Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Meeting: MMSTC (New Inverter Install) Wednesday, February 3, 2010 10:00AM



Approaching Students as Thinkers; Cultivating the Intellect… Enoch Hale


There is no more important goal in schooling than cultivating the intellect. But we can’t achieve this goal unless we place intellectual development at the heart of instruction. To do this, we must approach our students as thinkers, as persons capable of figuring things out for themselves, as persons with their own thoughts, emotions, and desires, as persons with minds of their own. But thinking is often ignored in schooling (and indeed in society). Historically critical thinking has been treated in schooling as another add-on, as something interesting we combine with other things we do. But when we understand what it takes to cultivate the intellect we bring the concepts and principles of critical thinking into everything we do in the classroom. Critical thinking becomes the centerpiece of instruction. This is true because it is through critical thinking that we make explicit the intellectual tools students need to live successfully and reasonably, to grapple with the complex problems they will inevitably face, to think their way through content of any kind. But we can’t foster critical thinking if we don’t understand it ourselves. Realizing that we cannot deal with all of the theory of critical thinking in one weekend, this workshop will emphasize some of the foundations of critical thinking. We focus on initial internalization of these foundations, coupled with application to classroom structures, lessons and strategies. Participants will develop some modest initial plans for redesigning instruction with critical thinking at its foundation, and most importantly they will aquire a plan for continuing their own development as thinkers and teachers.


More: http://www.criticalthinking.org/conference/Spring2010_index.cfm

1 comment:

JimB said...

Berkley is a bit far. This would make for a great vrtual conference though.