We often say to one another, ‘That’s a good question,’ by which we usually mean, ‘I don’t know the answer’ or ‘I had not yet thought to ask that but it seems worth asking.’
We can begin to define a good question by taking a look at its opposite. A question can be ‘bad’ for a number of reasons. A question is only a strategy (for inquiry) and must therefore have a purpose or intention if we want to evaluate its quality.
So most broadly, a question could be said to be ‘bad’ if it either doesn’t have a purpose or intention or doesn’t accomplish that goal or intention (while also failing to cause some other effect that was unintended but still somehow positive).
A bad question can be said to be so if it’s irrelevant, imprecise, or uses unclear language.
A bad question will obscure rather than reveal what a student knows now.
Further, a bad question will deter rather than encourage–or allow and promote–a student to create new knowledge.
A question might be thought of as bad if it, used in formative assessment, yields no useable (formal or informal) data that a teacher can use to revise planned instruction.
Thus asked, a bad question stops both the teacher and student cold with no clear and practical path forward.
A bad question intimidates, confuses (though not all confusion is bad), or somehow causes a jarring emotion that makes the students ability to use their cortex as effectively as they would in a calmer state.
It could be based on faulty premises, it could be loaded with cognitive biases, logical fallacies, or other irrational patterns of thinking.
It could be outside of the Zone of Proximal Development for the person it’s asked to (i.e., too easy or too difficult).
It may not be too difficult (in terms of content knowledge) but its language or syntax could be unnecessarily complex. The result here is that the student gets the question ‘wrong’ even though the ‘knew the content.’
As we’ve clarified, a question is simply a strategy for learning. A tool. You might, then, think of a ‘bad question’ like a ‘bad tool’: it simply doesn’t do what it’s intended to do.
In education, this usually means that it fails to facilitate/promote learning in the short-term and/or long-term for the student.
A good question, of course, is different. While (mostly) ignoring the nuance of the concept of quality, there are some things we might consider generally qualify a question as good (note the purposely vague language–some things…might consider…generally qualify).
A good question–on a test, for example–will be efficient and precise relative to its purpose. If a specific academic standard the teacher wants to assess the student’s mastery of, the question will have to be written in a way that does exactly that: assesses their mastery of exactly that standard.
As we’ve discussed, it will not have ‘fat’–unnecessary words, overly complex vocabulary, or require other (unnecessary, unrelated, or still unlearned) knowledge or skills. Certainly, a question can have such language and require knowledge or skills unrelated to the specific standard being assessed provided that the teacher understands this–and thus understands that the student may get the question ‘wrong’ while potentially still mastering the standard.
See? It’s complicated.
Traditional education has long held that we should help students learn and they can best prove they’re learning by answering questions accurately. But answering questions accurately can’t possibly be the goal of education, only a strategy itself in pursuit of a larger goal.
The simplest criteria to evaluate the quality of a question, then, might be this: a good question helps students learn and learn how to learn in a sustainable, inquiry-based, student-led way. In its very best carnations, a bad question centers itself as a kind of academic bar for the student to leap over to prove themselves.
At its worst, a bad question halts the process of learning entirely through confusion, imprecision, and discouragement, misleading both the teacher and student as they make their way through the learning process. (See also What Is The Cognitive Load Theory?)
12 Common Reasons Students Don’t Read & What You Can Do About It
by Terry Heick
Why don’t students read more?
Digital distractions? No books at home? Too much testing? Kim Kardashian? It depends on the student. It depends on illiteracy vs aliteracy. It depends on how you define reading (does reading long-winded character dialogues in Square Enix games count?) So below, I’ve gathered some of the most common reasons students don’t read and provided some ways you can begin to address that issue.
12 Common Reasons Students Don’t Read & What You Can Do About It
1. They haven’t found the right book or type of book.
How do you feel when your principal drops a book in your lap–something well-intentioned but not even a little naturally interesting to you? Do you hate to read because you don’t want to read it?
Possible solutions: I tell my students that when I walk into a bookstore of 10,000 books, 9200 of them don’t appeal to me. The upside? That means there are 800 books I’m dying to read. No one hates to read. Some of us are just pickier readers than others. We’ve got a collection of books for students who think they don’t like reading, too.
Possible solutions: ‘Market’ reading to them. Take pictures of them reading. Start a ‘Caught Reading’ class instagram feed or #caughtreading hashtag (send it to me and I’ll tweet it). Treat it with the same creativity and passion that marketing agencies successfully market billion-dollar companies.
3. They need specific reading strategies they can self-select from based on context.
Possible solutions: Identify their strengths and areas for growth as a reader, help them self-assess in the same way, then work together with them and their parents to create a set of 4-6 reading strategies from the list above (or other) for them to use flexibly depending on what they’re reading.
4. Reading can be intimidating.
Reading is fun–until it isn’t. Do I understand it? What will be on the test? Am I at grade level? Above? Below? What if I have to read out loud?
Possible solutions: Don’t make them read out loud unless what you’re wanting to assess is oral fluency! Don’t put them on the spot. Don’t ask comprehension questions out loud. Don’t always insist that they ‘read on grade level’ (Feel like reading Shakespeare after a long day, or would you rather go home and plop on the couch and watch ‘Bar Rescue’?)
5. The reading space or ‘vibe’ isn’t right.
Too noisy. Too quiet. Too many distractions. Too warm, too cold–we all have circumstances we like to read in. I can’t read if it’s not completely quiet–anyone talking and I’m done.
Possible solutions: Allow students to use white noise apps. Put white noise on in the classroom (they’ll get used to it). Create reading spaces in your classroom. Ask your librarian/media specialist if they have any ideas. Turn the lights down. Buy bean bags–even for high school students!
6. They need a reason to read.
And you assigning it isn’t enough.
Possible solutions: Make reading social. The process, the reflections, and the outcomes. Help them see the value of both the process of reading (critical thinking), and the outcomes of reading (knowledge). Help them see reading as part of the relationship between the life they have and the life they want to have.
7. They have too much else to do.
It’s hard to read if you have a million things to do. Who wants to “enjoy a good book” when you’ve got 20 pages of homework to do?
Possible solutions: Help them create a personalized reading schedule that works for them based on their life.
8. It’s not a habit.
Reading is a muscle. The more they read, the more they’ll want to read.
Possible solutions: They need an at-home library of ‘stuff’ they want to read. Or the Epic reading app.
9. They have problems with phonemic awareness.
If they struggle with phonemic awareness, reading is going to be like climbing a mountain.
Limited sight word vocabulary means slow reading speed, which reduces comprehension and makes reading not fun.
Possible solutions: Use Knowji. Have fun with Frayer Models. Play Vocab games. But more than anything else, help them build a sense of momentum as readers. Encountering words in context is better than on an index card for long-term retention.
11. They struggle with their own identity as a ‘reader.’
These students see reading as something that you do at school, rather than an opportunity to make meaning, be entertained, be exposed to new ideas, make friends, etc. Someone that engineers is called an engineer. Someone that writes is a writer. Someone that reads? That’s called a student.
12. They need to know all of the incredible things about reading–topics, knowledge, genres, authors, etc.
Possible Solutions: So show them.
12 Common Reasons Students Don’t Read & What You Can Do About It; image attribution flickr user eugenekim
You care but it’s a tired cliche–limps out of your mouth, barely alive: “How was school?”
You might use a slight variation like, “What’d you learn in school today?” but in a single sentence, all that is wrong with ‘school.’
First, the detachment–you literally have no idea what they’re learning or why. (You leave that up to school because that’s what school’s for, right?) This means you know very little about what your children are coming to understand about the world, only able to speak about it in vague terms of content areas (e.g., math, history).
Then, there’s the implication–they don’t talk about the way that they’ve been moved or impressed upon or changed but in the rarest cases; you have to drag it out of them.
And there’s also the matter of form–you ask them as if a developing learner will be able to articulate the nuance of their own learning to make for a conversation that will do anything but make it seem like they learned nothing at all. So what to do?
Well, that idea of form has some legs, doesn’t it? Show me. Demonstrate it. Let’s look at some artifacts that show thought and affection. Let’s see the impact of your work and effort. That’d actually make a pretty good post in itself. But let’s stick to the old questions-on-the-car-ride-home or over-the-dinner-table format.
What are some alternatives to “What’d you learn at school today?” Here are a few ideas.
25 Alternatives To “What’d You Learn In School Today?”
When did you notice yourself most interested and curious today?
Was there a time today when you were especially confused? How did you respond?
What is one thing that was hard to believe? Not confusing, but surprising?
If you were more ____ today, how would it have impacted the day?
When were you most creative today?
Tell me one fun thing you learned, one useful thing you learned, and one extraordinary thing you learned.
What does a successful day at school look like to you? Feel like?
What sort of different reasons do your friends go to school?
Who worked harder today, the teacher or the students?
How else could you have learned what the teacher taught?
How do your teachers show they care?
What do you know, and how do you know it?
What would you like to know more about?
What is the most important thing you learned today? The least?
Tell me one chance you took today, and how it ended up.
What is one thing you learned from a book?
What is one thing you learned from a friend?
What is one thing you learned from a teacher?
What still confuses you?
What is something you said or heard that stuck with you for some reason?
Based on what you learned today in ______ class, what do you think you’ll learn tomorrow?
Tell me three facts, two opinions, and one idea you heard today.
What should you do with what you’ve learned?
When did you surprise yourself today?
What’s stopping you from being an (even more) amazing learner?
More ‘Questions To Ask Students After School’: Alternatives To “How was school?”
A few readers chimed in with their own alternatives.
Drew Perkins: “What great questions did you ask today?”
Heather Braum: “What did you discover?”
Heather Braum: “What surprised you?”
Heather Braum: “Where did you travel?”
Eoin Linehan: “Why are you learning that?”
Eoin Linehan: “How do you know you are learning?”
Kristine Kirkaldy: “What did you learn/do that made you smile today?
Mrs. Moore: “What was your favorite part of school today?”
Amanda Couch: “Tell me your favorite moment at school today.”
Deb Gaskin: “If you had been responsible for the lesson, what would you have emphasized or done differently? Why?”
Robin Smith: “What was your “good” for today? What was your ‘bad’?”
Laura Cobb: “What did you improve today?”
Laura Cobb: “What challenged your thinking?”
Laura Cobb: “How did you contribute to other students’ learning?”
Jackie Gerstein: “What touched your heart today?”
Jackie Gerstein: “Did you experience anything at school that motivates you to make a difference in the world?”
Jackie Gerstein: “Did you experience any “aha’s” today – understanding or seeing something different than you previously had?”
Jackie Gerstein: “Did you experience any moments of full enjoyment in learning today? If so, when and how?”
Jackie Gerstein: “Did you invent or create anything new today?”
