I thought I would start a thread discussing the CFI video “Effective Teaching of Critical Thinking”
What are some thoughts?
Count me in. Start with the example that caused you to cite one of my posts.
Let’s see where that gets us.
Here is the direct Youtube link to the CFI videos.
Effective Teaching of Critical Thinking with Ray Hall | Skeptic’s Toolbox - YouTube
and
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The subject of this video is not about fallacies or how to do critical thinking. It an approach to teaching critical thinking. I would like to keep the topic focused on the video.
Sounds good to me. I’ll get back to you after I have had a chance to see the videos.
For the sake of clarity I’m posting the video.
Feb 26, 2021
Can teaching critical thinking classes really help students learn the difference between science and pseudoscience? To find out Ray Hall conducted and published a study to find out if Fresno State’s GE course Natural Science 4 (NS4) delivers on its desired learning outcomes. College students (n=806) were surveyed at semester’s beginning and end.Epistemically unwarranted beliefs in pseudoscience were found to be pervasive among our student population. NS4, a course that specifically and directly addressed pseudoscience produced a large and significant reduction of those beliefs, but scientific research methods classes and unrelated general education classes used as controls did not.
This talk will describe our study and our findings, and highlight a few strategies we have found effective for changing epistemically unwarranted beliefs, and the importance of teaching critical thinking.
Dr. Ray Hall is a professor of Physics at California State University – Fresno. …
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Haven’t watched the video yet, but the goal of any teacher is to make himself redundant. The end result is that by the time they leave school students are teaching themselves.
This is achieved by teaching them not your particular subject, but teaching them the STUDY of your particular subject, the technical term is “model of learning.”
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I’m confused to do think Critical Thinking is a specific subject?
Incidently googled “model of learning” for the fun of it.
Were you referring to any one in particular?
“Model of learning” is simply the method you use to do something. The starting point should always be teaching by example.
Eg. An English lit teacher should show his students an essay he’s written, with planning and notes and projecting them on a screen talk them through the process.
Then maybe put an essay together as a whole class.
In short “Do it like this”
But that’s not critical thinking skills is it, that requires a different kind of teaching, instead of “do it like this?” something more along the lines of "why is it done like this? Although seems to me, both styles are needed.
And there’s also the thing about windows of opportunities, when something will be remembered and learned better than at other times, etc. How to catch them and take advantage of those windows of opportunity, seems more an art/awareness/empathy sort of thing, than something that can be modeled. But I’m pretty simple, so maybe they can . . .
Big topic. Just making conversation.
In this context what I mean by “Do it like this” is “Think like this” or “Think using this process”
In other words, show the children the process you yourself go through when critically evaluating something, anything:
Step 1, step 2 etc
Once they have internalised that process they can then evaluate that process itself as an exercise in critical analysis.
What teachers often do is to simply talk at the children, without implanting the skills they need to evaluate. Then everyone’s wondering why kids can’t think for themselves.
“Do it like this” is the default starting point. They may well develop their own personalised model of evaluating stuff later on
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This is in fact what we do. Problem, what is the correct “do it like this”?
In nature it is the parents that teach the successfully evolved ways of doing it.
In human societies it gets much more complicated, because we are able to diverge from doing it as it was always done. Our exceptional brain is both a blessing and a curse.
Okay, I see. Thanks Rasilon.
Well, we include the reasons why “doing it like this” is better than doing it like that.
Then there is trial and error and learning and remembering.
Ironically you touch on something that very recently touched on me and that I’m still processing, so hang on, I feel another ramble coming on.
Back near six years ago, (how the time races by) I had the privilege of being one of five caregivers, (mom, dad, Granny, Nana and me, Napa) and I pretty much racked up more daytime one on one hours with lil B, then the others - parent both being full time workers - that is, during his first and second year - until COVID tossed a spanner into the works.
When I was on duty it was all about the little baby (Rule One - don’t drop the baby 
) and I wasn’t just a caregiver, I was tour guide, transitioning into teacher, as he grew older. It started with introducing himself to his house, carrying him around, showing and talking about this and that. Or if timing was right, I’d run us outside to catch the garbage truck doing its thing, or watch a helicopter or playing fly overhead.
Constantly talking to him (not at him), watching for non-verbal responses, engaging his mind and paying attention to him, following his interest and taking advantage of the tiny teaching moments that come and go. As he grew older I increasingly interacted with him. No tossing him into the playpen while I was off on my own thing, I appreciated how fleeting this time was and I didn’t want to waste any of it, so it was all about him - giving what I could and soaking up the moments as best I could.
Fast forward and this almost six year old started on his first basketball team - and they make the little tikes shoot at an 8’ net. This past month my wife flew out there for a month while I had to stay home to take care of Maddy and cabin, etc.
She took him to a couple basketball practices and he’s having fun, misses, but didn’t flip out, and when he focuses he scores too, so he’s got athletic abilities and promise, though we already knew that much, from playing ball and golf with him last summer.
Then my wife shared that she noticed and was impressed with, was how attentive and receptive he was to his coach, listening and taking the advice - while most of the kids were just running around, some in a distracted daze barely noticing the coaches as they were trying to figure out what to do with the gigantic ball they were handed.
After the conversation a warm feeling came over me as I remembered I was the little guy’s first coach, and I made it an enthralling experience for him, and that landed in some place in his mind.
He has no conscious memory of those early years, but his brain was constructed around those experiences and they create “guardrails” of sorts for how he will process incoming information and situations. In this situation, it created the fertile ground that made him receptive to being addressed, and instructed, that’ll probably last a life time, baring life altering disruption.
Do it like this, because of this and that.
Now you try it.
It’s okay to fail, relax, think about why it failed.
What have you just learned?
What would you change to get a different outcome?
Seems to me, it is a process that is too big to be conveyed with a few simple rules.
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Welcome back. Just pickup where you left off!