Assessing Critical Thinking in Elementary Schools

Meeting the Common Core

Rebecca Stobaugh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317921646
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

This practical, very effective resource helps elementary school teachers and curriculum leaders develop the skills to design instructional tasks and assessments that engage students in higher-level critical thinking, as recommended by the Common Core State Standards. Real examples of formative and summative assessments from a variety of content areas are included and demonstrate how to successfully increase the level of critical thinking in every elementary classroom! This book is also an excellent resource for higher education faculty to use in undergraduate and graduate courses on assessment and lesson planning.

1

Importance of Critical Thinking

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

—Roger Lewin

When I was a principal, one day the cafeteria manager reported that a student threw a strawberry during lunch. The student vehemently denied committing such an atrocious offense. Therefore, I conducted further interviews with students sitting at his table and near where the strawberry landed. All the stories pointed toward the accused student as the culprit. I asked the strawberry thrower to please clean up the table and floor where the strawberry was thrown. After several requests he adamantly refused to clean up the area, so I assigned him to the alternative learning area for the rest of the day. His guardian was informed of the incident. Several hours later I heard yelling in the front office, and the secretary informed me that the strawberry thrower’s mother wanted to speak to me. I invited her back to my office to discuss the incident. I tried to explain how I had investigated the situation; however, she refused to sit down and proceeded to defend her child, insisting that he would never throw anything. My attempts to calm her down were futile. Holding her cell phone up in the air with fingers on the numbers, she finally shrieked, “I am going to call 911!” At that moment I just stood looking at her, not knowing how to proceed. Although I had enjoyed an excellent undergraduate and graduate education, I did not remember anything in my coursework suggesting how to handle an irate mom calling 911 over a strawberry tossed across the lunchroom. I suspect even Google couldn’t have helped me here.

I felt sure that there was some piece of information that I was not connecting. I calmly asked her why this incident was making her so upset. After de-escalating this situation for a few minutes through rational conversation, I was able to piece together that she was angry that her son would be missing a field trip the next day due to being in the alternate learning classroom. As a compromise we agreed that instead of missing the field trip, the mother and son would clean the lunchroom together. This solution satisfied the mother because her son could go on the field trip, and I knew that cleaning the lunchroom would teach him the value of hard work and hopefully increase his respect for the school facilities. Interestingly, I never saw the offending student in the office again for misbehavior.

Life is complex. We all face similar situations when understanding complicated issues is critical to addressing the problem. The workplace and the world are rapidly evolving with abundant information and massive technological advances. How can we prepare our students to rapidly and successfully adapt to the changing world and complex circumstances they will encounter? We teach them to think! Thinking skills should be infused into daily instruction to adequately prepare students for college, careers, and life. Without these skills, students cannot effectively analyze multiple sources of information, draw logical conclusions, and create innovative solutions for problems.

What Is Critical Thinking?

It is easy to define what critical thinking is not—a memorized answer or reactive thinking. Critical thinking is not a simplistic recalling of previous information or illogical and irrational thinking. Reactive thinking is instinctive. For example, a buyer who desires a large-ticket item might immediately buy it without considering whether she has sufficient money, has space for the item, or needs the item.

People who disdain critical thinking often jump to conclusions, fail to recognize biases, and are unwilling to consider various perspectives. Weak critical thinkers address a problem or challenge by failing to understand and organize the important facts of the situation, being distracted by unimportant information, lacking perseverance to solve the problem, and designing a vague solution, not appropriate to the specific situation (Facione, 2011). Do you know people like this? All people have times in their lives when they might exhibit some characteristics of weak critical thinkers.

There are various definitions of critical thinking. According to Chaffee (1988), critical thinking is “our active, purposeful, and organized effort to make sense of our world by carefully examining our thinking, and the thinking of others, in order to clarify and improve our understanding” (p. 29). Critical thinking is analytical and deliberate and involves original thinking. Critical thinking is deeply processing knowledge to identify connections across disciplines and find potential creative solutions to problems. Critical thinkers use reflective decision-making and thoughtful problem-solving to analyze situations, evaluate arguments, and draw appropriate inferences. Critical thinkers have a passion to seek the truth even when the truth may contradict long-held beliefs.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2011) has identified four areas of critical thinking skills: (1) reasoning effectively, (2) using systems thinking, (3) making judgments and decisions, and (4) solving problems. (See Figure 1.1.) These thought processes often require students to examine multiple information sources and identify key information relevant to the task. Critical thinkers often possess a probing inquisitiveness, zealous dedication to understanding, eagerness to obtain reliable information or evidence, and purposeful, reflective judgment based on consideration of evidence. To make informed decisions and evaluate the impact of actions, critical thinkers use multiple thought processes at once. To teach students how to appropriately approach multifaceted problems, questions, and decisions, schools must design curriculum that replicates the complicated nature of the real world. With higher-level thinking tasks, classrooms can promote an intellectually stimulating learning environment that prepares students for the 21st century.

