From Critical Thinking to Student Involvement
From LiteracyTentWiki
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2289] From critical thinking to student involvement
From: Taylor, Jackie jataylor at utk.edu
Date: Mon Jul 14 14:37:47 EDT 2008
Hello again, All,
Now that we've explored what we mean by critical thinking, how does that
fit in with student involvement?
Here is what I have for a beginning definition of student involvement
(below).
I look forward to hearing from you. And let's also hear from those who
have not yet contributed but would like to do so.
- Thoughts, ideas? How do you 'involve' your students?
Thanks, Jackie
Jackie Taylor, List Moderator, jataylor at utk.edu
What Is Student Involvement?
- Student involvement is when learners become involved in the classroom or program in ways that help them meet their goals. Student involvement includes a range of possibilities, including:
- actively participating in classroom activities
- becoming involved in a class project
- taking a position (volunteer or paid) within the program
- becoming involved in the community
- Students have a voice in class and program decisions that matter to them.
- Students create the vision for involvement, for the project or position, such that their involvement equals the interest they have in what is at stake.
- Student involvement is a learner-teacher partnership, renegotiating the power dynamics inherent in traditional learner-teacher roles. Student involvement fills the gap that seems to exist between students and teachers because of this traditional power differential.
- Learners have greater responsibility by being involved, and it offers their classroom peers student leadership models.
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2310] from David, Critical thinking and learner leadership scenario
From: David J. Rosen at gmail.com
Date: Tue Jul 15 09:09:39 EDT 2008
Cynthia, Marty and others,
Sometimes learners, as individuals or as a group, have a strongly-held
opinion, for example about how their English language class should be
taught. Their view of what the class should be like is based on their
experience in school in their own country/countries. It involves having
a textbook, memorizing passages of text, and having the teacher stand in
front of the class and lecture, especially lecturing about grammar.
Their teacher may have a different view about how the class should be
organized, for example that it should include some language learning
games to reduce anxiety in producing sentences in the new language and
for practice. The teacher may also believe that the new language being
learned should be used to discuss issues of concern to the students in
their workplace (for example whether or not they are being exploited at
work, and if so what they can do about it, an issue,let's say, that some
students have asked about).
Suppose some of the learners hold a meeting to discuss this and that one
learner steps forward to tell the teacher they want a textbook and
grammar.
Is this learner leadership? Is it critical thinking? Is it activism? How
should a teacher who believes that learner leadership and critical
thinking are important respond to this? Does this scenario resonate with
anyone who has taught adults English?
David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2312] Critical Thinking and Learner Leadership
From: Wendy Quinones wbquinones at comcast.net
Date: Tue Jul 15 17:35:47 EDT 2008
David and all,
Anyone who's ever taught a GED class will tell you that English language
learners aren't the only ones with opinions about how their classes should
be taught -- "Is this going to be on the test?" is the mantra of the GED
student. Their assumption is that the GED consists of discrete items that
can be taught, and on that basis they want to learn "stuff" rather than the
habits of thought that will benefit them both on the test and in future
life. How do we challenge that assumption when it is precisely that
challenge that a great many GED students want to avoid? In my experience,
telling students that the GED is not about content is a lost cause; at least
at first, they simply don't believe it. I'm afraid I have taken to abusing
my position as an authority figure, and I simply answer "Yes" to that
question whenever it's asked, no matter what crazy (to them) thing I'm
asking them to do. My reasoning is simple: most haven't had the experience
of being in a situation where they are valued as thinkers, so they don't
know what that kind of classroom environment looks like. Without that
experience, how can they make informed judgments about how they best learn?
If telling them that everything in the class will be on the test will open
them to new methods that do value their thinking, I will certainly do it.
Eventually we do get to practice on GED test items, but by then they have
learned that getting the "right" answer (and what is more discouraging to
critical thinking than that!?!?!) is more a matter of critical thinking and
clear reasoning than of memorizing "stuff."
