By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What are critical thinking skills?
Steven Forth, TeamFit, 2019/03/14
What caught my attention first was Steven Forth's skills profile. It's a very detailed listing of skills, 324 in all, with expertise in them ranging from newbie to guru. Presenting them as a graph makes more sense than using that many badges, and the categorization of the skills helps a lot. But it stuck me that the identification and naming of the skills is very important. Which takes us to the article. Here we have an account of what constitutes 'critical thinking' as a skill. And, frankly, it's a mess. Properly speaking, critical thinking is really a collection of skills. But not the skills identified here, but a completely different set of skills. That takes me back to Steven Forth's skills, which lists many business skills, and had me wondering how many ways there were to say 'management' or 'analysis'. More...
What are critical thinking skills?
Literature Review of E-assessment
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jim Ridgway, Sean McCusker and Daniel Pead[Edit][Delete]: Literature Review of E-assessment, NESTA Futurelab [Edit][Delete] January 31, 2006
[link: Hits] Funny how things work in the blogosphere. This report has been out for more than a year (I hadn't seen it, though; I don't really follow assessment issues). It's quite well written, and packs some zingers (like: "In the worst case, to be able to invent and create something of value is taken to be a sure sign of feeble-mindedness; where as to opine on the work of others shows towering intellectual power"). Anyhow, this item was reviewed today in e-learning reviewa, covered in the Authentic Assessment Website, and finally, mentioned in Michelle's Online Learning Freakout Party Zone, which is where I saw it. More...
The State of Critical Thinking
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The State of Critical Thinking
Reboot, 2019/01/11
This is a fairly detailed report (20 page PDF) based on a survey conducted using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The study notes that while "strong reasoning skills have become increasingly key to navigating everyday life," it remains true that "in too many schools, critical thinking is not taught to young people" and "at workplaces, employers don’t do enough to prioritize richer forms of reasoning." In particular, the report says the teaching of critical thinking should not be left to parents because they don't have the skills and they don't teach them to their children. More...
Critical Thinking Skills to Help Students Better Evaluate Scientific Claims
Critical Thinking Skills to Help Students Better Evaluate Scientific Claims
Leah Shaffer, Mind/Shift, 2017/12/22
So much of what people are calling "critical thinking" and even "digital literacy" revolves around the idea of evaluating claims. This article in Big Think is a case in point, describing efforts to engage students in assessing articles and thinking like a scientist. More...
Five great reads to help teens become critical thinkers
Young adults who are, perhaps, still figuring out their needs don’t need to be overburdened with books they won’t like. The last thing we want is for a young reader to get turned off and lose out on the immeasurable benefits reading provides. More...
