Critical Thinking and FIE

One of the current buzz phrases in education is "critical thinking".  To show how commonplace, I just performed a google search on the terms: "critical thinking" "education".  Approximately 17 million results showed.  This doesn't mean that there are 17 million articles or necessarily even million about the topic, but there are more internet articles than I am likely to read in my lifetime.

So what is critical thinking?  Being a catchy yet important phrase usually means that few of us really understand what it means.  From the web site, criticalthinking.org, in a statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, who presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987, critical thinking may be defined as:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

Reading that definition, I would conclude that critical thinking is a rather complex process, and it is.  It is also a process that, unfortunately, is difficult to teach in normal educational settings, because teaching tends to be content-driven.  What is 6 times 8?  When was the Declaration of Independence signed?  What is the process of cell division called?  We don't often look at information and the method of how we gather, examine, or use it.  Knowledge of the term mitosis is not critical thinking, though in fairness to all the content that is taught in schools, what we know can be a very important part of the process.

So what is critical thinking?  From the perspective of Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, creator of FIE, thinking can be divided into 3 parts: gathering information, evaluating the input, and then responding.  Evaluation of information tends to be the aspect that we consider thinking, but observing and responding are also part of the process.  Focusing on all three of the components allows us to better understand our selves as thinkers. This is the focus of FIE.  It strips away the outer layers, the facts and numbers, and shines on the core of the thought process by enabling us to think about our thinking.

One of the goals of this blog is examine the process of how we think and how we can refine our methods of gathering, evaluating, and acting in this world, which is filled with lots of information.  I'm not talking particularly about the digital world and its streams of data, but our everyday lives from braking the car to avoid an accident to balancing personal finances so that twenty years from now isn't a struggle.  This is a big task, but very worthwhile.  As an educator, I believe that students thinking well and being able to take the next step and become lifelong learners is the ultimate goal of education.

Now...
Just a Moment..Let Me Think.