By The SoTL Blog Facilitators
The Centre offers several academic writing and communication courses where critical thinking (CT) is an important facet. Not only is CT a skill to be developed among our students, it is also a subject of research inquiry for some of our colleagues at CELC (see Blog Post by Namala, Laetitia, and Mark here; or paper by Mark). There are several reasons for examining CT in academic discourse, such as to gauge students’ ability to analyze information, or to determine students’ writing proficiency. Other studies that focus on the development of academic discourse have also reported CT as an important variable for online and cooperative learning (see Ebadi & Rahimi, 2018), as well as for validity of writing assessment (see Liu & Stapleton, 2018)
In other higher education settings, CT is also an integral component in a classroom setting, especially in demonstrating use of knowledge in meaningful ways. This can be seen in the video below, where Professor Bidisha Biswas briefly discusses the relevance of CT in the classroom setting.
Aside from the reasons mentioned above, are there other crucial points for CT to be an educational objective in academic writing or communication courses? Please share your thoughts!
References
Ebadi, S., & Rahimi, M. (2018). An exploration into the impact of WebQuest-based classroom on EFL learners’ critical thinking and academic writing skills: A mixed-methods study. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 31(5), 617-651.
Liu, F., & Stapleton, P. (2018). Connecting writing assessment critical thinking: An exploratory study of alternative rhetorical functions and objects of enquiry in writing prompts. Assessing Writing, 38, 10-20.
Critical thinking has had a bad name, due in part to the fact that it has so many definitions and means differently to different people; unless we agree on what it means, at least for the present purpose, it may be hard to speak productively of its value. If we adopt a broader view of critical thinking that extends beyond recognising premises, conclusions and logical fallacies to include ideological meanings and the recognition of strategies for concealing, exercising and perpetuating power, privilege and dominance (Brookfield, 2005), then critical thinking has a critical place in the development of university students who will soon become active participants of society. If I may further argue, critical thinking should be on every educator’s agenda, not just those who teach critical thinking courses. If we accept that the goals of a university education extend beyond preparation for industry to include helping students grow into authenticity, by which we mean helping students understand themselves as members of a wider social community towards which they feel a responsibility (Kreber, 2013), then critical thinking should not be reduced to a skill or competence to be practised in the critical thinking classroom but an opportunity for practising social justice and living a fully human and dignified life. ~Jonathan Tang
References
Brookfield, S. (2005). The power of critical theory for adult learning and teaching. Open University Press.
Kreber, C. (2013). The transformative potential of the scholarship of teaching. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 5-18.