Discipline in Critical Thinking
Well, critical thinking is not just thinking, but thinking which entails self-improvement. This improvement comes from skill develooped in using standards by which one appropriately assesses thinking. Discipline?
As an instructor I want students to try to reason things out on the basis of evidence and good reasons.Finding evidence takes discipline. Good reasons must be deveoped from a thorough process which also requires discipline. Therefore in order to teach critical thinking I have to teach discipline.
To think well is to impose discipline and restraint on our thinking-by means of intellectual standards — in order to raise our thinking to a level of "perfection" or quality that is not natural or likely in undisciplined, spontaneous thought. The dimension of critical thinking least understood is that of "intellectual standards." Most teachers were not taught how to assess thinking through standards; indeed, often the thinking of teachers themselves is very "undisciplined" and reflects a lack of internalized intellectual standards.
Question: Could you give me an example?
Paul: Certainly, one of the most important distinctions that teachers need to routinely make, and which takes disciplined thinking to make, is that between reasoning and subjective reaction.
If we are trying to foster quality thinking, we don't want students simply to assert things; we want them to try to reason things out on the basis of evidence and good reasons. Often, teachers are unclear about this basic difference. Many teachers are apt to take student writing or speech which is fluent and witty or glib and amusing as good thinking. They are often unclear about the constituents of good reasoning. Hence, even though a student may just be asserting things, not reasoning things out at all, if she is doing so with vivacity and flamboyance, teachers are apt to take this to be equivalent to good reasoning.
This was made clear in a recent California state-wide writing assessment in which teachers and testers applauded a student essay, which they said illustrated "exceptional achievement" in reasoned evaluation, an essay that contained no reasoning at all, that was nothing more than one subjective reaction after another. (See "Why Students-and Teachers-Don't Reason Well")
The assessing teachers and testers did not notice that the student failed to respond to the directions, did not support his judgment with reasons and evidence, did not consider possible criteria on which to base his judgment, did not analyze the subject in the light of the criteria, and did not select evidence that clearly supported his judgment. Instead the student:
described an emotional exchange
asserted-without evidence-some questionable claims
expressed a variety of subjective preferences
The assessing teachers were apparently not clear enough about the nature of evaluative reasoning or the basic notions of criteria, evidence, reasons, and well-supported judgment to notice the discrepancy. The result was, by the way, that a flagrantly mis-graded student essay was showcased nationally (in ASCD's Developing Minds), systematically misleading the 150,000 or so teachers who
Trinidad,
Personal discipline is such a critical element in the success formula. Students need to realize the importance of it and how they need to work to acquire it. If they learn and practice self discipline early in their careers they are going to go far in their career development.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
personal discipline can help with critical thinking by fortifying one's mind and thinking toward the act of delayed gratification. By doing the hard work of thinking through a problem from a fresh perspective one can come up with alternative routes to complete tasks and approach specific problems. It takes personal discipline to do the work and mental heavy lifting of actually thinking through matters from multiple points of view.
I think most people have some interest beyond work that provides a motivation to their lives. Probably, that interest is a disciplined one, requiring dedication, study, research, questioning, and judgement. That interest and the discipline that revolves around maintaining it can then be applied to other areas of life, such as teaching or learning.
Ruth,
You use a word that seems to be missing in many conversations about critical thinking. Discipline gives you an order and sequence to follow as you work through and analyze a situation. We need to help our students develop discipline in their problem solving formulas.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Discipline can help with critical thinking as it takes time and stamina to think things through and find the information needed to come up with a decision. We live in the time when we want to make quick decisions and have quick fixes to our problems. We need to put work into any decision. We expect our president and our government to solve all problems for us and we do not want to have to come up with any solutions or even think about it.
How can personal discipline help with critical thinking?