Figure 1.1 21st Century Critical Thinking Skills

Reason Effectively

◆ Use various types of reasoning (inductive, deductive, etc.) as appropriate to the situation

Use Systems Thinking

◆ Analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in complex systems

Make Judgments and Decisions

◆ Effectively analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, claims and beliefs

◆ Analyze and evaluate major alternative points of view

◆ Synthesize and make connections between information and arguments

◆ Interpret information and draw conclusions based on the best analysis

◆ Reflect critically on learning experiences and processes

Solve Problems

◆ Solve different kinds of non-familiar problems in both conventional and innovative ways

◆ Identify and ask significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions

Source: From The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2011). 21st century critical thinking skills. Copyright 2013 Eye On Education, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Importance of Critical Thinking

Global changes are directly impacting education. With increasingly complex jobs, global interdependence, and technological advances, the expectations for workforce skills are evolving. Workforce demands are leaving low-skilled workers with few options for other careers. Life choices are complex due to the proliferation of a variety of information that can be inaccurate and biased. Without refined critical thinking skills, erroneous information can negatively impact life decisions. In order to counteract these changes, students must be equipped with thinking skills to deliberately examine information and make logical decisions.

Several benefits arise from practicing and refining students’ critical thinking skills. Embedding critical thinking skills in the curriculum helps sustain an educated citizenry; prepares students for college, future careers, and life situations; and primes students to meet mandates of state and national tests and standards.

Sustaining Democracy

Thinking skills are vital in sustaining a democratic government. When citizens utilize critical thinking, countries can make good judgments about the best course of action. With critical thinking skills, individual citizens can effectively examine various candidates for election, decide how to act if they disagree with government measures, and carefully review opposing evidence as a jury member and make a sound decision based on facts. Since education is the primary means for preparing students to be citizens, schools should focus on embedding these skills in instructional tasks and assessments. Schools have the job of inculcating these skills in all students in order to prevent democracies from being led by the elite. Maintaining a democracy requires that all citizens possess an ability to critically engage in democratic functions.

College, Career, and Life Success

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2011) advocates merging the 3Rs (core academic content mastery) and the 4Cs (critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and creativity and innovation). (See Figure 1.2.) Fusing these skills together can prepare students for success in college, career, and life. While students may forget the specific content of their classes, critical thinking is a skill that prepares them to adapt to changing circumstances in the 21st century.

Figure 1.2 Partnership for 21st Century Skills: Framework for 21st Century Learning

Source: From The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2011). Partnership for 21st century skills: Framework for 21st century learning. Copyright 2013 Eye On Education, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

College Success

High schools have been criticized for not adequately preparing students for the level of rigor they will encounter in college (Achieve, 2006). The ACT test, which is used as a measure of college and career readiness, defines if students will be able to be successful in first-year courses at a postsecondary institution without the assistance of remediation courses. ACT’s College Readiness Benchmarks identify minimum scores needed on the ACT subject area tests to predict a 50 percent chance of obtaining a B or higher or a 75 percent chance of obtaining a C or higher in a first-year college course. In 2011, 66 percent of high school graduates taking the ACT met the English College Readiness Benchmark. Twenty-five percent successfully passed all four College Readiness Benchmarks. Twenty-eight percent of high school students did not pass any of the College Readiness Benchmarks. ACT reports that these test scores remained essentially the same between 2007 and 2011 (ACT, 2011). ACT predictions ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Supplemental Downloads
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Meet the Author
• Introduction: Engaging in Critical Thinking
• 1 Importance of Critical Thinking
• 2 Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy in Your Classroom
• 3 Misconceptions, Challenges, and a Solution
• 4 Interpretive Exercises: Scenarios and Real-World Applications
• 5 Interpretive Exercises: Visual Materials
• 6 Interpretive Exercises: Quotations
• 7 Establishing a Culture of Thinking
• 8 Conclusion
• References