In his essay Two Minds, Wendell Berry, unsurprisingly enough, offers up two tones of thought produced by two kinds of ‘mind’—Rational, and Sympathetic.
One is driven by logic, deduction, data, and measurement, the other by affection and other wasteful abstractions—instinct, reverence, joy, and faith. These minds struggle for to manifest in our collective behavior. That is, they both seek to control our actions–what we say and do.
Berry explains their distinctions:
“The Rational Mind of is motivated by the fear of being misled, of being wrong. Its purpose is to exclude everything that cannot empirically or experimentally be proven by fact.
The Sympathetic Mind is motivated by fear of error of a very different kind: the error of carelessness, of being unloving. Its purpose is to be considerate of whatever is present, to leave nothing out.”
It’s no surprise that these two minds exist in education as well. These are instincts you’ve likely had as an educator—a teacher, administrator, developer, or designer. Probably as a parent too if you have children. The need to be rational and deductive and strategic colliding with the enormous complexity and scale of the circumstances you face.
You’re told to be data-based—that is, to design learning experience with ‘strategies’ that are suggested by some measurement you’ve taken.
You might plan lessons and units by asking yourself, why this instructional strategy? Why this assessment form? Why group at this point in the lesson rather than that point? Why this standard with this novel?
This is your Rational Mind.
But your Rational Mind is servant to another kind of thinking—in fact, is roused and spurred by a kind of insecurity that realizes that unmistakable importance and coinciding impossibility of what you’ve made it your life’s work to do: Teach dozens and dozens of other human beings what they need to know to about (insert your content area here).
The Rational Mind (the same mind that drives policies and standards) wants to parse that task–to respond with logic. Preemptively, strategically, and analytically.
So rather than worry that this student can’t read and this student is a brilliant artist ready for a professional mentor to foster his gift and this student needs both a hug and self-knowledge more than content knowledge, you respond analytically. Your Rational Mind takes over.
You stare at standards and bar graphs and skim books by Marzano and Hattie that list the instructional strategies that their Rational Minds say will work. You listen to your colleagues, your instructional coach, and anyone else willing to offer advice. Then you teach, assess, reteach, re-assess, remediate, extend, and move on.
You’re keenly aware, though, of the tearing that has taken place by acting with logic. You’ve separated a learner from their very human circumstances—their interests, past experience, insecurities, and affections.
Academic content from their native schema.
Proficiency from curiosity.
Scientific concepts from the application of science.
Reading level from the love of reading.
The Rational Mind necessarily excludes curiosity, love, affection, and joy because they are inherently irrational. We live in an age of information that itself proceeds an Age of Enlightenment. By design, data and rationality can’t tolerate abstraction and humanity or they’d shake themselves apart in confusion.
But this requires an adjustment on our part. We have to stop being obstinate to what we increasingly see in our students. Apathy. Distraction. Superficiality.
As an industry, we are currently not just driven but dangerously preoccupied with research and science and that which is measurable and observable, having ridden our profession of superstitions like ‘patience,’ ‘self-knowledge,’ and ‘community.’
We leave it up to teachers to buffer the collision between students from policies, or sterile academic standards with communities that need more than proficiency from students. But if we are “considerate of whatever is present” and want to “to leave nothing out,” we can now see that pure Rationality isn’t fully a ‘mind,’ but an instinctive reaction to the scale of our task.
A challenge for you and I then may be to elevate teaching beyond singularities through a kind of marriage–joining our Rational and Sympathetic mind into something inclusive and awake and whole.
Always insisting, no matter what, that we don’t resort to Rationality or even Sympathy, but rather act as ‘whole teachers’ in every single one of our interactions with and analyses of students, and in doing so model for them the significant practice of being human.
Image attribution flickr user NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Becoming A “Whole Teacher”
Quality—you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is. But that’s self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There’s nothing to talk about. But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist at all. But for all practical purposes, it really does exist.
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, author Robert Pirsig talks about the evasive idea of quality. This concept—and the tangent “Church of Reason”–heckles him throughout the book, notably as a teacher when he’s trying to explain to his students what quality writing looks like.
After some struggling– internally and with students–he throws out letter grades altogether in hopes that students will stop looking for the reward, and start looking for ‘quality.’ This, of course, doesn’t turn out the way he hoped it’d might; the students revolt, which only takes him further from his goal.
So what does quality have to do with learning? Quite a bit, it turns out.
A Shared Sense Of What’s Possible
Quality is an abstraction–it has something to do with the tension between a thing and an ideal thing. A carrot and an ideal carrot. A speech and an ideal speech. The way you want the lesson to go, and the way it actually goes. We have a lot of synonyms for this idea, ‘good’ being one of the more common.
For quality to exist–for something to be ‘good’–there has to be some shared sense of what’s possible, and some tendency for variation–inconsistency. For example, if we think there’s no hope for something to be better, it’s useless to call it bad or good. It is what it is. We rarely call walking good or bad. We just walk. Singing, on the other hand, can definitely be good or bad–that is have or lack quality. We know this because we’ve heard good singing before, and we know what’s possible.
Further, it’s difficult for there to be a quality sunrise or a quality drop of water because most sunrises and most drops of water are very similar. On the other hand, a ‘quality’ cheeseburger or performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony makes more sense because we A) have had a good cheeseburger before and know what’s possible, and B) can experience a vast difference between one cheeseburger and another.
Back to learning–if students could see quality—identify it, analyze it, understand its characteristics, and so on—imagine what that requires. They have to see all the way around a thing, compare it to what’s possible, and make an evaluation. Much of the friction between teachers and learners comes from a kind of scraping between students and the teachers trying to guide them towards quality.
The teachers, of course, are only trying to help students understand what quality is. We describe it, create rubrics for it, point it out, model it, and sing its praises, but more often than not, they don’t see it and we push it closer and closer to their noses and wait for the light to come on.
And when it doesn’t, we assume they either don’t care, or aren’t trying hard enough.
The Best
And so it goes with relative superlatives—good, better, and best. Students use these words without knowing their starting point–quality. It’s hard to know what quality is until they can think their way around a thing to begin with. And then further, to really internalize things, they have to see their quality. Quality for them based on what they see as possible.
To qualify something as good—or ‘best’—requires first that we can agree what that ‘thing’ is supposed to do, and then can discuss that thing in its native context. Consider something simple, like a lawnmower. It’s easy to determine the quality of a lawnmower because it’s clear what it’s supposed to do. It’s a tool that has some degrees of performance, but it’s mostly like an on/off switch. It either works or it doesn’t.
Other things, like government, art, technology, etc., are more complex. It’s not clear what quality looks like in legislation, abstract painting, or economic leadership. There is both nuance and subjectivity in these things that make evaluating quality far more complex. In these cases, students have to think ‘macro enough’ to see the ideal functions of a thing, and then decide if they’re working, which of course is impossible because no one can agree with which functions are ‘ideal’ and we’re right back at zero again. Like a circle.
Quality In Student Thinking
And so it goes with teaching and learning. There isn’t a clear and socially agreed-upon cause-effect relationship between teaching and the world. Quality teaching will yield quality learning that does this. It’s the same with the students themselves–in writing, in reading, and in thought, what does quality look like?
What causes it?
What are its characteristics?
And most importantly, what can we do to not only help students see it but develop eyes for it that refuse to close.
To be able to see the circles in everything, from their own sense of ethics to the way they structure paragraphs, design a project, study for exams, or solve problems in their own lives–and do so without using adultisms and external labels like ‘good job,’ and ‘excellent,’ and ‘A+’ and ‘you’re so smart!’
What can we do to nurture students that are willing to sit and dwell with the tension between possibility and reality, bending it all to their will moment by moment with affection and understanding?
As a culture, we have a thought crisis–namely, a harmful and enduring refusal and/or inability to think well and think critically.
This is just an opinion, but I hope not a radical one. To clarify why this crisis exists–or even why I believe it exists–would require a sweeping analysis of cultural, societal, political, and other anthropological terms beyond the scope of TeachThought.
For starters, skim through almost any social media ‘discussion’ about any culturally critical issue. If you disagree that such a crisis exists, the rest of this article will likely not be worth your time. If we can assume that statement to be at least partly true, though, we can see that as an industry, then we have a crisis in education that is both a cause and effect of the above.
Education both causes and is an effect of thought. Education and thought, at least conceptually, are as connected as the architecture of a building and the building itself.
In part, this ‘thought crisis’ is also a crisis in language and is related to a parallel crisis in affection. Connected are deficits in utility, knowledge, patience, place, and cultural memory. But for our purposes, let’s discuss a central crisis among the crises: A deficit in critical thinking.
This is, in part, an issue of thought subjects and thought quality: what we think about and how.
On the surface, education–as it is–is not about teaching thought but rather about content. This shouldn’t be controversial, really.
Education As It Is
Education is roughly arranged into content areas and stratified by age. On a wide view, the general structure can be thought of as a large grid: The columns are the content areas, and the rows are the ‘age.’ We could also consider it the reverse, and it wouldn’t change much.
Put briefly, the formal education system in the United States is designed for people to study (generally) four primary categories of knowledge (math, science, social studies, and language arts) for thirteen years.
These content areas tend to become more complex but are only intermittently specialized (‘science’ becoming ‘chemistry,’ for example, even though chemistry is still a science; for the record, I’m not sure why we don’t show at least a little vision and wed science and the humanities into ‘new content areas’ that aren’t content areas at all but realize that this is crazy talk to most and will save my breath).
The point is, education–as it is–is about content, and mastery of content is about points and grades that either does or does not result in certificates (e.g., diplomas) that allow increasingly specialized study (business, law, medicine, etc.) in post-secondary education (like college/university) for the purpose of ‘career prep’ (which, I’ve offered, should not be the purpose of school).
Three of the most visible components of most modern K-12 public education systems: teachers, content, and letter grades, with the two former components often merged (e.g., ‘math teacher’ or ‘art teacher.’) Also hugely visible education components: students, tests, computers, books, walls, desks, hallways, groups, bells, calendars, front-of-the-room chalkboards and whiteboards, etc.
The above is not a comprehensive analysis, and there are countless exceptions of learning approaches and forms, but they’re still exceptions. Indeed, this overview is not, as far as I can tell, misleading in its characterization of modern public learning forms and spaces.
And if the above is more or a less accurate thumbnail of how human beings learn in formal education, it should become at least somewhat clear that we have a problem.
A kind of deficit.
The McDonaldization of The Classroom
You can’t evaluate the quality of a ‘thing’ without knowing what the thing ought to do. This is simple for kitchen utensils and challenging for art and affection and people: To clarify an education and what it ‘should be’ is to impart what ideally is a very personal and ‘local’ philosophy on everyone else. This is because of the nature of standardization.
