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Discussion of Student Involvement and Critical Thinking in Adult Literacy
- Hosted by the Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List[[1]]
Announcement
July 7-14, 2008
What do you do in your teaching that empowers students? Why do you do that? Why does it matter?
The Adult Literacy Professional Development List hosted a guest discussion of Student Involvement and Critical Thinking in Adult Literacy. Guests Cynthia Peters, Editor of The Change Agent, and Marty Finsterbusch, Executive Director of VALUE, discussed issues, strategies, and resources for instruction and staff development with subscribers.
This discussion was the first in a mini-series of guest discussions this summer and fall on Literacy for Social Change.
Full Summary
Understanding Critical Thinking
Many subscribers posted questions to begin the discussion. Subscribers explored what they mean by critical thinking and a little bit about what they mean by student involvement. From this discussion, it became apparent that critical thinking (CT) is more than logical analysis. They generated a rich list of defining phrases for critical thinking:
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Critical_Thinking:_Summary. These ideas sift out into four main categories:
- Cognitive: logical processes in problem solving and moving through higher-order thinking skills as in Bloom's taxonomy, including interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and related skills
- Disposition: traits of a "good" critical thinker
- "Critique": questioning underlying assumptions: the "what" and "why" of it
- Purpose
- a. Develop agency: the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power : operation (Merriam-Webster)
- b. Create and maintain a healthy democracy
-- and can be compared to definitions from research and literature that also embody these aspects subscribers discussed. See the Student Involvement and Critical Thinking Discussion Terms for comparison terms.
Areas that Prompt Critical Thinking
Subscribers discussed areas for teaching and learning to prompt critical thinking:
- Health literacy
- Integrating technology
- Project-based learning
- ESL instruction
- Learner leadership, agency, and social activism
Subscribers shared several instructional ideas and questions to prompt CT in each of those areas.
Student Involvement
Question: What do we mean by student involvement? Where does critical thinking come in?
Students become "involved" when instructors involve them early, such as
deciding how they want to be involved, whether they want to pursue a
project (meaningful to and chosen by them) and their roles in that.
Subscribers requested to open the discussion floor to critical
literacies as this may prompt more instructional strategy-sharing and
generate ideas. We touched on what CT means for professional development
and have yet to hear a wide range of views.
Discussion Summaries
Summary-by-Theme
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