being cognizant of how you get yourself unstuck.” And then as students try to help themselves to name their process, I ask things like, “How did you get yourself unstuck? How did you take your first step? What are you up to right now? What would you like to try next?” As students discuss their process, I’ll add to a list of tactics they’re utilizing and, if they’re having trouble, assist them in naming a specific approach. “Oh, that’s interesting.” If a student says he or she wrote down the facts from the math problem and points to a chart, I might respond, “You extracted the critical information from the problem and organized it in a chart.” In this sense, I’m giving them the words to describe what they did, so they have a method to fall back on in the future. These self-­inquiring prompts evolve with us throughout time and are used to help students who are stuck or struggling. When students are reflecting on and monitoring what worked and what did not work, they become a resource and a tool for them to talk about their process. It is critical for me as a teacher to develop a classroom climate in which students are problem solvers. This helps students connect their challenges to methods, allowing them to recognize the value in not only working harder but also working smarter by experimenting with new and different strategies and improving their process. They will be more successful the second time around if they do so. And if students are solving problems effectively in an individual way, they will build the collective efficacy in problem-­solving. The ability to solve problems is in high demand and it’s ubiquitous in the world around us. Problem-­solving and critical thinking are listed as must-­have qualifications on every job offering, and

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every job candidate claims to have it. But what happens to that employee who gets the job and finds themselves in a stressful situation having to solve a problem? They’ll default to their well-­learned response (which may be a kneejerk reaction based on intuition). Parents and teachers strive for curriculum that fosters critical thinking approaches beyond solving for x. This chapter has armed you with strategies that help students transcend their critical thinking skills beyond the classroom. We continue to establish habits that stifle our ability to solve problems, which is ironic. Consider the modern requirement of being “always on.” We put pressure on ourselves to be working constantly, always producing, always promoting, always socializing, always informed, always available, and always doing. It’s too much, and when everything is on all the time, our brain resources are depleted, making it difficult to properly connect with difficulties. If we’re serious about solving problems at school and at home, we need to improve our ability to tune out so we can focus. Let’s model this in our classroom by providing a learning structure and an environment that promotes problem-­solving.

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Creativity’s Connection with Critical Thinking

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ritical and creative thinking are two distinct modes of processing information, but they can complement each other and function well together when attempting to solve an issue or make a decision. As you’ve learned throughout this book, the ability to examine information offered to us in a clear and logical manner is known as critical thinking. The goal of creative thinking is to come up with new, novel, or beneficial ideas. Great innovators and thinkers are able to mix critical and creative thinking. In this chapter we’ll look at how these various modes of thinking can interact. You can use critical thinking to assess the concepts that your creative thoughts have generated. You can use critical thinking to determine which option is the best. You gather information when you think critically. You come up with

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novel answers to challenges when you think creatively. When you’re trying to tackle a problem, you’ll find the best solution by combining both critical thinking and creative thinking. Using both skills allows you to look at challenges and solutions from multiple angles.

Inspiration for Creativity and Critical Thinking Many of our decisions rely on a certain amount of intuition. It’s so difficult to explain how things work naturally. For example, it’s hard to describe the color blue to someone. (This is defined as qualia, by the way, the subjective component of sense perceptions. How would you describe the smell of grass?) We have a vast number of memories of experiences in our mind. We have movie quotes, song lyrics, cookbook recipes, museum artworks, and much more all swirling in our heads, ready to come to the surface at any moment. Critical thinking is a vehicle for logical and rational thought, but consequentially it can allow us to make connections in a new combination. Interestingly, half of our inventions were happy accidents. Did you know that microwave ovens, chocolate chip cookies, Coca-­Cola, Post-­it Notes, and Teflon were all created accidentally? In other words, the invention’s breakthrough or ultimate product was not what the inventor had in mind. That may sound great, but is there any way to encourage or foster these happy accidents so that they lead to additional inventions? According to Kennedy’s 2005 research, individuals can create novel and inventive goods even when they aren’t attempting to do so (Kennedy, 2016). According to the poll, two-­thirds of patents result from collaboration, and the intended audience, or the people who will actually use the finished product, is the biggest source of inspiration. As Kennedy explained, “People are

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engaging in a very creative act as they dredge the unknown.” Some scientists even practice something akin to “free jazz,” improvising as they go. For example, When Alexander Fleming, a well-­known bacteriologist from Scotland, got back from a vacation, he discovered cultures of staphylococcus in the lab that he had intended to discard before he left. Unexpectedly, several of the cultures had disappeared. Fleming’s discovery that a fungus that had developed in the culture attacked the bacteria was the result of more research. He discovered a mold called Penicillium notatum, a form of fungus. Numerous lives have been saved thanks to this medication, which was the first antibiotic ever found. How do we inspire the next generation of inventors to turn happy accidents into something significant? What can we do in the classroom as educators to encourage this kind of thinking in our students? • Take them outside (park, museum, city street, etc.) and let them gather inspiration before beginning a project. • Provide some out-­ of-­ the-­ ordinary materials for them to work from. • Provide think and sketch time. • Provide students with open conversation time about a particular topic. • Give students constraints, so they must think both convergently and divergently. There is surprise all around us. Astonishment defies easy categorization. The unexpected astonishes and amazes us. Effective surprise is interesting because it doesn’t have to be rare, unusual, or outlandish to be effective. After the initial shock of recognition fades, there is no longer any wonder in an effective surprise.

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For example, take mathematics and physics equations, which hold that a specific outcome is guaranteed to be produced whenever certain conditions are present. That in itself isn’t surprising. The surprise may only come when we look back and see where we have come, echoing Steve Jobs’s observation in his autobiography about connecting the dots looking forward but connecting them only looking back. Imagination is a product of metaphorical thinking, which is at the root of human development. While categorization is built into our brains, the combination of metaphors and ideas goes beyond systematic placement to look for connections that haven’t been thought of before.

There Is Nothing New under the Sun Even though we have innate creativity, we must also accept the following: • Creativity is combinatorial. • Nothing is truly unique. • Everything builds on what has come before. • We create by recombining existing pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill, and insight accumulated throughout our lives. In order to truly create and contribute to the world, we must be able to connect countless dots, cross-­pollinate ideas from a diverse range of disciplines, and combine and recombine these fragments in new ways. Think about Legos. The more of these building blocks we have in various shapes and colors, the more interesting our creations will become. If we are limited to a single color and shape, we are severely limited in terms of what we can create, even within

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our single area of expertise. Einstein famously attributed several of his greatest physics breakthroughs to his violin sessions, which he believed created new connections between various parts of his brain. And legendary novelist Vladimir Nabokov was a secret lepidopterist—­he devoted his life to collecting and studying butterflies. And he believed that this scholarly obsession helped him cultivate a strong sense of detail and precision, which resulted in his writing being crisp and vivid. Of course, the concept of combinatorial creativity and cross-­ pollination of disciplines is not novel. It has been iterated and repeatedly reiterated in virtually every cultural discipline over the last century. One of the best modern examples of combinatorial creativity is from the popular fashion reality show Project Runway. The show pits participants against one another as they compete in challenges to create the best garment designs while being limited by time, materials, and topic. The challenges vary in creative diversity, putting the designers’ creativity to the test while keeping their individual fashion design flair. In the “unconventional challenge,” designers must create a garment out of such nontraditional materials as apartment furnishings, recyclable materials, items from the grocery store or the party store, food items, plants and flowers, or even their own clothes they happen to be wearing. The format of this show could be applied to any classroom or project. Students learn how to put their ideas to life by inventing their own creations as their understanding of concepts grows. Alvin Lustig once said that he’d discovered that every position people take in their beliefs is profoundly influenced by thousands of small, often imperceptible experiences that gradually form a sum of choices and decisions. Neuropsychologist Roger Sperry (1963) made this analogy between neurons and ideas: ideas generate new ideas and aid in the evolution of existing ones. They communicate with one another and other mental

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forces within the same brain, between neighboring brains, and, thanks to global communication, with distant, foreign brains. In 1970, French molecular biologist Jacques Monod proposed the “abstract kingdom,” a conceptual equivalent to the biosphere populated by ideas that spread similarly to how organisms do in the natural world. Monod stated that some of the properties of organisms have been transferred to ideas. Like organisms, ideas tend to breed and perpetuate their structure; they, too, can fuse, recombine, and segregate their content. Monod stated that ideas have “spreading power” and “infectivity,”—­a point reinforced today by the language of “viral” ideas. In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” for a similar concept in his book The Selfish Gene (Dawkins and Davis,  2017). Memes include tunes, concepts, catchphrases, fashion trends, and techniques for making pots or constructing arches. Just as genes propagate through the gene pool, memes propagate through the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process referred to as imitation in the broadest sense. The primary impetus of scientific and technical innovation has been our increased ability to reach out and exchange ideas with others, as well as to borrow other people’s ideas, and blend them with our own to create something new. Combinatorial creativity is the acknowledgment that nothing is genuinely unique, at least not in the sense of being constructed entirely from scratch. That notion is met with considerable resistance in creative spaces. To create is to start with a blank canvas. However, much data exists to support this ecosystem of influences and inspirations. Nina Paley, an artist, shot and animated ancient relics from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to illustrate her point that all creation is derivative. Every work of art is a derivative work. In animation, Oliver Laric examines the reappropriation of images in his video essay “Versions” by looking at how Disney recycles animation. Creativity is the original open-­source code.

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What enables this derivative creativity and idea cross-­ pollination is a rich reservoir of mental resources from which to draw. And, in my opinion, the two primary mechanisms by which we replenish that pool are curiosity and choice. Curiosity is a fundamental human motivation. Consider small children and the innate curiosity they possess. George Land and Beth Jarman carried out a study on kids (Land and Jarman,  1968) that was created to gauge the level of innovation in prospective NASA scientists and engineers. The researchers questioned 1,600 kids aged 5 about the potential applications for paper clips, and retested the kids when they were 10 and 15. A group of grownups were also tested. When compared to widely held notions about the relative IQ of toddlers and adults, the results were startling. Here are the percentages of respondents who achieved “genius level” results on this test: • 5-­year-­olds: 98 percent • 10-­year-­olds, 30 percent • 15-­year-­olds, 2 percent • Over 18, 2 percent The findings of the experiment and George Land’s work in the 50 years that have passed since then emphasize the value of divergent and convergent thinking. Imagination is a component of divergent thinking. It is the capacity to consider every possibility. Convergent thinking involves judgment and decision-­ making. I would argue that both convergent thinking and divergent thinking fall under critical thinking. According to Land’s research, when people mature, a mental conflict begins. Different regions of the brain are involved in divergent and convergent thinking. The older a person gets, the more likely it is that divergent and convergent thought are attempting to occur

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simultaneously, rather than convergent thinking coming first. When the brain’s divergent region begins to fire, it is overflowing with ideas and aspires to have the same creativity as that five-­year-­old. Before those ideas can even be properly thought through or communicated, the convergent section of the brain quickly springs into action and starts to filter those ideas, eliminating all the fallacious ones (gravity pulls us down, the laws of physics don’t change). I would say convergent thinking is about choice, and divergent thinking is about curiosity. Choice is how we discipline, channel, and focus our curiosity, invest our time and energy, and ultimately, what we pay attention to. We must build in time for our students to pay attention, for inspiration. Inspiration can guide us to topics we didn’t realize we were interested in. When students pay attention—­because as teachers we create opportunities for them to do so—­they become a part of our networked knowledge and another Lego block in our combinatorial creativity. Gandhi (2011) said, “Our ideas transform into words, our words into actions, our actions into character, and our character into destiny.” How we choose to pay attention to and interact with information and others influences who we become, our level of critical thinking, creativity, and, ultimately, our experience of the world.