In 1993, George Ritzer wrote a book–which owes itself in large part to previous work by many, including Max Weber–called The McDonaldization of Society. The book is an exploration of the causes, effects, and nature standardization through the lens of the McDonald’s American restaurant chain.
McDonald’s is hardly the first business to leverage such standardization. In fact, Industrialism itself–the spine of 20th-century America–owes itself to the concept in many ways ushered into ‘popularity’ by Henry Ford. Whether or not you find a ‘problem’ with industrialism is first a philosophical concern.
George Ritzer has taken central elements of the work of Max Weber, expanded and updated them, and produced a critical analysis of the impact of social structural change on human interaction and identity. The central theme in Weber’s analysis of modern society was the process of Rationalization; a far-reaching process whereby traditional modes of thinking were being replaced by an ends/means analysis concerned with efficiency and formalized social control.
For Weber, the archetypical manifestation of this process was the Bureaucracy; a large, formal organization characterized by a hierarchical authority structure, well-established division of labor, written rules and regulations, impersonality and a concern for technical competence. Bureaucratic organizations not only represent the process of rationalization, the structure they impose on human interaction and thinking furthers the process, leading to an increasingly rationalized world.
The process affects all aspects of our everyday life. Ritzer suggests that in the later part of the Twentieth Century the socially structured form of the fast-food restaurant has become the organizational force representing and extending the process of rationalization further into the realm of everyday interaction and individual identity. McDonald’s serves as the case model of this process in the 1990’s.
In the book, Ritzer explains that one effect of endless rationality is irrationality: “Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. By that, I mean that they deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them.”
Which brings us back to education and our deficit in critical thinking.
Standardizing anything is a trade. I’ve talked about this dozens of times before–here for example. And here. And dozens of other posts and tweets and articles because, it seems to me, it represents one of the inherent flaws in our design of modern learning. In short, in education as it is, every single student regardless of background, ethnicity, gender, passion, family history, local needs, or familial expertise will study the same thing delivered in similar ways–very much like a kind of academic cafeteria.
The implied hope in a curriculum delivered to such students (i.e., all of them) in such a fashion (i.e., the ‘grid approach’ explained above) is that it will fit everyone’s needs. It is designed to be rational.
And the methods of delivery of such a curriculum (e.g., teachers, classrooms, books, apps, tests, etc.) are also designed to be rational. That is, both the curriculum (what is studied) and the learning and instructional design models (how it is being studied) are designed to be practical: testable, observable, and deliverable to every single student regardless of–well, anything. By design, public education is (intended to be) for all students everywhere, no matter what.
But what about thinking? Can critical thinking–wrought and wielded by the thinkers–coexist in a standardized learning environment designed to promote the broadest numbers of students to mastery of the most traditional academic content? Possibly–but that may not be the best way to ask the question.
Is education designed to promote affection, curiosity, inquiry, and critical thinking?
People race tractors and ride on hot air balloons, but that doesn’t mean either is entirely suited to the task. Outside of education, it is in the disparity of function and application that our amusement resides. But within education? Generation after generation of students suffers from the deficit.
“Critical thinking is among the first causes for change (personal and social) but is a pariah in schools –for no other reason than it conditions the mind to suspect the form and function of everything it sees, including your classroom and everything being taught in it. In critical thinking, the thinking is only a strategy to arrive at informed criticism, which is itself is a starting point for understanding one’s self and/or the world around you. While in function it can run parallel to the scientific method, science intends to arrive at an unbiased, neutral, and zero-human conclusion. In critical thinking, there is no conclusion; it is constant interaction with changing circumstances and new knowledge that allows for a broader vision which allows for new evidence that starts the process over again.”
And that’s getting us closer to our deficit of critical thinking culturally, which in part owes itself to a parallel deficit of critical thinking in education.
Whether or not we can ‘teach’ critical thinking is often argued, but that seems to be missing the point. Rather than ask if schools can teach critical thinking–or even if critical thinking can be taught–we might start by asking what we lose if we live in a world where it doesn’t happen.
While entirely new forms and methods and reasons to learn will likely eventually disrupt education as it is from the outside, if we’re feeling nostalgic with the old sturdy body of education, we can at least address that deficit of critical thinking by embedding into the architecture of education. This can be accomplished in any number of ways, but some fruit appears to be low-hanging.
1. Design curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking–curriculum that becomes catalyzed by sustained inquiry and critical thought. (Much like electricity.)
2. Create learning models that require critical thinking–learning models that cannot function if students (all students) don’t think critically. (Much like a rowboat where everyone has to row and stops if someone stops rowing; alternatively, break apart the boats completely so every student must row themselves.)
3. Create learning achievements, grades, certificates, etc. that all illuminate the process, sequence, patterns, genius, and outcomes of critical thinking.
4. Establish cultural practices where critical thinking is valued over popularity. (Democracy might benefit.)
5. Champion teachers as leaders in helping grow children that think for themselves by supporting teachers as professional designers of learning experiences and opportunities.
6. Promote an ongoing dialogue between schools, families, communities, organizations, higher education, members of the local economy, etc., about the necessity and nature of critical thought.
7. Create learning opportunities that benefit from the respective genius of each child, where that child’s gifts and affections are clear and undeniable especially to that student as they see themselves.
We can go on and on and I worry I’m moving too far away from the point: Schools as they are are not ‘designed for’ critical thinking and right now and as a culture (and planet) we are suffering from the ensuing deficit.
This implies we might focus less on the iterative improvement of education and more on education as it might be.
How can you tell if a student really understands something?
They learn early on to play the game—tell the teacher and/or the test what they ‘want to know,’ and even the best assessment leaves something on the table. (In truth, a big portion of the time students simply don’t know what they don’t know.)
The idea of understanding is, of course, at the heart of all learning, and solving it as a puzzle is one of the three pillars of formal learning environments and education.
1. What do they need to understand (standards)?
2. What (and how) do they currently understand (assessment)?
3. How can they best come to understand what they currently do not (planning learning experiences and instruction)?
But how do we know if they know it? And what is ‘it’?
Understanding As ‘It’
On the surface, there is trouble with the word ‘it.’ Sounds vague. Troublesome. Uncertain. But everyone somehow knows what it is.
‘It’ is essentially what is to be learned, and it can be a scary thing to both teachers and students. ‘It’ is everything, described with intimidating terms like objective, target, proficiency, test, exam, grade, fail, and succeed.
And in terms of content, ‘it’ could be almost anything: a fact, a discovery, a habit, skill, or general concept, from mathematical theory to a scientific process, the importance of a historical figure to an author’s purpose in a text.
So if a student gets it, beyond pure academic performance what might they be able to do? There are many existing taxonomies and characteristics, from Bloom’s to Understanding by Design’s 6 Facets of Understanding.
The following actions are set up as a linear taxonomy, from most basic to the most complex. The best part about it is its simplicity: Most of these actions can be performed simply in the classroom in minutes, and don’t require complex planning or an extended exam period.
By using a quick diagram, concept map, t-chart, conversation, picture, or short response in a journal, quick face-to-face collaboration, on an exit slip, or via digital/social media, understanding can be evaluated in minutes, helping to replace testing and consternation with a climate of assessment. It can be even be displayed on a class website or hung in the classroom to help guide self-directed learning, with students checking themselves for understanding.
How This Understanding Taxonomy Works
I’ll write more about this soon and put this into a more graphic form soon; both of these are critical in using it. (Update: I’m also creating a course for teachers to help the, use it.) For now, I’ll say that it can be used to guide planning, assessment, curriculum design, and self-directed learning. Or to develop critical thinking questions for any content area.
The ‘Heick’ learning taxonomy is meant to be simple, arranged as (mostly) isolated tasks that range in complexity from less to more. That said, students needn’t demonstrate the ‘highest’ levels of understanding–that misses the point. Any ability to complete these tasks is a demonstration of understanding. The greater number of tasks the student can complete the better, but all ‘boxes checked’ are evidence that the student ‘gets it.’
36 Thinking Strategies To Help Students Wrestle With Complexity
The Heick Learning Taxonomy
Domain 1: The Parts
Explain or describe it simply
Label its major and minor parts
Evaluate its most and least important characteristics
Deconstruct or ‘unbuild’ it efficiently
Give examples and non-examples
Separate it into categories, or as an item in broader categories
Example Topic
The Revolutionary War
Sample Prompts
Explain the Revolutionary War in simple terms (e.g., an inevitable rebellion that created a new nation).
Identify the major and minor ‘parts’ of the Revolutionary War (e.g., economics and propaganda, soldiers and tariffs).
Evaluate the Revolutionary War and identify its least and most important characteristics (e.g., caused and effects vs city names and minor skirmishes)
Create a diagram that embeds it in a self-selected context
Explain how it is and is not useful both practically and intellectually
Play with it casually
Leverage it both in parts and in whole
Revise it expertly, and explain the impact of any revisions
Domain 3: The Interdependence
Explain how it relates to similar and non-similar ideas
Direct others in using it
Explain it differently–and precisely–to both a novice and an expert
Explain exactly how and where others might misunderstand it
Compare it to other similar and non-similar ideas
Identify analogous but distinct ideas, concepts, or situations
Domain 4: The Function
Apply it in unfamiliar situations
Create accurate analogies to convey its function or meaning
Analyze the sweet spot of its utility
Repurpose it with creativity
Know when to use it
Plausibly theorize its origins
Domain 5: The Abstraction
Insightfully or artfully demonstrate its nuance
Criticize it in terms of what it might ‘miss’ or where it’s ‘dishonest’ or incomplete
Debate its ‘truths’ as a supporter or devil’s advocate
Explain its elegance or crudeness
Analyze its objectivity and subjectivity, and how the two relate
Design a sequel, extension, follow-up, or evolution of it
Domain 6: The Self
Self-direct future learning about the topic
Ask specific, insightful questions about it
Recall or narrate their own learning sequence or chronology (metacognition) in coming to know it
Is comfortable using it across diverse contexts and circumstances
Identify what they still don’t understand about it
Analyze changes in self-knowledge as a result of understanding
Advanced Understanding
Understanding by Design’s 6 facets of Understanding, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Marzano’s New Taxonomy were also referenced in the creation of this taxonomy; a learning taxonomy for understanding
We tend to teach reading in a very industrial way.
We focus on giving kids ‘tools’ and ‘strategies’ to ‘make’ sense of a text. To ‘take the text apart’. To look for the ‘author’s purpose’—to bounce back and forth between a main idea, and the details that ‘support’ the main idea, as if the reading is some kind of thing that students happen upon by chance while on some purely academic journey.
And we push the illusion of the ‘otherness’ of a text by promoting the lie that they simply need to decode this, recognize that, and analyze that and that and that, and they’ll be able to ‘read.’
