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The Critical Thinking Project
A Project to Promote Critical Learning

If you are interested in participating in this ongoing project, contact the Research Academy for University Learning at Montclair State University.

Faculty members engaging in the Critical Thinking Project think deeply about the learning objectives they have set for their students and about how those intellectual expectations might be raised.

Participating faculty members work collaboratively and independently to address a series of fundamental questions:
  • What reasoning abilities must our students possess or develop to think within particular disciplines, to answer the questions a discipline raises?

  • What is the next level of intellectual ability, of reasoning skills that we might encourage in our students in any particular course?

  • How can we best foster those intellectual abilities? Can any of the literature from the learning sciences inform efforts to foster this intellectual development?

  • Can any of the emerging technologies--particularly the Web-based technologies--aid such an enterprise?

  • If we adopt technologies, must we sacrifice any of the richness of traditional pedagogies? What are the advantages of those traditional pedagogies and how can they best help students reach higher levels of thinking?
Within the second phase, they undertake experimental projects to apply the ideas that emerge. Some of those experimental projects may explore the use of technology to help foster advanced thinking within a discipline, but the emphasis in the project is not on technology. It is, instead, on how we can expand the boundaries of student thinking. The objective is to focus the conversation on the thinking abilities that we expect from our students--and then, only in the context of exploring these fundamental issues, to ask how the emerging technologies might help us promote traditional intellectual goals or foster more ambitious student achievements.

Some participants may decide that they can best promote the kind of learning objectives they seek without using new technologies. If participants do consider the use of Web technology, we want them to consider also what they might sacrifice from the richness of traditional pedagogy. These pilot experiments might take a variety of forms, including the development of new courses, the creation of new ways to teach old courses, or ways to create interdisciplinary learning or problem-solving experiences for students.

The goal is to develop a rich set of ideas and some initial application of those ideas in some experimental, demonstration projects. Those individual experiments can help shape ongoing course developments and teaching strategies. They might also provide examples that can help shape and guide the evolving uses of technology in teaching, avoiding the random growth that has characterized so much effort in this area in recent years.

Some Additional Thoughts on Critical Thinking

Ken Bain
The Research Academy for University Learning at Montclair State University - Montclair, New Jersey, 07043, USA
| 973-65-LEARN (655-3276) | Office Hours: 8:30am - 4:30pm | teach-learn@mail.montclair.edu | Ken Bain, Director