Teaching Critical Thinking

Being the teacher or professor whose students consistently score high on standardized tests is an honor for some instructors. These teachers successfully transfer knowledge and test-taking skills to their students to ensure their success on the end-of-semester test. But there exists a completely different realm of teaching, which is teaching critical thinking. The goal of showing students how to question, how to break down stereotypes, and how to analyze their own thinking is a difficult one to achieve. Here are some ideas on how to stimulate critical thinking with students of any age.
Teaching Critical Thinking Through Role Play
Role playing activities are some of the most effective ways to get students to question their assumptions about the world they live in. For older students and adults, one idea is to hold a mock business networking event, where students are assigned different cards representing their status in a pretend company. Students don’t know their own status but other students can see it on the card. Students with higher status cards will quickly realize their prestigious position, as will the students with very low status cards.
Immediately the students will grow uneasy about being treated differently than they would normally expect, and teachers can use this feeling as an opportunity to talk about status-based stereotypes, how they are formed and why we hold on to them as adults.
Teaching Critical Thinking Through Questioning Techniques
Ask the students why they think they are being taught Math, Biology, English, or any subject in the classroom. Encouraging students to ask “why?” about everything they learn will enable them to begin connecting their classroom experience to the real world. Why is Algebra important to know? Why is it used in business and finance? Why is this type of mathematics important for the regular population to understand?
Connect all of these questions to Math applications in the real world, and show them how being able to perform simple algebraic calculations can help them make smart purchasing decisions or get a better loan rate. Helping students understand the purpose behind the class content is a great way to nourish critical thinking skills.
Teaching Critical Thinking Through Debate
Show students how to debate effectively and without personal attacks. Debate is a healthy way to get students to consider other perspectives on a subject and come up with creative ways to justify their own arguments. Sometimes, students run out of logical arguments and end up changing their perspectives entirely. Other times, students end a debate feeling empowered because they have increased their knowledge about a particular subject. Debating also allows students to learn from each other, which can also break down any incorrect assumptions they might have made about classmates they do not know well.
Many instructors consider teaching critical thinking a risky activity since it can often bring out emotions among students, especially in culturally diverse classrooms. By approaching the concept delicately at first with lighthearted classroom activities on non-controversial subjects, many instructors soon find their students willing and curious to understand more about the people, and the world, around them, and this can be more rewarding than the results of any standardized test.
These are only a few suggested techniques to begin nurturing critical thinking in the classroom. There are vast online resources available, including the Foundation for Critical Thinking, that provide ideas and discussion on the subject. Most techniques can be adapted for use with any age group and with any subject of study, so don’t be afraid to experiment with any kind of class composition.

essay prices