Increasing Opportunities for Critical Thinking

Apple recently published a series of three books on the topic of Educational Leadership. Written in partnership with SRI Education's Center for Technology in Learning and with contributions from Apple Distinguished Educators, this series highlights the latest research and knowledge about great teaching and learning. In fact, the book Elements of Leadership features the Barrington 220 District Technology Committee as an example of shared leadership in instructional technology (page 21).

This bsd220tech series focuses on the book Elements of Learning which discusses powerful instructional strategies that engage learners and empower them to believe that their work matters. This month, we challenge the myth that you have to sacrifice rigor when trying to increase student ownership.

Elements of Learning

Part One: Teamwork
Part Two: Creativity
Part Three: Personalization

Elements of Learning—Part 4 of 5: Critical Thinking

There is a lot of excitement in the pedagogical zeitgeist about student-centered learning. We are frequently reminded of the positive impact of student choice, personalization, student ownership, and collaborative, creative endeavors. Sometimes, this message is misunderstood. I've spoken with teachers who are apprehensive about gravitating toward more student control of the learning because they believe that this shift comes at the expense of deep learning and high-level thinking. After all, if students are given too much choice and freedom, how do we ensure that students master the learning targets determined by the countless standards to which we are beholden? 

In fact, the opposite is true. In order to maximize the impact of an emphasis on creativity and student choice, students need to have lots of practice with complex thinking and content mastery. As John Hattie puts it, "If you don't teach the content, you've got nothing to inquire about." In order to unlock the full potential of student-centered learning, critical thinking is vital.  

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is inherent in any activity in which a student is asked to grapple with information they are coming to know. It's not enough to introduce students to new concepts or content on a surface level. Knowledge for its own sake fails to properly captivate a student so it "sticks" in the long term. Unless you ask students to think critically about new information, it is unlikely they will remember it for long or fully understand it. They need to do something with it—take it apart, rearrange it, compare it to previously learned knowledge, or use it in a new way.  

There are many ways to foster critical thinking with your students:

When is critical thinking most effective?

Critical thinking is most effective when it is the main task that a student is performing during the course of a lesson. For example, a group of students in a high school digital photography class are asked to search the internet to collect samples of photographs from a variety of popular online magazines. With a few minutes remaining in the period, the students are asked to share their impressions of the photos they found. In this example, critical thinking is not the main activity of the lesson, collecting samples is. To improve the critical thinking aspect of this lesson, the teacher could curate a selection of photos and share it with the class. Instead of collecting the photos themselves, the students could spend the class period analyzing and comparing the photos for design aspects such as composition and lighting. Students could then construct a definition of what elements make a successful photo for an online magazine.   

How can technology amplify critical thinking?

Technology can amplify critical thinking by improving opportunities for intellectual independence. When students are first coming to understand a new concept, a greater amount of scaffolding and support will be necessary. As a student demonstrates greater understanding, they can be given increasing amounts of independence in their work with the material. One-to-one devices and a learning management system would allow a teacher to differentiate and manage a wide variety of student challenges at the same time. For example, in an elementary STEM class students are asked to learn and sequence a set of coding commands to program a robot to perform a specific and defined task. No doubt there will be significant critical thinking in this lesson, but since every student is performing the same task and will have the same outcome, there is limited intellectual independence. Instead, students could demonstrate that they know the basic commands by creating a video of their successful solution. Next, they can be given the challenge of independently finding additional command sequences that would also get the robot to successfully perform the task. Additionally, students could be allowed to choose alternate tasks for the robot to perform.  

Want to Learn More?

Download the multitouch book, Elements of Learning, in the Apple Book Store. The book is available right now, including examples from multiple grade levels and content areas.

1. Open the Apple Books app already on your device in the Applications folder of your MacBook Air or from the App Store (or Self Service) on iPad.
2. Search for Elements of Learning.
3. Click or tap Get.
4. Enter your Apple ID and password when prompted.
5. Start reading!