While this can work well to emphasize the work that real literacy requires, there’s little wonder why students are increasingly seeking briefer, more visual, social, and dynamic media. Because not only are these media forms effortlessly entertaining, they rarely require meaningful investment of themselves.
And it is this kind of connection that makes reading–or any other media consumption for that matter–feel alive and vibrant and whole. When readers are younger, there is a natural ‘give’ between the reader and the text, their imaginations still raw and green and alive.
But as readers grow older, there is less give–and more need for texts to be contextualized differently.
There is a spirituality involved in reading (really) that is challenging to promote only in the classroom. (That is, not at home, at social or recreational events, but only at school, where it will always be a kind of naked.)
Cognitively, a student ‘makes sense’ of a text through a perfectly personal schema—that is, through the symbols and patterns and enthusiasm and suffering and meaning in their own lives. Students can’t simply be encouraged to ‘bring themselves’ and their own experiences to a text; they have to realize that any grasp of the text decays almost immediately if they don’t.
Without that inward, reflective pattern where students acknowledge the sheer craziness of reading–where they are asked to merge two realities (the text, and themselves)—then that process will always be industrial. Mechanical.
A matter of literacy and ‘career readiness.’
Other.
It’s interesting that we give students mechanical tools that, even used well, can break the text beyond recognition, then wonder why they don’t appreciate Shakespeare or Berry or Faulkner or Dickinson.
We try to divorce the reader from the reading.
The nuance and complexity of literature is its magic. But students dislike reading raised in data-loud, image-based, form-full, socialized and self-important circumstances aren’t accustomed to that kind of selfless—and terrifying–interaction.
The self-reflection true literacy requires is horrifying! To closely examine who we are and what we think we know by studying another parallel examination from another human being who put their thinking in the form of a novel, short story, poem, or essay! You’re not just ‘reading’ another person’s thoughts, but you’re pouring yourself into their marrow.
No wonder they skim.
Most readers are already working from a disadvantaged position, where they view themselves as not only distinct from the text (false), but somehow further along in time and priority, as if they are being brought to some text to see if it’s worth their time.
And so they sit with it only long enough to see if it entertains them, neglecting the most fundamental tenet of literacy: Interdependence.
The Irony Of Reading
In reading, you’re simply uncovering something you’ve always been a part of. Instincts you’ve always had. Circumstances you’ve long been afraid of. Events and ideas and insights you’ve struggled to put into words but have just found right there on the page.
Your brain can’t understand it any other way.
Compared to media experiences most modern students gravitate easily towards–Instagram, facebook, Epic Fail YouTube channels, video games—reading also lacks the immediate spectacle that can catalyze the experience. Something that lights them up inside at a basic knee-jerk level, and will keep them from having to go any further.
Reading isn’t a show. (Not at first anyhow.) It doesn’t exist to make them LOL. (Though it might.) But they often turn the page hoping to be passively entertained. Ironically then, reading isn’t ‘built’ for what we use it for in education. Reading is hugely personal but in education, we often focus on the mechanics instead of the people and the strategies instead of the living and breathing happening all around us.
Reading involves process and tools and strategies, but it isn’t any of those things.
The Ecology Of Reading
It’d be easy to blame the ecology of it all. To suggest that Huckleberry Finn was only interesting because Minecraft wasn’t around to compare it to. Or to blame social media for distracting everyone.
And this is all part of it. Their habits and access to complex texts and personal affinities matter. There is an ecology that schools and students and texts and literacy operate within–an interdependence–that is there whether we choose to honor it or not. A lot of this is much bigger than you and I as teachers.
But that doesn’t excuse us from our own failures in how we teach reading in schools. We give students processes for writing and tools for reading without stopping to humanize the whole effort. Mechanized literacy has all sorts of troubling implications.
You and I–we teach students to overvalue their own opinions when they’re still often baseless and uninformed, which is like teaching them to read without helping them to truly understand why they should read.
We fail to help them navigate the blessed, intimidating, awkward otherness of reading that makes it rise.
And so we lose the reader—the real person–in the process.
My wife is a schoolteacher, and recently I’ve been listening to her online meetings.
And there have been a lot of them. Yesterday, I was at a cafe sitting next to what seemed to be a group of teachers and they had a lot of ideas.
And a lot of enthusiasm. Over the low but constant noise of most cafes, some words and phrases were audible:
Data.
Goal.
Standards.
Vision.
Fidelity.
Roll out.
More about data.
Activity.
Track.
Something about dots and dot walls and data walls.
They talked about goals.
i
Groups and grouping.
Tracking.
Programs.
Data, again.
Fidelity, again.
More tracking (based on grouping and data).
The gist of it all was clear and I could hear the eagerness and buzz lifting up away from the table. It’s July and school is starting soon and there are things to do and teachers are clearly busy, busy, busy.
But it wasn’t just buzz. The was more to it. Something just beneath the surface.
Mindnumbing-ness
My wife has had 8-10 of these meetings since late last week—faculty trainings where she’s being trained on things she needs trained on and then faculty meetings to discuss the schedule for upcoming trainings.
It’s exhausting to hear but, with only a few exceptions here and there, it is all numbing. There is a kind of forced energy but the numb bit is both a cause and effect: another year, another series of sprints.
A few thoughts–
Teaching is a lot work. A lot.
This has always been true but, for many educators, it’s gone from exhausting to unsustainable.
All of the planning and energy busts are followed by something close to a slog or dredge, which itself is followed up by an annoyed kind of fatigue, and then finished as entirely depleted by the end of the school year.
Of course, this varies greatly from teacher to teacher. It depends on factors, including building and climate, mindset, relationships with parents, student engagement, and classroom management, the function of various standards in your teaching and curriculum, the quality of the PLCs—if they are used in your building—and so on.
So much goes into teaching, and so describe the profession as an exhausting slog that is barely endurable by the end of the year is a magnificent over-generalization and probably disillusioned.
The point here isn’t necessarily to mark the general satisfaction of teachers over the course of the school year, but rather to notice the passion and enthusiasm of many teachers in July and how it will, sadly, wain as the year progresses.
Policies vs Children
There is so much to do and plan and prepare and create spaces for that there is very little left for human conversations about the teacher and about the student. That’s the broadest lesson here, for me.
July energy is markedly different from the spring semester.
And this isn’t just a matter of energy being higher and lower. Rather, as the school year continues, there is a shift from vision and creativity and even a bit of enthusiasm, to a quieter and plainer sense of effort.
Take ‘July’ as a metaphor—a bridge month from the summer to the upcoming school year. (The idea of the teachers get the summer off is a dated one, but that’s another post entirely.)
The level of energy from teachers in July is often, and understandably, much higher than it is in late November, never mind March or April of the following year.
July is a beginning.
A Few Strategies For Sustaining Your Enthusiasm For Teaching During The School Year
1. Pace Yourself
Pacing, as an obvious solution here, requires the luxury of pacing, which many teachers don’t have.
The idea is that the energy levels that are both tempting and often necessary before the school year starts can often set schools up for failure because educators create these necessary, set of plans to try to meet student needs and start off with the best intentions simply.
2. Create Moments
Or recognize them, but whatever you do appreciate. Just as it can be difficult in life—but also rewarding—being present for the individual moments during a lesson, for a small group activity, or conversation with a student all gather to create a larger body of work called teaching.
2. Set Realistic Goals
Setting achievable goals helps maintain motivation and reduces burnout. Break the school year into manageable segments with specific, attainable objectives for each period.
Create a yearly plan with milestones and celebrate small victories along the way. This could include mastering a new teaching strategy, implementing a successful project, or simply staying on top of grading.
3.Prioritize Self-Care
This can be, just as a can be in your personal, but self-care is absolutely essential for sustaining energy and enthusiasm. Taking care of your physical, emotional, and mental health helps you stay resilient and positive.
Schedule regular exercise, maintain a balanced diet, and ensure you get enough sleep. Incorporate relaxation techniques such as mindfulness or yoga into your daily routine. Make time for hobbies and activities that bring you joy outside of teaching.
4. Build a Support Network
A strong support network can provide encouragement, share ideas, and offer emotional support during challenging times.
Connect with colleagues, join professional learning communities, and participate in teacher groups or forums. Regularly meet with a mentor or coach for guidance and feedback. Don’t hesitate to seek help when you need it.
5. Stay Organized and Efficient
Organization and efficiency in planning and classroom management can save time and reduce stress, allowing more energy for teaching.
Use tools like planners, apps, or digital calendars to keep track of tasks and deadlines. Develop routines for common tasks such as grading, lesson planning, and classroom setup. Delegate responsibilities when possible and use time-saving teaching strategies, such as flipped classrooms or project-based learning.
6. Reflect and Adapt
Regular reflection helps identify what’s working and what isn’t, allowing for adjustments that keep your teaching practice fresh and engaging.
Set aside time each week to reflect on your teaching. Keep a journal to document successes and challenges, and brainstorm ways to improve. Solicit feedback—formal or informal—from students and colleagues and be open to trying new approaches or techniques.
7. Social-Emotional Teaching
and so far as you were able, try to create learning activities and lessons that lend themselves well to joy or fun or positive experiences for both the students and yourself. It’s hard for teaching to be fine, and sustainable, the work.
8. Embrace It All
That doesn’t mean to lower your expectations, but to realize that an all professions there are challenging times or facets of the job they can feel draining.
Teaching is unique and that it is a kind of mix of procedure and creativity, and that can make it both a challenge and an opportunity to enjoy.
The first step in helping students think for themselves just might be to help them see who they are and where they are and what they should know in response.
If we truly want students to adapt their thinking, design their thinking, and diverge their thinking, it (the thinking) has to start and stop in a literal place. Generally, this means beginning with the learning target a teacher establishes and ending with an evaluation of how the student ‘did.’
Isn’t that, at best, odd? Thinking has nothing to do with content. Thinking is a strategy to learn content but they are otherwise distinct. This process, then, is about thought and learning rather than content and mastery.
Examining A Self-Directed Learning Framework
In 2013, we created a framework to guide students in self-directed learning. The idea was/is for each student to truly think for themselves in large part by examing what was worth thinking about for them and why. There are two theories that underpin this concept of students being able to create and navigate their own learning pathways:
1. Wisdom (e.g., knowing what’s worth understanding) is more important than content (e.g., mastery of academic standards).
2. Advances in technology have created an ecology that can support the pursuit of wisdom and content mastery (in that order)
These theories don’t sound outrageous but compared to existing educational forms they can seem strange. How we plan, how we determine success, how we offer feedback, and even how our schools are physically arranged all reflect a way of thinking that places priority on the student’s ability to constantly prove mastery of content delivered to them.
By now this is a tired argument but one theory is that modern education can be characterized by its industrial form and its managerial tone. Its primary movers are standards, policies, and teachers rather than content, relationships, and creativity. Its outcomes are universal and impersonal, which is fine for skills but fails to resonate much further.