Subtraction For years, the usual method of teaching children to ride a bicycle was using training wheels or a tricycle. However, many parents have elected to train their children using balancing bikes, pedal-­ less two-­wheelers that help children develop the coordination necessary for bicycling—­a skill that is not as easily mastered with an additional set of wheels. Given their benefits, why did it take so long for balancing bikes to supplant training wheels? There

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are numerous such instances where ignored remedies involving subtraction prove to be superior options. For example, in several European towns, urban planners have eliminated traffic lights and road signs in order to make streets safer—­a move that contradicts conventional traffic design. Leidy Klotz, an engineer at the University of Virginia, discovered that minimalist designs, in which components of an existing model are deleted, were unusual. As a result, he contacted Gabrielle Adams, a university social psychologist, to ascertain why this was the case. The two researchers believed that there could be a psychological explanation: when confronted with a problem, people prefer solutions that include adding new pieces rather than eliminating existing ones. Adams, Klotz, and their colleagues (2021) set out to determine the validity of their hunch. “We wanted to determine whether and to what degree people neglect subtraction when given the responsibility of changing something,” Adams explains. Their inquiry was “not informed by the literature, given there is no academic literature on this subject.” It was really simply a matter of us putting our heads together to come up with an explanation for why this may be the case.” To begin, the researchers conducted a series of observational studies, assessments without using a control group, to determine whether this bias existed. They asked 91 participants in one study to create a symmetrical pattern by adding or removing colored boxes. Only 18 individuals (20 percent) used subtraction. In another study, the team combed through an archive of reform recommendations given to a new university president and discovered that only 11 percent of 651 proposals called for the elimination of an existing regulation, practice, or program. Similar findings arose for tasks involving the modification of structures, essays, and itineraries—­in each case, the overwhelming majority of participants chose to augment rather than eliminate.

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To elucidate why people choose additive solutions, the researchers conducted a series of eight experiments with over 1,500  individuals recruited from a university campus or via Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing website. In one experiment, participants were tasked with stabilizing the roof of a Lego construction that was supported by a single block atop a cube-­shaped base. The incentive for finishing the assignment was $1, and participants could purchase additional blocks at a cost of ten cents each, or remove existing blocks for free. The researchers reported that one group was told, “Each piece you add costs ten cents, but removing pieces is free,” while another group was simply told, “Each piece you add costs ten cents.” Almost two-­thirds of those in the cued group chose to remove the single block rather than adding new ones, compared to 41 percent of those in the control group. Additionally, the researchers discovered that when participants were asked to produce a symmetrical pattern by adding or removing colored blocks, they chose for removal more frequently when given practice trials than when given only one chance to solve the problem. On the other hand, having to juggle another task—­such as keeping track of numbers on a screen—­made respondents less likely to subtract parts to solve the same problem, implying that finding subtractive solutions required more work than finding additive ones. (In each of these trials, the most efficient solution was to remove blocks.) Additive solutions have a sort of privileged status—­they tend to spring to mind fast and easily, according to co-­author Benjamin Converse (2008), a social psychologist at the University of Virginia. While subtractive solutions are not always more difficult to comprehend, they do require more work to discover. The authors “convincingly illustrate that humans tend to overlook subtractive solutions in favor of additive ones,” according to Tom Meyvis (2021), a consumer psychologist at New York University who was not involved in the

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study directly but examined it and co-­authored a Nature editorial on it. While the proclivity of schools to choose complexity over simplicity is well known, this work is interesting in that it demonstrates that people prefer to add additional features even when removing them would clearly be beneficial. Additionally, Meyvis argues that a greater possibility could explain this effect that additive solutions will be recognized or by the so-­called sunk-­cost bias, in which people continue to invest in items on which they have already spent time, money, or effort. If left to our own devices, we will likely do what comes easily to humans when confronted with a problem, which is adding more complexity. Our classrooms are likely missing out on simpler and more innovative solutions. How do we incorporate the subtraction strategy with students? We first need to practice and apply this strategy to our profession and teaching practice. School leaders can relieve teachers of time constraints and support them in focusing around clear priorities. Cultivating a collaborative and shared culture that appreciates simplicity is a good place to start. The subtraction technique can also help students think outside of the box. Here is a protocol you can use to get students started: Methods for Using the Subtraction Technique 1. Define all of the elements. 2. Dissect the product or service into its basic parts, which are the items that are directly related to the product or service. Make a numbered list of them so you can see them and comprehend the process you’ll be going through. 3. Remove one component at a time from the system. 4. Choose one that you believe is either vital, or that you can live without. Now imagine that the component you chose is no longer available. You have all of the other components except for that one.

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5. Create a mental image of the virtual product. Keep in mind that in a cognitive process, shape comes before function. So, from there, go backwards. Determine the problem it solves or the advantage it provides. 6. Consider the following two questions (in order): • Should we go ahead and do it? What is the advantage? • Is it possible? Can it be done? Do we have the necessary know-­how and systems in place to accomplish this? Are there any legal or regulatory obstacles that we need to overcome? Let’s use the cellphone (pre-iPhone) as an example: • Components or items in the surrounding vicinity: screen, physical buttons, visible antenna, input jacks, battery, etc. • Let’s start with the physical buttons, which is the component we need to get rid of. • Can you have a phone without buttons? Before the 2007 Apple announcement, you would have said no! And that is precisely the aim of this technique: to recognize fixedness. • Visualize all of the remaining components, which we’ll refer to as the virtual product now that the screen has been removed. And what we get is a television without a screen. • Provide answers to these questions: 1. What are the advantages of a button-­less phone? Quicker to text, sleeker design, smaller, etc. 2. Do you think we’ll be able to pull it off? Apple obviously did, but in the early 2000s what do you think students might have said? Maybe from watching science fiction, they could have imagined phones without physical buttons.

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Creativity via Narrative Theory Creativity can appear magical. We admire those who can develop game-­changing ideas, invent unexpected but essential gadgets, or create captivating works of fiction out of thin air. But, as with magic, most people want to be creative, but no one understands how to teach it. Angus Fletcher, an English professor at Ohio State University who has also studied neuroscience, believes he has discovered a way. Fletcher presented his creative training routine in a study published in the Annals of the New  York Academy of Sciences with his colleague Mike Benveniste (2022). Narrative theorists look into what makes narrative unique and how it differs from other types of discourse like lyric poems, arguments, lists, descriptions, or statistical analyses. It accounts for what happens to specific people in specific circumstances with particular consequences. In a nutshell, narrative theorists look at how tales help individuals make sense of the world and how stories help people make sense of themselves. As a result, one central question is whether narrative means thinking about or describing human experience in a way that differs from scientific explanations that represent events as examples of general covering rules. Narrative theorists use ideas from rhetoric, (socio)linguistics, philosophical ethics, cognitive science (including cognitive and social psychology), folklore to investigate how tales function as both types of texts and techniques for navigating experience. Literary fiction and nonfiction, film narratives, comics, graphic novels, and narratives told in courtrooms, doctors’ offices, and business conference rooms anywhere—­all are relevant to the field. The narrative theory brings students into closer contact with their counterparts in various social-­scientific, humanistic, and other disciplines due to the pervasiveness of narrative in our

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culture and the diversity of texts, media, and communicative situations that narrative theory examines. Narrative theory says that people need stories to figure out what’s going on in the world. Thinkers solve problems by figuring out what the stories of everyday life mean. When people make up new stories, they think of ways to bring those stories to life. Think of ourselves as smart characters in our own and other people’s stories to help us come up with new ideas. They say that the new training can be put into three types of storytelling techniques: building a world, changing the point of view, and making things happen. The first uses stories to help the mind imagine new situations; the second helps the mind imagine from different points of view; and the third helps the mind imagine likely future actions: • Present scenarios to students (for example, Thomas Jefferson running for president today). • Students are given a character description and instructed to imagine getting into the mind of that character. • Pair students together and ask them to solve a problem. • Ask each partner to explain their problem-­solving motive to their partner. • Each partner solves a second problem using their partner’s motive. (Hamilton uses Jefferson’s problem-­solving motive created by partner 1. Does Hamilton duel with Burr because he is using Jefferson’s line of thinking?) I think this strategy is quite brilliant for teaching creativity. Students have to draw inferences based on facts and events, problem solve under that guise, and then apply that same problem-­ solving motive to a new character. This is a form of convergent thinking (what do the facts say?) and divergent thinking (inferencing and creating) as students generate ideas by examining a

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wide range of options (brainstorming). This encourages students to be creative in the same manner that children and artists do: by making up stories that envision alternative worlds, shift perspectives, and generate unexpected acts. According to Fletcher, the narrative method works by acknowledging that we’re all creative: “We as a society severely undervalue the creativity of children and many others because we are fascinated with the notion that certain people are more creative than others. However, the reality is that we aren’t properly training creativity.” The technique known as divergent thinking, which has been in use since the 1950s, is the present cornerstone of creativity training. According to Fletcher, it is a “computational approach” to creativity that sees the brain as a logic computer. It uses activities to improve working memory, enhance analogical thinking, and promote problem-­solving, among other things. But Fletcher criticized divergent thinking because in his view it hasn’t produced the desired impacts. One fundamental flaw is that its computational technique is based on data and information from previous difficulties and triumphs. He believes that it can’t prepare us for new issues and unique activities. I believe these skills can be transferable, but only through intention, opportunity, and practice. Another narrative theory idea is to create new mental worlds. Students in your classroom, for example, would be asked to consider their favorite class or subject in school and then picture a world if all of their classes were their favorite class. What impact would this have on their schooling experience? What if all of their classes were held outside? What if they moved to a different country for a semester and studied abroad? Perspective-­shifting is another narrative-­building technique being used here. As an educator, you can also use this strategy in your everyday work. A principal may be requested to solve a problem by thinking like a teacher or an instructional coach.

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You might better solve a problem by thinking like a student. The objective of utilizing these and similar strategies isn’t that the events you imagine will happen, but about allowing yourself to consider dramatically different options. By using the narrative approach, you’ll be able to respond to changes and challenges more rapidly and nimbly. The narrative approach of teaching creativity through storytelling is similar to how young children are creative (we discussed this earlier), and children are more imaginatively creative than adults. According to studies, children’s capacity to complete creative tasks decreases after four or five years of schooling. Children undergo extensive logical, semantic, and memory instruction at this age. Sir Ken Robinson (2009) correlates the existence of ADHD to the rise of the standardized testing emphasis. Students are given drugs to get them focused and calmed. Our classrooms should be classrooms of beauty, creativity, excitement, and discovery. How are students to fully experience learning if 1) they aren’t being taught in a way that reinforces meaning, 2) we are continually industrializing education by forcing them to memorize, conforming with school initiatives, complying with rules, and organizing them into standardized structure, and 3) we are giving them drugs that weaken the senses? The way we teach must not be measured by inaccurate standardized test results that are not correlated to the living conditions of students. It also must not be framed as some magic fix. Demands that all children attain some prescribed proficiency in a subject and by a certain grade level are arbitrary, artificial, and unnatural. Instead of telling students all the things they will or should learn each day, we should inspire them to seek out opportunities to see the wonder in everyday things, discovering the joy in learning. True learning isn’t rushed and is characterized by temporary bewilderment and confusion, followed by curiosity

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and comprehension. The way we teach should always be guided by how our students learn. Teaching students how to think goes beyond knowledge wheels, higher-­order thinking triangles, and verbs in a state standard. It really means learning how to actively construct—­and distill—­meaning from experience, and to fully exercise an individualized expression of themselves. The story approach to creativity can help students (and teachers) rediscover creativity that they may have lost as they moved through school.

