I would proffer that critical thinking is not so much a skill as it is an attitude; at least it starts there. 
Because critical thinking exposes oneself to the possibility of being shown that he is wrong, it is more about being open to ambiguity and change. These are not skills per se; it is really about overcoming the will. Montaigne's essays come to mind as exemplars of critical examinations about how one initially thinks the world and oneself "is", and after honest reflection and observation, revising one's opinion's about things. Critical thinking is concerned with growth and change and these always carry risk. A willingness to accept risk is paramount.  
 
Any attempt to “teach critical thinking” will be lost on those who are not ready to accept its consequences. 
I have never heard a teacher say, "today we are going to learn about critical thinking." 
Kearney


----- Original Message ----
From: Janet Isserlis <Janet_Isserlis at brown.edu>
To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 8:31:03 AM
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2243] Re: What do we mean bystudentinvolvement and critical thinking?

I think we're also losing (or maybe teasing apart?) some of the finer distinctions between critical thinking and persuasive arguing.

Sometimes saying it again, saying it more loudly may sway a listener.  But it's easy to be loud, and even sequential , and yet still not think critically.

Think of some politician whose views you don't share.  S/he may be clear, have a beginning, middle and end of her/his oration, and yet, at the end of the day, hasn't problematized anything, hasn't asked him/herself to think about something differently and/or imagine different outcomes and certainly hasn't moved his/her audience beyond the thing they were thinking about the candidate or the issue before they came to the rally, the speech, the demonstration.

In other words, it feels like some of this thread is parsing out the things people need to be able to do to articulate ideas, but we're not (entirely) quite digging into what has to happen to think critically.

Maybe it's a continuum of sorts — to engage in a project, we analyze what we'll do, what the goals are, what the outcomes might be, etc.  But to then push ourselves a bit more critically, we might ask why the project is important, who gains or loses / in whose interest are we undertaking the project...?

It is fascinating.

Janet


      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20080710/f3f74fbd/attachment.html