Strategies for Designing Critical Thinking Tasks

Strategies for Designing Critical Thinking Tasks
(Sources: Bean, Engaging Ideas and Mazur Group's Project Galileo)

Think of tasks based on a problem or question addressed in the reading. Assign an exploratory writing task or a collaborative group task to arouse interest and thought BEFORE reading.

EXAMPLE to introduce Plato's Crito [Philosophy or Literature]

Socrates has been sentenced to death and awaits his execution. The state, perhaps embarrassed by its decision to kill Socrates, has made it easy for him to escape from prison. In the Crito dialogue, Socrates's friend Crito urges Socrates to escape and go into exile. Socrates argues that his right action is to stay in prison and accept execution. Try to predict the arguments that both Crito and Socrates will make. Give at least three good reasons for escaping and three good reasons for staying and dying. [Bean, Engaging Ideas, p. 140]

Think of tasks that would let students link concepts in your course to their personal experience or prior knowledge.

EXAMPLE [Mathematics]

Think of examples out of your own experience to illustrate the uses of vector algebra. You might consider experiences such as swimming in a river with a steady current, walking across the deck of a moving boat, crossing the wake while water-skiing, cutting diagonally across a vacant lot while friends walk around the lot, watching a car try to beat a train to a railroad crossing. Use one of these experiences--or another of your own--to explain to a friend what vector algebra is all about. Use both words and diagrams. [Bean, Engaging Ideas, p. 123]

Ask students to teach difficult concepts to a new learner.

EXAMPLE [Linguistics]

Explain to a native speaker of Japanese when English speakers use the articles a, an, and the in front of a noun and when they do not. Consider statements such as these: Here is a cookie. Here is the cookie. Where are the cookies? I think I smell cookies. I like cookies. He brought the cookies. [Bean, Engaging Ideas, p. 56]

Think of controversial theses in your field that students can support or challenge.

EXAMPLES

* Global warming is/is not a significant environmental threat at this time.

* Baccalaureate programs in engineering [or another field] should/should not be extended to five years.

* The eighty-eight-year-old stroke victim described in the case study should/should not be informed of her daughter's terminal cancer.

Give students raw data (such as lists, graphs, tables, or photographs) and ask them to respond to the data. This can set up discussion and prepare them for new information.

EXAMPLE [Environmental Studies]

Study the following table, then indentify any data that surprise you, and write about why you would imagine that the statistics would be different:

CONTENTS OF LANDFILLS IN THIS COUNTRY:

Plastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18%
Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47%
Metal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8%
Leaves, wood, and other organic. . 20%
Other (glass, rubber, petroleum) . . . 7%

(Source: Chris Thaiss, The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing across the Curriculum, 16)

Develop cases by writing scenarios that place students in realistic situations relevant to your discipline, where they must reach a decision to resolve a conflict.

EXAMPLE [History]

Historian Donald Holsinger (Seattle Pacific University) teaches students historigraphic methods by confronting them with primary documents that make radically different interpretations of the same event; e.g., two accounts of a violent encounter on the Congo River in the 19th century between an African party and one led by the American writer-adventurer Henry Stanley. Before they read the accounts, he asks students to assume the role of journalists attempting to sift the truth from these differing versions. Each student writes an "objective" account and these accounts are then compared and discussed in class--not to reach closure onthis instance but push students to invent methods of reading and using such evidence. (Source: Chris Thaiss, The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing across the Curriculum, 22)

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