The teaching of critical thinking in public schooling is a central aim. Yet, despite its widespread acceptance in curriculum documents, critical thinking is rarely taught. Motivated by Onosko (1991), and by the efforts of some post-secondary instructors of critical thinking to get critical thinking taught in schools, I look at the recent literature on (a) critical thinking in the social studies, (b) definitions of, and programs in critical thinking, (c) teachers beliefs, and (d) the (...) milieus in which teachers work. I pose three questions and provide tentative hypotheses as to why critical thinking is not being implemented in schools. (shrink)

Although there are differences among critical thinking (hereafter CT) theorists about aspects of critical thinking, there is consensus about its importance in education. Several Saudi scholars argue that there is a lack of CT among Saudi students at high school which is attributed to the lack of teacher knowledge and practice of CT. This qualitative case study based on Paul’s theoretical framework (1992) investigates the implementation of CT at two secondary preservice teacher education programs in Saudi (...) Arabia. The results reveal that none of the lecturers taught CT, either explicitly or implicitly. While they all acknowledged the importance of CT, most maintained that they have never been instructed, advised or encouraged to teach CT. This study aims to build on the CT literature and address the gap in this literature in the Saudi context. (shrink)

One way in which the practice of inclusion can be actualised in classrooms is through the use of consistent, appropriate differentiated instruction. What remains elusive, however, is insight into what teachers in different contexts think and believe about differentiation, how consistently they differentiate instruction and what challenges they experience in doing so. In the study reported on here high school classrooms in a private and a government school in Lesotho were compared in order to determine teachers’ thoughts and beliefs about (...) differentiation, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and the challenges faced by teachers who implement this inclusive practice. Sampled teachers offered their views on what they understood differentiated instruction to be, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and identified challenges via an administered questionnaire. Data analysis was based on frequency counts and bar charts for comparative purposes. Findings indicate that private school teachers have a higher frequency of differentiated teaching practice, with time constraints indicated as the main challenge. Government school teachers had a lower frequency of differentiation, and identified a lack of resources, and the learner-teacher ratio as challenges, among others. In the study we highlighted the critical role that private schools can play in the national call for the implementation of inclusive teaching in Lesotho, in terms of active collaboration with surrounding government schools. Private schools, with their resources and access to professional development opportunities, can become catalysts in the implementation of inclusive teaching practices. (shrink)

Ethics is of vital importance to the Swedish educational system, as in many other educational systems around the world.Yet, it is unclear how ethics should be dealt with in school, and prior research and evaluations have found serious problems regarding ethics in education.The field of moral education lacks clear and widely accepted definitions of key concepts, and these ambiguities negatively impact both research and educational practice. This thesis draws a distinction between three approaches to ethics in school – the descriptive (...) ethics approach, the value transmission approach, and the inquiry ethics approach – and studies in what way (if at all) they are prescribed by the national curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school, how they relate to students’ moral reasoning about technology choices and online behaviour, and what pedagogical merits and disadvantages they have. Hopefully, this both contributes to reducing the ambiguities of the field, and to answering the question of how ethics should be dealt with in education. The descriptive ethics approach asserts that school should teach students empirical facts about ethics, such as what views and opinions people have. The value transmission approach holds that school should mediate some set of predefined values to the students and make sure the students come to accept these values.The inquiry ethics approach is the view that school should teach students to reason and think critically about ethics and to engage in ethical inquiry. The role of ethics in the curriculum has not been studied in light of the above distinction, in prior research,and such an investigation is undertaken here.The results suggest that ethics has a prominent, but complicated, role in the Swedish national curriculum. Although no explicit distinction is drawn or acknowledged in the curriculum, all three approaches are prescribed throughout the curriculum, albeit to different degrees. In the general section of the curriculum, the value transmission and inquiry ethics approaches are more extensively prescribed than the descriptive ethics approach. It was found that most of the syllabi contained explicit references to ethics, while some only contained implicit references to ethics, and two syllabi lacked references to ethics altogether. In the syllabi, the inquiry ethics approach is the most dominant, both in the sense of being present in the most syllabi, and in the sense of being more strongly prescribed in many of the syllabi where several approaches occur.The value transmission approach has the weakest role in the syllabi. In total, the inquiry ethics approach is the approach most strongly prescribed by the curriculum. But prior research has shown that inquiry ethics is very rarely implemented in the classroom. In this thesis, it is found that the inquiry ethics and the value transmission approaches are incompatible, given certain reasonable interpretations, which makes the finding that inquiry ethics is rarely implemented less surprising, since value transmission is practiced in schools. Some possible causes, and some consequences, of this is discussed. The students, in their moral reasoning about technology choices, reasoned in accordance with several classical normative theories – including consequentialism, deontological ethics and virtue ethics – and in doing so, they expressed reasoning that in the discussion is found to be in conflict with the values of the value foundation in the curriculum. These findings complement earlier findings, for example that students in their actions contradict the value foundation, by adding that such conflicts also exist in their reasoning. The existence of these conflicts is found to be problematic for a value transmission approach. Many of the students defended very restrictive views on disclosing personal information online, and prior research as well as the present data has shown that adults typically hold views that are very similar to these, concerning how they think that young people ought to act online. On the other hand, youths’ actual online behaviour, as reported in earlier studies, differs considerably from this. In line with this, the students also seemed to endorse a form of private morals view, according to which moral choices are simply up to one’s own taste, which would yield an escape exit from the restrictive views mentioned above, and permit any behaviour. In the discussion, it is argued that this is the result of an attempt at value transmission from the grown-up community, probably including teachers, which might seem to work, since the students claim to hold certain views, but which likely instead constitutes a false security, since these values are not actually accepted, but only paid lip service to, and the adults are therefore wrong in their belief that the students are protected by a certain set of values (that they think the students are upholding), since the students in fact do not uphold, and therefore do not act based upon, these values. This situation risks making the students more vulnerable than had no value transmission attempt been taken in the first place. Hence, the attempted value transmission runs the risk of counteracting its purpose of helping the students acquire a safe online behaviour. Throughout the moral reasoning mentioned above, extensive variations in the students’ reasoning were found, both interpersonally and intrapersonally, both in the decision method and in the rightness criterion dimensions, as well as in between the dimensions.The existence of such variations is a novel finding, and while possible applications in future research are discussed, it is also noted that this existence constitutes a reason to question the successfulness of both the value transmission and the inquiry ethics endeavours of the educational system. The results and discussions described above highlight the importance of investigating the merits of the different approaches. Several arguments that arise from the material of this thesis are presented, evaluated and discussed. The ability of each approach to fulfil some alleged key aims of ethics education is scrutinised; their abilities to educate for good citizenship, to educate for quality of life of the individual, and to facilitate better educational results in other subjects are all investigated, as well as the ability of each approach to help counteract the influence from online extremist propaganda aimed at young people and to promote safe online behaviour in general. It is concluded that the inquiry ethics approach has the strongest support from the material of this thesis. Some consequences for school practice are discussed, and it is concluded that changing the role of ethics in the curriculum would be beneficial, downplaying the role of value transmission and further increasing, and making more explicit and clear, the role of inquiry ethics. It is also shown that there are strong reasons for the inclusion of a new subject in the Swedish compulsory education with special focus on ethics. 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The notion and practice of critical thinking (CT) has moved from its speculative formation by John Dewey to a standard element in teacher education curricula and standards. In the process, CT has narrowed its focus to the analysis and articulation of logical thought, and lost transformative value. In this paper, we examine the conception and implementation of CT in three teacher education domains primarily in the United States–music, media and information literacy, and social studies–asking how CT has (...) deformed education in those domains, and how domain-specific approaches could reinvigorate CT. We further suggest refocusing the purpose of CT in teacher education on accomplishing transformative education for equity in school and society, by implementing a critically reflective, transformative praxis based on the insights of domain-specific approaches to CT. (shrink)

