Critical Thinking: Designing Instructional Strategies to Promote Critical Thought
Available On-Demand
Overview
Critical thinking is a concept that is widely used and has high visibility in the accreditation and mission statements of educational institutions across the world. However, many educators and institutions have difficulty clarifying the concept and knowing how to infuse it within curriculum and instruction. This three part workshop focuses on explicating those concepts and principles that inform a foundational, cross-disciplinary conception of critical thinking as well as how these fundamentals translate into concrete teaching and learning strategies that, when done well, help our students improve the quality of their thinking.
Session Titles & Descriptions
Part 1: Introduction to Foundational Critical Thinking Concepts and Principles
In this first segment, participants will be introduced to a robust, cross-disciplinary conception of critical thinking. We will discuss what critical thinking is and explore how it can be substantively infused into our content areas and instructional contexts. It will be argued that critical thinking is not something that is merely added to our existing curriculum and workload, but should be the way we teach and learn. When critical thinking is treated as the organizing idea of teaching and learning substantive understanding will naturally result.
Part 2: Question Generating Concepts
The critical mind is the questioning mind. The extent to which students ask genuine questions and seek to answer them reflects the extent to which students take content seriously and think it through. The problem is that our students rarely know how to systematically ask questions that probe content by searching out assumptions, concepts, purposes, information, inferences and solutions, points of view, or implications. They rarely seek out intellectual standards to evaluate the quality of their thought and the thoughts of others: questions that target clarity, depth, relevance, validity, significance, and accuracy. We want to create a classroom culture where students actively, reflectively, and fair-mindedly question the content and each other. Such a culture cultivates important intellectual skills and abilities as well as virtuous dispositions like intellectual flexibility, empathy, humility, integrity, open-mindedness, and perseverance to name a few. This session will focus on the relationship between our ability to question and our ability to think critically. Participants will explore various ways to help students develop questions that analyze and evaluate content and their thinking.
Part 3: Focus on Instructional Strategies that Promote Critical Thought
This session will build on the foundational critical thinking concepts and principles addressed in the first session. In doing so, participants will explore the intimate relationship between what it means to think critically and how we can design instruction to promote critical thought. Based on best practices in teaching and learning, participants will engage and discuss specific instructional strategies designed to foster critical thought and the cultivation of higher order thinking skills. The instructional strategies act as examples of what instructors can do on a typical day of class, so at the end of the session participants should have a short list of practical strategies they can immediately incorporate into their instruction.
Workshop Objectives
- Participants will explicate the concept of critical thinking.
- Participants will contextualize foundational critical thinking concepts as intellectual tools to help students learn to as clear, focused, deep, and reflective questions.
- Participants will work with and compile a list of instructional strategies designed to be transferred to their instructional contexts.
Who should attend?
This workshop is appropriate for faculty and administrators interested in practical strategies for improving student thinking. This is also relevant to those administrators who have articulated critical thinking as part of their accreditation plans and/or college mission statements.
Who is the speaker?
Dr. Enoch Hale is a Fellow at the Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking. With over a decade of teaching experience, Dr. Hale brings a wealth of experience to the workshop setting. Recognizing the importance of placing critical thinking at the heart of instruction early on in his teaching career, Dr. Hale took an incremental but systematic approach to bringing critical thinking theory and practice into his courses.
He holds a B.A. degree in intellectual and social history, a Masters degree in liberal arts and sciences, a secondary single subject credential in social science, and a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis on critical thinking and educational reform. His research interests involve identifying practical methods for teaching students to identify and work through complex interdisciplinary issues and problems as well as studying how teachers learn.
Dr. Hale regularly conducts workshops throughout the country, teaches a graduate course on critical thinking, and has been a presenter at the annual International Conference on Critical Thinking for the last five years.
Registration Information
You can purchase a single presentation or a pack of 3, 6 or 12. The more you buy, the more you save. For a single presentation, add the product to your cart and follow the steps. If purchasing more than two events, add the products to your cart and enter the appropriate coupon code.
Package Deals (for our products costing $345):
3 presentations for $750 - enter coupon code 3ondemand when registering (Save $285)
6 presentations for $1395 - enter coupon code 6ondemand when registering (Save $675)
12 presentations for $2140 - enter coupon code 12ondemand when registering (Save $2000)
If you are interested in ordering multiple presentations that involve our products priced at $200 or $545, please contact Val at val@ieinfo.org or call 303-775-6004 for the multiple discount. Please note: a presentation costing $545 counts as two presentations, as these trainings consist of two sessions. How does it work?
1. We email you a link and password that will give you access to the On-Demand Training presentations
2. You distribute the link and password to your entire faculty and staff via email
3. You will have access to these links for one full year
What are the benefits of On-Demand Trainings?
- Accessible: Email the trainings to your entire faculty and staff, so they can take advantage of training opportunities anytime, anywhere. They can watch in the comfort of their office, their home or while traveling.
- Cost-Effective: No travel required. An innovative way to provide your entire faculty and staff with a variety of professional development opportunities for one low price! The more you train, the more you save. The registration fee is per institution, not per person.
- Easy: It's as easy as point, click, participate. If you run into any problems, we're always here to help.
- Practical: Our training sessions focus on the most critical and relevant issues facing educators today. Our primary goal is to provide participants with the information, training and skills necessary to immediately implement positive change at their institutions.
- Top-Notch Speakers: Our speakers are subject matter experts and recognized in their field.
- Flexible: When you purchase an On-Demand Training, it is yours for one full year. You can use it whenever and as often as you want during the year, offering consistent training to all of your hires.
- Satisfaction Guaranteed: Our On-Demand Trainings are 100% guaranteed. Thus, there is no risk. If you are not completely satisfied, we will refund your money in full.
How will we use these trainings?
- Hybrid Professional Development: Distribute an On-Demand Training to faculty and staff at the beginning of each month and plan a discussion session at the end of the month to determine how you will implement the strategies presented.
- Online Faculty and Staff Learning Communities: Distribute On-Demand Trainings to faculty and staff so they can watch anytime, anywhere. Contact Innovative Educators at val@ieinfo.org and we will create an online discussion group specifically for your institution at no extra charge.
- In-Service Training: Plan a day and time to show an On-Demand Training in a lecture hall or large conference room and invite faculty and staff to attend a debrief immediately following the presentation.
- Staff Recognition: Develop a program around the On-Demand Trainings with monthly themes and recognize the staff members that implement the best idea related to the theme.
- Team-Building: Utilize these On-Demand Trainings to develop cross-functional and cross-discipline teams to foster collegiality.
- New Employee Training: Include these trainings as part of your new employee training program to ensure consistency.
- Implementation and Follow-Up: Use the guide and evaluation materials provided by Innovative Educators to plan, implement and track your progress.
If you have any questions, please contact Val at val@ieinfo.org or call 303-775-6004 for more information.