Wendy Quinones
Subject [ProfessionalDevelopment 2313] Re: Critical Thinking and Learner Leadership
Gabb, Sally S. Sally.Gabb at bristolcc.edu
Wed Jul 16 08:04:09 EDT 2008
Great answer as always Wendy! Since being able to think 'critically' is indeed 'on the test', you have hit the nail on the head (great metaphor or cliché??) Thank - and an important part of 'transition to college' learning as well. Sally Gabb, Developmental Reading, Bristol Community College, Fall River MA
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2315] Re: Critical Thinking and LearnerLeadership
From: Gabb, Sally S. Sally.Gabb at bristolcc.edu
Date: Wed Jul 16 09:27:36 EDT 2008
I agree absolutely, Catherine - we use such exercises on a regular basis in college developmental reading, to enable students to reflect on their own knowledge and thinking process. Thanks for a clear explanation of this kind of exercise. Sal
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2316] Re: Critical Thinking and LearnerLeadership
From: Andrea Wilder andreawilder at comcast.net
Date: Wed Jul 16 10:16:57 EDT 2008
Catherine--
Do you have any useful examples of this? it's a lovely idea.
Andrea:)
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2317] Re: Critical Thinking andLearnerLeadership
From: Catherine B. King cb.king at verizon.net
Date: Wed Jul 16 10:43:05 EDT 2008
Hi Andrea:
The study of cognitional theory and surrounding philosophical meaning comes
from the work of Bernard Lonergan's Insight: A Study of Human Understanding
(1958 & 2000) and a massive collection of other related works.
However, do you mean by "useful examples," more ideas of questions to pose?
As far as examples of insights is concerned, I use my own examples where I
have had "aha" moments--but a common example is when we finally "get" a joke
we didn't understand before but that everyone else understands. And all
adult students have minds and, thus, have had various kinds of insights
about concrete events in their lives over the years. The "insight" is a
general/universal term for what everyone has in the particular case as
experience.
But in this arena of learning, the point to stress in reading--for instance,
stories, novels, poetry, etc.,--is not to objectify-to-analyze what the
meaning of the writing is (a valuable thing to do in its own right), but
rather to self-reflect--to consider what the poem or story brings to mind in
my own life--how does it relate or inform my own experience, what did I
learn from it?--and we can note how such stories, etc., can inform our own
depth of thinking and our critical judgments (critical thinking)? This is
besides just the joy of reading.
As an aside, I am myself a "late" adult learner. All through K-12 I thought
school was a horrible thing--socially and educationally (a later insight).
I never experienced it as being for me. What caught me onto my own
education was my realization of how good I felt when I really understood
something well (had insights).
It's a great feeling to really grasp something--and that experience--now
reflectively understood itself as something valuable FOR ME--was what gave
me the impetus to want more--learning and reading and studying became a real
discovery process for me instead of something boring and horrible to
memorize and spit back--I learned to love learning, as it were--I felt my
mind breathing--quite literally; whereas my own K-12 background was a horror
story of not only neglect of learning potential, but actual quashing of that
potential by teachers and others who either didn't know what they were
doing, or teachers who had 36 kids in a classroom for 55 minutes at a time.
Shuffled from room to room with no connection between rooms or my past
experience. Enough.
If I missed what you meant by "example," let me know?
Catherine
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2318] Re: CriticalThinking and LearnerLeadership
From: Muro, Andres amuro5 at epcc.edu
Date: Wed Jul 16 11:55:51 EDT 2008
John Dewey talks extensively about this, and George Demetrion expands on Dewey's arguments in his book and several of his articles.
According to Dewey between the onset of a task, a problem, an activity and its solution, there is a road that leads to the outcome. Traditional education assessed through standardized testing has been mostly concerned purely with the outcome part of the whole equation. Given an input, what is the correct output. Teachers being forced to also produce proper outputs (high number of passing scores) forget about the process of getting towards the output. This is where learning takes place. Understanding the processes that we engage in to produce the output is essential. This is what ultimately makes successful students. The ones who excel in college are the ones that have learned the strategies necessary to get to the output. They know how to summarize. They know how and when to use their peers. They know how to access information in the library. They know how and when to use technology. They know that they concentrate better at certain times, before or after lunch, in noisy or quiet environments with music or the TV on, etc. In fact, all of us are aware of these strategies for ourselves and take advantage of them regularly.
Some people think that success is directly related to effort. In other words, if I cram for 10 hours I will do better than if I do it for 5. However, those who master their own "metacognitive" learning strategies are the ones that have more fun. They only work as hard as it is absolutely necessary.