Queer Inclusion in Teacher Education explores the challenges and promises of building queer inclusive pedagogy and curriculum into teacher education. Weaving together theory, research findings, and practical "how-to" strategies and materials, it fills an important gap by offering a clear roadmap and resources for influencing the knowledge, beliefs, and actions of faculty working with pre-service teachers. While the book has implications for policy change, most immediately, readers will feel empowered with ideas for faculty development they can implement in (...) their own teacher education programs. Looking at both the politics and practices of teacher education and the ways in which queer issues manifest in schools, it is hopeful in suggesting that if teachers and pre-service teachers can critically reflect on homophobia and heteronormativity, they can begin to think about and relate to queer youth in a different, more positive and inclusive way. A Companion Website [http: //queerinclusion.com] with additional activities and materials for teacher educators and faculty development and a practical guide enhances the usefulness of the book. (shrink)

This study examines how one student teaching seminar employed collective critical observation and reflection of an experienced high school social studies teacher's pedagogy using a multimedia representation of teaching. Pre-service teachers watched this teacher implement two full class lessons and reflections on teaching about freedom of speech. This study's pre-service social studies teachers exhibited a developing ability, through collective observation, to critically reflect on their individual methodological and philosophical goals, social studies teaching and learning, and professional and (...) curricular visions in relation to their student teaching experiences and future practice. The study's findings offer implications for how pre-service social studies teachers critically reflect on their practice, while also developing knowledge of learners, subject matter, and teaching social studies. (shrink)

Research has shown that “no use” drug education programs, with the objective of scaring or shaming youth into abstinence, have not been effective in addressing problematic substance use. The ineffectiveness of such scare tactic approaches has led program developers to focus on prevention and harm reduction associated with drug use, or in general, health literacy promotion. While significant ‘discussion-based’ drug education programs have been developed over the past decade and has encouraged students to be expressive and critical thinkers regarding (...) drug use, their effective implementation has been a challenge. This paper introduces Engaged Philosophical Inquiry as a pedagogical approach in order to promote drug literacy. The EPI approach is used both as the content and means of professional development for high school teachers to address the significant role of teachers in these programs. Its goal is to help teachers become aware of and re-evaluate their biases, beliefs and behaviors, before they are able to facilitate a non-stereotyped, open, and thoughtful discussion on drug use related topics. The overall idea of this paper is based on an in-progress research project sponsored by Mitacs organization. It discusses the significance of the project by first presenting the existing methods and theoretical approaches to drug education. On that basis, it shows how EPI can contribute to traditional drug education approaches. It then describes how the methodology and phases of the project are rooted in a dialogical process that aim for a close collaboration with teachers. (shrink)

Recent developments in the field of education have led to a renewed interest in the mediating role of critical thinking abilities in the relationship between language learning strategies and the intermediate English as a Foreign Language learners’ writing performance. Oxford Placement Test was run to homogenize the participants, and 100 intermediate learners out of 235 were selected. Then, two valid questionnaires of Ricketts’ Critical Thinking Disposition and Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning were administered. Having administered the questionnaires, (...) the researchers asked the participants to sit for a writing test. The data collected from the questionnaires and as well as the scores of their writing performances were analyzed through SPSS. The results showed a significant relationship between learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, the sub-sets of learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, and CTA and learners’ learning strategies. However, CTA did not play a mediating role in the relationship between intermediate EFL learners’ learning strategies and writing performance. Based on the results of the study, one might also conclude that strategies seemed to play a more important role in the performance of learners especially their writing performances. Therefore, this study had useful contributions for students, teachers, and curriculum designers. Findings of this research could assist teachers to be aware of learners’ strategies in learning writing and help their students to be responsive to using learning strategies in their learning process and create a satisfactory learning context for using learning strategies. Therefore, learners were able to become independent and feel responsibility for their own learning. Secondly, curriculum developers could take advantage of the findings to include learning strategies training into the curriculum. As a result, students were able to use strategies in their learning process more easily and finally, the results might pave the way for improving the research findings. (shrink)

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash INTRODUCTION The coronavirus pandemic is a challenge to educators, policy makers, and ordinary people. In facing the threat from COVID-19, school systems and global institutions need “to address the essential matter of each human being and how they are interacting with, and affected by, a much wider set of biological and technical conditions.”[1] Educators must grapple with the societal issues that come with the intent of ensuring the safety of the public. To some, “these (...) are actually as important as the biological concerns of people.”[2] The current global crisis shows that “scientifically, socially, and politically the economy and technosphere are not just related, they are integral to a comprehensive response to major challenges.”[3] In developing these responses, scientists, government leaders, and policy makers need to consider the vulnerabilities of people, especially those in “thrown away” groups.[4] Jerome Ravetz explains that “microscopic viral predators cull our populations, as ever, but with a selection that is not natural but social and political.”[5] Educators must address the underlying vulnerabilities and evaluate the virus as a threat to academic experiences and access to a fair education. ANALYSIS • Critical Pedagogy By definition, the critical approach to teaching is about the problem-posing method of education developed by Paolo Freire. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he proposed a paradigm shift away from the banking method of learning wherein teachers deposit knowledge into the minds of students. Critical pedagogy is an educational approach that challenges students to develop the ability to recognize and criticize dominating theories and evaluate them in their social context. Teachers press students to recognize oppression and try to remedy oppression in their culture.[6] Despite the lack of in-person interaction between the teacher and the students, the effort to use innovative teaching techniques like critical pedagogy should continue. Online learning is not just about the use of technology, although the internet is crucial in the delivery of content. Since human beings are creators of value, they determine the meaning and purpose of technology. In this way, the set of values people have will influence online learning. Teachers cannot be more concerned about outcomes than about the process itself. The process is crucial since the ability of the student to think critically is developed in the exchange between the student and the teacher. The teacher cannot simply dump loads of information (deposit knowledge) but must pose problems to test the analytical and critical skills of students.[7] Education is about how people humanize the world. Policy makers miss the point when they focus on the delivery but do not pay attention to the substantive aspect of learning, which is human empowerment. Education is meant to expand the freedom of people. Education should be seen as an integrative activity. Learning is a formative process that aims to develop the human person. Without the face-to-face encounter between teacher and students, the challenge is finding ways to make learning an effective means to mold the values of young people. • Online Critical Pedagogy & the Role of Technology Physical distance appears to be an impediment in realizing the ideals of learning. The lack of contact between the teacher and the students may prevent a more meaningful interaction since online instruction is impersonal. It can be argued that there is no alternative to some classroom activities, especially laboratory experiments in science courses. The total classroom environment naturally influences the behavior of students when it comes to academic work: the look in the eyes of the professor, the caring ways of a teacher, or the pressure while taking exams contribute to an experience that only a classroom setting can provide. If implemented properly, technology can facilitate the personal relationships between teachers and students while providing meaningful experiences. With the current need for online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, gadgets are indispensable. Some would even consider gadgets an extension of the human body. A mobile phone is not just any instrument; it has evolved into a novel way of being in the world. Our gadgets are a means of seeing how the outside world unfolds. Modern technological tools allow the interface of people in many fields of experience in a globalized environment. Computers and other digital devices extend the meaning and value of human freedom. For example, a laptop provided to a poor child can redefine the meaning of and what the future might hold for that child. The device is crucial to the whole learning process. Modern tools are critical to self-discovery and greater freedom. The values that people embrace will matter in the new normal. The internet has provided a new democratic space that empowers groups and individuals to express themselves and to understand the world.[8] In an online class, students and teachers alike need to analyze big picture questions and layers of information. For example, the student in an ethics or philosophy class can reflect on the realities of life. With the proper guidance, online education should help define the meaning of moral commitment and human responsibility. CONCLUSION Before the pandemic, policy makers had been pursuing the goals of a globalized economy. They had been fashioning and promoting programs that cater to the interests of a consumer-driven world that has deprived the poor of opportunity. When the pandemic struck, globalization suddenly came to a halt and people realized the things that truly matter in life – family, love, and life itself. The new normal must now emphasize the role of education as a source of inner strength that can empower the person to live well reinforcing values based on a social consciousness. Critical pedagogy is possible under the new normal. The distance between the teacher and student does not make the educational process less real and in the absence of a vaccine, online learning is the safest strategy. Governments cannot freeze an entire school year since education is the only way out from poverty for millions. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a reason to re-imagine teaching using technology to encourage all students to question systems of oppression or greed, as the persistent pursuit of the truth is what education is all about. [1] Hartsell, Layne, Krabbe, Alexander, & Pastreich, Emmanuel. “Covid-19, Global Justice, and a New Biopolitics of the Anthropocene.” Social Ethics Society Journal of Applied Philosophy 6, no. 2 (2020), 3. [2] Ravetz, Jerome. “Science for a Proper Recovery: Post-Normal, not New Normal.” Issues in Science and Technology [Internet] July 15, 2020. https://issues.org/post-normal-science-for-pandemic-recovery/ [3] Hartsell, et al. “Covid-19, Global Justice, and a New Biopolitics of the Anthropocene,” 6. [4] Ravetz, “Science for a Proper Recovery: Post-Normal, not New Normal.” [5] Ibid. [6] Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (New York: Continuum Books, 1993). [7] Freire writes that in such a situation “instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.” See his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. [8] Bakardjieva, Maria. Internet Society. (London: Sage Publications, 2005). (shrink)

