Stephen Brookfield is a scholar in adult education who holds the John Ireland Endowed Chair at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Before that, he was a Professor of Higher and Adult Education at Columbia University in New York for ten years. During 2002 he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. In this occasion, Brookfield made a lecture about critical and creative thinking providing tools and techniques to help students question their assumptions.
He states that Critical Thinking focuses on understanding and checking out assumptions, while Creative thinking emphasizes the ability to look at things from multiples responses to familiar ideas and practices, that means move outside from typical mental framework. The point of both critical and creative thinking is to take informed action.
Brookfield also explains three kinds of assumptions students are likely to encounter:
1. Casual: this one is the most common uncover in classrooms, it is about cause-effect.
2. Prescriptive: students think about how scholarship should look like (e.g. a good teacher should engage in this particular way), this assumption usually have the word "should".
3. Paradigmatic: This is the hardest one to get students to uncover, it is a kind of common sense taken for granted.
He explains four intellectual traditions: analytical philosophy, natural science, critical theory, and pragmatism. The last one is the most intersected with creativity because it implies that knowledge is constantly reinvented, opened to new ways of thinking.
Brookfield asked some students "what is critical thinking learned?" and these are some of the responses he got:
1. Make instructor modeling by critical incident questionnaire, assumptions inventories, ending presentations, discussions and exercises with questions, chalk talk.
2. Providing real world illustration/examples.
3. Instructor points/counterpoints: Model critical and creative thinking in front of students through engaging critical conversations and exploring alternative perspectives.
4. Speaking of tongues: Make students realize that there are multiples ways of understanding the same situation or idea.
5. Introduce critical and creative thinking incrementally: I like this method of becoming critical because it is a non-threatening way to get closer to think critically and creative in your own pace, it is like a scaffolding process.
6. Present a situation that takes students by surprise (face and respond to a "disoriented dilemma"). There are many ways to create it, some of them are teaching with no speech (visual, musical, kinetic, etc) and classroom geography that means that as a teacher I can change my position and talk to the ones who sit on the back.
Hi, I think you did a great job summarizing the lecture given by professor Brookfield. You summed up all the topics he was talking about during his speech. However, I found some gaps in your writing here in your blog. I think you should had provided more information about the 4 keys of intellectual traditions, (analytical philosophy, natural science, critical theory, and pragmatism) of course it was easy to enumerate them but I believe those keys are pretty important to compile and to be reminded so that readers (your audience) can acknowledge the background of what past teachers have taught students before the same students can develop their own reflective and critical positions when thinking. You could had provided real life examples so that your audience can identify them easily. After all, I personally enjoyed reading your writing. You have such a great talent to sum things up and to make yourself understood! You did great.
ResponderBorrarDear Yahira;
ResponderBorrarI enjoyed reading your work, I also liked how you went through the video and then, making a precise summary of it. There is not much to say about this task due to the information you wrote about, was previously given in the video, you just needed to organize it in the best way you may consider. Anyways, you did a really good contribution with your relevant, also, I had some doubts regarding the video and I ended up making up my mind by reading your thoughts, I appreciate it, keep it up.