Module 12 and 14 Blog Post 1

The main ideas of these chapters what the importance of understanding one’s own thinking so that they can further develop and excel.  Metacognition is the processes of thinking about one’s own thinking processes, memory capabilities, and the ability to monitor your own learning.  It’s important to understand our own cognitive processes in order to maximize learning.  By looking at person, task, and strategy knowledge we can better understand they way in, which we think.  It’s important for us to be able to regulate our thinking by planning, monitoring, and evaluation.  One important theory discussed in this module was the Theory of Mind; it understands the “mental world.”  This theory is characterized by four characteristics: false-beliefs, appearance, visual perspective, and introspection.  Environmental and biological differences affect metacognition. Teaching different thinking dispositions are important, these dispositions include tendencies to explore, inquire, seek clarity, and think critically.  A thinking disposition is considered a personal attribute while a thinking skill is a cognitive strategy.  Critical thinking is an important concept that involves the process of evaluating the accuracy and worth of information through reasoning.  It’s important for students to understand what critical thinking is, and how there own thinking processes work before they can engage in critical thinking.  Problem solving is the means we use to reach a certain goal.  There are well-defined problems, which can be solved with an algorithm and have a definite answer and set of steps to be solved.  If the steps are followed correctly, the answer can be found.  Ill-defined problems are problems where the desired goal is unclear and there can be a variety of possible solutions.  Ill-defined problems can be solved through heuristics, which are a general rule of thumb, educated guess, or common sense.  Heuristics are just general guidelines to help solve a problem, and may not always lead to a solution. 

What are ways to teach critical thinking in a classroom? 

Lower-order thinking is the simplicity of just recalling information with a routine of repeating past experiences.  Higher-order thinking uses complex cognitive strategies and integrates past experiences to apply our knowledge. It’s important that not only high-achieving students practice high-order thinking, but students of all achieving levels learn higher-order thinking.  According to research from the book, students of all levels can benefit from higher-order thinking. 

Adolescent egocentrism is the difficulty differentiating between our own thoughts and the thoughts of others.  This is done through an imaginary audience in which one believes he or she is the focus of attention without regards to the thoughts of others.  Another example is personal fable in which adolescents believe they’re unique and no one else can understand their situation or what they’re going through.  These topics relate to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.  Piaget suggests these are negative consequences in development that come from an individual moving into operational thinking.  Others disagree with Piaget and believe that these might not necessarily be negative consequences but rather adaptive coping processes. 

To facilitate critical thinking in my classroom I will first have students explore there own thinking processes, and understand the concepts that consist with critical thinking.  I can have the students engage in exploratory discussion where I’ll raise questions to get the students thinking of prior knowledge and connect it with their own beliefs and biases.  It’s important to use an appropriate wait-time when asking questions to give the students a few seconds to think through the question, and it will provide for better answers from students.  By breaking down complex issues into simpler parts I can more easily facilitate the critical thinking steps so students can slowly find the big idea.  After the discussion I can have students write down a summary of our discussion, so they can record there thought processes, and I can see if they in fact engaged in critical thinking.