I was talking to a friend who has a teenage daughter who "never" has homework, is always hanging out and having fun. She always makes As. Her husband has another teenager from a different spouse who studies like crazy but has a hard time making Bs and Cs. They both seem equally intelligent, but, I think, the one who makes better grades has mastered the metacognitive strategies that makes her a more effective student.
Andres
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2319] Re: Critical Thinkingand LearnerLeadership
From: Cynthia Peters cynthia_peters at worlded.org
Date: Wed Jul 16 12:12:04 EDT 2008
There have already been great responses to the excellent question David
raised. I have one more thing to add, which also maybe brings us full
circle in this discussion of critical thinking — and that is, our own
critical thinking — which of course is a key element to our ability to
"teach" (or inspire/encourage/foster) critical thinking.
If, as a critically engaged teacher, we have students who organize
together and make the case that they should use textbooks, I think the
most important thing to do at that time is engage with the students on
what that means, why they want them, how they (along with you) will
evaluate how effective they are, etc.
It would be a great time to discuss goals, to think about past
experiences with text books (or lack thereof), to process whatever comes
up around all that — including for you, the teacher.
The point is to not respond to any situation in a knee-jerk way. If we
can avoid clamping our minds down and clamping down others' minds, we
can all usually grow. We have to notice what makes our minds shut down.
I remember once in one of my classes, everyone was talking about the
rash of inner-city murders in Boston. A lot of the students had friends,
brothers, nephews who had been murdered. I remember at one point
shutting down the conversation and moving everyone to the next algebra
problem. I hope I wasn't rude, but I know I was driven by a sort of fear
that unfolded something like this: I don't know how to handle this. This
is overwhelming. What can I do? I can't do anything. Oh right, I can
teach algebra. Everyone, please open your books to page such and such.
Maybe I was groping for feeling some power in that moment. Maybe I was
retreating to the safety of algebra where murders don't happen. Maybe it's
not even so bad that we all got to retreat to that place for that
moment.
Another time (which I wrote about in the women and literacy issue of
The Change Agent) one of my students said that if his son were gay, he
would kill him. Talk about wanting to change the subject! Talk about
wanting to use my authority as a teacher to shut him down somehow! But
for some reason, in that moment, I was able to let his comment take up
room. Which enabled others to respond, which enabled us to have an
incredibly productive conversation about sexuality and family and love.
If student leadership takes the class in a direction you don't agree
with, my feeling is the most important thing is to respond as a critical
thinker. If, in the end, your response is that you can't go in the
direction that the students are trying to take, that's okay. You've
modeled critical thinking in the process. You've shown that you're
willing to think hard, to listen respectfully, and to disagree if you
feel it's right to do so. You can also help students think of another
way to get their needs met if you find you can't meet that need in the
classroom.
Cynthia
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2320] Re: Critical Thinkingand LearnerLeadership
From: Jac-Lynn Stark jaclynn10 at yahoo.com
Date: Wed Jul 16 12:36:12 EDT 2008
I've had very similar experiences to Cynthia's where
students were talking about violence and murders in
their community and I became concerned that I wouldn't
be able to handle what might come up in the
conversation. But I have found that when I let the
conversation go in the direction that the students
needed to go, regardless of my initial discomfort with
the topic, that students were definitely thinking
critically about concerns that mattered to them. I
think this highlights the need for curriculum to
include topics that are important to students in
order to make best use of students' natural tendencies
to think critically.
Jac-Lynn Stark
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2326] Re: Critical Thinking andLearnerLeadership
From: Andrea Wilder andreawilder at comcast.net
Date: Wed Jul 16 16:52:46 EDT 2008
Hi Catherine,
Thank you very much for your full example and explanation.
What I had in mind was some examples from your classroom or any
teacher's classroom--empirical descriptions which would give me a
clearer idea of what is being discussed.
If anyone has that, I would appreciate it.
However, what I have gotten in your extended discussion is a
fascinating reflection on learning.
Thanks!
