Critical Thinking Issues

Lib Staff,

This morning while evaluating GAP projects, I made a series of comments to the faculty relating to "critical thinking issues." It seems this is a major area of concern; the letter, the communication piece and the information literacy document can be easily managed. But the "critical thinking" area needs to be addressed. Faculty may be unclear as to what "critical thinking" really means, so we need to discuss definitions, Bloom categories (some of these overlap with each other, etc), methods, and just what "critical thinking" is or purports to be. Once this is done, then we (faculty) need to teach these skills and "coach" students to write pieces that focus or emphasize on these "ways" of thinking, etc. Faculty could give essay assignments or papers in which words such as the following are included: Explain, evaluate, analyze, compare and contrast, [see handout on Bloom categories]

Serafin

PS This is my first posting, sorry about this!