CHAPTER

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The Learning Environment

E

instein said, “If I had 60 minutes to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes defining it and 5 minutes solving it.” One of the ways we can best support critical thinking is to employ critical thinking in our daily work by creating a learning and working environment that encourages it. The skill of thinking critically is key to leading well. Leadership must balance the day-­to-­day problems and opportunities with the long-­ term vision while keeping teachers and staff engaged, passionate, and motivated. As leaders, one of our primary responsibilities is to empower staff and beneficiaries through the constant articulation of what drives us and the mission forward. Encouraging critical thinking throughout the district and school building is vital as classroom-­level ownership and buy-­in will determine the success of any initiative to promote high levels of learning. Autonomy in thought and decision-­making must be shared from central office to the classroom. 153

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How many times have we completed rote tasks or paperwork without ever thinking about why or how we’re doing it? What is the purpose of these tasks and why does it follow a particular process? Is this the best way to do it, or can I optimize the process? How many times do we go with our gut feeling or fly by the seat of our pants when making a decision, or not spend enough time analyzing a situation? There are some decisions where intuition needs to be employed (I will talk more about this later), but every significant decision must go through a thorough critical-­thinking process. Leaders who are critical thinkers don’t automatically accept the status quo and instead process decisions at a thoughtful level to develop an approach with intent. It isn’t about dragging our feet when making a decision. Actually, you will save time later by engaging those who might implement the initiative. Taking a moment to include all stakeholders’ critical points of view also strengthens interpersonal relationships. As we develop and implement an initiative, we can use the following question prompts (I recommend sequentially) to ensure critical thinking is a part of our decision-­making. Leading an Initiative Critically Question 1: What do I know? ______________________________________________________ Question 2: Have I defined my own beliefs about this idea and have I noted inconsistencies and flaws in thinking? Have I logically examined the evidence that supports those beliefs? ______________________________________________________ Question 3: Have I gathered input from many different stakeholders? ______________________________________________________

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Question 4: Have you created a high-­level communication brief that explains the purpose of the initiative and a summary of the perspectives that were considered, and a solution that is inclusive of the final outcome? ______________________________________________________ Question 5: Have you developed evaluation criteria that allow you to collect reliable data to evaluate if outcomes are successful? ______________________________________________________

Spacing and Chunking It is critical thinking that Robert Ennis (2018) calls “reasonable, thoughtful thinking that is focused on what to believe or do” (p.  10). Despite the existence of other definitions of critical thinking (Facione, 1990; Kuhn,  1999; Siegel, 1988), Ennis portrays those other definitions as smaller chunks of an even broader conceptual pie. Criticizing one’s options before making an informed conclusion is a critical thinking trait that all excellent critical thinkers possess. A person’s ability to engage fully in the process of critical thinking is greatly enhanced by prior knowledge and expertise in the field (Ennis, 2018; Fig. 1). If we are to maintain our positions in a democratic society, critical thinking is an essential tool (Dewey,  1909). Because of this, we must break down its components in order to teach our next generation of thinkers. It’s vital that pupils learn to think critically about the world rather than simply accepting the views and beliefs that are given to them—­especially because they’re constantly exposed to information via the Internet at home and at school. In light of the importance of critical thinking to student learning and the fact that it has been largely disregarded by

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learning and memory researchers (Fullan, 2013), this is surprising. Only a small percentage of studies on the spacing effect have looked at critical thinking. “Spacing effect” refers to the increase in retention that occurs when newly learned information is relearned or restudied over multiple smaller chunks of time, rather than learned once in a longer chunk of time. Spacing out study time has been demonstrated to improve long-­term memory when done consistently (Cepeda et al., 2008). When formulating the school year’s long-­ term learning objectives, keep curriculum implementation in mind. Teachers need to be aware of cognitive strategies like the spacing effect so that they may make tiny adjustments to their teaching approach to assist students to become more successful in their learning process. Teachers may be reluctant to change their plans since teaching resources are cumulative and teachers generally utilize the same materials year after year, therefore this may be an issue. The only adjustment that needs to be made is in the timing of long-­term plans if spacing is used. Both students and teachers would benefit from this; it is not only doable but also saves both parties’ time. Another related strategy to the “spacing effect” is chunking content. When offering direct instruction, concepts should be structured and dealt with in small chunks that make sense to students. However, chunking content is simply one component of a successful direct instruction framework. Teachers must also provide opportunities for students to absorb each element in order for their ideas to be implemented and then built upon by the next notion. For example, students begin to develop the understanding of fractions by expanding on the concept of splitting a whole into equal pieces when they are first introduced to fractions formally. We start with fractions having a numerator of 1 before dividing into whole parts. Identifying equal portions and taking one part is the first conceptual piece of the lesson. If a whole is divided

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into three equal parts, each part is one-­third of the entire. The teacher can prompt students to create fractions from unit fractions as part of their processing of this conceptual block, pointing out the numerator 2 in the fraction of ⅔ and explaining that ⅔ is the value that occurs when students combine two of the one-­ thirds. Or let’s take the example of learning ratios. Students must learn the vocabulary that allows them to distinguish ratios, rates, and proportions in order to learn ratios. The chunking method in this case would be to concentrate on the terms “for every,” “for each,” “to,” and “per,” which reflect various but equal ways of identifying ratios and rates and are essential to comprehending the structure of ratio tables. Understanding the responsibilities of multiplication and division processes is the next key aspect of ratios. Students can concentrate on the rows and columns of a ratio table as multiples (not additives) of each other during the processing step. When it comes to algebra (and inherently teaching the quadratic formula), a classic instructional technique would have students occupied with many drills on equations with incorrect values. This strategy prevents pupils from learning the basic logic behind solving quadratic equations, denying them the freedom and intellect to select the method that best fits the situation. Teachers could start by emphasizing the fundamentals of factoring. Without a good foundation, factoring can be difficult (like attempting to figure out what ingredients went into a cooked dish), thus the teacher must identify which kids want further assistance with factoring. The square’s completion would be the next conceptual component. The continual understanding that solving equations is a reasoning process would be the processing aspect of this scenario. The logic starts with the assumption that x equals an integer that solves the problem and gives a list of possible x values. Students can organize numerous strategies for tackling different issues holistically if they grasp that solving quadratic equations is a thinking process

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rather than just procedures they have memorized in order. New paths of inquiry arise as students efficiently assimilate knowledge in between chunks, leading to deeper thinking and learning.

Incorporation of Music There is something about music that moves us. Bach, Beethoven, Shubert, Mozart. As humans, how could we not marvel at the feats of accomplishment and musical brilliance. But not just classical music—­we are moved by all kinds of music from many genres and time periods. We don’t have to be musicians to have an appreciation of the pure aesthetics of music. When I say music, I’m talking about music listening, making music, and musical cognitions such as harmony, tonality, musical forms, and structures. Music education can be utilized to promote not only musical skills, but also social skills, problem-­solving skills, cognitive skills, critical thinking dispositions and skills, and academic accomplishment. Music is a form of self-­expression that allows students to connect with themselves and others, transform the learning environment through arts integration products, provide learning opportunities for adults in students’ lives, provide new challenges for students, and connect learning experiences to the world of real work. Music has the potential to reach a wide range of kids who might otherwise be out of reach. The classroom atmosphere should enhance the students’ critical thinking dispositions due to the students’ social connections fostered by music. This manifests the same psychological phenomenon that makes us more likely to believe familiar statements than unfamiliar ones. Interacting with music entails perceptual skills (e.g., understanding structural and social information), cognitive abilities (e.g., memory, decision-­making, pattern recognition), and motor skills. These abilities operate, interact, and grow in such complicated ways that we are only now beginning to comprehend them

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(Davidson et  al.,  2006). Music can play a vital role in people’s intelligence and cognitive abilities because musical skills have complex multiple effects on them. The most important issue at this moment, however, is how music lessons are taught. A badly structured music lesson cannot compel students to think critically. Music classes must be organized to encourage students to think critically, and music teachers must guide and allow students to present a variety of examples from many contexts to enhance their critical thinking skills. In this regard, teachers must create music lessons with this goal in mind. There is a whole case for music education that can be made. Music education can assist with developing critical thinking skills in individuals, and it can also help raise better performers, music instructors, and composers who can think critically. Even if you’re a general education teacher and not a trained music educator, you can simply incorporate classical music or music from other cultures into the classroom. At a bare minimum, this could spark dialogue about why the music was written or what the music inspires students to do or to think about.

Leading a Learning Culture to Nurture Critical Thinking Among the key problems education confronts today is technological change. Your job as a learning leader is to ensure that your colleagues and students have the skills they need to be successful in the face of these changes. To put it another way, you need to create a transformation-­ready organization. To be transformation-­ready, you don’t have to use cutting-­edge technology or rewrite your mission statement to stay up with current trends. Instead, it’s about cultivating a learning culture that allows the entire organization, community, classroom, and

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so on to adjust to the unavoidable unknowns of the future. A school must promote a learning culture in order to empower transformation-­ready students. Habits of mind are developed in such a culture, allowing students to spot obsolete processes and make necessary changes promptly and efficiently. There’s no guarantee that today’s knowledge or talents will solve tomorrow’s challenges or remain relevant. However, we can detect when the nature of a problem changes and hone those insights. Insights aren’t just on the surface, ready for the taking. We must be given opportunity to gain information, investigate intriguing ideas, and try out new solutions in order for our classrooms to thrive. We must also encourage people to continue learning throughout their lives. According to Pew Research, American adults only read about 12 books a year, a number skewed by bookworms, because most adults read just 4 books. People in most organizations and teams go to great lengths to conceal their flaws and what they know and don’t know. Learning should not be considered a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of character. Failure is not the polar opposite of success but rather a necessary component of the learning process. For these reasons, we must foster development mindsets through a learning culture. Even the most knowledgeable person can’t accomplish everything, and that shouldn’t be the goal. The time it takes to master a new skill is sometimes framed in a deficit model. Teacher teams that are energized by a learning culture, on the other hand, aim to break down these barriers. They accomplish this by facilitating cross-­functional learning, providing opportunities for peer-­to-­peer information sharing, and establishing interdepartmental skill-­sharing mentorships. What does this look like in practice? Some school leaders call these “vertical team meetings” (e.g., fifth-­grade teachers collaborate with first-­grade teachers). When teachers come together to develop collaborative affinity groups, this is known as vertical collaboration. These teams

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may not meet as frequently as horizontal teams (e.g., third-­grade team meetings), but they are still a significant element of the school’s culture. You can consider building one or more of the following vertical collaboration teams for this purpose: • Collaboration team for primary teachers (K–2) • Collaboration team of upper elementary teachers (grades 3–5) • Collaboration task force (after-school club, PTO, etc.) • Co-­teaching teams (groups of people who teach together) • Team of school leaders (representative group of building staff) • Teams for school improvement (related to content areas: literacy, STEM, PBL, SEL, etc.) The work of vertical cooperation teams is energized by celebrating student accomplishments. These accomplishments are the result of teams’ joint commitment to student success. Much of the work in these teams includes data charts, planning interventions and lessons, vertical progression calibration, and so on. Schools that are transformation-­ready adapt from the ground up, starting with their teachers. Teachers with a learning culture have more time and resources to refine their abilities to adapt to changing conditions and demands, such as resilience and agility. School leaders have a disproportionately large impact on everyone in an organization. Leaders who want their teachers to learn and improve must show that they are prepared to do so themselves. This necessitates the development of intellectually humble leaders who are willing to learn, commit to improvement, and never use their intelligence or position to discourage others. Teaching those qualities will need frank, honest dialogues with senior leaders as well as personal intellectual humility. It takes time to develop a successful learning culture. Schools must commit to purposefully growing their staff, which

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necessitates strategic investment decisions. Consider the following factors when you begin to build a learning culture at your school. • Clear objectives and goals • How to measure impact • Professional development • Buy-­in • Team engagement • Teacher retention Leaders spend a good amount of time delivering feedback to staff, but not as much time for them to concentrate on their areas for growth. If leaders want their teachers to progress, they must set aside time for learning, specifically about critical thinking in the classroom. And learning time should be shielded from the plethora of other obligations that impinge upon it. It doesn’t matter how good a learning program is if teachers are unable to engage due to a lack of time. As a result, the 80/20 rule has been implemented by Google and others. Employees are given 20 percent of their time to learn, develop, and experiment with new concepts. Although this ratio can change, having an established norm in place helps to highlight the significance of education. Microlearning in small doses spread throughout a teacher’s week can also have a huge influence. We might have heard of teachers providing 20 percent time for students or a “genius” hour, when students can work on passion projects. But what about for teachers? What if we gave them 20 percent time during their PLC or PD days where they could work on passion projects? Learning leaders play a vital role in shaping the culture of a school. In today’s complex and dynamically changing world, the learning culture you foster will be the catalyst for change.