One challenge posed by climate change education is that, despite the scientific consensus on human induced climate change, the issue is controversial and politicised. A recent poll conducted in the USA revealed that 45% of respondents did not believe that human activity is a key cause of climate change, while 8.3% denied that climate change was occurring at all. The poll also found that those with conservative political beliefs were far more likely to deny anthropogenic climate change. The controversial nature (...) of climate change is a double-edged sword for educators—offering both benefits and risks. Controversial topics can be engaging for students, allowing them to critically examine competing perspectives, justify opinions and, thus, develop and practice critical thinking skills. On the other hand, they may provoke classroom conflict and expose teachers to backlash from students, parents, colleagues or even members of the public, including accusations of indoctrination. This risk has resulted in some teachers adopting problematic approaches to teaching about climate change, such as presenting students with an impartial account of ‘both sides’ of the debate. Some climate change sceptics groups have even developed their own curriculum materials and lobbied for their implementation in schools in order to provide students with a ‘balanced’ account of the issue. These problems, and suggestions for overcoming them, are explored by several papers in this special issue. (shrink)

In spite of the widespread recognition of critical thinking as an elementary aim of education, and an important tool for people to evaluate information and make reasonable decisions in their daily lives, to think critically is a difficult task. We are consciously and unconsciously biased, and our basic beliefs strongly influence the way we assess evidence, so our cognitive default condition seems to move us away from critical thinking. However, it is possible appropriately to exercise critical thinking (...) to evaluate subjects to which we are emotionally attached, and the experience of the illusionist Harry Houdini investigating Spiritualism is a striking example of it. My objective here is to discuss how Houdini incorporated core elements of critical thinking, such as the ability to evaluate reasons, and the disposition to calibrate his beliefs accordingly, in his assessment of the claim that Spiritualist mediums could contact the spirits of dead people, as described in his book A Magician among the Spirits.Export citation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Looking to Learn: Museum Educators and Aesthetic EducationNancy Blume (bio), Jean Henning (bio), Amy Herman (bio), and Nancy Richner (bio)IntroductionMuseum education. Aesthetic education. How are they similar? How do they differ? How do they relate to each other? What are their goals? As museum educators working with classroom and art teachers, we are often asked these questions, and we ask them ourselves. “What do you DO?” is probably the (...) most frequently asked question of all, and the answer is complex. Even more complex is how these questions relate to the Rembrandt Project. Given that looking at original works of art is such a priority for museums and museum educators, how do we address the project’s reliance on technology? And how do these questions relate to the social studies and visual arts standards, [End Page 83] another major component of the project? How does the project relate to the work we do in our own museums? Writing collaboratively implies that we have certain areas of commonality; but we also have differences, which will be apparent in individual sections of this article: Jean Henning and Nancy Richner discuss the Nassau County Museum of Art, Nancy Blume writes about Asia Society, and Amy Herman explores the Frick Collection. Our focus will be the domain of museum education as that is what we know best, but there are inevitably areas where it overlaps and complements the domains of art education, aesthetic education, and social studies.Art Museum Education HistoryThe history of art museum education begins with the founding of museums in the United States during the commercial and industrial expansion that took place after the Civil War, between 1870 and 1929. The principles guiding American museums have always mirrored the values of American society. From the beginning of this country’s history, the fine arts have been viewed as elitist and thus of no value to the larger society. “To America,” Ben Franklin wrote in the late 1700s, “one school master is worth a dozen poets, and the invention of a machine or the improvement of an implement is of more importance than a masterpiece of Raphael.”1 Given such longstanding and deep-seated suspicion of art among Americans, it is not surprising that both the champions and the staff of art museums insisted on the practical educational benefits museums provided to the public.By the late nineteenth century, at the height of immigration and the emergence of a strong working class and labor movement, a social dimension was added to the mission of museum education. Art museums, like public libraries, were seen as venues for achieving social balance. By the early twentieth century an aesthetic agenda was finally joined to these social and pragmatic ones.2While museums have responded to the needs created by cyclical changes in social, economic, political, and intellectual life, today’s art museum educators still deal with the tension among the museum’s aesthetic, educational, and social missions; only the context and delivery modes of museum education have changed. Yet despite the shifting directions and priorities in museum education, there are certain basic and commonly accepted premises that museum educators have shared since the late nineteenth century. The 1984 Museums Commission on Museums for a New Century stated what has been the continuing premise of museum education since the late nineteenth century: learning in museums is based on objects and involves not only developing the ability to synthesize ideas and form opinions but also shaping an aesthetic and cultural sensibility.3 Another fundamental [End Page 84] assumption is that museums are institutions of visual instruction. Although each of the museum educators writing here represents a unique institution with unique approaches to looking at and finding meaning in art, we all agree on the importance of the original work of art as the basis for our work. It is the complexity of original artworks that enables them to play a dual role. One role is pragmatic, which requires meeting standards set by state and national governments for teaching critical thinking skills and improving literacy. The second role is aesthetic—namely, ways of helping students develop habits for aesthetic encounters that are an integral part... (shrink)

Enquiry teaching approaches are widely considered as more useful than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour. This paper is a report of an empirical study on the validity of this belief with reference to higher-ability and lower- to medium-ability groups drawn from geography classes at the Advanced Level in Hong Kong. The hypotheses were that, taken together, enquiry approaches are more effective than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour in both the short and long (...) terms for students as a whole, and for students within the same range of academic ability. A quasi-experimental control group design was used for selecting students and classes from schools in the territory. A questionnaire survey and a series of interviews were conducted to collect data about students' behaviour before and after they were taught a people-environment topic with a didactic approach or an enquiry approach. The results suggest that the students on the whole were not behaving as positively for the environment as their peers in other countries. For both the higher- and the lower- to medium-ability classes, those who were taught with an enquiry approach were behaving positively in more areas than those who were taught with a didactic approach in both the short and long terms. This trend could be attributed to their greater attention to critical thinking, positive behavioural changes, and the development of internal locus of control, while society as a whole was still largely apathetic to personal efforts for improving environmental quality. To further enhance the effectiveness of enquiry for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour, it is suggested that teachers should give more attention to the elements of concern and empathy in the classroom. Improvements in teacher education and training and in the guidelines for teachers, restructuring and revision of environmental education in schools, providing adequate funding and resources, and revision of the style and content of questions in public examinations are also recommended. (shrink)

The development of the third wave of Information and Communication Technology is accompanied by the growing concern on the decline of an individual’s ability to think sharply and wisely. In Malaysia, this concern has brought to fore the prominence of teaching thinking skills within the school system and teachers were expected to be the agents of this change. Are teachers aware of the importance of this thinking ability? Have they been adequately prepared for this paradigm shift? Do they personally feel (...) competent teaching for thinking in the classrooms? This survey attempts to answer these questions and investigates the relationship between teachers’ attitudes and practices. It also examines if there exists any significant differences in teachers’ beliefs and their practices with respect to gender, course attendance and teaching experience. Finally, it explores some of the problems faced by teachers in teaching for thinking. (shrink)