One response is to support students in designing their own learning pathways, in terms of content (what’s studied), form (how it’s studied), and most critically, purpose (why it’s studied). The end result is, ideally, students who can ‘think for themselves.’
Teaching Students To Think For Themselves: Examining A Self-Directed Learning Framework
Big Idea: Promote self-directed & critical learning
There are 6 areas in the self-directed learning framework:
1. Self: (e.g., What citizenships am I a member of, and what does that suggest that I understand?)
2. Context: (e.g., What are the contexts of this topic or idea?)
3. Activate: (e.g., What do I or others know about this topic or idea?)
4. Pathway: (e.g., What resources or thinking strategies make sense for me to use?)
5. Clarify: (e.g., Based on what I’ve learned so far, how should I revise my intended pathway?)
6, Apply: (e.g., What changes in myself should I see as a result of new understanding?)
Self-Knowledge As A Starting Point
1. What’s worth understanding?
Out of all of the ideas and circumstances you encounter on a daily basis, what’s worth understanding? What knowledge or skills or in-depth understandings would support you on a moment-by-moment basis? What’s the difference between recreation, interest, curiosity, and passion?
This even can be overtly academic. For example:
In math, what’s valuable? What can math do for ‘you’–the place you live or the people you care about or the environment you depend on to live?
What can rich literature enable you to see or do?
What perspective can a study of history provide?
What mistakes can a scientific approach to things prevent?
2. What problems or opportunities are within my reach?
It sounds noble to want to solve world hunger or play the violin at Carnegie Hall but that may or may not be in your immediate reach. Right here, right now, what can you do to get there?
3. What important problems & solutions have others before me created?
Interdependence–realizing where we, as a family, neighborhood, state, nation, species, etc. have been, and what trends and patterns emerge under study that we can use to make sense of where we’re going?
What are our collective achievements–poetry, space travel, human rights, etc.?
What are our collective failures–poverty, racism, ecological damage, etc.?
And with this in mind, how should I respond?
4. What citizenships and legacies am I a part of & what do those memberships suggest that I understand?
This is kind of the ultimate question for the first step of the SDL model, and the final step: To ‘what’ do I belong, and how can I care-take that membership through my understanding and behavior?
Below are some hypothetical examples of student responses.
I belong to the ‘Johnson’ family, a family long involved in photography and art. So how should I respond?
I live in an area that used to be ‘nice’ but has recently devolved through a lack of civic voice and action. So how should I respond?
I love social media but am concerned with how it’s affecting my self-image/thinking/life. So how should I respond?
I’m an American, a Nigerian, a Canadian. I’m from The Netherlands or Prague or Paris or Tel Aviv or Peru. So how should I respond?
I love books, I love fashion, I love nature, I love creating–how should I respond?
My parents were divorced, and their parents were divorced. So how should I respond?
I am poor. I am rich. I am anxious. I am curious. I am loved. I am lonely. I am confident. I am uncertain. How should I respond?
The First Step In Helping Students Think For Themselves; image attribution flick user flickeringbrad; Teaching Students To Think For Themselves
As planners, designers, executors, and general caretakers of public and private education systems, we are tasked with the insurmountable: overcome a child’s natural tendency to play, rebel, and self-direct in hopes of providing them with a ‘good education.’ Reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.
And this isn’t wrong. This is good by almost any measure. Our intent is noble, our effort extraordinary, and certainly the learning of many children, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, is better than anything they might have had otherwise.
But there’s also an unfortunate, darker side to formal learning processes–especially when you crowd 800 in a school and 32 in a classroom and ‘hold teachers accountable.’
This is a side that can be more concerned with that accountability than anything else–and that means students accountable to teachers, teachers accountable to principals, principals accountable to superintendents, superintendents accountable to state government agencies, and everyone accountable to many measures of ‘motivation’ and/or punitive action.
The net result can be a learning climate where spontaneity, curiosity, and learner self-direction are secondary to just the right ‘research-based’ literacy strategy to ‘move kids to proficiency’–and a crucial loss of ‘childlishness’ of learning.
It’s within this context that I watched the following video by Adora Svitak, who eloquently (please tell me this child was coached, or else I am going to wish she was also more ‘childish’ herself) discusses the role of ‘immaturity’ in great accomplishments. Regarding ‘childish’ behavior and ‘immaturity,’ she explains:
“Then again, who’s to say that certain types of irrational thinking aren’t exactly what the world needs? Maybe you’ve had grand plans before but stopped yourself, thinking, “That’s impossible,” or, “That costs too much,” or, ‘That won’t benefit me.’
“For better or worse, we kids aren’t hampered as much when it comes to thinking about reasons why not to do things. Kids can be full of inspiring aspirations and hopeful thinking. Like my wish that no one went hungry or that everything were a free kind of utopia. How many of you still dream like that and believe in the possibilities? Sometimes a knowledge of history and the past failures of utopian ideals can be a burden because you know that if everything were free, then the food stocks would become depleted and scarce and lead to chaos. On the other hand, we kids still dream about perfection.
“And that’s a good thing because in order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first.”
It’s easy to take that argument a step further and wonder what education would be like if it were able to really lose itself in the learning, and be fully immersed in content and community. Standards? Fine. Assessment? Fine–but standardize the assessment without standardizing the learning.
What if the learning was like the child: irrational, in motion, and in love with discovery?
Critical thinking is the ongoing application of unbiased analysis in pursuit of objective truth.
Although its name implies criticism, critical thinking is actually closer to ‘truth judgment‘ based on withholding judgments while evaluating existing and emerging data to form more accurate conclusions. Critical thinking is an ongoing process emphasizing the fluid and continued interpretation of information rather than the formation of static beliefs and opinions.
Research about cognitively demanding skills provides formal academic content that we can extend to less formal settings, including K-12 classrooms.
This study, for example, explores the pivotal role of critical thinking in enhancing decision-making across various domains, including health, finance, and interpersonal relationships. The study highlights the significance of rigorous essential assessments of thinking, which can predict successful outcomes in complex scenarios.
Of course, this underscores the importance of integrating critical thinking development and measurement into educational frameworks to foster higher-level cognitive abilities impact real-world problem-solving and decision-making.
Which critical thinking skills are the most important?
Deciding which critical thinking skills are ‘most important’ isn’t simple because prioritizing them in any kind of order is less important than knowing what they are and when and how to use them.
However, to begin a process like that, it can be helpful to identify a small sample of the larger set of thinking processes and skills that constitute the skill of critical thinking.
Let’s take a look at eight of the more important, essential critical thinking skills everyone–students, teachers, and laypersons–should know.
8 Critical Thinking Skills Everyone Should Know
8 Essential Critical Thinking Skills
Analyze: Break a whole into parts to examine
Example: A teacher asks students to break down a story into its basic components: characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution. This helps students understand how each part contributes to the overall narrative.
Evaluate: Assess the value or quality
Example: A teacher prompts students to evaluate the effectiveness of two persuasive essays. Students assess which essay presents stronger arguments and why, considering factors like evidence, tone, and logic.
Interpret” Explain the meaning or significance
Example: After reading a poem, the teacher asks students to interpret the symbolism of a recurring image, such as a river, discussing what it might represent in the poem’s context.
Synthesize” Combine to form a coherent whole
Example: A teacher asks students to write an essay combining information from multiple sources about the causes of the American Revolution, encouraging them to create a cohesive argument that integrates diverse perspectives.
Infer: Draw conclusions based on evidence
Example: A teacher presents students with a scenario in a science experiment and asks them to infer what might happen if one variable is changed, based on the data they’ve already gathered.
Question
Formal or informal inquiries to understand
Example: During a history lesson, the teacher encourages students to ask questions about the motivations of historical figures, prompting deeper understanding and critical discussions about historical events.
Reflect
Recall and interpret experiences or ideas
Example: After completing a group project, a teacher asks students to reflect on what worked well and what could have been improved, helping them gain insights into their collaborative process and learning experience.
Judge: Form an opinion or conclusion
Example: A teacher presents students with a scenario where two solutions are proposed to solve a community issue, such as building a new park or a community center. The teacher asks students to use their judgment to determine which solution would best meet the community’s needs, considering cost, accessibility, and potential benefits.
8 Of The Most Important Critical Thinking Skills
Citations
Butler, H. A. (2024). Enhancing critical thinking skills through decision-based learning. J. Intell., 12(2), Article 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence12020016
Grading problems are one of the most urgent bugaboos of good teaching.
Grading can take an extraordinary amount of time. It can also demoralize students, get them in trouble at home, or keep them from getting into a certain college.
It can demoralize teachers, too. If half the class is failing, any teacher worth their salt will take a long, hard look at themselves and their craft.
So over the years as a teacher, I cobbled together a kind of system that was, most crucially, student-centered. It was student-centered in the sense that it was designed for them to promote understanding, grow confidence, take ownership, and protect themselves from themselves when they needed it.
Some of this approach was covered in Why Did That Student Fail? A Diagnostic Approach To Teaching. See below for the system–really, just a few rules I created that, while not perfect, went a long way towards eliminating the grading problems in my classroom.
Which meant students weren’t paralyzed with fear when I asked them to complete increasingly complex tasks they were worried were beyond their reach. It also meant that parents weren’t breathing down my neck ‘about that C-‘ they saw on Infinite Campus, and if both students and parents are happy, the teacher can be happy, too.
How I Eliminated (Almost) All Grading Problems In My Classroom
1. I chose what to grade carefully.
When I first started teaching, I thought in terms of ‘assignments’ and ‘tests.’ Quizzes were also a thing.
But eventually I started thinking instead in terms of ‘practice’ and ‘measurement.’ All assessment should be formative, and the idea of ‘summative assessment’ makes as much sense as ‘one last teeth cleaning.’
The big idea is what I often call a ‘climate of assessment,’ where snapshots of student understanding and progress are taken in organic, seamless, and non-threatening ways. Assessment is ubiquitous and always-on.
A ‘measurement’ is only one kind of assessment, and even the word implies ‘checking in on your growth’ in the same way you measure a child’s vertical growth (height) by marking the threshold in the kitchen. This type of assessment provides both the student and teacher a marker–data, if you insist–of where the student ‘is’ at that moment with the clear understanding that another such measurement will be taken soon, and dozens and dozens of opportunities to practice in-between.
Be very careful with what you grade, because it takes time and mental energy–both finite resources crucial to the success of any teacher. If you don’t have a plan for the data before you give the assessment, don’t give it, and certainly don’t call it a quiz or a test.
2. I designed work to be ‘published’
I tried to make student products–writing, graphic organizers, podcasts, videos, projects, and more–at the very least visible to the parents of students. Ideally, this work would also be published to peers for feedback and collaboration, and then to the public at large to provide some authentic function in a community the student cares about.