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That’s a big job, but the good news is you don’t have to do it all by yourself. A learning culture isn’t created from the top down, with leaders dictating the appropriate conditions and teachers dancing to the piper’s tune. It necessitates a bubble-­up strategy in which everyone is on board.

Learning Pathways Learning pathways are goal-­oriented sequences of educational events that promote growth. By providing students with a roadmap to success, well-­designed learning routes help us to avoid irrelevant material. Think about a PD in which you’ve been a part. The manner in which a training program is implemented has a significant impact on its success. When learners (students and adult learners) know where they’re headed and are excited to get there, it’s a lot easier to guide them (versus launching into a series of directives and tasks). Learning pathways can be a powerful instrument for promoting critical thinking. The issue is that an organizational culture can often cause educators to hide signs of their need for personal development; after all, who wants to be perceived as being subpar for critical thinking? All team members can take ownership of enhancing their skillsets and addressing areas where they could benefit from additional training in a low-­pressure setting. They can also try out new skills and discover if they have new undiscovered interests. Let’s explore some best practices for establishing a high-­ impact learning route that teachers (anyone really) can utilize in addition to using an on-­demand format. Learning paths are kind of like a roadmap. Most of the time, the best road trips start with directions, but the driver must be able to adjust to changes in the road based on the map. To do this, they use mile markers, exit signs, and sometimes even a compass to get to their destination.

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Is there any other way to go on a trip? You could drive around aimlessly to see different things, or you could be so used to the way your GPS is set up that any changes to the way it works would cause you to get lost. A good way to learn looks a lot like the first trip on the road. You, as the teacher, will figure out what the learning goals are, make them clear, and put them in a logical order for students. But it is up to the learner to decide which way they want to go on their path to learning success. For learning pathways to be effective, there must be planned ways to incorporate prior knowledge, reflection, and application prompts. Without these, the learner would probably do micro-­modules to learn the content but wouldn’t be able to connect the content to the bigger reason why they are doing those modules. A learning pathway sets up an environment for these design features to work together. The goal is for learning pathways to be flexible, cross-­disciplinary, and more and more personalized. Learning paths should be: • Multidisciplinary, because our jobs are multidisciplinary and people need to be able to show competence in more than one area • Made up of distinct points along the way, but all connected and progressive • Complex and personalized, so that the learner can go from being a beginner to an expert Using high-­ quality content while curating resources for learning pathways is critical for learner engagement. Learners have formed new expectations for what constitutes premium-­ quality content as a result of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok’s millions of videos providing basic to advanced training in every imaginable skillset. By keeping a pulse on learner preferences and remaining up to date about best-­in-­class content providers,

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teachers are able to stay engaged and access on-­demand content. A moment of pause, though—­it is important to vet these ubiquitous videos to ensure content comes from credible sources and experts. There are a variety of ways to distribute information in a learning path, whether it’s promoting creativity or learning a foreign language. The most frequent type of on-­demand and online learning is one that incorporates a complementing mix of articles, videos, podcasts, and infographics. Offering knowledge in a variety of formats can keep learners engaged longer, boost memory of concepts, and accommodate to a larger range of learning preferences. We can only recall something if we can fit it into a framework of previous knowledge. This is something we learned in our foundational pedagogy courses. The more we support our students and colleagues in constructing scaffolds around new facts, figures, or concepts, the more equipped they will be to utilize that information in the future. When a learner returns to the topic after a brief period of rest, their comprehension improves. That is why review and reflection is so vital for cognition. Learning paths, especially when presented in a microlearning format, can support teachers with building on past knowledge. Because microlearning experiences are delivered in short, incremental spurts, we can take breaks and return to the concept or skill at a later time. When a learner returns to the initial subject after a little period of rest, their comprehension and recall of the material improves. Creating learning paths necessitates a grasp of how to engage adult learners most effectively. Adults are more likely to engage in learning if it is extremely relevant to them and they see a clear return on their time investment. Ensure that the messaging at the start of a pathway clearly indicates what learners will get by completing it. Then, as you progress down the route, seek methods to emphasize the learning’s relevance by connecting it to

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job activities and corporate goals. If critical thinking is the skill you wish to promote others to build, ensure you communicate the problem you wish to solve. You could communicate a statistic: critical thinking ranks as the most in-­demand skill for the workplace. Designers might incorporate ways to recognize learners’ successes along the road, in addition to showcasing relevance across a learning path. Learners may, for example, receive a digital badge or downloadable certificate following completion of a course, which they can add to their resumes. Employees place a high value on transferable qualifications, so developing artifacts of achievement that can be posted on LinkedIn or included in a professional portfolio will encourage them to advance. Leaders should also notify the learner’s entire team or department about accomplishments such as course completions. Most of all, the intrinsic motivation of thinking with more complexity and better reasoning through problems should provide the highest-­yielding petrol of all. After you’ve created a learning pathway, don’t just throw it into your Learning Management System and hope for the best. It will be launched by sending out schoolwide emails and developing advertising materials that communicate the pathway’s worth. Discuss the possibilities that could arise because of acquiring the talent and new skills. Describe what outcomes we are aiming for with the learning pathway. Leaders can help by sharing the knowledge with their teams and possibly providing incentives for them to participate.

Meditation I wanted to adopt an additional practice to improve my critical thinking skills in addition to learning the French language. Meditation became a part of my life while I was in my early twenties.

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But I had stopped practicing because I was using it as a “self-­ help” strategy. If things were going well, I stopped meditating. If things seemed chaotic, I would meditate. When I started writing this book, I knew I wanted to pick up meditation again, but implement the practice in a new and consistent way. It’s been suggested that mindfulness meditation is “simply cognitive fitness with a humanist face.” And what cognitive fitness is more important than that required to keep sane in a world that demands more and more? According to academic research, mindfulness practice reduces stress and anxiety, enhances concentration, improves interpersonal relationships, strengthens compassion, and provides a slew of other advantages. The following is a summary of study findings on the benefits of mindfulness for educators: • Improved concentration: People with better attention perform better on objective tasks that require a long period of concentration. • Emotional self-­control: There is a linkage between mindfulness and better emotion regulation. Mindfulness causes changes in the brain that correspond to less reactivity, as well as a better ability to engage in tasks even while emotions are active. • Enhanced compassion: People are more willing to help others in need and have higher self-­compassion. • Stress and anxiety reduction: When in a stressful social context, mindfulness reduces stress and relieves anxiety and discomfort. When detecting and reacting to emotions, even difficult or powerful emotions like dread, the amygdala is stimulated. This area of the brain may be less active after mindfulness training sessions. The hippocampus aids in the regulation of the amygdala and is important for learning and memory. Following mindfulness training, the hippocampus

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becomes more activated and creates higher gray matter density. The prefrontal cortex is most closely linked to maturity, including the ability to control emotions and behaviors as well as make sound judgments. Following mindfulness training, this area of the brain becomes more active and developed. According to research, learning mindfulness benefits youth in terms of enhanced cognitive outcomes, social-­emotional abilities, and well-­being. As a result, such advantages may result in long-­term gains in life. Social skills in kindergarten, for example, predict better results in adulthood in terms of school, employment, crime, substance misuse, and mental health. According to research, adolescents who practice mindfulness can develop: • Learning and attention skills • Attention and focus • Development of the mind • Emotional and social skills • Empathy and the ability to see things from a different perspective • Resilience • Reduction of anxiety and stress In recent years, we’ve become accustomed to hearing psychologists, neuroscientists, politicians, and celebrities espouse the benefits of mindfulness in the media. While mindfulness may appear to be a panacea, more thorough research is beginning to show where it is effective and where it is not. We’re also learning more about the mechanisms that underpin mindfulness’s effects. When evaluating mindfulness research, it’s vital to remember

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two things: the scientific study of mindfulness is still in its early stages, but the mindfulness practice itself is centuries old. These realities, together with the widespread popularity of mindfulness in today’s culture, can occasionally lead to assertions about mindfulness’s effects that are not supported by empirical evidence. This isn’t to say that such accusations should be dismissed right away. Rather, these assertions should be investigated. Thinking abilities can be operationalized in a variety of ways. In the body of critical thinking literature, there are assessments that seek to capture people’s thinking skills in real-­world circumstances (Ku, 2009). Critical thinking is a metacognitive process that consists of a number of sub-­skills (e.g., analysis, evaluation, and inference) and dispositions (e.g., trustful of reason, willing to change one’s position) that, when applied correctly, increase the likelihood of producing a logical solution to a problem or a valid conclusion to an argument (Dwyer, Hogan, and Stewart, 2014). As a result, the empirical topic of whether mindfulness improves critical thinking skills is one that should be investigated. Early mindfulness teachings, for example, stated that a dispositional tendency to engage in mindful attention is both an intrinsic and a trainable quality (Rau and Williams, 2016). The predisposition to engage in present-­moment attentional concentration combined with nonreactive monitoring of one’s current experience is referred to as dispositional mindfulness (Brown and Ryan, 2003). As a result, dispositional mindfulness encompasses two unique dispositions: present-­ moment attentional concentration and nonreactive monitoring, both of which can be linked to critical thinking through different self-­regulatory mechanisms. Self-­ regulation can be operationally defined by reference to the idea of executive control in cognitive theories of

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self-­regulation. Updating, shifting, and inhibition are three basic cognitive processes that are essential to our ability to govern and regulate our behaviors: • Updating is the ongoing updating and monitoring of working memory as new information emerges. (I am having spaghetti for dinner.) • Shifting is the transition between activities with different rules (I am talking on the phone, and now I am shifting to reading a book.) • Inhibition is the active, deliberate suppression of thoughts or responses while maintaining attention on goal-­relevant information. (I am hungry for dinner, but I need to finish this assignment.) Evidence supports the idea that efficient executive control facilitates the goal-­directed coordination of thoughts and actions, and that it is necessary for success in education, and in professional and everyday life (Hofmann et  al.,  2012). We can reasonably hypothesize that dispositional mindfulness aids self-­ regulation, and both aspects of mindfulness—­present-­moment attentional focus and nonreactive monitoring—­interact with the executive control processes that underpin self-­regulation: updating, inhibition, and shifting. Inhibition has emerged as a probable mechanism explaining the link between mindfulness and critical thinking, which makes sense. Other higher-­order thinking skills that may rely on executive functioning, such as insight problem-­solving (Ostafin and Kassman,  2012), moral reasoning, and ethical decision-­ making, appear to benefit from mindfulness training (Cottone and Javier, 2007). Each of these research studies highlighted mindfulness’s nonautomatic approach to experience, which entails the blocking of instinctive or impulsive responses in

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situations requiring reflective decision-­making. Some theories of thinking and reasoning, for example, propose two sorts of thought processes: Type 1 processes require very little working memory and occur spontaneously in reaction to stimuli (e.g., you touch a hot pan and jerk your hand back). Type 2 processes, on the other hand, are slow, capacity-­limited, conscious, and controlled, and critical thinking falls within this category (Evans and Stanovich, 2013). Importantly, studies in this tradition reveal that engaging Type 2 processes necessitates Type 1 process inhibition. If we want to be strong critical thinkers, we need to slow down and suppress heuristic or automatic answers, as Daniel Kahneman’s work on heuristic processing indicates we tend to do. As a result, the findings point to a mechanism that underpins the association between mindfulness and critical thinking. How do you incorporate mindfulness into the classroom? Meditation. Meditation in the classroom, you ask?