Assuming that critical thinking dispositions are at least as important as critical thinking abilities, Ennis examines the concept of critical thinking disposition and suggests some criteria for judging sets of them. He considers a leading approach to their analysis and offers as an alternative a simpler set, including the disposition to seek alternatives and be open to them. After examining some gender-bias and subject-specificity challenges to promoting critical thinking dispositions, he notes some difficulties involved in assessing (...) critical thinking dispositions, and suggests an exploratory attempt to assess them. (shrink)

__Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning _answers an urgent call for teachers who educate children from diverse backgrounds to meet the demands of a changing world._ In today’s knowledge economy, teachers must prioritize problem-solving ability, adaptability, critical thinking, and the development of interpersonal and collaborative skills over rote memorization and the passive transmission of knowledge. Authors Linda Darling-Hammond and Jeannie Oakes and their colleagues examine what this means for teacher preparation and showcase the work of programs that are educating (...) for deeper learning, equity, and social justice. Guided by the growing knowledge base in the science of learning and development, the book examines teacher preparation programs at Alverno College, Bank Street College of Education, High Tech High’s Intern Program, Montclair State University, San Francisco Teacher Residency, Trinity University, and University of Colorado Denver. These seven programs share a common understanding of how people learn that shape similar innovative practices. With vivid examples of teaching for deeper learning in coursework and classrooms; interviews with faculty, school partners, and novice teachers; surveys of teacher candidates and graduates; and analyses of curriculum and practices, _Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning _depicts transformative forms of teaching and teacher preparation that honor and expand all students’ abilities, knowledges, and experiences, and reaffirm the promise of educating for a better world. (shrink)

The Joy of Not Knowing takes every aspect of the curriculum and of school life and transforms it into a personalised, meaningful and enjoyable experience for all. It offers readers an innovative, theoretical and practical guide to establish a values-based, enquiry-led and challenge-rich learning to learn approach to teaching and learning and to school leadership. This thought-provoking guide provides the reader with a wealth of whole-class, easy-to-implement, malleable, practical ideas and case studies that can be personalised to the vision of (...) each setting, age-group and curriculum. It brings together, as a whole-school framework, the strategies that have been shown to have the greatest impact on practitioner's professional fulfilment and on children's life chances, love of learning, intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm for wanting to know. The Joy of Not Knowing: enables schools to launch the academic year with a bespoke JONK Learning to Learn Week that enables every student to succeed; develops philosophical, creative and critical problem-solving and multi-lingual thinking skills; establishes collaborative cultures of thinking, learning and leadership; Informs practice through active action research; incorporates a values-led democratic approach to school life; nurtures school-pupil-family-community partnerships. Designed for school leaders and practitioners at all levels and across all ages, this practical guide shows how all students can thrive and develop the dispositions of successful lifelong learners and global citizens. (shrink)

Teachers and teacher educators in the US struggle with conflicting needs. They must think critically and adaptively in response to the rapidly changing demographics of their students and adjust to a policy climate that emphasizes standardization, measurement, and disregard for teachers as professionals. Embattled pre-service teacher education programs in institutions of higher education have traditionally sought to develop teacher candidates’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions. The authors argue that in the current climate pre-service teachers also must appropriate conceptual (...) frameworks to support their development as responsive professionals. While dispositions are beliefs and attitudes the origin and teaching of which remain in dispute, concepts like social justice, political-economic equity, and formative assessment are abstract ideas or concepts that inform practice. Conceptual tools, i.e., concepts, theories, and frameworks, guide novice teachers in making decisions in response to the growing and rapidly changing student populations they will teach as well as the policy contexts that constrain their teaching practice. The appropriation of conceptual tools contributes to development of vision and adaptive expertise required by responsive teacher professionals. Using an activity theory framework developed by Wartofsky that draws in particular on the classification of artifacts, or tools, this article frames and critically examines teachers’ need for conceptual tools, the appropriation of those tools, and a mixed methods study of that appropriation. The study demonstrates that teacher candidates do appropriate conceptual tools, but that measurement of that process, though desirable in the current policy context, requires the development of a systematic and replicable methodology. (shrink)

To understand the relationship between kindergarten school-based research and preschool teachers’ teaching ability and identify the mechanism by which SBR affects teachers’ teaching ability, a survey of randomly sampled preschool teachers in Sichuan Province was conducted online using three scales assessing community learning, teaching ability and teaching philosophy. The survey results showed that the level of SBR reached the upper-middle level. The level of SBR positively predicted the teaching beliefs and teaching ability of preschool teachers. SBR influenced teaching ability through (...) direct and indirect effects, with indirect effects accounting for 23.5% of the total effect; however, only constructivist teaching beliefs played a mediating role in the relationship between SBR and teaching ability via an indirect effect. SBR focused on improvement in teaching ability should not only examine the connection between SBR and practical problems to promote improvement in teachers’ teaching ability but also should examine the role of teachers’ beliefs and influence teachers’ teaching abilities by changing teachers’ teaching beliefs. (shrink)

This qualitative study presents 27 students’ insights about four teachers’ implementation of an immersive Native American history curricular unit designed to equip students with digital skills to critically navigate complex, polarizing social issues. The Digital Civic Learning (DCL) curriculum used Google Suite and Google Classroom or Schoology to provide collaborative slides supporting immersive 2D-graphics, children’s books/resources, immersive activities/artefact-creation, and multimodal tools (e.g., discussion posts, Flipgrid video-essays). Teachers regulated student thinking/behavior towards cohesive outcomes, and encouraged open-ended exploration, operationalizing the design framework (...) as a zone of proximal development (ZPD). The history unit incorporates four cybernetic design features (DF) that enable teachers to steer student-centered collaboration within the curricular unit. The teacher serves four diverse roles (guide, facilitator, modeler, participant observer) mapping onto the DF. Results of focus group interviews with students, which were analyzed based on a theory-informed coding scheme and narrative inquiry, suggest ways for social studies teachers to operationalize the DCL immersive history unit as a cybernetic ZPD by adapting its basic structure to technologies accessible in their schools by adapting its basic structure to technologies accessible in their schools. (shrink)

The basis for the paper ‘Exploring a Framework for the Mentoring of Early Career Teachers in Catholic Schools in Western Australia’ stems from the work undertaken in the author’s recently published PhD study and on personal experiences of teaching philosophy to students as a classroom teacher, gifted and talented coordinator and School leader for over 28 years. The mixed methods study identified and explored the mentoring experiences in the transition from graduate to Early Career Teacher in selected Catholic (...) primary and secondary schools in Western Australia. The research addressed a significant deficit, as presently the lack of a system-wide framework for the mentoring of ECTs, the cessation of the current ECT program and the limited training of mentors, has resulted in less than ideal mentoring experiences for ECTs. A chief finding was that the guarantee of a mentor does not necessarily alleviate every problem faced by an ECT. However, the attributes of a mentor may significantly assist or hinder the aspirations of an ECT. Encouragingly, the majority of principals recognised the importance of mentoring by offering support for the instigation of a system-wide mentoring framework. On the basis of these findings, principles upon which a new mentoring framework might be developed are proposed. The suggested system frame-work for Western Australian Catholic Education, titled ‘Borromeo’s Mentoring Framework’, may benefit system-leaders, principals, mentors and ECTs through the implementation of programs at a school based level, that enhance critical thinking skills i.e. Philosophy for Children and Circle of Inquiry. (shrink)