By making student work public (insofar as it promoted student learning while protecting any privacy concerns), the assessment is done in large part by the people the work is intended for. It’s authentic, which makes the feedback loop quicker and more diverse than one teacher could ever hope to make it.
What this system loses in expert feedback that teacher might be able to give (though nothing says it can’t both be made public and benefit from teacher feedback), it makes up for in giving students substantive reasons to do their best work, correct themselves, and create higher stands for quality than your rubric outlined.
3. I made a rule: No Fs and no zeroes. A, B, C, or ‘Incomplete’
First, I created a kind of no-zero policy. Easier said than done depending on who you are and what you teach and what the school ‘policy’ is and so on. The idea here, though, is to keep zeroes from mathematically ruining a student’s ‘final grade.’
I try to explain to students that a grade should reflect understanding, not their ability to successfully navigate the rules and bits of gamification stuffed into most courses and classrooms. If a student receives a D letter grade, it should be because they have demonstrated an almost universal inability to master any content, not because they got As and Bs on most work they cared about but Cs or lower on the work they didn’t, and with a handful of zeroes thrown in for work they didn’t complete ended up with a D or an F.
Another factor at work here is marking work with an A, B, C, or ‘Incomplete.’ Put another way, if the student didn’t at least achieve the average mark of C, which should reflect average understanding of a given standard or topic, I would mark it ‘Incomplete,’ give them clear feedback on how it could be improved, and then require them to do so.
4. I went over missing assignments frequently.
Simple enough. I had a twitter feed of all ‘measurements’ (work they knew that counted towards their grade), so they didn’t have to ask ‘what they were missing’ (though they did anyway). I also wrote it on the board (I had a huge whiteboard that stretched across the front of the classroom).
5. I created alternative assessments.
Early on in teaching, I noticed students saying, in different ways, that they ‘got it but don’t all the way get it.’ Or that they believed that they did, in fact, ‘get it’ but not the way the assessment required (reminder: English Lit/ELA is a highly conceptual content area aside of the skills of literacy itself).
So I’d create an alternative assessment to check and see. Was the assessment getting in the way–obscuring more than it revealed? Why beat my head against the wall explaining the logistics of an assignment or intricacies of a question when they assignment and the question weren’t at all the points? These were just ‘things’ I used the way a carpenter uses tools.
Sometimes it’s easier to just grab a different tool.
I’d also ask students to create their own assessments at times. Show me you understand. It didn’t always work the way you’d expect, but I got some of the most insightful and creative expression I’ve ever seen from students using this approach. As with most things, it just depended on the student.
6. I taught through micro-assignments.
Exit slips were one of the the greatest things that ever happened to my teaching. I rarely used them as ‘exit tickets’ to be able to leave the classroom, but I did use them almost daily. Why?
They gave me a constant stream of data for said ‘climate of assessment,’ and it was daily and fresh and disarming to students because they knew it was quick and if they failed, another one would be coming soon.
It was a ‘student-centered’ practice because it protected them. They had so many opportunities and, math-wise, so many scores that unless they failed everything every day, they wouldn’t ‘fail’ at all. And if they were,
I could approach a single standard or topic from a variety of angles and complexities and Bloom’s levels and so on, which often showed that the student that ‘didn’t get it’ last week more likely just ‘didn’t get’ my question.
In other words, they hadn’t failed my assessment; my assessment had failed them because it had failed to uncover what they, in fact, knew.
7. I used diagnostic teaching
You can read more about diagnostic teaching but the general idea is that I had a clear sequence I used that I communicated very clearly to the students and their families. It usually took the first month or two for everyone to become comfortable with it all, but once I did, grading problems were *almost* completely eliminated. Problems still surfaced but with a system in place, it was much easier to identify exactly what went wrong and why and communicate it all to the stakeholders involved in helping support children.
Every few months, I see an article making the rounds that critical thinking isn’t a skill and therefore can’t be taught.
And because it’s also difficult to measure and modern public education is driven by measurement, as an idea it kind of sits in the corner, aloof and mute.
Often, these articles are in regards to a conversation or research related to Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who is often associated with this kind of claim. Even though my instinct is to disagree, Willingham, of course, knows more about this topic than I do so my goal here is not to dispute that claim.
I do, however, think it’s possible that we may misunderstand what it means to think critically, which I’ve written about (though not often or well enough) many times. In The Definition Of Critical Thinking, for example, I said:
Critical thinking is among the first causes for change (personal and social) but is a pariah in schools –for no other reason than it conditions the mind to suspect the form and function of everything it sees, including your classroom and everything being taught in it. Of course, critical thinking without knowledge is embarrassingly idle, like a farmer without a field. They need each other—thought and knowledge. They can also disappear into one another as they work. Once we’ve established that—that they’re separate, capable of merging, and need one another—we can get at the marrow and fear of this whole thing.
Terry Heick
After watching the effect of disinformation on recent national and global events, it has occurred to me that critical thinking is less of a skill and more of a willingness or habit. In short, critical thinking is a mindset. As I’ve said before about reading–here, for example, in Why Students Should Read–is that while it’s important that students can read, it’s more important that they do read.
And critical thinking–thinking rationally, with reason and evidence, humility and knowledge, understanding and skepticism–is similar: it’s important that students can think critically but it’s more important that they do think critically.
In this way, critical thinking has to be a mindset.
Just as math can be said to be a kind of language and science is a way of thinking, critical thinking (while also being a ‘way’ of thinking) is first a state of mind–a willingness to do so both preceded and proceeded by a motley collection of presuppositions and premises and tendencies and cognitive defaults and even eventually personality traits that manifest when you read a book or have a discussion or skim a news headline or research an idea.
Critical thinking is certainly a ‘skill’ but when possessed as a mindset–a playful and humble willingness–it shifts from a labor to an art. It asks, ‘Is this true? By what standard? Who would disagree and why? What is the history of this issue or topic? What am I missing? What kinds of knowledge am I missing to understand this more closely and how can I acquire them?
Critical thinking as a skill attempts to understand.
Critical thinking as a mindset reads and listens as a witness and is haunted by what it doesn’t know and cannot understand and then, from that starting point, starts the process of reason–of being and becoming rational.
Critical thinking isn’t emotional because its identity isn’t wrapped up in an opinion or ‘belief’ and being ‘wrong’ is valuable because it gets us closer to being ‘right.’
Critical thinking is nearly impossible to apply without some kind of bias but, as a mindset, it watches for its own biases (see the definition confirmation bias, for example) as a watchman might watch for strangers.
Critical thinking is slow to decide and may not ‘decide’ at all because it realizes that in the face of new evidence, it must think again. And again. And again.
And, as a mindset, it’s okay with the labor of it all because it values reason more than favor with crowds; it favors accuracy over perceived accuracy and encounters any circumstance wide-eyed and humble and curious, seeking to understand and scared to death of bias and incomplete knowledge and logical fallacies and other cognitive misbehaviors that might lead it astray.
See? Critical thinking is a skill but it’s also a tendency and trait and light-making tool in darkness for many becomes a mindset–both a way of knowing and a way of being.
And this is all part of way teaching it as a skill–much like teach students how to read rather than why–is part of our challenge in education. As usual, we are asking the wrong questions.
Humility is an interesting starting point for learning.
In an era of media that is digital, social, chopped up, and endlessly recirculated, the challenge is no longer access but the quality of access—and the reflex to then judge uncertainty and “truth.”
Discernment.
On ‘Knowing’
There is a tempting and warped sense of “knowing” that can lead to a loss of reverence and even entitlement to “know things.” If nothing else, modern technology access (in much of the world) has replaced subtlety with spectacle, and process with access.
A mind that is properly observant is also properly humble. In A Native Hill, Wendell Berry points to humility and limits. Standing in the face of all that is unknown can either be overwhelming—or illuminating. How would it change the learning process to start with a tone of humility?
Humility is the core of critical thinking. It says, ‘I don’t know enough to have an informed opinion’ or ‘Let’s learn to reduce uncertainty.’
To be self-aware in your own knowledge, and the limits of that knowledge? To clarify what can be known, and what cannot? To be able to match your understanding with an authentic need to know—work that naturally strengthens critical thinking and sustained inquiry.
What This Looks Like In a Classroom
Analyze the limits of knowledge in plain terms (a simple introduction to epistemology).
Evaluate knowledge in degrees (e.g., certain, probable, possible, unlikely).
Concept-map what is currently understood about a specific topic and compare it to unanswered questions.
Document how knowledge changes over time (personal learning logs and historical snapshots).
Show how each student’s perspective shapes their relationship to what’s being learned.
Demonstrate authentic utility: where and how this knowledge is used outside school.
Show patience for learning as a process and emphasize that process alongside objectives.
Clearly value informed uncertainty over the confidence of quick conclusions.
Reward ongoing questions and follow-up investigations more than “finished” answers.
Create a unit on “what we thought we knew then” versus what hindsight shows we missed.
Analyze causes and effects of “not knowing” in science, history, civic life, or daily decisions.
Highlight the fluid, evolving nature of knowledge.
Differentiate vagueness/ambiguity (lack of clarity) from uncertainty/humility (awareness of limits).
Identify the best scale for applying specific knowledge or skills (individual, local, systemic).
Research Note
Research shows that people who practice intellectual humility—being willing to admit what they don’t know—are more open to learning and less likely to cling to false certainty. Source: Leary, M. R., Diebels, K. J., Davisson, E. K., et al. (2017). Cognitive and interpersonal features of intellectual humility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(6), 793–813.
Literary Touchstone
Berry, W. (1969). “A Native Hill,” in The Long-Legged House. New York: Harcourt.
This idea may seem abstract and even out of place in increasingly “research-based” and “data-driven” systems of learning. But that is part of its value: it helps students see knowledge not as fixed, but as a living process they can join with care, evidence, and humility.
Knowing something–all of the things you don’t know collectively is a form of knowledge.
There are many forms of knowledge–let’s think of knowledge in terms of physical weights, for now. Vague awareness is a ‘light’ form of knowledge: low weight and intensity and duration and urgency. Then specific awareness, maybe. Notions and observations, for example.
Somewhere just beyond awareness (which is vague) might be knowing (which is more concrete). Beyond ‘knowing’ might be understanding and beyond understanding using and beyond that are many of the more complex cognitive behaviors enabled by knowing and understanding: combining, revising, analyzing, evaluating, transferring, creating, and so on.
As you move left to right on this hypothetical spectrum, the ‘knowing’ becomes ‘heavier’–and is relabeled as discrete functions of increased complexity.
It’s also worth clarifying that each of these can be both causes and effects of knowledge and are traditionally thought of as cognitively independent (i.e., different) from ‘knowing.’ ‘Analyzing’ is a thinking act that can lead to or improve knowledge but we don’t consider analysis as a form of knowledge in the same way we don’t consider jogging as a form of ‘health.’ And for now, that’s fine. We can allow these distinctions.