Meditation in the Classroom The integration of this practice into the classroom is simple and completely secular. You could ask a student volunteer to play a peaceful noise to let the class know it’s time to begin the meditation. Students sit on the floor in a comfortable posture. Some students close their eyes, while others look straight ahead. After five minutes, a student volunteer strikes a gong or chime to bring our practice to a close. Offer extra meditation options. Students can also do the following: • Sit comfortably, with the spine erect, either in chair or cross-­ legged on a cushion. • Close the eyes, take a few deep breaths, and feel the points of contact between the body and the chair or floor.

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• Breathe with the hands on the belly. • Expand and contract a mini-­sphere to mimic and visualize the movement of the lungs during breaths. • Count breaths. • Notice the sensations associated with sitting—­feelings of pressure, warmth, and the like. • Gradually become aware of the process of breathing. Pay attention to wherever the breath is felt most clearly—­either at the nostrils, or in the rising and falling of the abdomen. • Allow attention to rest in the mere sensation of breathing. (There is no need to control the breath. Just let it come and go naturally.) • Every time the mind wanders in thought, gently return it to the sensation of breathing. • As students focus on the breath, they will notice that other perceptions and sensations continue to appear: sounds, feelings in the body, emotions, and the like. Simply notice these phenomena as they emerge in the field of awareness, and then return to the sensation of breathing. • The moment students observe that they have been lost in thought, they can notice the present thought itself as an object of consciousness. Then return attention to the breath—­ or to whatever sounds or sensations arise in the next moment. • Continue this way and merely witness all elements of consciousness—­sights, sounds, sensations, emotions, and even thoughts themselves—­as these elements arise and pass away. By conferencing with students and collecting and analyzing data, you can assess the practice’s impact on their academic performance. Monthly, students reflect on their readiness for class, measure their calmness after meditation, and share issues and

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concerns about the practice. Upon reviewing their responses, you could gather a small group of three to five students. Explore strategies to refine their practice and strengthen their self-­regulation and their focus on coursework. Students then apply these modifications in following sessions. The teacher monitors their progress for two weeks, and observes improvements in their effort, participation, work products, and contributions during discussions. Encourage students to change up their practice by moving their seats to a different section of the room. The goal is to awaken from our trance of discursive thinking—­and from the habit of ceaselessly grasping at the pleasant and recoiling from the unpleasant—­so that we can enjoy a mind that is undisturbed by worry, and effortlessly aware of the flow of experience in the present.

Remove Cognitive Filters from the Environment Your mind is bursting at the seams with ideas. All you have to do is recall your childhood’s fantastically bizarre ideas. For example, when I was in elementary school, I began to create imaginary cities. I gave my new cities names and drew extensive and detailed maps. I’d play architect and design parks, interstates, commercial areas, residential areas, and more. I’d have a whole notebook full of maps of cities, Diamonte Springs to Capernica. I also made my own computer from a cardboard box. My dad had taught me how to solder wires to metal thumbtacks. I attached an alarm when two thumbtacks created a closed circuit. I did this when I was in fourth grade; my cognitive filters were free and open. Our cognitive filters—­the mind’s security guards—­likely tightened their grip on our thoughts as we grew older. Schooling most likely exacerbated this effect by putting notions in our subconscious and only allowing the more traditional ones to come to the fore. The one right answer was championed, which means anything that

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didn’t fit into a nice answer bank was considered “wrong.” When our cognitive filters become overly tight, though, they can cut us off from novel ideas that could address otherwise intractable problems. Theoretical physicist Leonard Mlodinow (2013) discusses three ways for relaxing your cognitive filters so that your students’ bright ideas can shine. Remove all potential sources of distraction for your students. When we keep an open mind, new ideas emerge. Be aware of anything that causes your mind to focus on its analytical, or “rule-­ following,” framework. We all know that multitasking doesn’t work, so let’s take it one step at a time. When people change their focus from one task to another, they are said to be task switching, a term used by psychologists to describe what people mistake for multitasking. The change is quick, so quick that some people mistake it for instantaneous—­but juggling takes a toll on your cognitive abilities, especially when you’re dealing with many high-­stress scenarios. This is because switching tasks involves mental effort. You must detach from the current task, shift your focus to the new one, activate the proper mode of thought, process the required data, and then take action. It’s a whole neurological nightmare. While one switch may seem insignificant, if you make enough of them, your brain may fatigue to the point that you won’t be able to interact with your creative side. That implies that you must manage your distractions. However, this also necessitates the management of expectations. You must establish clear limits. As educators, we can promote an environment that champions focused time, instead of reacting to all the external stimuli that is occurring. Allot time for play. We all need to relax our brains in order to be imaginative. We require space to test our ideas. A strict time limit suffocates flexible thinking. The urge to complete tasks (and do so fast!) encourages you to do things correctly the first time. The mind’s ability to play, develop connections,

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and test new ideas is hampered by this stress. There’s no place for experimenting when there’s no room for error—­only the coming deadline. You can relieve stress and relax your thoughts by giving students space. An uncracked mind, like a muscle, is not only more pliable but also significantly less unpleasant to use. It can bend in the directions you need it to, stretch to form unexpected connections, and work for longer periods of time without becoming exhausted. Get over your fear of failing. Get in the habit of failing. Get used to making mistakes. Worrying about appearing stupid prevents you from thinking clearly. It has the potential to kill novel ideas—­many of which will be horrible, but some of which may be fantastic. Being incorrect helps you appear intelligent and self-­ assured. Model this behavior for your students. If a time limit suffocates creativity and flexible thinking, fear of failure will suffocate them completely. Unusual ideas can occasionally result in a shambles, especially if they’re awful. However, if you are afraid of the messy, unsightly consequences of failure, you will be unwilling to attempt new ideas, even the excellent ones. How can you get past your fear of failing? How can your students? The first two tactics proposed by Mlodinow—­removing distractions and giving oneself time—­are terrific places to start. Another option is to simply fail. Encourage your students to do something they’ve never done before, such as ax throwing, taking an improv class, or making tiramisu. When the ax misses its mark, the joke doesn’t land, or the tiramisu is too soupy, remember that it’s not the end of the world. They can try again if they want to get better. Or they could perhaps try something different. It’s entirely up to them! The goal is to become accustomed to failure so that they can better deal with it in the present (by laughing it off and acknowledging their error) and establish a more positive, long-­ term connection with learning (by developing a growth mindset). Won’t my students feel ignorant or incompetent? Quite

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the reverse, actually. People who strive to hide their mistakes and strange ideas frequently appear to be lacking in confidence. Once you get comfortable with failing, allow your students to do so. Give them safe environments and low-stakes activities to get them comfortable with the idea. What happens when we’re stumped and need a break? We take a break! Setting a difficult activity aside and letting your subconscious take a crack at it, as counterintuitive as it may appear, helps your conscious efforts later. What should we do with these idle hours? It’s entirely up to you, but studies have repeatedly proven that healthier behaviors lead to more resilient minds. This is especially true when it comes to executive functions, which encompass a person’s ability to self-­control, set and achieve objectives, think creatively, and, yes, solve issues. “In tests that evaluate long-­term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-­ solving, and even so-­ called fluid-­ intelligence tasks, exercisers outperform couch potatoes. These activities assess your ability to reason rapidly and abstractly while solving a new problem using previously learned content. According to John Medina (2011), a developmental molecular biologist at the University of Washington, “exercise increases a whole array of qualities valued in the classroom and at work.” A study published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Best et  al.,  2014) looked at data from over 4,000 British individuals. It discovered a bidirectional association between exercise and greater levels of executive function over time after controlling for factors. Another study, published in Frontiers in Neurology (Li et al., 2018), matched the fitness data of 128 adults to brain scans acquired when they were dual-­tasking. Regular exercisers had more active executive regions, according to the study’s findings. Let your students wander outside (supervised) or take a walk throughout the halls or the school nature trail during the school day.

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Research indicates that there’s also a correlation between problem-­solving, a healthy diet, and good sleep patterns. When taken together, these lifestyle choices assist people in managing stress, which is known to impede problem-­solving and creativity. Deciphering the complicated relationship between cause and effect can be difficult. Do persons who live a healthy lifestyle have good executive functions by default? Or do their practices help them maintain their mental health throughout their lives? That’s a difficult question to answer, but the researchers in the Frontiers in Neuroscience study believe it’s a positive feedback loop. They claim that getting enough sleep, eating well, and exercising regularly strengthens our executive functioning. As a result, more powerful executive decisions energize healthier lifestyle choices. You can see where this is going with those healthy choices. While individual decisions about their lives are ultimately up to them, teachers can help. You can create cultures that safeguard off-­hours for relaxing or play, incentivize better habits (such as a contest for healthy eating), and encourage one another to get more exercise. Such endeavors would also not be fully unselfish because they have the added benefit of improving a team’s collective problem-­solving skills. There is a temptation for school leaders to fill every second of the day with school tasks. I’ve even seen students reciting their multiplication facts while waiting in the lunch line. While there is nothing wrong with this activity itself, we are sending a message to our students that the only meaningful activity at school has to do with “doing.” Again, make sure you’re providing plenty of opportunities for students to take breaks, take a walk, go outside, and so on. Not every second of the day should be filled with a “task.” We are rarely alone because of being constantly connected. Everywhere we go, we’re connected by the constant chirps of friends messaging, social media buzzing, and colleagues pinging us for advice. This is a boon in some ways. Modern technologies

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enable nearly limitless potential for communal problem-­solving and collective learning. According to a Harvard Business School study published in 2018, such collaboration has its limits. Participants in the study were divided into three groups and asked to answer issues involving traveling salesmen. The first group had to work on the issues on their own. After each round of problem-­ solving, the second group exchanged notes, while the third collaborated after every three rounds. The researchers discovered that lone problem solvers came up with a wide range of possible answers. Their solutions, on the other hand, were of varying quality, with some being actual light-­bulb moments and others being burnt-­out duds. The always-­on group, on the other hand, used their combined knowledge to solve more difficult problems more successfully. However, societal pressure often caused these groups to prematurely coalesce around a single notion, ignoring potentially bright outliers. The Goldilocks method was devised by the sporadic collaborators. Individual group members had more time to foster their ideas because they interacted less frequently. However, because of collective learning, the group was able to increase the overall quality of their solutions when they got together. The study’s authors challenge the usefulness of always-­ on society, particularly our submission to intrusions, in their presentation. Ethan Bernstein (2018), an associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the study’s authors, said, “We might be decreasing our potential to solve issues well as we replace those sorts of intermittent cycles with always-­on technologies.” These findings suggest that we should set aside time for students to reflect and to reflect individually, but eventually come together to work on problems collectively. There is a sequence to do this more effectively. Rather than splitting our days into production output and group problem-­solving sessions, we need to make time to focus on individual challenges. This approach gives you the best

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of both worlds. It helps students to formulate their thoughts before being swayed by social pressure to discard them. However, it does not rule out the need for group knowledge to fine-­tune those concepts. And the more distractions students can filter out or turn off, the more working memory they’ll have to focus on the task at hand.