This paper describes three social studies teachers’ participation in an approximately 50-h, 13-month, Lesson Study-type professional development program called Beyond Words. The program centered around promoting teachers’ understanding of historical domain knowledge through experiences with innovative visual curriculum materials and sustained collaboration. This qualitative investigation answers: To what degree can Beyond Words help in-service geography teachers design and implement powerful instruction centered around historical photographs? Throughout Beyond Words the teachers demonstrated a spirit of open-mindedness and a willingness to experiment with (...) unfamiliar ideas; they planned and implemented a lesson that featured engaging historical photographs, thinking critically about the past, and making claims about a public issue. At the end of the program, however, they demonstrated conventional approaches toward social studies instruction, especially regarding curriculum and assessment. The work shared here suggests that helping teachers craft high-quality questions to anchor student-inquiry and scaffolding teachers’ sensemaking of student-outcome data should be high priorities for professional development providers. (shrink)

With the growing need to nurture students’ independent learning, English language teaching practices should reflect student-centered assessment approaches, such as self-assessment, an ultimate goal of higher education. It has been pointed out that to conduct effective self-assessment, students need to be taught systematically, and that is where teachers are expected to step in. Prior to implementing such a change in ELT, it is important to conduct research on English as a foreign language teachers’ attitudes toward, and self-efficacy beliefs about, implementing (...) self-assessment to cultivate capable student self-assessors. Although the strong global endorsement of self-assessment over the past two decades has witnessed its classroom implementation in different disciplines, such studies are scant in relation to EFL writing classrooms. To address this gap, the present qualitative research examined five Chinese tertiary EFL writing teachers’ attitudes toward and self-efficacy beliefs about student self-assessment of writing, as well as possible reasons that discourage them from engaging students in self-assessment practices. Data collected from in-depth, semi-structured interviews indicated that self-assessment, a critical element of self-regulated learning, is surprisingly missing from the teachers’ knowledge base and previous practices. Additionally, the findings offer insights into the striking differences in teachers’ understanding of, attitudes toward, and low self-efficacy beliefs about self-assessment of writing. Reasons why teachers choose not to implement self-assessment of writing are also discussed. Findings from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of how EFL teachers’ attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs are enacted in relation to their classroom assessment practices in order to move forward discussions on the feasibility of implementing self-assessment of writing in tertiary EFL classrooms. (shrink)

The global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant uncertainty for students and teachers. During this time, teacher and student creative beliefs and affect play a supportive role in adaptively managing stress, finding joy, and bouncing back from inevitable setbacks with resilience. Developing an adaptive orientation to creativity is a critically important step in helping teachers deal with the challenges and stress of reaching their students through distance learning, especially the most marginalized. This study aims to understand how (...) teacher creativity linked to well-being in the face of COVID-19-related school shutdowns and how teachers planned to adapt creatively to distance learning through the guidance of a summer creative teaching training institute. Results from this sequential mixed method study demonstrated important relationships. Creative self-efficacy in teaching related to teacher buoyancy in the face of setbacks. Creative growth mindset related to teachers’ general positive affect in teaching. Lowered creative anxiety related to reduced effects of secondary traumatic stress and general negative affect in teaching. Environmental support and encouragement for creativity in schools may be foundational for teacher well-being by enhancing teachers’ dispositional joy, general positive affect, and reducing general negative affect. Results suggested additional stress and loss of creativity for most teachers due to the COVID-19 pandemic alongside substantial capacity for creative adaptations with the support of training for creativity in teaching and learning. (shrink)

As a sub-realm of Language Teacher Psychology, teachers’ professional agency has gained significant attention from educational practitioners and teachers. The aim is to better discern teachers’ professional development and teaching effectiveness with a view to ensuring the quality of language teaching. International literature concerning teachers’ professional agency has noted a shift from knowledge training to vocational development in relation to teachers’ experience in decision making. Yet, little research so far has scrutinized this specific issue in Chinese university settings, and (...) the real picture of teacher agency needs further exploration. Besides, the multidimensional and complex nature of agency identifies the overwhelming research work in understanding its contents in detail based on the previous perspectives from individuals, society, and time. To this end, the ecological understanding of professional agency reframed the theoretical basis of this study, prone to explore how teachers’ experience could be examined in relation to individual capacity, resources, and structural and contextual variables. The study was conducted in Chinese university settings in response to the research gap related to understanding professional agency. Quantitative and qualitative data from questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observations with 116 university teachers in China demonstrated that the enactment of professional agency rested on the interplay between temporal contexts, teacher capacity, and beliefs, especially in the instructional community. The findings revealed that university teachers at different stages of career development manifested variability in exercising their professional agency in relation to adapting or adopting existing teaching concepts, methods, or approaches. Mounting evidence revealed some enablers and constraints in relation to formative assessment, time impact, classroom interaction, and school culture. Emphasizing the interaction between individuals’ ability and their engagement with the professional environment, the findings provide insights into theoretical implications associated with ecological theory and enhance the practical discussion about promoting professional development for novice, mid-career, and veteran English teachers at the university level. (shrink)

The California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory is a commonly used tool for measuring critical thinking dispositions. However, research on the efficacy of the CCTDI in predicting good thinking about students’ own deeply held beliefs is scant. In this paper we report on preliminary results from our ongoing study designed to gauge the usefulness of the CCTDI in this context.

In this paper, we address critical thinking skill assessment in the context of management education. This paper uses Ennis' well-known list of critical thinking abilities to identify assessable critical thinking components present in student work. A sample of 152 graduate written assignments designed to assess critical thinking is used as a basis for analysis. These were taken from a business analysis subject in a large Australian business school over a 6-year period. A methodological framework is proposed (...) and applied to this data set, offering a way of assessing evidence of five representative categories pertaining to critical thinking in a business context. The framework includes a basic clarification (BC), bases for inferences (BI), inferences (IN), advanced clarification (AC) and auxiliary abilities (AA). Results indicate that the essays rank highly on AA and AC but low on BC, BI and IN. While critical thinking is partially evidenced in the study corpus, attention is needed in terms of refining the measurement framework dedicated to eliciting specific critical thinking components. We provide the initial elements of such a framework in this paper and make suggestions for how it can be improved. Implications for the theory and practice of management education are outlined. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Nature of Critical Thinking Critical Thinking: Skills/Abilities and Dispositions Critical Thinking and the Problem of Generalizability The Relationship Between Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking “Critical Thinking” and Other Terms Referring to Thinking Critical Thinking and Education Critiques of Critical Thinking Conclusion.

The usage of social media in education is increasing as a result of perceived pedagogical benefits. The literature emphasizes the importance of teachers continuing to build their social media capabilities, experiences, and values. Critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to contextualize social media require intellectual, social, and ethical talents regardless of operational proficiency. We performed a semi-structured interview with 13 high school teachers who expressed their thoughts and experiences using social media in the classroom. The interviews’ recorded videos were (...) transcribed into text and coded inductively and deductively for analysis. The study’s findings agreed with a proposed conceptual framework that claims that regular interactions with social media enable teachers to better understand and teach with it. The paper presents a framework to assist education facilitators, educational technologists, teachers, and other affiliated agencies in refocusing their efforts on technology-assisted context training. It also emphasizes the significance of engaging with technology regularly. (shrink)

The burgeoning of new technologies is increasingly affecting people’s lives. One new technology that is heatedly discussed is artificial intelligence in education. To allow students to understand the impact of emerging technologies on people’s future lives from a young age, some popular science activities are being progressively introduced into elementary school curricula. Popular science activities are informal education programs and practices of universal education. However, two issues need to be discussed in the implementation of these activities. First, because these informal (...) curricula are usually short in duration, the question of whether they only serve to generate motivation or actually enhance learning outcomes requires examination. Second, the role of teacher support in popular science activities and its impact on students’ learning results need to be further investigated. To this end, this study aims to explore the effectiveness of popular AI science activities in informal curricula on students’ AI achievement and the interrelationship between students’ learning outcomes in popular AI science activities with and without teacher support. A 6-h-long AI popular science activity was conducted with 22 fifth- and sixth-grade students in elementary school. This study was conducted using a one-group pretest and posttest design, and the data collection tools included AI achievement pre- and posttests and an artifact scoring rubric. The results showed that with regard to learning outcomes, popular science activities were helpful for cognitive enhancement of AI concepts, but more time was needed for skills to improve. Additionally, this study found that students’ learning performance was different with and without teacher support. Activities with teacher support can enhance students’ learning outcomes, but students become accustomed to relying on their teachers. In contrast, activities without teacher support seem to be more effective in fostering students’ independent computational thinking and problem-solving abilities. (shrink)

