if...then

Critical Thinking and US universities

Roy — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:11:13 +0000

A recent book by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa ‘Academically Unfit: Limited Learning on College Campuses’ has argued that over a third of America’s university students show no improvement in critical thinking or analytical reasoning after four years in college. Though there are disputes over the methods used to assess such thinking, the study does raise important issues as to whether critical thinking can emerge whilst doing a university course or whether there needs to be some explicit development of the skills and attributes. It does seem surprising that, as the authors claim, more than a third of graduating students didn’t know the difference between facts and opinions and couldn’t write a clear and coherent argument. But, if this is true, it is highly disturbing. It would be interesting to see if similar results were found in universities in other countries.

Critical Thinking in Singapore

Roy — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:32:59 +0000

We were working again in Singapore in November, conducting workshops with teachers in various Junior Colleges, and also speaking to parents about the value of Critical Thinking to their children’s overall educational performance. I am always very impressed by the interest shown in Critical Thinking in Singapore by both teachers and parents, and also impressed by teachers’ experience in this area. We expect to return early in 2012.

Community Critical Thinking is Here

Roy — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:19:07 +0000

If…then are delighted to announce we’ve recently gone social with the setup of our brand new Twitter and Facebook pages.
You can now keep totally up to date with all If…then activity. To make this as easy as possbile we’ve also permanently added links to our Twitter and Facebook pages in our website footer – just click below to visit our sites.

To enhance our information sharing even more, our News page has also been improved. ‘Categories’ and ‘Tags’ are now included in the right-hand sidebar to help navigation and finding your way around our regular updates. Even better than this, we’ve also added RSS feeds.

In short – information sharing has got smart!

Critical Thinking and decision-making

Roy — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:37:05 +0000

We are involved with a Suffolk-based organisation which works with a wide range of young people. Having provided two sessions of staff training, we are now focusing on collaborating with the staff on producing dedicated materials for work with their students. At this stage, we are focusing on decision-making. This is a fruitful area for Critical Thinking, in that it benefits from clear thinking as well as the skill of being able both to see alternatives and to evaluate them.

Critical Thinking and the economy

Roy — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:17:18 +0000

This week’s announcement of the Nobel prize for economics to Professors Sims and Sargent for their work on how economies function highlights the importance of Critical Thinking in dealing with complex issues. Too often, pronouncements on what should be done to solve economic problems are given as simple remedies. As Professor Sims explained, getting economies back on track is not a question of simple prescriptions but ‘a lot of slow work looking at data’. This links well with Critical Thinking which centrally is about asking questions about the significance of claims (including data).

Critical Thinking in business

Roy — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:58:31 +0000

On the Harvard Business Review website of 27 September, we find the article ‘Learn how to think different(ly)’. This argues for the virtues of thinking differently for entrepreneurs and executives. It gives some information on a study carried out on thinking differently. Not suprisingly, it found that innovators (of new businesses, products, and processes) spend almost 50 per cent more time trying to think differently compared to non-innovators. But the really worrying statistic is that ‘sixty to eighty per cent of adults find the task of thinking different uncomfortable and some even find it exhausting.’

In a response to the article, a contributor makes the point that ‘becoming a “Thinking-enabled Enterprise” should be part of every business strategy.’ In this connection Critical Thinking is commended as a way of producing such an enterprise. ‘Thinking more, thinking better, and thinking differently confers tremendous business advantage.’ At if…then, we do, of course, very much agree.

Critical Thinking in India

Roy — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:25:19 +0000

We have recently been working with teachers in schools in India. It is interesting how similar issues come up in terms of how Critical Thinking should be taught (including how it can be incorporated into very full timetables with lots of material needing to be taught.) In one of the schools (in Mussoorie, high up in the mountains), there was an interesting emphasis on physical education as well as intellectual education (with lots of cross-country running up and down the mountain-side). This fits well with the emphasis Socrates placed on the need for physical training as well as for what we now call Critical Thinking.

The need for critical thinking in plans for prison education

Roy — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:19:06 +0000

A letter from Roy van den Brink-Budgen was recently published in the ‘FE Focus’ section of the UK’s ‘Times Education Supplement‘. The letter was concerned with the plan to link the funding of prison education to what happens to its students when they leave prison.

The letter argues that the plan has many problems and betrays a serious lack of critical thinking. There are so many variables involved that the idea that education providers should be paid according to ‘results’ is very difficult to defend. For example, there’s the issue of timescale – at one point should we say that an ex-prisoner has or has not succeeded? In addition, there’s the issue of context. A prisoner might be greatly committed to education and training whilst in prison, but it might be very difficult to sustain this commitment when they return to a chaotic domestic context. Furthermore, there’s the big problem of measurement. How do we define ‘success’ for an ex-prisoner in terms of education and training? No further offending but unemployed? Employed but still offending? And so on.

It can be seen that critical thinking would very much contribute to clarifying these problems (and, thus, possible solutions to them).

Critical Thinking to be taught at the New College of Humanities

Roy — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:22:29 +0000

The planned new university – the New College of Humanities (NCH) – has been greatly in the news recently. The man most associated with NCH is A.C. Grayling, the eminent philosopher. It is highly gratifying that one of the things that he reports as being essential for students of this new university is critical thinking. He recognises its straightforwardly central importance for education.

Well-known publisher sees Critical Thinking as central to society

Roy — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:41:49 +0000

In a recent interview in the ‘Financial Times’, Sara Miller McCune, the co-founder (with her husband) of the renowned publishing group Sage, has stressed the central value of being able to think critically. As she says, ‘I don’t see how either an individual or society can flourish without education: without learning to think critically and politically, and to follow arguments.’