Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines

The problem with the traditional model of education is that the student is largely receptive. The constructivist model corrects this defect by promoting learning within a highly interaction oriented pedagogy. The problem is that sometimes it combines this with a constructivist view of knowledge, which does not provide an adequate epistemological framework for critical thinking. Even though individual creativity should be encouraged, students’ constructions must be subject to critical scrutiny. This assumes the development of the capacity for critical evaluation on the basis of generally valid rational criteria. The constructivist view of learning is most useful, when it is combined with moderate foundationalism about knowledge. Adequate knowledge constructions presuppose the development of the capacity for critical thinking with its constitutive habits, skills and attitudes.

This paper applies the Sonoma Model of Critical Thinking to visual arts in an educational setting. The analysis produces insights into the functioning of the model, insights into visual arts, and pragmaticconclusions regarding relationships among art historians, visual artists, and others. We summarize the Sonoma Model of critical thinking and apply it to thinking about art history and visual arts. We use these insights to apply the Sonoma Model to thinking critically about visual arts in an educational environment. One application of the model for visual artists and art historians is in appreciating these disciplines, something that is often lacking among and between them. We find further insight in the application of the elements of the model to themselves, and close with practical affective conclusions for applications of the model by faculty and administrators.

In this paper, we study the manifestations of what we call “dialogical critical thinking” in elementary school pupils when they are engaged in philosophical exchanges among peers: What are thecharacteristics of dialogical critical thinking? How does it develop in youngsters? Our research was conducted during an entire school year, with eight groups of pupils from three different cultural contexts: Australia, Mexico and Quebec. Our findings were constructed in an inductive manner, inspired by qualitative analysis as defined by Glaser and Strauss (1967). From our analysis, a grid was developed, illustrating the process by which dialogical critical thinking developed among the pupils involved in our research. This process is manifested via four modes of thinking (logical, creative, responsible and meta-cognitive), which become increasingly complex according to three epistemological perspectives (egocentricity, relativism and inter-subjectivity oriented toward meaning).

Pre- and postmeasures of course knowledge correlated more strongly and consistently with course performance variables (essay quizzes, course project, multiple-choice exams, and total course credit)than did pre- and postmeasures of generic critical thinking. In addition, the total sample (N =126) improved significantly on course knowledge from the pre- to the postassessment but changed minimally on critical thinking. The extent and pattern of change in critical thinking differed somewhat for students making high and low grades in the course. High-grade students achieved significantly more favorable changes on both critical thinking and course knowledge than did the low-grade students.

Teacher-education students in a large Human Development course took a generic critical thinking test and 2 companion questionnaires related to the accuracy of human-development claims andperceived sources of information for evaluating those claims. Based on their initial critical thinking scores, some students were identified as high or low critical thinkers and subsequently compared ontheir evaluations of developmental claims and perceived sources of information for their evaluations. The critical thinking groups differed in the following respects: High critical thinkers better judged theaccuracy of developmental claims both at the beginning and end of the course; high critical thinkers made greater gains during the course in judging the accuracy of course-related claims; and high andlow critical thinkers differed in the sources of information used in evaluating developmental claims.

Creative activities in a classroom can often be mistaken for negligence of academic requirements. This is especially true for many African American students. Recognition of the mental processes used in the expression of creative behaviors should give teachers the opportunity to harness this creative energy to develop academic skills. This article draws upon a historical perspective of creativity and its relationship to this trait in African Americans. Although many of the behaviors listed are common in all ethnic groups those behaviors listed as uniquely evident among African American students are derived from assumptions made from experiences by various scholars, research documents and historical data. Strategies for addressing and enhancing these creative behaviors are included.

In this article the importance of history, culture, and family in nuturing creativity in Chicano populations is examined. While Some research that examines the role of Chicano or “Latino” culture on creative production has provided some suggestions for the relationship between constructs such as bilingualism and acculturation on creativity, there does not exist clear explanations of these relationships. Therefore, it may be useful to examine how history and culture have affected creative production and how that might inform us about the environments that may provide for enhanced creative performance amongChicano persons.

This essay examines modern linguistic meaning of creativity and its roots in ancient Cinese philosophy. In particular, two kinds of creativity that originated in ancient Cinese thought -- natural and individual creativity -- are introduced and discussed.

‘And’ thus splits up the ambiguous starting unity, introduces into it the difference between ideology and science ... since the gesture of distinguishing ‘mere ideology’ from ‘reality’ implies the epistemologically untenable ‘God's view’, that is, access to objective reality as it ‘truly is’... [And] what emerges via distortions of the accurate representation of reality is the real -- that is, the trauma around which social reality is structured. (Zizek, 2000, pp. 24-5, original emphasis)

This paper starts by acknowledging that pragmatists agree with multiculturalists when they assert that individuals are grounded in local communities that give rise to different ways of seeing the world. Where pragmatists part company with many multiculturalists, however, is in our willingness to carry through with the logic entailed in this claim. When pragmatists assert that all ways of knowing are situated, we mean fully situated. In our view, multiculturalists can ask their auditors to celebrate or tolerate differences, but they cannot claim to be multicultural (in the strongest sense of that word) because they necessarily read, write and think from a set of provincial assumptions not global ones. The conclusion a pragmatist draws from this is simple: Multicultural discourse (whether it be conservative, liberal or radical) will always be biased and limited because its knowledge claims are necessarily grounded in a historical and local context that guarantees a limited understanding of ofher cultures.

VVe argue in this essay that the real violence in schools is a result of the structural violence of oppresive social conditions that force students, especially low-income African American and Latino males, tofeel vulnerable, angry, and resistant to the normative expectations of “police-like” school environments. Instead of making attempts to transform these oppressive conditions and explore alternatives outsideof these frameworks, schools utilize the ideological state apparatuses (ISA’s) to justify the construction of certain students (e.g., African American and Latino males) as “violent/deviant/disabled” therebymaking it an individual rather than a social problem. On the other hand, we contend, a political economic analysis of educational contexts makes critical linkages between race, class, and disabilityand in doing so offers an alternative way of re-theorizing identity. Additionally this argument will aIso demonstrate how a political economic analysis exposes and re-orients one towards a collective (global) struggle for social transfornlation in critical multicultural contexts.