This essay offers a comprehensive vision for a higher education program incorporating critical thinking across the curriculum at hypothetical Alpha College, employing a rigorous detailed conception of critical thinking called “The Alpha Conception of Critical Thinking”. The program starts with a 1-year, required, freshman course, two-thirds of which focuses on a set of general critical thinking dispositions and abilities. The final third uses subject-matter issues to reinforce general critical thinking dispositions and abilities, teach samples of (...) subject matter, and introduce subject-specific critical thinking. Subject-matter departmental and other units will make long-range plans for incorporating critical thinking in varying amounts in subject-matter courses, culminating in a written Senior Thesis/Project involving investigating, taking, and defending a position, which reinforce critical thinking abilities and dispositions and increase subject-matter knowledge. Teaching approaches used in the program are involving and based on the principle, “We learn what we use.” Both summative and formative assessment are employed as appropriate. Coordination and support are extensive. Objections and concerns are discussed, and alternatives, including possible transitions, are considered. An extended review of research supports moving toward CTAC. (shrink)

The global education crisis is a complex problem that requires change from teachers, school managers, civil society, implementers, planners, governments and donors. Addressing the issues that lie beneath this crisis requires new ways of working. Systems thinking is a suite of approaches to grappling with complex problems that is beginning to gain traction in international education. This innovative book brings together new research in the nascent field of systems thinking in international education to exemplify how systems thinking offers the tools, (...) frameworks and concepts to improve outcomes in education systems. (shrink)

The chapter presents the prototyping of a thinking routine designed to foster good inference habits in children ages 6 to 11. The prototyping was developed at Ninho, an educational project for children from underprivileged households in Brazil. The thinking routines by Ritchhart and colleagues (2006) served as our starting point. Following a Virtue Education (VE) approach, we supposed that the repeated application would conduce to habituation. In addition, to increase peer-to-peer interactions, the teacher applying the routines worked as a (...) facilitator in a Community of Inquiry (CI). After six months of application, the results were partially successful. We identified that the repeated exposition to the magic question “What makes you say that?” made children more aware of the evidence supporting their assumptions. Furthermore, the interactions between peers made them recognize different perspectives. However, we also identified some shortcomings. Most of them seemed to arise from cognitive biases. At the individual level, belief perseverance kept children too attached to their first assumptions. They preferred self-serving rationalizations instead of accepting a counter-argument. At the group level, we identified problems of social contagion such as information cascades. The effects of a first opinion rhetorically voiced were hard to efface. Since none of the steps on the previous routines addressed these biases, we prototyped a routine to start filling this gap. Following Critical Thinking (CT) theorists, we added a step of structured instruction concerning one specific reasoning technique - the inference to the best explanation. Moreover, the recommendation of cognitive psychologists motivated the inclusion of some extra features to avoid groupthink biases. For instance, a visual table that juxtaposes contrasting arguments should facilitate comparative evaluations. Also, a star-based evaluation scale should help different individuals to discuss their assessments based on a common ground. As described in the end, the prototype with elements from VE, CI and CT presented promising results. (shrink)

Models of the explore–exploit problem have explained how children's decision making is weighed by a bias for information (directed exploration), randomness, and generalization. These behaviors are often tested in domains where a choice to explore (or exploit) is guaranteed to reveal an outcome. An often overlooked but critical component of the assessment of explore–exploit decisions lies in the expected success of taking actions in the first place—and, crucially, how such decisions might be carried out when learning from others. Here, (...) we examine how children consider an informal teacher's beliefs about the child's competence when deciding how difficult a task they want to pursue. We present a simple model of this problem that predicts that while learners should follow the recommendation of an accurate teacher, they should exploit easier games when a teacher overestimates their abilities, and explore harder games when she underestimates them. We tested these predictions in two experiments with adults (Experiment 1) and 6- to 8-year-old children (Experiment 2). In our task, participants' performance on a picture-matching game was either overestimated, underestimated, or accurately represented by a confederate (the “Teacher”), who then presented three new matching games of varying assessed difficulty (too easy, too hard, just right) at varying potential reward (low, medium, high). In line with our model's predictions, we found that both adults and children calibrated their choices to the teacher's representation of their competence. That is, to maximize expected reward, when she underestimated them, participants chose games the teacher evaluated as being too hard for them; when she overestimated them, they chose games she evaluated as being too easy; and when she was accurate, they chose games she assessed as being just right. This work provides insight into the early-emerging ability to calibrate explore–exploit decisions to others' knowledge when learning in informal pedagogical contexts. (shrink)

School failure is an educational problem that affects academic performance and the trajectory of students, impacts their self-esteem, and contributes to social inequality. This phenomenon, which indicates low educational quality, is linked to a lack of motivation, poor performance, and a scarcity of resources. A critical approach proposes analyzing the institutional structures that perpetuate this situation, fostering dialogue among educational actors to find effective solutions. At the ISENCO high school in Tecomán, efforts are being made to identify internal and (...) external causes, proposing alternatives such as improving reading comprehension, implementing tutoring, and strengthening educational infrastructure. Additionally, it is crucial to develop critical thinking and ethical skills in students, as well as to encourage community participation in the school. This partial report presents advancements and results obtained, using a mixed approach for in-depth analysis that leads to solutions that prevent school dropout and failure. (shrink)

At different times in their school career and across different subject areas, some pupils may require additional and/or more complex tasks from their teachers, since they find the work set to be insufficiently challenging. Recommendations for coping with these pupils’ needs are varied, but among other responses, it is common, in the field of ‘gifted and talented’ education, to advocate the use of critical thinking programmes. These can be very effective in providing the missing challenge through helping develop pupils’ (...) facilities for building and defending rational argument. However, the exercises can be just that; mental agility tasks that lack relevant context. When children engage in learning philosophy in school, they benefit from the experience of developing logical, rigorous argument; but the subject can offer more than critical skills practice. Since philosophy attends to questions about things that matter in pupils’ lives, discussions can have an ethical and moral dimension and as such can be more than an intellectual exercise. Pupils of all abilities and propensities can become involved in the discussions, but the open nature of the areas of debate lends itself particularly well to providing challenge for pupils who need enriched and extended tasks in order to remain engaged. Some of the well-rehearsed Philosophy with/for Children methods are also designed to help develop mutual respect and understanding and so philosophy not only appeals to the cognitive and intellectual in children, but places this development in a context that fosters positive personal qualities. (shrink)

