Introduction Starting any form of Higher Education is a huge leap for most practitioners and along with the general concerns about issues like time management and referencing there is also a requirement to get to grips with what the lecturers mean when they use specific terminology. The request to think critically, or demonstrate critical thinking, is the essence of Higher Education (University of Canberra, n.d.) and in my experience of teaching on a foundation degree in early years for over 8 years, it causes students a lot of confusion. This is often because it is likely to have a specific meaning in academic circles, which is not related to how it is used in everyday life. Study skills books don't always seem to help clarify the issue with definitions such as: "Critical thinking is the art of thinking about thinking while thinking in order to make thinking better" (Paul and Elder, 2006, p.xvii), which seem to suggest that critical thinking can be a complex and difficult matter. Concerned about how to help our students, my colleagues and I embarked upon a project to identify the thinking skills, we believe, combine to create a 'critical thinker' on our type of course.Then we needed to enable students to use these thinking skills in everyday activities before applying them in an assignment. Giving students opportunities to practice skills in tandem to subject content appeared to be an appropriate pedagogical approach to develop (Melville Jones and Haynes, 1999). The purpose of this article is to demonstrate some of those skills and articulate how identifying and practicing the thinking required may help during study. Research has shown that the skills of critical thinking must be practiced with a wide variety of problems in many different contexts in order to be learned and retained (Halpern, 1996, Moon, 2005). Defining the components of critical thinking The thinking skills students may need to be aware of are based on Fisher's definition (2001, p.1-14) and include: the ability to compare and contrast; understanding of bias; the influence of values and beliefs; the ability to interpret and clarify expressions and ideas; the ability to question the credibility of claims; to analyse and evaluate from different perspectives and make decisions. It needs to be recognised however that sometimes there is an overlap between these concepts, so clearly identifying what is being asked for in an assessment task is part of the approach to understanding the type of thinking required. It is also important to recognise that there is no one 'official' definition of critical thinking (Harper-Marinick, 2001, p.4). Fleetham (2006) suggests, that in order to activate critical thinking, you need to know what thinking is, so this is the starting point for the following ideas. All the activities are adapted from Thinking critically- a learning and teaching project (Betts et al 2007). Introducing critical thinking The key objective of this first activity is to see the process of critical thinking not as an overly complex and obscure notion despite what was said above about definitions, but as an extension of how we think and respond to everyday events. For this reason, the exercises deliberately deal with simple concepts as a first step approach. This activity specifically avoids the identification of the various aspects of critical thinking, but aims instead to provide a foundation on which to build the skills of critical thinking. Stages of critical thinking This activity will help you to identify the stages of cognition required for higher level study, in order to move you from the point of merely replicating information, to a position of analysis and synthesis. To simplify this process, three stages of critical thinking have been defined with their associated cognitive activities. At the end of each stage a set of questions has been suggested with a strong emphasis placed on the issue of topic focus. Evidence strongly suggests that assignment focus is a fundamental challenge for students and stressing this issue indicates its importance. Activity 1 (A) Firstly think about what activities you do in your daily life that requires little thought. How are you identifying the level of thought required? What has contributed to you being able to undertake a task with little thought e.g. the process of driving? Are there any tasks you've always been able to do with little thought? Here you might want to draw on your knowledge of young children learning and how they acquire skills. It's helpful to make a note of any reflections you've had, this allows you to come back and revisit ideas as your thinking develops. ( Next think about the activities you do in your daily life that require a significant amount of thinking. Can you identify what makes the difference? Will these activities always require you to think more about them, or will they eventually require little thought? Do you do all the thinking required on your own or do you think with others? What does thinking with others look like? It is likely that having spent some time on this activity you will begin to recognise that the activities that require more thinking are the more complex ones that may require you to find out further information or that may require organisation of resources. Planning for children's learning is one of these more complex tasks, it requires that we know our children, what their interests and current stage of development are, that we are familiar with the EYFS ( DCSF 2008) and that we work as a team together. Yet if we have been in practice a while, all these elements somehow fit together to make the whole, a well planned stimulating and enabling environment. It's the same with complex thinking for study as the following illustrates. Critical thinking stage 1 - Gathering information This stage of critical thinking involves making decisions about the information you collect in