Andrea
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2330] Re: Critical Thinking andLearnerLeadership
From: Bonnie Odiorne bonniesophia at sbcglobal.net
Date: Wed Jul 16 21:18:45 EDT 2008
Andrea,
I was tutoring an English 102 student, composition and literature. She is someone who must be learning disabled in some way because her spelling is erratic (she has L1 interference but speaks perfect English, has lived here in the US for many years.) Her reading comprehension was always on the literal level, and she was trying to understand the concept of metaphor in Hemingway's "The Hills are like Elephants." I made her slow down, read attentively, and notice the comparisons and how they changed throughout the story. All of a sudden she said, "You mean....?" and then she took the opposite tack, and started comparing everything to everything and completely going wild, to the point of misinterpretation. But she got it. Somehow she knew she'd gotten to some kind of different level, and it was like falling in love, a kind of infatuation with language that was a joy to see.
Is this more what you were looking for?
Or, in an ESOL workforce program at a factory, I was teaching a group of men "going to". Of course, I was in my perfect pronunciation mode. Then I inadvertently said "What are you gonna do after work?" Of course, that's what they would have heard among their fellow workers, so they were able to make the connection, and the light went off.
Best of luck with your qyeries. It was fun remembering these times.
Bonnie Odiorne, (now at) Post University, Waterbury CT
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2332] Re: Critical ThinkingandLearnerLeadership
From: Catherine B. King cb.king at verizon.net
Date: Thu Jul 17 09:20:35 EDT 2008
Hello Bonnie and Andrea:
The idea of critical thinking holds at least three aspects of thought processes: First, a fullness of meaning-understanding; then, second, marshaling adequate, relevant, appropriate meaning that can then end in, third, a critical judgment--yes or no.
For a critical thinker, the last two are dependent on the meaning development in the first--because we cannot be critical unless we have a vast range of prior understanding to be critical about.
Excellent examples--the direct insight is the "tipping point" that occurs between (1) the prior wonder/question for meaning and (2) the flow of meaning that is our under-standing. The reflective insight occurs when we marshal meaningful evidence towards making a critical judgment.
In your example of the ESL student learning about metaphor, she had already had the direct insight--then she was seeking a reflective insight: "Do you mean?" in order to get your affirmation and make her judgment for truth: yes or no. Once that judgment is made, based on a set of direct insights, then she has "owned" the meaning and can now relate that understanding/judgment to many other things--apparently in her zeal, less critically than you would like her to--but so what. She was exploring her own intellectual capacities with apparent joy. The critical judgment can come later after she has experienced that joy of learning. And once she can develop her own evidence of how metaphor works, she won't need you anymore to affirm her own affirmation.
Catherine
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2331] Conflict resolution, critical thinking and learner leadership skills
From: David J. Rosen djrosen at comcast.net
Date: Thu Jul 17 07:01:50 EDT 2008
PD Colleagues,
Conflict is an area where learner leadership and critical thinking can flourish (or flounder) .Negotiation skills such as listening to and accurately describing others' points of view, finding win-win or good compromise solutions, sorting out long-term goals from short-term objectives, identifying shared goals and objectives, separating out activities and strategies from goals and objectives (in order to suggest new strategies and activities that may help those in conflict to reach common goals) and other conflict negotiation skills can be identified and learned.
Negotiation may be needed in the example I gave earlier, where a group of students and a teacher are in conflict about the way the class should be taught. The teacher and students may have common goals and objectives, but may differ on the strategies (textbook and grammar lessons vs language learning games and problem posing) for getting there. Compromise may be needed by the teacher and the students. As part of the negotiation, the teacher may agree to use a textbook for some things, and the students may agree to try new ways of learning that they have not experienced before but that may be beneficial in achieving their goals and objectives. In such a negotiation, leadership is needed by many people, not just one learner leader and one teacher, and if a good solution is worked out in the classroom, everyone has the opportunity to learn from the negotiation process some new skills that may be useful in other parts of their lives.
Some of the violence in neighborhoods in my community -- and others -- results from young people who do not have good negotiation skills. Sometimes teachers see this played out in their classes, increasingly now because more young school dropouts are enrolling in adult education programs.
For the success of the class and, more important, for the success of the students, some would argue that conflict resolution skills should be taught in adult education. Do you agree? Do you you teach conflict resolution skills in your classes? If you provide professional development, do you offer workshops, courses or study circles in conflict resolution skills? Do you think this is an area that offers good opportunities for learner leadership and critical thinking skills?
David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net