Critical thinking involves deliberate application of tests and standards to beliefs per se and to methods used to arrive at beliefs. Pedagogical license is authorization accorded to teachers permitting them to use otherwise illicit means in order to achieve pedagogical goals. Pedagogical license is thus analogous to poetic license or, more generally, to artistic license. Pedagogical license will be found to be pervasive in college teaching. This presentation suggests that critical thinking courses emphasize two topics: first, the nature (...) and usefulness of critical thinking; second, the nature and pervasiveness of pedagogical license. Awareness of pedagogical license alerts the student to the need for critical thinking. Indoctrination is done to students; education is done by students. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art in Nature and Schools:Nils-UdoYoung Imm Kang Song (bio)IntroductionThe arts are an integral part of our culture, and they invite us to investigate, express ideas, and create aesthetically pleasing works. Of interest to educators is clear scholarship that links the arts to cognitive and intellectual development. The processes of creating art and viewing and interpreting art promote cognitive and skill development.1 Elliot Eisner, who has written extensively on this (...) topic, argues that "Artistic activity is a form of inquiry that depends on qualitative forms of intelligence."2 Eisner suggests that children can use art to question and reflect on sensory information from their daily lives, and from this reflection develop insight, awareness, and critical thinking skills.3 Expanding on this idea, many scholars suggest that sensory perceptions promote learning through reflection, thus affirming the link between sensory perception and cognitive processing.4 Greene also posits that the arts provide a reflective type of learning, in which students learn "new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and moving."5 This expressiveness develops from the creative nature of art and its ability to encourage students to "[learn] to learn."6This article focuses on how the arts heighten cognitive experience through the use of natural materials and sites and the engagement with the natural world. The arts expose viewers to new ways of seeing, feeling, and thinking about nature; this can lead to greater awareness of and motivation to act on behalf of nature. Arts-based experiences "encourage contemplative, reflective thought, which can extend environmental awareness, an essential basis for environmental understanding."7 Sharpening sensory and perceptive [End Page 96] skills through observation and creation can offer children insights into the mystery and metaphor of nature.8 Such a powerful experience often fosters aesthetic sensitivity and can also motivate students to act. To assist in this process, teachers can offer a context of factual information, creative idea exploration, interdisciplinary tools, and a sense of social awareness.9Eisner notes that simple natural components, such as those encountered in viewing or creating ecological art, can be enormously powerful when considered from an aesthetic perspective.10 He writes,A tree, for example, can be viewed as an investment in the value of one's property, as a species of flora, as a source of shade, or an expressive form that provides a certain quality of experience when one looks through its leaves just before sunset. The tree's aesthetic features become salient when we choose to perceive the expressive features of the tree.11Greene reinforces the idea that aesthetic understanding can be deeply engaging to learners and can highlight things that had previously gone unnoticed, thus providing new insights in the life of the viewer.12 Viewers experience new connections, identify new patterns, and think in entirely different ways that break from a more constricted viewpoint. It is this kind of fresh thinking that is needed in the field of environmental education, and which ecological art may in fact provide. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Nils-Udo, Circle of Calumet Bamboo, Calumet bamboo; 1990, Reunion, Indian Ocean. Photo by Nils-Udo.[End Page 97]In light of these ideas about aesthetics, ecology, and education, several questions are raised. How can an aesthetic experience with the works of an environmental artist lead children to take in more through their senses and to apply such radical openness in any subject that comes up for them? What really makes ecological artworks unique, not only as aesthetic experiences but as learning experiences? How can ecological art in educational settings inform, inspire, and engage students around environmental issues? In this article, I examine the artworks of Nils-Udo, a German artist, by looking at his art-making processes, intentions, and themes. Using illustrations of several of his major works situated in various natural environments, I consider how these artworks could initiate discussions and foster connections to classrooms while providing elementary and middle school students with the opportunities to view and ponder existing artworks, create their own natural artworks, and heighten their ecological awareness.The ArtistIn order to more deeply understand Nils-Udo's life and work, I interviewed... (shrink)

Everyday beliefs often organize and guide motivations, goals, and behaviors, and, as such, may also differentially motivate individuals to value and attend to emotion-related cues of others. In this way, the beliefs that individuals hold may affect the socioemotional skills that they develop. To test the role of emotion-related beliefs specific to anger, we examined an educational context in which beliefs could vary and have implications for individuals’ skill. Specifically, we studied 43 teachers’ beliefs about students’ anger in the school (...) setting as well as their ability to recognize expressions of anger in children’s faces in a dynamic emotion recognition task. Results revealed that, even when controlling for teachers’ age and gender, teachers’ belief that children’s anger was useful and valuable in the school setting was associated with teachers’ accuracy at recognizing anger expressions in children’s faces. The belief that children’s anger was harmful and not conducive to learning, however, was not associated with teachers’ accuracy at recognizing children’s anger expressions. These findings suggest that certain everyday beliefs matter for predicting skill in recognizing specific emotion-related cues. (shrink)

This qualitative study examined how social studies teachers implemented experiential instructional techniques by closely analyzing videotaped lessons taught over four years in third through 12th grade classrooms across 16 school districts. Data analysis indicated that of the 438 lessons, only 14 involved experiential instructional techniques, and their implementation generally failed to reflect the potential benefits of this instructional approach. Twelve of the experiential exercises (a) lacked a clear instructional purpose related to the content; (b) did reflect an instructional purpose, but (...) it was ultimately thwarted by the activity's unanticipated dynamism; or (c) encouraged the development of significant misconceptions about the content, while one of the two lessons without these problems demonstrated the strategy's use for reinforcement of factual recall rather than critical thinking. Implications for social studies education research and practice are considered. (shrink)

It is astonishing that we humans are able to have, act on and express moral beliefs. This dissertation aims to provide a better philosophical understanding of why and how this is possible especially when we assume metaethical expressivism. Metaethical expressivism is the combination of expressivism and noncognitivism. Expressivism is the view that the meaning of a sentence is explained by the mental state it is conventionally used to express. Noncognitivism is the view that the mental state expressed by a moral (...) sentence is a noncognitive, desire-like state. The central question of this dissertation is this: "How can metaethical expressivists explain that we are able to express moral beliefs?" The shortest answer this dissertation will give is the following: "by becoming `dispositional expressivists´." Dispositional expressivists hold that moral beliefs are dispositions to be in certain mental states that resemble desires. More precisely, a central thesis of this study is that to hold a moral belief is to be disposed to be in a desire-like, noncognitive state where this state has some specific structure. This dissertation arrives at and justifies this thesis by making a number of steps. It starts with preparing the ground by developing a general theory of what it is for a sentence to express a mental state. Roughly, this theory states that for a sentence to express a mental state is for that sentence to be conventionally used to perform a speech act which counts as sincere only if the user or speaker is in that mental state. This theory of expressing satisfies all the constraints that must be satisfied for it to be compatible with the purposes of metaethical expressivism. The next step is to provide a solution to the most notorious semantic problem confronting metaethical expressivism, the problem of explaining how sentences containing moral words can have compositional meaning and stand in logical relations also known as the Frege-Geach or embedding problem. Building on the research of Mark Schroeder, a new expressivist semantics, called `Attitude Semantics´, will be developed for a first-order language. The motivating idea underlying attitude semantics is that expressivists can avoid the problematic feature of so-called `biforcation´ if they treat the structures of the mental states expressed by moral sentences as well as that expressed by non-moral sentences as being isomorphic. In order to give those structures a philosophically interesting interpretation, it will be suggested that we treat sentences as expressing dispositional states. As a toy example we will treat the sentence `murder is wrong´ as expressing the disposition to be for blaming for murder. After dealing with the Frege-Geach problem, I turn to the metaethical expressivists' project of quasi-realism. Two major goals of this project are to explain how moral sentence can be truth-apt and how the states expressed by them can be regarded as moral beliefs. In order to establish those goals I critically examine a number of theories of truth-aptness by providing counterexamples to them. I then present my own theory which says that a sentence is truth-apt iff and because there is a conventional way to use it to express a belief. What is new about this theory is that it treats expressing a belief as being explanatorily more basic than being truth-apt. Belief, according to this theory, explains truth-aptness, not vice versa. This has the important consequence that it shows that what I call the `orthodox strategy´ of quasi-realists is mistaken and needs to be inverted: expressivists must `earn the right´ to moral belief before they can establish that moral sentences are truth-apt, and not the other way round. The second part of this dissertation is then concerned with the question of what it is to hold a moral belief and how they can figure in rational reasoning. In short: it is concerned with earning the right to moral belief. After discussing the major problems confronting a noncognitivist theory of belief, most importantly what I call the `tightrope problem´, I argue for a dispositional form of noncognitivism about moral belief that combines elements from Eric Schwitzgebel's dispositionalism about belief and Sebastian Köhler's `conceptual role expressivism´. This dispositional noncognitivism perfectly matches and justifies the dispositionalist interpretation of the expressivist semantics developed before. In order to fully earn the right to moral belief, however, metaethical expressivists must also deal with several epistemological objections concerning the rationality of moral belief. The first objection I deal with comes from Derek Baker and is directed against Mark Schroeder's specific development of expressivism. I deal with this objection because my own theory bears close resemblance to Schroeder's theory and so it might be worried that it confronts the same issues. Fortunately, we will see that Baker's objection rest on a number of mistaken assumptions and so neither applies to Schroeder's expressivism nor to the version which I defend in this study. The other epistemological objection to metaethical expressivism I deal with is Cian Dorr's famous wishful-thinking objection. In contrast to previous replies to this objection I attack it by directly questioning the central assumption on which it rests, namely that reasoners can never be justified in basing a factual belief on a desire-like state. I argue that this is false, and that under certain conditions reasoning from desire-like mental states to factual beliefs is justified. My argument shows that even if holding a moral belief is being in a desire-like noncognitive state, basing factual belief on a moral belief can give one an epistemic reason for the factual belief. Hence, even if moral thoughts are wishes, moral thinking is not wishful thinking. I take my arguments to earn the dispositional expressivist the right to moral belief. By the previously defended theory of truth-aptness in terms of belief, this allows the dispositional expressivists to conclude that moral sentences are also truth-apt. This finishes the quasi-realist project of this dissertation. In the last part of this dissertation I switch gears and present two unnoted problems for metaethical expressivists having to do with explaining moral motivation. Both arguments are surprisingly simple. The first one is this: if motivation requires a belief as well as a desire (Humeanism), and moral judgments motivate by themselves (internalism), then moral judgments cannot be desires only. If this argument is sound, it shows that the famous `motivation argument´ not only entails the falsity of cognitivism, but also the falsity of noncognitivism. The second argument is the following: moral judgments when combined with suitable external desires motivate to act (externalism), but if motivation requires belief as well as desire (Humeanism), then moral judgments cannot be desires only. I discuss several ways in which noncognitivists might want to deal with those problems, but leave it as an open question whether those solutions will ultimately be viable. Overall, this dissertation makes serious contributions to the research program of metaethical expressivism. It makes proposals for how to solve a number of notorious problems, such as the Frege-Geach problem in semantics and the wishful-thinking problem in epistemology. Besides this, however, it also raises two new problems for metaethical expressivism in the philosophy of action. For those reasons this dissertation will be of interest for anyone who wants to defend or criticize expressivism in metaethics, and more generally, anyone who wants to better understand our astonishing ability to express moral beliefs. (shrink)