Conclusion

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O

ur education system has failed us,” someone exclaims over dinner or in a conversation overheard at the grocery store. The phrase always bothers me, partly because I take it personally as an educator, and partly because I feel an intrinsic desire to help education evolve. I hear this statement used when people behave badly and someone needs to assign blame to help them cope with their emotions, as if blaming education makes the problem feel justified. Education is a facet of our society, and therefore all of us have a part to play to help education move forward. The American education system as a whole does not inherently teach students to be skeptical, independent thinkers (it was never designed to function in this way). I do believe teachers and our profession have not failed us. Teachers are one of the hardest-­ working groups of professionals I know. I believe that to change education, we educators must rise up to the challenge. We must commit to making education truly about thinking. Bertrand Russell believed that most people don’t like to think and that most people would rather die than think. He said that people “fear thought.” People may not think because they are lazy, can’t, or for other reasons, but fear is a big reason why people don’t think critically. Why is that? People don’t want to think not just because it’s hard, but also because they’re afraid it will make them question their long-­held beliefs. Your students 181

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most likely do want to think about things that can be very controversial, like politics, ethics, and philosophy. But probe even deeper. Once we start thinking deeply, long-­held assumptions are challenged. Thought makes us worry that we’ll lose our balance and have to look at the world in a different way. We worry about thinking because we care about what we and other people think. Even the most far-­fetched ideas have an effect on the world. Non-­Euclidean geometry and symbolic logic are about as abstract as thinking can get, but you can’t understand Einsteinian gravity without the first and run computers without the second. Thinking is important to us, to others, and to the world we live in. This is one reason why we are so afraid of it: it shakes us to the core. But not any kind of thought will do. If we really care about the truth, we will think carefully, using the best reason and evidence we can find. A big part of our dignity depends on how well we think. Thomas Jefferson said, “This organization will be based on the freedom of the mind, which has no limits. Because here, we don’t mind following the truth wherever it takes us, and we’re willing to put up with any mistake as long as reason is free to fight it.” In a paper he gave at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, William Hare (1998) pointed out that Russell doesn’t use the term “critical thinking.” This idea is at the heart of Russell’s philosophy. Hare turned Russell’s writings on politics, education, and social issues into a rich idea of critical thinking. This idea includes not only skills and abilities but also attitudes. Russell called the skills needed for “judicial habits of thought” the ability to make up your own mind, find a reasoned solution, and recognize and question assumptions. In “Russell on Indoctrination,” A.D. Irvine (2001) talks about how Russell made sense of the fact that education must teach beliefs and his dislike of indoctrination. The solution is for the educator to propose beliefs for acceptance within what Russell

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called a scientific worldview, which weighs beliefs according to how much evidence there is for them. Instilling intellectual habits like curiosity, observation, belief in the possibility of knowledge, patience, open-­mindedness, and even courage is a key part of education. Russell says in many places that knowledge can only grow by allowing different points of view. He recommends having a critical attitude, and with this attitude to hold our beliefs tentatively, in proportion to the evidence that supports them, and always to be open to new evidence and willing to put beliefs to the test of reason. When you think scientifically, you follow the highest standards of logic and evidence. When you don’t, you just don’t. When we think critically, we are forced to look again at what really drives our thoughts and actions, as well as how they interact, balance, override, and cancel each other out. Only then will we be able to start learning more about how we really work. The beauty of scientific truth is that it acknowledges that it’s something we know and understand for now and in a certain way, and if we get counterevidence, we update our knowledge. Facts are useful units that can be used in a certain frame or setting. They should be as exact and indisputable as possible, and experiments should be used to test them as much as possible. When the frame changes, they don’t have to be thrown out as false, but they should still be respected as useful within their domain. We have to be more careful when we say something is true or false for all time and everywhere in the universe. It’s important that we say, “Based on the evidence, it’s more likely or unlikely for X to happen.” Every single serious and well-­thought-­out theory about the world should be kept. We need to think about how we got to where we are now, because we don’t want the future to outdate us; we want to see growth. Science should learn from literature how to keep its history alive as a monument to creativity and hard work. We will not stop using Shakespeare.

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Everything we think or do should be based on what makes sense. We must return to reason. We live in a time when critical thinking and basing beliefs on evidence are in short supply; 75 percent of Americans believe in at least one thing that goes against scientific laws, such as psychic healing, extrasensory perception, and haunted houses. Even many smart people argue that reason, objectivity, and the truth are just social constructions that justify the power of the dominant group. Reasoning is a part of the brain that lets us argue and judge arguments. No one has ever reached perfect rationality, but we have rules that help us get closer to objective truth because we believe it is possible. We can train ourselves to follow the rules of reason and make them the norm. Humans have used reason to go to the moon, eradicate smallpox, and make computers. Reason gives us access to objective truths.

Teaching the Value of Objective Truth It is a myth that all ideas are equally valid, even those with little or no objective proof. The existence of science is the commitment to objective truth. After all, science is true: fire is hot, the wheel is efficient, birds and planes can fly, we’ve landed on a comet and traveled to the Moon, antibiotics treat illness, and immunizations keep us from getting sick. These accomplishments are made possible by objective truths. A plausible theory can, and frequently does, propel science forward. However, an intuition must be followed with testing that confirms or disproves its veracity. If a theory is disproved, one should consider it as a reason to reject or alter the hypothesis, not a justification to just keep doggedly holding to the hypothesis because you are instinctively wedded to it. Critical thinking is an absolute must, and we must respect evidence. It’s the only reason for anyone to trust anything about reality. Without testing and evidence, intuition is useful, but it is

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never the ultimate word. Don’t be deceived by folks who defend unfounded beliefs by arguing, “Well, it’s true for me, but it might not be true for you.” It is not true for anyone without evidence. Expert advice is valuable, but it’s more about trusting the scientific process, not necessarily about trusting the person. Though some people may be suspicious of scientists who offer tough, even terrifying news, findings based on testing and data should be regarded seriously. It doesn’t matter that we hope climate change is false. We don’t enjoy hearing that our atmosphere has much more CO2 present than it did 100 years ago. True experts will have thoroughly researched and tested their claims. How does this apply to the classroom? We need to examine the word “theory” here. The practice of referring to specific science terms (e.g., evolution) as a “theory” is also used to deceive. The phrase “only a theory” perplexes many people. As educators we must eliminate any confusion around the word “theory.” “Theory” in science has a different meaning than “hypothesis” in everyday speech. These definitions are from the Oxford English Dictionary: • Sense 1: A hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed. • Sense 2: A hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts. A mere hypothesis, speculation, or surmise; a thought or set of ideas about something; an individual opinion or notion, in the second sense. Society’s difficulty in grasping sense 1 is due in part to a common desire to jump to sense 2: theory as a speculative “mere”

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hypothesis. However, we must agree that scientists use the term “theory” in ways that the average person could find confusing and inconsistent. Charles Darwin frequently mentioned his “theory,” which was a theory in sense 2: a hypothesis whose supporting evidence at the time persuaded some but not all scientists. Over the next century and a half it progressed from sense 2 to sense 1, suggesting that there is a historical continuity between the two senses of the word. No informed scientist nowadays doubts the existence of evolution: it is undeniable that we share similar ancestors with our cousin gorilla and our more distant cousin kangaroo. “Theory” is misunderstood and is inconsistently used in its application. Let’s ensure when it comes to talking about justified facts, we are referring to sense 1 and that we explicitly point out the differences between sense 1 and sense 2.

Education and Thought in History Why do we pursue education? For the majority of us, attending school was a given; unquestioning and unquestioned, we conformed to the construct established many years ago. Why was education established? Was it to foster critical thinking and to test the human mind’s capacity to grasp the truth? If it is the case, why isn’t school like that today? Why is this book even necessary, if critical thinking and reasoning are so prevalent and fundamental to modern education? Because you and I are both aware that contemporary education has a distinct aim. If we want to understand why schools are the way they are now, we must trace our ancestors and our human history. Schools are neither logical, rational, scientific, nor artistic entities. Rather, they are ingrained in our sociology and history. At the turn of the millennium, countries such as New Zealand, Finland, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as multinational agencies such as the OECD, began to define education’s purpose

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in terms of broader mental and personality qualities, rather than content knowledge or content-­specific skills. These characteristics are discussed using a variety of terms: 21st-­century skills, soft skills, personal learning and thinking skills, character education, learning disposition, and habits of mind, to name a few. However, regardless of the precise language used, the anticipated results of education are generally described in terms of the broad ways in which future citizens will deal with specific types of significant situations, particularly those that are complex, confusing, or unfamiliar. John Dewey, a philosophy professor and prominent educational theorist, was a leading proponent of “progressive education” and authored numerous books and articles promoting democracy’s central role in education. He felt that schools should serve as a venue for students not just to acquire academic knowledge, but also to learn how to live in and be effective members of society. Thus, education’s principal objective became to develop each student’s full potential and the capacity to apply those abilities for the greater good. According to Dewey, “preparing him for the future life” entails “giving him command of himself; it entails training him in such a way that he will make full and ready use of all his capacities.” Dewey emphasized the importance of education and schooling in effecting social change and improvement. He stated that “education is a mechanism for regulating the process of acquiring social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual behavior to this social consciousness is the only certain way of social reconstruction.” Although Dewey’s ideas received widespread attention, they were primarily implemented in small experimental schools affiliated with colleges of education. Dewey and other progressive theorists found a highly bureaucratic system of school administration in the public schools that was often resistant to new methods.

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Dewey considered pragmatism important to the development of democracy, which he did not view as a separate type of governance but as something that occurred within the workings of ordinary life.

Self-­Reflection and Self-­Awareness Are Essential to Critical Thinking Being a critical thinker goes beyond just being intelligent. It’s difficult to define “intelligence.” Everyone has a different, “personal” conception of what it means. Someone considered to be intelligent could be a person who can adjust quickly to new situations, while another person considered intelligent could be someone who can interact with others and empathize with them. Personally, I believe that someone who demonstrates great cognitive abilities, particularly in abstract reasoning, is intelligent. To be a critical thinker, you need more than just the ability to read people well. Self-­awareness is also required, as is the ability to recognize our own motivations, admit our failures, and figure out what has worked or not and why. When we’ve been wronged, it’s hard to look inward and reflect on our own shortcomings. It’s even more difficult to admit when we’ve been wrong—­careless, selfish, or both. Criticizing our own certainty is often a painful struggle that requires courage as we try to evaluate ourselves and our own accountability objectively. The following are the five characteristics of a critical thinker who possesses self-­awareness: • A critical thinker knows what he or she is doing with clarity and with intention. Distractions are acknowledged and mitigated.

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• A critical thinker can improvise in real time, balancing competing goals and interpreting rules and principles in light of the context in which they are operating. • A critical thinker is perceptive, knows how to read social contexts, and is able to see the gray in a situation. • A critical thinker can empathize and truly see the viewpoints of others. Understanding the needs of others and making decisions that are in the best interest of others (students, parents, colleagues, family, or friends) is made possible by this ability to step back and see things from a different perspective. • A critical thinker knows how to make emotion an ally of reason by relying on emotion to signal what a situation calls for, and inform judgment without distorting it. Because their feelings and intuitions are well-­trained, critical thinkers are able to act quickly if needed. Objective reality that is illuminated through critical thinking is awe-­inspiring and beautiful. Even if you are afraid of science’s harrowing results, the fortitude it takes to face such facts opens up a whole new world of wonder and beauty for you and your students. To fully embrace this truth, we have to cut ourselves loose from the familiar, tame the apparent certainty, and accept the wild truth. Being alive at a moment when humanity is testing the boundaries of understanding makes me extremely happy. Better yet, we might finally find that there are no boundaries. There is something wonderful about this notion that thinking, learning, and understanding can bring our life purpose and meaning. Life is as wonderful, important, and beautiful as we choose to make it. These are the takeaways our students need in life.

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We must continue to preserve students’ curiosity in such a way that they aren’t satisfied with not understanding. And shouldn’t this be the purpose of education? To strive for understanding by teaching students how to ask questions, think critically and independently, to weigh the evidence, and to express their disagreement. How often do we tell our students that they can disagree with us, as long as they have evidence to justify their claim? Our job as educators is to teach students not what to think, but how to think. Students have the right to be reassured by logic and reasoning, and also have the right to be safeguarded from erroneous notions. And it is our social responsibility to provide this education to them. Because of this, we should feel just as obligated to teach our children the best scientific and philosophical understanding of the natural world as we already do to provide for their food and shelter. Critical thinking and reasoning are skills that can be honed through practice and application in a variety of contexts. Aristotle said that we can only learn bravery by doing brave things. And it is exactly the same when it comes to critical thinking. We must stop telling others to think critically, and actually do it. We must never stop asking.