There are many taxonomies that attempt to provide a kind of hierarchy here but I’m only interested in seeing it as a spectrum populated by different forms. What those forms are and which is ‘highest’ is less important than the fact that there are those forms and some are credibly thought of as ‘more complex’ than others. (I created the TeachThought/Heick Learning Taxonomy as a non-hierarchical taxonomy of thinking and understanding.)
What we don’t know has always been more important than what we do.
That’s subjective, of course. Or semantics–or even pedantic. But to use what we know, it’s useful to know what we don’t know. Not ‘know’ it is in the sense of possessing the knowledge because–well, if we knew it, then we’d know it and wouldn’t need to be aware that we didn’t.
Sigh.
Let me start over.
Knowledge is about deficits. We need to be aware of what we know and how we know that we know it. By ‘aware’ I think I mean ‘know something in form but not essence or content.’ To vaguely know.
By etching out a kind of boundary for both what you know (e.g., a quantity) and how well you know it (e.g., a quality), you not only making a knowledge acquisition to-do list for the future, but you’re also learning to better use what you already know in the present.
Put another way, you can become more familiar (but perhaps still not ‘know’) the limits of our own knowledge, and that’s a wonderful platform to begin to use what we know. Or use well.
But it also can help us to understand (know?) the limits of not just our own knowledge, but knowledge in general. We can begin by asking, ‘What is knowable?” and ‘Is there any thing that’s unknowable?” And that can prompt us to ask, ‘What do we (collectively, as a species) know now and how did we come to know it? When did we not know it and what was it like to not know it? What were the effects of not knowing and what have been the effects of our having come to know?
For an analogy, consider an automobile engine disassembled into hundreds of parts. Each of those parts is a bit of knowledge: a fact, a data point, an idea. It may even be in the form of a tiny machine of its own in the way a math formula or an ethical system are types of knowledge but also functional–useful as its own system and even more useful when combined with other knowledge bits and exponentially more useful when combined with other knowledge systems.
I’ll get back to the engine metaphor in a moment. But if we can make observations to collect knowledge bits, then form theories that are testable, then create laws based on those testable theories, we are not only creating knowledge but we are doing so by whittling away what we don’t know. Or maybe that’s a bad metaphor. We are coming to know things by not only eliminating previously unknown bits but in the process of their illumination, are then creating countless new bits and systems and potential for theories and testing and laws and so on.
When we at least become aware of what we don’t know, those gaps embed themselves in a system of knowledge. But this embedding and contextualizing and qualifying can’t occur until you’re at least aware of that system–which means understanding that relative to users of knowledge (i.e., you and I), knowledge itself is characterized by both what is known and unknown–and that the unknown is always more powerful than what is.
For now, just allow that any system of knowledge is composed of both known and unknown ‘things’–both knowledge and knowledge deficits.
An Example Of Something We Didn’t Know
Let’s make this a little more concrete. If we learn about tectonic plates, that can help us use math to predict earthquakes or design machines to predict them, for example. By theorizing and testing concepts of continental drift, we got a little bit closer to plate tectonics but we didn’t ‘know’ that. We may, as a society and species, know that the traditional sequence is that learning one thing leads us to learn other things and so might suspect that continental drift might lead to other discoveries, but while plate tectonics already ‘existed,’ we hadn’t identified these processes so to us, they didn’t ‘exist’ when in fact they had all along.
Knowledge is odd that way. Until we give a word to something–a series of characters we used to identify and communicate and document an idea–we think of it as not existing. In the 18th century, when Scottish farmer James Hutton began to make clearly reasoned scientific arguments about the earth’s terrain and the processes that form and change it, he help solidify modern geography as we know it. If you do know that the earth is billions of years old and believe it’s only 6000 years old, you won’t ‘look for’ or form theories about processes that take millions of years to occur.
So belief matters and so does language. And theories and argumentation and evidence and curiosity and sustained inquiry matter. But so does humility. Starting by asking what you don’t know reshapes ignorance into a kind of knowledge. By accounting for your own knowledge deficits and limits, you are marking them–either as unknowable, not currently knowable, or something to be learned. They stop muddying and obscuring and become a kind of self-actualizing–and clarifying–process of coming to know.
Learning.
Learning leads to knowledge and knowledge leads to theories just like theories lead to knowledge. It’s all circular in such an obvious way because what we don’t know has always mattered more than what we do. Scientific knowledge is powerful: we can split the atom and make species-smothering bombs or provide energy to feed ourselves. But ethics is a kind of knowledge. Science asks, ‘What can we do?’ while humanities might ask, ‘What should we do?’
The Fluid Utility Of Knowledge
Back to the automotive engine in hundreds of parts metaphor. All of those knowledge bits (the parts) are useful but they become exponentially more useful when combined in a certain order (only one of trillions) to become a functioning engine. In that context, all of the parts are relatively useless until a system of knowledge (e.g., the combustion engine) is identified or ‘created’ and actuated and then all are critical and the combustion process as a form of knowledge is trivial.
(For now, I’m going to skip the concept of entropy but I really probably shouldn’t because that might explain everything.)
See? Knowledge is about deficits. Take that same unassembled collection of engine parts that are simply parts and not yet an engine. If one of the key parts is missing, it is not possible to create an engine. That’s fine if you know–have the knowledge–that that part is missing. But if you think you already know what you need to know, you won’t be looking for a missing part and wouldn’t even be aware a functioning engine is possible. And that, in part, is why what you don’t know is always more important than what you do.
Every thing we learn is like ticking a box: we are reducing our collective uncertainty in the smallest of degrees. There is one fewer thing unknown. One fewer unticked box.
But even that’s an illusion because all of the boxes can never be ticked, really. We tick one box and 74 take its place so this can’t be about quantity, only quality. Creating some knowledge creates exponentially more knowledge.
But clarifying knowledge deficits qualifies existing knowledge sets. To know that is to be humble and to be humble is to know what you do and don’t know and what we have in the past known and not known and what we have done with all of the things we have learned. It is to know that when we create labor-saving devices, we’re rarely saving labor but rather shifting it elsewhere.
It is to know there are few ‘big solutions’ to ‘big problems’ because those problems themselves are the result of too many intellectual, ethical, and behavioral failures to count. Reconsider the ‘discovery’ of ‘clean’ nuclear energy, for example, in light of Chernobyl, and the seeming limitless toxicity it has added to our environment. What if we replaced the spectacle of knowledge with the spectacle of doing and both short and long-term effects of that knowledge?
Learning something generally leads us to ask, ‘What do I know?’ and sometimes, ‘How do I know I know? Is there better evidence for or against what I believe I know?” And so on.
But what we often fail to ask when we learn something new is, ‘What else am I missing?’ What might we learn in four or ten years and how can that kind of anticipation change what I believe I know now? We can ask, ‘Now I that I know, what now?”
Or rather, if knowledge is a kind of light, how can I use that light while also using a vague sense of what lies just beyond the edge of that light–areas yet to be illuminated with knowing? How can I work outside in, beginning with all the things I don’t know, then moving inward toward the now clear and more humble sense of what I do?
A closely examined knowledge deficit is a staggering kind of knowledge.
The influence of Berry on my life–and thus inseparably from my teaching and learning–has been immeasurable. His ideas on scale, limits, accountability, community, and careful thinking have a place in larger conversations about economy, culture, and vocation, if not politics, religion, and anyplace else where common sense fails to linger.
But what about education?
Below is a letter Berry wrote in response to a call for a ‘shorter workweek.’ I’ll leave the argument up to him, but it has me wondering if this kind of thinking may have a place in new learning forms.
When we insist, in education, to pursue ‘obviously good’ things, what are we missing?
That is, as adherence to outcomes-based learning practices with tight alignment between standards, learning targets, and assessments, with careful scripting horizontally and vertically, no ‘gaps’–what assumption is embedded in this insistence? Because in the high-stakes game of public education, each of us collectively is ‘all in.’
And more immediately, are we preparing learners for ‘good work,’ or merely academic fluency? Which is the role of public education?
If we tended towards the former, what evidence would we see in our classrooms and universities?
And maybe most importantly, are they mutually exclusive?
Wendell Berry on ‘Good Work’
The Progressive, in the September issue, both in Matthew Rothschild’s “Editor’s Note” and in the article by John de Graaf (“Less Work, More Life”), offers “less work” and a 30-hour workweek as needs that are as indisputable as the need to eat.
Though I would support the idea of a 30-hour workweek in some circumstances, I see nothing absolute or indisputable about it. It can be proposed as a universal need only after abandonment of any respect for vocation and the replacement of discourse by slogans.
It is true that the industrialization of virtually all forms of production and service has filled the world with “jobs” that are meaningless, demeaning, and boring—as well as inherently destructive. I don’t think there is a good argument for the existence of such work, and I wish for its elimination, but even its reduction calls for economic changes not yet defined, let alone advocated, by the “left” or the “right.” Neither side, so far as I know, has produced a reliable distinction between good work and bad work. To shorten the “official workweek” while consenting to the continuation of bad work is not much of a solution.
The old and honorable idea of “vocation” is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted. Implicit in this idea is the evidently startling possibility that we might work willingly, and that there is no necessary contradiction between work and happiness or satisfaction.
Only in the absence of any viable idea of vocation or good work can one make the distinction implied in such phrases as “less work, more life” or “work-life balance,” as if one commutes daily from life here to work there.
But aren’t we living even when we are most miserably and harmfully at work?
And isn’t that exactly why we object (when we do object) to bad work?
And if you are called to music or farming or carpentry or healing, if you make your living by your calling, if you use your skills well and to a good purpose and therefore are happy or satisfied in your work, why should you necessarily do less of it?
More important, why should you think of your life as distinct from it?
And why should you not be affronted by some official decree that you should do less of it?
A useful discourse on the subject of work would raise a number of questions that Mr. de Graaf has neglected to ask:
What work are we talking about?
Did you choose your work, or are you doing it under compulsion as the way to earn money?
How much of your intelligence, your affection, your skill, and your pride is employed in your work?
Do you respect the product or the service that is the result of your work?
For whom do you work: a manager, a boss, or yourself?
What are the ecological and social costs of your work?
If such questions are not asked, then we have no way of seeing or proceeding beyond the assumptions of Mr. de Graaf and his work-life experts: that all work is bad work; that all workers are unhappily and even helplessly dependent on employers; that work and life are irreconcilable; and that the only solution to bad work is to shorten the workweek and thus divide the badness among more people.
I don’t think anybody can honorably object to the proposition, in theory, that it is better “to reduce hours rather than lay off workers.” But this raises the likelihood of reduced income and therefore of less “life.” As a remedy for this, Mr. de Graaf can offer only “unemployment benefits,” one of the industrial economy’s more fragile “safety nets.”