In a fictional conversation designed to appeal to both working teachers and social philosophers, three educators take up the question of whether critical thinking itself can, or should, be taught independently of an explicit consideration of issues related to social justice. One, a thoughtful but somewhat traditional Enlightenment rationalist, sees critical thinking as a neutral set of skills and dispositions, essentially unrelated to the conclusions of morality, problems of social organization, or the content of any particular academic discipline. (...) A second interlocutor, steeped in “critical” pedagogy of Paulo Freire, insists that the problem is the pose of neutrality itself. On this view, all honest and effective approaches to teaching must confront the hegemony of unjust relationships, institutions, and conceptual schemes. The third character attempts to resolve the tension between these two opposed camps. (shrink)

Global citizenship education (GCE) within schools in England is increasingly being reoriented to address a statutory duty to promote fundamental British values (FBV). This multi-method study investigates the influence of critical GCE within initial teacher education in reshaping awareness, understanding and disposition towards FBV amongst beginning teachers. Findings highlight a tension between growing confidence and understanding of how to implement the FBV agenda and the development of autonomous dispositions of the kind demanded for the practice of critical (...) GCE. Four teacher orientations towards FBV are developed and explored, demonstrating the role of practice-based learning for the cultivation of critical dispositions. (shrink)

In the Australian context, all teachers are obliged, in accordance with the national curriculum, to engage students in critical and creative thinking in the classroom. Yet teachers often wonder ‘How do we facilitate the development of (critical and creative) thinking skills in our students?’ In our specific local context, a large-scale community consultation highlighted a need for a thorough, concerted strategic approach in relation to this obligation. In this paper we spell out our response to this need: the (...) establishment of a Centre for Critical Thinking and Ethics to implement a two-pronged strategic approach. It is our contention that the best way to cater for students’ growth in critical and creative thinking is to combine deliberative use of explicit critical thinking materials with the norms/tools/activities and strategies of the Philosophy in Schools pedagogy. Our innovation consists primarily in our 'detached' and 'embedded' approaches to critical thinking at Newington College. We aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion of best practice in critical and creative thinking, to improve capacity both in and beyond our own school. (shrink)

In the most recent Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS2018) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the percentage of Japanese teachers who taught critical thinking (CT) and professed self-efficacy in CT teaching was by far the lowest among participating economies (OECD, 2019). This research explores the emic or indigenous understanding of CT in Japanese education through in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 schoolteachers of diverse backgrounds. Japanese schoolteachers find the nuance of CT undesirable. Yet, a particular (...) facet of CT, namely multidimensional-multiperspective thinking (MMT), is well-received since the national curriculum guidelines, which most participants find to be their teaching foundation, lay strong emphasis on MMT. Almost all participants agree that low socioeconomic-status (SES) schools have difficulty teaching CT/MMT. Furthermore, a hidden curriculum in Japanese schools, namely valuing empathy, also affects CT teaching. Being empathetic constitutes a core value in Japanese schooling, so participants find it impossible to practice CT without teaching empathy. The findings suggest that the curricular power, whether official or implicit, is forceful in Japan. Still, schoolteachers practise indigenous versions of CT teaching and manage to keep away from the power of the etic/global model of CT teaching. This paper concludes with practical implications for educators to reconcile the etic and emic understandings of CT teaching. (shrink)

The crisis of the outdated education system in Ukraine has led to radical changes at all levels. One of such vital changes in 2016 was the New Ukrainian School reform introduced by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. It relies on critical theories of the postmodern philosophy of education. They are as follows: toleration of difference, rejection of stereotypes and child-centeredness; transformation of teacher’s authority and roles; individualization of the educational process. Importantly, the New Ukrainian School (...) reform has been launched in primary school as a fundamental part of the whole education system. In this regard, it is crucial to train primary school teachers of the new generation who will be able to implement the ideas of the New Ukrainian School. Consequently, it is extremely essential to update the system of corresponding training in higher education institutions in Ukraine. Therefore, the article aims to justify how future primary school teachers are trained for purposes of the New Ukrainian School in the postmodern era. (shrink)

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement (CRM) is a relevant K-6 topic to learn foundational concepts of social justice and participatory citizenship. Year after year, though, U.S. elementary school lessons typically focus on a Martin Luther King, Jr.-Rosa Parks centered narrative, adapted for character education. This qualitative inquiry invited 66 pre-service teachers to explore social justice education embedded at the core of existing K-6 historical topics. Examining pre-service teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and what and how they plan to teach their future students (...) revealed dated educational philosophies. They held limited content knowledge and sociopolitical critical thinking needed to teach the CRM's civic significance and were conflicted by wanting to both empower students and withhold information. This study describes actions designed to model replicable, justice-oriented lessons and help K-6 pre-service teachers reflect on pedagogical choices and ideologies they adopt. It also calls attention to the challenges of K-6 teacher education and school reform when teachers lack content knowledge and political/cultural awareness. (shrink)

The ability to gain knowledge from text in widely different subject matter areas is key to academic success and lifelong leaming. The process of attaining critical understanding of ideas in text requires a robust repertoire of leaming or study strategies, metacognitive knowledge for regulating their use, and willingness to apply them. Although much is known about the basic design of leaming environments to develop higher-order thinking skills and motivation to learn, educators have, in general, not changed their practices to (...) reflect new knowledge. The lack of procedures that are easy for teachers to administer and provide results that teachers may use in their classrooms for assessment of complex cognitive skill development is a major obstacle to widespread adoption of new approaches. This paper describes a new technology, referred to as HyLighter, and a pedagogically sound implementation of this technology, referred to as the Interaclive Annotation Model. This approach suggests a promising direction for improving the quality of instruction and promoting active reading (i.e., an approach to the development of leaming ability that combines reading with critical thinking and a range of learning-to-Iearn skills) for students in higher education across academic disciplines. (shrink)