References

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Chapter 7 Bayard, P. (2007). How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Carson, R. (2011). Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson. Boston: Beacon Press. Costa, A., and Sebastián-­Gallés, N. (2014). “How Does the Bilingual Experience Sculpt the Brain?” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 15(5), 336–345. Gollan, T. H., Montoya, R. I., Cera, C., and Sandoval, T. C. (2008). “More Use Almost Always Means a Smaller Frequency Effect: Aging, Bilingualism, and the Weaker Links Hypothesis.” Journal of Memory and Language 58(3): 787–814. Goodall, J. (2000). In the Shadow of Man (vol. 4113). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Ingham, A. G., Levinger, G., Graves, J., and Peckham, V. (1974). “The Ringelmann Effect: Studies of Group Size and Group Performance.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 10(4): 371–384. Kleon, A. (2012). Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative. New York: Workman Publishing. Kovács, A. M., and Mehler, J. (2009). “Cognitive Gains in 7-­Month-­ Old Bilingual Infants.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(16), 6556-­6560.

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Fullan, M. (2013). The Jossey-­Bass Reader on Educational Leadership. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Hofmann, S. G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I. J., Sawyer, A. T., and Fang, A. (2012). “The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-­Analyses.” Cognitive therapy and research 36(5): 427–440. Ku, K. Y. (2009). “Assessing Students’ Critical Thinking Performance: Urging for Measurements Using Multi-­Response Format.” Thinking Skills and Creativity 4(1): 70–76. Kuhn, D. (1999). “A Developmental Model of Critical Thinking.” Educational Researcher 28(2): 16–46. Li, K. Z., Bherer, L., Mirelman, A., Maidan, I., and Hausdorff, J. M. (2018). “Cognitive Involvement in Balance, Gait and Dual-­Tasking in Aging: A Focused Review from a Neuroscience of Aging Perspective.” Frontiers in Neurology 9, 913. Medina, J. (2011). Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. ReadHowYouWant. com. Mlodinow, L. (2013). Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. Vintage. Ostafin, B. D., and Kassman, K. T. (2012). “Stepping out of History: Mindfulness Improves Insight Problem Solving.” Consciousness and Cognition 21(2): 1031–1036. Rau, H. K., and Williams, P. G. (2016). “Dispositional Mindfulness: A Critical Review of Construct Validation Research.” Personality and Individual Differences 93, 32–43.

Conclusion Hare, W. (1998, January). Bertrand Russell on Critical Thinking. In The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy (vol. 29, pp. 142–149). Irvine, A. D. (2001). Russell on Indoctrination. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 20(2): 20–26.

Index

A Abstract kingdom, 140 Achievements, earning, 166 Active learning, 52 Active mindset, 12 Adams, Gabrielle, 143 Additive solutions, 143–145 Adolescents, mindfulness for, 168 Adult learners, learning pathways for, 165–166 Agarwal, P. K., 39 Agreements, 67, 107, 114 American Psychological Association (APA), 10 Analysis, 7, 11–12, 38, 168 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Fletcher), 147 Answers, see Process of critical thinking Anticipation guide, 48–50 Anticipatory thinking, 45–50 Anxiety reduction, 167–168 APA (American Psychological Association), 10 Apophenia, 26–27 Application skills, 38, 39 Apprehension, assessment, 125 Approval, social, 110 Argumentation, 87, 89, 93, 96. See also Collaborative argumentation

Argumentation Vee Diagrams (AVDs), 106–108 Argument-­from-­ignorance ­fallacy, 28–29 Argument Talk Protocol, 114–116 Asch, Solomon, 108–109 Aspirations, 114 Assessments, 125, 172–173 Assumptions, 89, 114, 182 Attention skills, 168 Authenticity, of experiments, 63 Authority, experts vs., 88, 91–92 AVDs (Argumentation Vee ­Diagrams), 106–108 B Backgrounds, evaluation of, 34–35 Banach–Tarski Paradox, 60 Bayard, Pierre, 121–123 Benveniste, Mike, 147 Bernstein, Ethan, 178 Bialystok, Ellen, 127 Bias(es), 23–29 cognitive, 23 confirmation, 22 discovering source of, 89 identifying your, 5 implicit, 21–22 sunk-­cost, 145 and Systems Thinking, 41 Bilingualism, 127–129

201

202 The Birthday Paradox, 59 Bloom, Benjamin, 37 Bloom’s Taxonomy, 7, 37–40 Bobkina, J., 71, 73 Books, access to, 121–122 Boundaries, of understanding, 189–190 Brain function, 99, 128–129, 167–168, 174 Breaks, taking, 176, 177 Brod, G., 32 Brookfield, Stephen, 37–38 Bunge, S. A., 32 C California State Universities and Colleges, 9–10 Carson, Rachel, 117 Challenges of critical thinking, 19–36 common misconceptions, 29–33 fallacies/biases, 23–29 The Forer effect, 33–35 obtaining truth, 21–23 rationality, 35–36 Chew, L. P., 47 Children, creativity of, 150 Choice, 142 Chunking, 155–158 Church, M., 42, 43 Claims, 43–44, 80, 97 Classrooms: critical thinking in, 80–85, 94–96 meditation in, 171–173 Close reading, 72 Closure, cognitive, 69–70 Cognition, 38, 41–43, 99, 158–159 Cognitive bias, 23 Cognitive closure, 69–70 Cognitive filters, 173–179 Cognitive fitness, 167 Cognitive hierarchy, 37–53 factual knowledge in, 38–40 learning styles in, 50–53

Index process of thinking in, 44–50 and Systems of Thinking, 40–44 Cognitive performance, 37 Collaboration: in classroom instruction, 80 and constant connections, 178 discussions for, 67–68 and group work, 123–124 in Kiva Project, 119 reflection for, 178–179 for successful skills, 14 vertical, 160–161 Collaborative argumentation, 105–116 and Argumentation Vee ­Diagrams, 106–108 and debates, 108–116 Combinatorial creativity, 138–140 Compassion, 167 Complexity, 80, 145, 164 Compliance, 110–113 Comprehension, 38, 39, 72, 73, 87, 95 Concentration, 169, 170 Concept inventories, 31 Concept maps, 42 Concepts, distance from, 89, 92–93 Conceptual change, 33 Concern (Four Cs), 43–44 Confidence, 112 Confirmation, independent, 87, 90 Confirmation bias, 22 Conflict resolution, 129 Conformity, 108–116 Connections, making, 44, 53, 85–86, 158, 177–178 Consistency, 51 Contentment, 6 Convergent thinking, 141–142, 148 Converse, Benjamin, 144 Coordinating, and anticipatory thinking, 48 Costa, Albert, 128 Counterarguments, 107, 115

Index Creative thinking, 135–151 inspiration for, 136–138 limitations of, 138–142 narrative theory for, 147–151 and subtraction technique, 141–146 Creativity, 13–14, 70, 138–141, 177 Credibility, 22–23, 120 Criteria (Four Cs), 44 Critical framing stage, 71, 72 Critical thinking, 7–17 and analysis/evaluation, 11–12 framework for, 5–6 procedural mindset for, 12–17 Criticism, 101, 105, 123 Culture, of learning, 159–163 Curiosity, 5, 12–13, 86, 141, 142 D Darwin, Charles, 26, 186 Data, evaluating, 5, 88 Dawkins, Richard, 140 Debates, 88, 90–92, 108–116. See also Collaborative argumentation Decision journals, 73–77 Decision-­making: anticipatory thinking for, 48 and biases, 24 convergent thinking for, 141 critical thinking for, 4 high-­order thinking for, 170 and intuition, 64, 154 literature to improve, 69 questions for, 154–155 Deductions, logical, 120 DeGroot, J. L., 45–46 Delphi Report (APA), 10 Dennett, Daniel, 107 Derivative creativity, 140–141 Dewey, John, 37–38, 85–86, 187 Disagreements, 67, 114 Disciplines, critical thinking across, 14, 38, 139–141, 164

203 Discovery, 16 Discursive thinking, 173 Discussions: about books, 122–123 in anticipation guide, 49, 50 collaborative, 67–68 Kialo for online, 115 open, 137 Paideia seminars for, 97–99 paradoxes/problems for, 58–63 during peer review sessions, 102 scientific process for, 94–98 Dispositional mindfulness, 169–170 Distractions, removing, 174, 175 Divergent thinking, 141–142, 148–149 Djikic, M., 69–70 Dunning-­Kruger effect, 26 E Eddington, Arthur, 84 Edgeworth, Francis, 65 Editing, reviewing vs., 102 Education system: applying critical thinking skills in, 22 critical thinking in, 4–5 factors for learning culture in, 162 failure of, 181 industrialization of, 150 integration of critical thinking in, 9 and thought in history, 186–188 Einstein, Albert, 83–84, 139, 153 Elder, Linda, 37–38 Elementary Math Example, 61 Emotional intelligence (EQ), 68–70 Emotion regulation, 167, 168 Empathy, 68, 70, 168, 189 Engagement, 58, 106 Ennis, Robert, 155 Epistemic mentality, 14 EQ (emotional intelligence), 68–70

204 Evaluation, 10–12, 34–35, 38, 72, 95, 106 Evidence, using, 28, 67, 90, 182, 184–185 Excuses, making, 74 Executive function, 127–128, 170, 176, 177 Exercise, 176 Experiences, learning from, 34–35, 57–58, 147–148, 151 Experiencing self, 65–67 Expertise, 155 Experts, 64, 88, 91–92, 185 Explanation, 10, 32 Explicit order stage, 72 F Facione’s Peter, 9–10 Facts, verification of, 88–90 Failure, 34, 175–176 Fallacies, 23–29 Falsification, principles of, 94 Farnham Street, 74–75 Fear, of thinking, 181–182 Feedback, 40, 101 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (Lilienfeld), 52 Fitness, cognitive, 167 Flaws, in reasoning process, 100 Fleming, Alexander, 137 Fletcher, Angus, 147, 149 Focus, 80, 168, 173–175 Follow-­up questions, 67 The Forer effect, 33–35 Forky (Toy Story 4), 56 Four Cs to Defending Claims, 43–44 Frameworks, defining, 97 Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 176, 177 Fundamental Surprise (Lanir), 47 G Gandhi, Mohandas, 142 Gardiner, Howard, 15

Index Gino, Francesca, 112 Gollan, Tamar, 129 Goodall, Jane, 117 Grant, A., 112–113 Gravity, 81–83 Group work, 53, 123–126 “Gut feelings,” 64. See also Intuition H Halo effect, 65 Hare, William, 182 Harkins, Stephen, 124–125 Harvard Business School, 178 Hasselhorn, M., 32 Herschel, William, 81–82 Heuristics, 23–24, 171 Higher-­order questions, 55–77 and decision journals, 73–77 and literature, 68–73 and paradoxes/thought problems, 58–63 for reflection, 85–86 skills to ask, 67–68 using intuition with, 64–67 History, thought in, 186–188 How We Think (Dewey), 85 Hypotheses, 88, 89, 92–94, 185–186 I Ignorance, 26, 28–29, 85 Illusion, introspection, 25 Imagination, 63, 141, 148 Implicit bias, 21–22 Improvisation, 189 Independence, 131 Individualization, 80, 109 Inference, 10, 148 Ingham, Alan, 124 Inhibition, 170 Innovation, 112–113 Inquiries. See also Higher-­order questions free and open, 55 during peer review, 101–102