relation to the topic you are studying e.g. perhaps to answer a question around the importance of multidisciplinary working. This information will come from a range of different sources so your critical thinking at this stage should prompt questions such as: Which publications should I look at? Where will those publications be? Is this a reputable source of information? How does this information relate to the topic I'm studying? Critical thinking stage 2 - Processing and analysing information Once you have gathered the information together, you need to think about what it is telling you. This is the next stage of critical thinking and involves processing and analysing information. Your critical thinking at stage 2 should prompt questions such as: Is there a common thread running through this information? What are the surprising facts I have discovered? What are the most important bits of information I have discovered? How does this information relate to the topic I am studying? Critical thinking stage 3 - higher order thinking and reasoning This stage of critical thinking involves considering the meaning of the information you have collected and analysed. Your critical thinking at stage 3 should prompt such questions as: How does this information relate to my existing knowledge of this topic? Has it changed my view of this topic and if so how? What are the most important pieces of information and what effect might they have? How does my thinking at this level relate to the topic I am studying? Questioning You will have begun to see, in this activity, that one of the fundamental tools for thinking critically is the ability to ask effective questions. Did you realise some questions are better than others at encouraging you to think more deeply about a topic? Picture a young child who has been given something new that he has never seen before, although he does not necessarily articulate, his exploration is designed to support him finding out the answers to questions such as :-what does it taste like? What can I do with it? How can I move it? Why does it move in that way? Think also about how you use questions in your own work with children, high quality open ended questions are tools to enable them to explore and develop further their ideas and understandings. Well, the same is true at all levels of education; a considerable amount of attention has been given to the use of questioning skills within teaching and learning (Brown and Wragg, 1993; Morgan and Saxton, 1991). Developing these skills to critically interrogate issues can enhance not only the depth of personal understanding, but also enrich group dialogue and discussion (Kyriacou, 1997). Activity 2 Here is an activity around using questions. You are going to use the questions when, where, what, who, why and how. See how many questions you can develop about any everyday object such as a stone, a pencil, a piece of clothing. e.g. what value is this? Where did it come from? Now review the questions and determine what sort of answers they might be supplying, and identify which types of questions generally lead to more open ended thinking? Using questions to interrogate opinions, insights and reflections can add new and valuable dimensions to the interpretation of information and contribute significantly to the ability to critically examine issues such as, the best way to carry out observations, support parents etc. Remembering the types of questions that provide the richest information - the why, what and how questions, may help you formulate questions about your study such as: Why is this point of information so important? What does it contribute to the overall discussion? How does it relate to other points in the discussion? Compare and Contrast Working out what terms mean and then how they might be phrased is a step in the right direction to understanding what a tutor might expect of you. Here as a final example is how you might approach ideas around comparing and contrasting. You are likely to be asked to do this in almost any assignment because you are expected to draw upon different ideas and views expressed in literature, even if the term is not used specifically in an essay title, this type of thinking will be employed at some point. When comparing and contrasting we are looking at differences and similarities as they are presented to us. It is about fine tuning and analysing what is alike and what is different. The challenge with academic work is that often we are talking about theories, ideas and principles of practice that seem very similar, so practicing the skills of this type of thinking with something easy first should help. Activity 3 Imagine perhaps two types of fruit e.g. oranges and apples, or two sports activities e.g. football and basketball and begin to compare - look for similarities and contrast - look for differences. As you begin to identify the similarities and differences in these, can you also see how you are approaching the task; are you making lists, using a Venn diagram, using a mind map? Whatever structure works for you, use for the next task. Draw upon something from practice e.g. a comparison of the ways children play in the outside area. Are you able to undertake this analysis without supporting your ideas by further observation? Are you able to use your comparison to consider what might be the types of play that are most popular? What else are you noticing? Now apply this to an academic assessment, perhaps a comparison of two early years' pioneers. Can you identify what they have in common? Do you need to find more information to do this effectively? What criteria are you using for your comparison? Hopefully you will now see how undertaking this task will enable you to add depth and criticality to your writing as it encourages you to look beyond the surface of the information you are provided with.
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