And what are people going to do with the “more life” that is understood to be the result of “less work”? Mr. de Graaf says that they “will exercise more, sleep more, garden more, spend more time with friends and family, and drive less.” This happy vision descends from the proposition, popular not so long ago, that in the spare time gained by the purchase of “labor-saving devices,” people would patronize libraries, museums, and symphony orchestras.
But what if the liberated workers drive more?
What if they recreate themselves with off-road vehicles, fast motorboats, fast food, computer games, television, electronic “communication,” and the various genres of pornography?
Well, that’ll be “life,” supposedly, and anything beats work.
Mr. de Graaf makes the further doubtful assumption that work is a static quantity, dependably available, and divisible into dependably sufficient portions. This supposes that one of the purposes of the industrial economy is to provide employment to workers. On the contrary, one of the purposes of this economy has always been to transform independent farmers, shopkeepers, and tradespeople into employees, and then to use the employees as cheaply as possible, and then to replace them as soon as possible with technological substitutes.
So there could be fewer working hours to divide, more workers among whom to divide them, and fewer unemployment benefits to take up the slack.
On the other hand, there is a lot of work needing to be done—ecosystem and watershed restoration, improved transportation networks, healthier and safer food production, soil conservation, etc.—that nobody yet is willing to pay for. Sooner or later, such work will have to be done.
We may end up working longer workdays in order not to “live,” but to survive.
Wendell Berry Port Royal, Kentucky
Mr. Berry’s letter originally appeared in The Progressive(November 2010) in response to the article “Less Work, More Life.” This article originally appeared on Utne.
A critical thinking strategy is simply a ‘way’ to encourage or facilitate the cognitive act of thinking critically.
Critical thinking is the ongoing application of unbiased, accurate, and ‘good-faith’ analysis, interpretation, contextualizing, and synthesizing multiple data sources and cognitive perspectives in pursuit of understanding.
What are the 7 critical thinking strategies? Someone emailed me recently asking that question and I immediately wondered how many more than seven there were.
One of the more basic critical thinking strategies is ‘analysis’: Identify the parts and see the relationships between those parts and how they contribute to the whole.
2. Interpret
Explain the significance or meaning of a ‘thing’ in a specific content or to a specific audience. Similar to ‘translate’ but (generally) with more cognitive demand.
3. Infer
Draw a reasonable conclusion based on the best available data. This critical thinking strategy is useful almost anywhere–from reading to playing a game to solving a problem in the real-world.
In fact, many of these strategies are built-in to the taxonomy.
5. Separate cause and effect
And concept map it–and maybe even consider prior causes to the most immediate causes and predict future possible effects. For example, if you’re considering an effect (e.g., pollution), you might see one cause being a new industrial factory built near a river or runoff. But you might also consider what enabled or ’caused’ that factory to be built–a zoning change or tax break given by the local government, for example.
6. Prioritize
Prioritizing is an executive neurological function that demands knowledge to then apply critical thinking to or on.
7. Deconstruct
And narrate or annotate the deconstruction. Deconstruct a skyscraper or a cultural movement or school or app. This is somewhere between analysis and reverse engineering.
8. Reverse Engineer
9. Write
Writing (well) is one of the most cognitively demanding things students commonly do. It’s also a wonderful strategy to promote critical thinking–a kind of vehicle to help it develop. Certainly one can write without thinking critically or think critically without writing but when they work together–in the form of a thinking journal, for example–the effects can be compelling.
10. Reflect
Observe and reflect is a basic pattern for thought itself. The nature of the reflection, of course, determines if it’s actually a strategy for critical thinking but it’s certainly a worthy addition to this list.
11. Separate the subjective from the objective
And fact from opinion.
12. Be vigilant in distinguishing beliefs and facts or truths
To be able to think critically requires
Dewey described critical thinking as ‘reflective thinking’ (see #10)–the “active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends.” (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9) It’s clear that to be able to consistently do this requires one to separate beliefs (which are personal and fluid) and knowledge (which is more universal and less fluid–though the depth and nature of knowledge and understanding can change over time).
13. Link and Connect
This is somewhere between analysis and concept mapping, but seeing the relationship between things–ideas, trends, opportunities, problems–is not only useful as a strategy but is how the brain learns: by making connections.
14. Use formal and/or informal inquiry
15. Use the 5 Ws
A flexible strategy for inquiry and thought, the 5 Ws provides a kind of starting point for ongoing thought: who, what, where, why, and when.
16. Use spiral thinking
17. Concept map
18. Illustrate what’s known, currently unknown, and unknowable
This is part analysis, part epistemology.
19. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy
20. Apply informed skepticism
21. Use question and statement stems
22. Explore the history of an idea, stance, social norm, etc.
Especially change over time.
23. Debate
24. Analyze from multiple perspectives
25. Transfer
26. Patience
27. Adopt the right mindset
28. Humility
29. Judge
30. Study relationships
Between beliefs, observations, and facts, for example.
31. See ‘truth’ in degrees/non-binary
32. Improve something
33. Curiosity
Similar to inquiry but more a cause of inquiry than a strategy itself.
34. Creativity
35. Explore the nature of thinking and belief
This sets the stage for long-term critical thinking.
36. Separate people from their ideas
This isn’t necessarily a pure critical thinking strategy but it can reduce bias and encourage rationality and objective analysis.
37. Making some abstract concrete or something concrete abstract
38. Challenge something
39. Predict and defend
40. Form a question, then improve that question before gathering information
41. Revise a question after information/observation
42. Critique something
43. Observe something
While not actually ‘critical thinking,’ critical thinking rarely happens without it. It’s one (of many) fuels for ‘higher-order’ thinking.
44. Revise something
45. Transfer a lesson or philosophical stance from one situation to another
A lesson from nature to the design of a tool or solution to a problem.
46. Compare and contrast two or more things
47. Test the validity of a model
Or even create a basic mathematical model for predicting something–stocks, real-world probabilities, etc.
48. Create an analogy
This helps emphasize relationships, rules, and effects.
49. Adapt something for something new
A new function or audience or application, for example.
50. Identify underlying assumptions
51. Analyze the role of social norms on ‘truth’
Or even the nature of ‘truth’ itself.
52. Narrate a sequence
53. Identify first truths or principles
A first principle is a proposition that can’t be deduced from another proposition (or assumption) and thus can be thought of as ‘first’ or most fundamental.
54. Keep a thinking journal
55. Identify and explain a pattern
56. Study the relationship between text and subtext
Or explicit and implicit ideas.
57. Elegantly emphasize the nuance of something
58. Identify cognitive biases and blind spots
59. Use model-based learning
I’ll provide a model for this soon but I’ve been using it with students for years.
60. Take and defend a position
Similar to debate but it can be one-sided, in writing, on a podcast, or even concept-mapped. It’s a simple strategy: specify a ‘stance’ and defend it with the best possible data and unbiased thinking
I first encountered the 40/40/40 rule years ago while skimming one of those giant (and indispensable) 400 page Understanding by Design tomes.
The question was simple enough. Of all of the academic standards, you are tasked with ‘covering’ (more on this in a minute), what’s important that students understand for the next 40 days, what’s important that they understand for the next 40 months, and what’s important that they understand for the next 40 years?
As you can see, this is a powerful way to think about academic content.
Of course, this leads to the discussion of both power standards and enduring understandings, curriculum mapping, and instructional design tools teachers use every day.
But it got me thinking. So I drew a quick pattern of concentric circles–something like the image below–and started thinking about the writing process, tone, symbolism, audience, purpose, structure, word parts, grammar, and a thousand other bits of ELA stuff.
Not (Necessarily) Power Standards
And it was an enlightening process.
First, note that this process is a bit different than identifying power standards in your curriculum.
Power Standards can be chosen by looking at these standards that can serve to ‘anchor and embed’ other content. This idea of “40/40/40” is more about being able to survey a large bundle of stuff and immediately spot what’s necessary. If your house is on fire and you’ve got 2 minutes to get only as much as you can carry out, what do you take with you?
In some ways, it can be reduced to a depth vs breadth argument. Coverage versus mastery. UbD refers to it as the difference between “nice to know,” “important content,” and “enduring understandings.” These labels can be confusing–enduring versus 40/40/40 vs power standards vs big ideas vs essential questions.
This is why I loved the simplicity of the 40/40/40 rule.
It occurred to me that it was more about contextualizing the child in the midst of the content, rather than simply unpacking and arranging standards. One of UbD’s framing questions for establishing ‘big ideas’ offer some clarity:
“To what extent does the idea, topic, or process represent a ‘big idea’ having enduring value beyond the classroom?”
The essence of the 40/40/40 rule seems to be to look honestly at the content we’re packaging for children, and contextualize it in their lives. This hints at authenticity, priority, and even the kind of lifelong learning that teachers dare to dream about.
Applying The 40/40/40 Rule In Your Classroom
There’s likely not one single ‘right way’ to do this, but here are a few tips:
1. Start Out Alone
While you’ll need to socialize these with team or department members soon, it is helpful to clarify what you think about the curriculum before the world joins you. Plus, this approach forces you to analyze the standards closely, rather than simply being polite and nodding your head a lot.
2. Then Socialize
After you’ve sketched out your thinking about the content standards you teach, share it–online, in a data team or PLC meeting, or with colleagues one afternoon after school.
3. Keep It Simple
Use a simple 3-column chart or concentric circles as shown above, and start separating the wheat from the chaff. No need to get complex with your graphic organizer.
4. Be Flexible
You’re going to have a different sense of priority about the standards than your colleagues. These are different personal philosophies about life, teaching, your content area, etc. As long as these differences aren’t drastic, this is normal.
5. Realize Children Aren’t Little Adults
Of course, everyone needs to spell correctly, but weighing spelling versus extracting implicit undertones or themes (typical English-Language Arts content) is also a matter of realizing that children and adults are fundamentally different. Rarely is a child going to be able to survey an array of media, synthesize themes, and create new experiences for readers without being able to use a verb correctly. It can happen, but therein lies the idea of power standards, big ideas, and most immediately the 40/40/40 rule: One day–40 days. 40 months, or even 10 years from now–the students in front of you will be gone–adults in the “real world.”
Not everything they can do–or can’t do–at that time will be because of you no matter how great the lesson, assessment design, use of data, pacing guide, or curriculum map. But if you can accept that–and start backward from worst-case “if they learn nothing else this year, they’re going to know this and that–then you can work backward from those priorities.
Those content bits that will last for 40 years–or longer.
In your content area, on your curriculum map, pacing guide, or whatever guiding documents you use, start filling up that little orange circle first and work backward from there.
Which Content Is Most Important? The 40/40/40 Rule
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