205

Index and science, 57 in Socratic seminar, 97 Inspiration, 136–138 Instruction, overt, 71 Intelligence, 159, 188–190 Intention, doing with, 188 Interconnectedness, 80 Interpretation, 11–12, 122, 123 Introspection illusion, 25 Intuition, 35–36, 64–67, 136, 154, 184–185 Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (Rapoport), 107 Inventions, creative thinking for, 136–137 Investigative mindset, 12–13 Irvine, A. D., 182–183 J Jarman, Beth, 141 Jefferson, Thomas, 57 Johnston, Peter H., 131 Jordan, Erika, 119 Journals, decision, 73–77 Judgments, 11–12, 86, 88, 141 K Kahneman, Daniel, 40–41, 64, 171 Kennedy, P., 136–137 Kialo Edu, 114–115 Kirschner, Paul, 51, 52 Kiva project, 118–119 Klein, Gary, 16, 47, 64 Kleon, Austin, 122 Klotz, Leidy, 143 Knowledge: anticipation guide for, 50 applying prior, 126 asking students about processed, 53 establishing factual, 38–40 as factor for learning, 87 misconceptions from incorrect, 29

prior, 155 repeatable, 96 thoughts vs., 84 updating your, 182 in variety of formats, 165 Kohlmann, Ben, 112–113 Kovács, Agnes, 128–129 L Land, George, 141–142 Language: learning, 126–131 using precise, 95 Lanir, Z., 47, 48 Laric, Oliver, 140 Latane, Bibb, 124–125 Lazere, D., 70 Leadership, 153, 154, 161–163 Learning: active, 52 culture of, 159–163 examining mistakes to improve, 99 experiences related to, 57–58 knowledge/skills for, 87 language, 126–131 lifelong, 45 and microlearning, 162, 165 mindsets for, 160 pathways for, 163–166 research on long-­term, 39 self-­directed, 132 styles of, 50–53 Learning environment, 153–179 learning culture for, 159–163 learning pathways for, 163–166 meditation in, 166–173 music in, 158–159 removing cognitive filters from, 173–179 spacing/chunking for, 155–158 Le Verrier, Urbain, 83 Lifelong learners, 45 Lilienfeld, Scott, 52

206

Index

Limitations of creative thinking, 138–142 Literature, 68–73, 120–123, 183 Loafing, social, 124–126 Logic, 8, 36, 72, 120, 182 Long-­term memory, 156 Lustig, Alvin, 139

Moser, Jason, 99 Motion, laws of, 81–82 Motivation, 69 Motor skills, 158 Multimedia, 53 Multitasking, 174 Music, 158–159

M Maps, concept/understanding, 42–43 Martine, Arthur, 105 Martin-­Rhee, Michelle, 127 Marzilli, Angela, 119 Materials, for innovation, 137 Meaning, and experiences, 151 Measurability, of hypothesis, 89, 93 Medina, John, 176 Meditation, 166–173 Memes, 140 Memory, 23, 39, 156 Mentality, epistemic, 14 Mental processes, 16 Mental shortcuts, 2–3, 23, 35. See also Challenges of critical thinking Merriënboer, Jeroen, 51, 52 Metacognition, 39–40, 52–53, 130 Metaphorical thinking, 138 Meyvis, Tom, 144–145 Microlearning, 162, 165 Milgram, Stanley, 110–112 Miller, M. R., 70 Milton, John, 15 Mind, theory of, 68 Mindfulness, 167–170 Mindset, 12–17, 160 Misconceptions, 29–33 Misinterpretation, 29 Mistakes, 74, 99–103 Mlodinow, Leonard, 174, 175 Monitoring, nonreactive, 169, 170 Monod, Jacques, 140 Monolinguals, 127–128 Morrison, K., 42, 43

N Nabokov, Vladimir, 139 Narrative theory, 147–151 NASA, 1–2 National Paideia Center, 97 National School Reform Faculty, 114 A Nation at Risk (United States National Commission on Excellence in Education), 16–17 Nature, 145 New London Group, 71 Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, 81–83 Nonconformity, 112–113 Nonreactive monitoring, 169, 170 Nonreading literature, 120–123 Novices, and studying examples, 52 O Obedience, 111 Observations, 32 Occam’s Razor, 89, 93 Online discussions, 115 Open-­ended questions, 5, 98, 101–102 Openness, 80 Opposition, considering, 90, 107 Originality, 112 Outcomes, predicting, 32 Outlines, 102, 115 Outside, taking students, 137, 176, 177 Ownership, problem-­solving, 131–133

Index P Paideia seminars, 97–99, 116 Paley, Nina, 140 Paradoxes, 58–63, 120–123 The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, 59–60 Paraphrasing, 73 Pareidolia, 27 Participation, active, 126 Pashler, Harold, 51, 52 Pathways, learning, 163–166 Pattern recognition, 3, 27, 28, 74 Pblworks.org, 119 Peer reviews, 100–101 Perception, 189 Performance: assessments of, 172–173 cognitive, 37 and learning styles, 51–52 Personal development, 163–166 Personalization, 33 Perspective-­shifting, 149–150 Perspective-­taking, 69, 70, 90–91, 168 Pew Research, 160 Pinker, Steven, 35 Planning, 48, 80 POE (predict-­observe-­explain), 32 Polk, Bryan, 91 Positions, evidence to support, 90 Practice: retrieval, 39–40 situated, 71–72 Pradhan, S., 46 Pragmatism, 188 Prediction, 46–47 Predict-­observe-­explain (POE), 32 Premise, 89, 93 Present-­moment attentional concentration, 169, 170 Primary sources, 90, 120 Principle, being driven by, 62–63 Problems, thought, 58–63

207 Problem-­solving: and constant connections, 178 critical thinking for, 5 healthy lifestyles for, 177 high-­order thinking for, 170 language learning for, 129–131 literature to improve, 70 and mindfulness, 169 music to improve, 158 narrative theory for, 148 ownership of, 131–133 perspective-­shifting for, 149–150 process of thinking for, 44–45 transformation readiness for, 160 Procedural mindset, 12–17 Process of critical thinking, 79–103 in classroom instruction, 80–85, 94–96 and cognitive hierarchy, 44–50 for creating connections, 85–86 for examining mistakes, 99–103 and Paideia seminars, 97–99 truth/skepticism in, 86–94 Productivity, 131 Progressive education, 187–188 Project Runway (TV show), 139 Project Zero, 42 Q Qualifications, transferable, 166 Questions: in Argument Talk Protocol, 114 to ask as the experiencing self, 66 for decision-­making, 154–155 encouraging students to ask, 67–68 to ensure students think critically, 61 follow-­up, 67 higher-­order (see Higher-­order questions) open-­ended, 5 during peer review, 101

208 Questions: (continued) for projects, 119–120 for real-­world situations, 119–120 in situated practice stage, 71 types of, 39 R Rapoport, Anatol, 107 Rationality, 35–36 Reader, Come Home (Wolf), 70 Reading, close, 72. See also Literature Reality, objective, 189 Real-­world situations, 117–133 essential questions for, 119–120 group work for, 123–126 and language learning, 126–131 and nonreading literature, 120–123 problem-­solving ownership for, 131–133 thinking abilities for, 169 Reasoning: aloud, 99–103 and collaborative argumentation, 106 to discover truth, 182, 184 heuristic, 23–24 high-­order thinking for moral, 170 misconceptions from faulty, 29 practice and application of, 190 scientific method for, 96 and successful critical thinking, 5 Redaelli, Simone, 94 Reflection, 74, 77, 98–99, 165, 178–179 Refutational teaching, 32–33 Relational understanding, 121 Relevance, in classroom instruction, 80 Reliability, of information, 22–23 Remembering self, 65 Research, 3, 5 Resilience, 168

Index Resources, for personal development, 164–165 Responsiveness, 80 Retrieval practice, 39–40 Reviews, 100–102, 165 Riecken, T. J., 70 Ringelmann, Maximilien, 124–126 Ringelmann effect, 124 Ritchhart, R, 42, 43 Robinson, Ken, 150 Robinson, Martin, 15 Rohrer, Doug, 51 Russell, Bertrand, 55, 181–183 “Russell on Indoctrination” (Irvine), 182–183 S Sagan, Carl, 3–4, 87–88 Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit, 86–94 Scientific method, 81, 86–87, 94–98, 185 Seesholtz, Mel, 91 Self, experiencing, 65–67 Self-­assessments, 98 Self-­awareness, 37–38, 66–67, 188–190 Self-­control, emotional, 167 Self-­deception, 65–66 Self-­directed learning, 132 The Selfish Gene (Dawkins and Davis), 140 Self-­reflection, 188–190 Self-­regulation, 11, 169–170, 173 Sensemaking, 45, 48 Shifting, 170 Ship of Theseus Thought Puzzle, 58–59 Showcase, for anticipation guide, 49 Shpancer, Noam, 110 Shuffling the Deck Paradox, 60 Similarities, failure to notice, 34 Simplicity, 145

209

Index Situated practice, 71–72 Skepticism, 86–94 Skill(s): attention, 168 from collaborative argumentation, 106 critical thinking as most important, 22 emotional, 168 as factor for learning, 87 literature to build critical, 68 music to improve, 158 questioning, 67–68 social, 168 students’ complex application, 39 Sleep, 177 Snowden, D., 47 Social approval, 110 Social loafing, 124–126 Social skills, 158, 168 Socratic seminar, 97, 116 Solutions, 93, 100 Sources, primary and credible, 90, 120 Spacing effect, 155–158 Special relativity, 83–84 Sperry, Roger, 139 Standardized testing, 150 Status quo fallacy, 24–25 Stefanova, S., 71, 73 Storytelling techniques, 148 Stress reduction, 167–168, 177 Structure, of anticipation guide, 49 Subjective interpretation, 122, 123 Subjective validation, 33–34 Substance, debates about, 88, 90–92 Subtraction technique, 141–146 Success, 112 Sunk-­cost bias, 145 Synchronicity, 27 Synthesis, 38 Systematic instruction, 80 Systems of thinking, 40–44

T Task switching, 174 T-­charts, 31 Teaching, refutational, 32–33 Technological change, 159 Teh, C. A., 183 Testing, standardized, 150 Texas sharpshooter fallacy, 24, 27 Theory(-­ies): ideas based on, 81 of mind, 68 misconceptions about, 185–186 Thinking. see also specific types fear of, 181–182 in history, 186–188 knowing vs., 84 paradoxes/problems to elicit, 58–63 process of, 44–50 reading to encourage, 70 and reasoning aloud, 99–103 students’ complex, 39 systems of, 40–44 time for, 137 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 41, 64 Thought problems, 58–63 Toy Story 4 (film), 56 Transformation-­ready students, 159–161 Transformed practice stage, 71, 73 Translanguaging, 128 Trolley problem, 62–63 Truth, evaluating, 21–23, 81, 86–94, 184–186 Tversky, Amos, 64 Twain, Mark, 105 Type 1 and 2 processes, 171 Tyson, Neil DeGrasse, 116

210 U Understanding: displaying level of, 43–44 explaining your, 32 in explicit order stage, 72 relational, 121 science to bridge gaps in, 36 starting from a state of, 85 testing boundaries of, 189–190 Understanding maps, 42–43 Updating, 170 V Validation, subjective, 33–34 Verification of facts, 88–90 “Versions” (Laric), 140 Vertical collaboration, 160–161 Videos, anticipation guides for watching, 50 Viewpoint, seeing another person’s, 189 Viral ideas, 140 Visualizations, 115 Vocabulary, introducing, 96, 97

Index W Waves of critical thinking, 16 Williams, Kipling, 124–125 Wisdom, 117 Wolf, Maryanne, 70 Working memory, 23 Z zzSteve: I’m only seeing this referrred to as “anticpation guide,” not “anticipating guide”; also this term continues onto page 50: Anticipating guide, 48–49 need complete sentece in cross-­ ref; can’t end with “of”: Thinking (see also specific kinds of) watch initial “A”; sort under “N”: A Nation at Risk (United States National Commission on Excellence in Education), 16–17

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