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Professional Development in Critical Thinking


Note: The Foundation for Critical Thinking now offers customized workshops and twelve-week customized online courses, all tailored to your institution's needs and goals!  Read More Here


Introduction

Critical thinking is not an isolated goal unrelated to other important goals in education. Rather, it is a seminal goal which, when done well, simultaneously facilitates a rainbow of other ends. It is best conceived, therefore, as the hub around which all other educational ends cluster. For example, as students learn to think more critically, they become more proficient at historical, scientific, and mathematical thinking. They develop skills, abilities, and values critical to success in everyday life. All of this assumes, of course, that those who teach have solid grounding in critical thinking and in the teaching strategies essential to it.

Professional Development Specialized for Your Department or Program

Professional Development for Faculty and Staff

Research suggests that critical thinking is not typically an intrinsic part of instruction at any level. Students reach high school, college, and beyond without training in critical thinking. At the same time, faculty tend to take it for granted as an automatic by-product of their teaching. Yet, without critical thinking systematically designed in instruction, learning is typically transitory and superficial. What can we do?

There are no easy answers to this problem, for students and instruction will not be transformed over night. However, with well-designed long-term professional development in critical thinking, faculty can begin to teach for critical thinking.

Click to read Dr. Linda Elder's Times Higher Education article on long-term staff development.

Having conducted successful workshops at many hundreds of institutions for more than 100,000 educators, the Foundation's distinguished presenters know how to lay the necessary foundations and then build for the future through follow-up workshops. Highly practical, each workshop is designed to ensure that participants think their way through critical-thinking concepts and principles, then apply these concepts and principles to the redesign of instruction.

Click to request more information about our Professional Development and Inservice programs.





Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. To continue our work, we must now rely upon your financial support. If critical thinking matters to you, please click here to contribute what you can today.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR WORK.

Thank you for your support of ethical critical thinking.