Donna,
Your last sentence is powerful and essential if a person is to be successful as a critical thinker. Nothing comes easy and critical thinking is no exception. Individuals need to develop critical thinking and problem solving steps to work through and the learning of these steps take effort and discipline as you mention. The majority of what we do in our careers involve critical thinking so we need to prepare ourselves and our students to be able to do such.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Critical thinking at it's very core requires discipine. In order to think critically an individual must stay focused on a problem or issue and work through all of the possible solutions or implications and apply their available knowledge base to it in an attempt to come to a conclusion or resolution. The very act of effectively thinking critically requires energy and discipline in itself.
Discipline leads most often to a step by step aproach to solving a problem. It can also help as the discipline of being able to listen and not just waiting to talk has helped in solving many problems. Critical thinking relys of being focused and being able to take what you have learned and advance it into a series of actions done in the head to lead to the correct outcome.
Paul,
What an excellent example of 'applied' critical thinking. Thank you.
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
In the sport of back country skiing, many seasoned skiers have invested time and resources into learning about the environmental dangers snow packs present in the form of avalanches. What is appealing to the skiers is skiing untracked snow covered slopes in a pristine wilderness environments, void of the congestion of a ski resort. In order to safely ski in the back country, skiers have to exercise discipline. In their pre-trip preparations they conduct analysis of the weather, snow and local avalanche reports and determine if it is safe to go skiing. Once they are out in the back country, they invest time and do an analysis of the snow pack on the terrain they are hoping to ski. This analysis involves digging a pit deep into the snow pack and determining the reliability of each layer of snow. Analysis are refined down to observing individual flakes in each of the layers. Often weak unconsolidated layers of snow are found several feet down in the snow pack,under several layers of consolidated snow. This becomes a red flag and indicates an unsafe snow pack. In other words the slope being evaluated is prone to avalanche, therefore should not be skied. We can see, how discipline skiers have taken the time to apply their critical thanking skills in order to avoid becoming victims to a avalanche. Unlike resort skiing, BC Skiing demands discipline and critical thinking to ski safely and avoid avalanches.
Lois,
It seems your focus is on target for your students' success in training. Very good.
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
I believe one must be personally disciplined to attain critical thinking----now getting our students to be personally disciplined can be a tremendous challenge. In the post-secondary environment I have many students who lack personal discipline; they enter with very little patience. In my situation I must first move the students to personal discipline, dedication, focus, and keep reiterating the goal---successful profession. Successful Profession = Critical Thinker. I train my students for the Field of Surgical Technology which equates to direct patient care = no room for lack of personal discipline. I must tier my instruction and keep moving the students towards the goal; with personal discipline/critical thinker in the forefront.
By making a consistent effort to evaluate information critically before acting upon it, we gain experience, practice and skill at critical thinking. The consistent application requires a dedicated effort. Many people find it much easier to accept information at face value rather than looking deeper and questioning.
Jason,
Very well stated. Thank you for sharing your helpful insights.
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
People are victims to habit. When faced with a challenging problem or a high stakes issue, people will use whatever problem-solving method that had been used previously unless a conscious choice is made to use a new system. This is where discipline is required. New routines are sometimes tough to use because they take time to develop and learn. The first few repetitions using the new skill can be cumbersome as the inefficiencies are discovered and mitigated. Discipline is required again to stay with the new paradigm instead of switching back to the well known previous system. The whole process is about delaying gratification. We sacrifice ease and speed now for a more effective system later.
Debby,
Very helpful recommendation. Do you have some favorite examples?
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
Critical thinking, that is to think the situation through requires the person to be completely focused on the issue as well as the best possible outcome. This requires individual discipline as it is often so much easier to just respond. In the class room it is the responsibility of the instructor to engage the students with information that requires them to stop and think rather than spit back information they have been fed.
There is a sometimes a tendency and/or pressure to get to answers quickly and that forces people not to critically think through problems and arrive at flawed answers...perhaps through over-generalizations, wrong assumptions, not enough information. Personal discipline is recognizing those pressures, not giving in to them, so as to enable your critical thinking.
