Daniel Willingham--Science & Education
Hypothesis non fingo
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Articles
  • Op-eds
  • Videos
  • Learning Styles FAQ
  • Daniel Willingham: Science and Education Blog

Willingham talk on critical thinking

8/21/2013

 
Spring, 2013 at the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching.
EB
8/21/2013 07:39:29 am

Great presentation. And, I hope, helpful in re-framing the "critical thinking" agenda for K-8 students. At that level, I think that critical thinking is limited to some very basic skills -- recognizing truly ridiculous statements, making comparisons based on very basic knowledge, and (I'm not a fan of this) learning to support opinions with facts, no matter how limited.

Douglas Hainline
8/21/2013 08:34:23 am

The presentation's conclusion reminds me of work done by Alan Schoenfeld in the 1980s, trying to get his undergraduate mathematics students to apply George Polya's heuristics for mathematical problem-solving. He found that simply reviewing these heuristics, getting the students to 'know' them, made little difference in their problem-solving abilities. But they could be taught. A summary of his conclusions : "Successful solution of mathematics problems depends up on a combination of resource knowledge, heuristics, control processes and belief, all of which must be learned and taught."

Jordan link
8/22/2013 04:16:37 am

Critical thinking is something that seems to be lost on our current generation. With the ease of access to information, people are too easily finding answers to problems without actually having to think about it themselves. Great presentation!

Mark Anderson link
8/22/2013 10:16:56 am

Interesting to see the parallels between what is needed in higher ed and in K-12 to develop critical thinking skills: a curriculum that sequentially builds domain-specific knowledge.


Comments are closed.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed


    Purpose

    The goal of this blog is to provide pointers to scientific findings that are applicable to education that I think ought to receive more attention.

    Archives

    July 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    December 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories

    All
    21st Century Skills
    Academic Achievement
    Academic Achievement
    Achievement Gap
    Adhd
    Aera
    Animal Subjects
    Attention
    Book Review
    Charter Schools
    Child Development
    Classroom Time
    College
    Consciousness
    Curriculum
    Data Trustworthiness
    Education Schools
    Emotion
    Equality
    Exercise
    Expertise
    Forfun
    Gaming
    Gender
    Grades
    Higher Ed
    Homework
    Instructional Materials
    Intelligence
    International Comparisons
    Interventions
    Low Achievement
    Math
    Memory
    Meta Analysis
    Meta-analysis
    Metacognition
    Morality
    Motor Skill
    Multitasking
    Music
    Neuroscience
    Obituaries
    Parents
    Perception
    Phonological Awareness
    Plagiarism
    Politics
    Poverty
    Preschool
    Principals
    Prior Knowledge
    Problem-solving
    Reading
    Research
    Science
    Self-concept
    Self Control
    Self-control
    Sleep
    Socioeconomic Status
    Spatial Skills
    Standardized Tests
    Stereotypes
    Stress
    Teacher Evaluation
    Teaching
    Technology
    Value-added
    Vocabulary
    Working Memory