Critical Thinking: an interview with Roland Case

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: DOWNLOAD

Dr. Roland Case is a professor of curriculum and social studies in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is currently on long-term leave from the university to direct TC2—The Critical Thinking Consortium.

Since 1993, Roland has worked with many educators across Canada and in the United States, England, Israel, and India to embed critical thinking into their teaching practices. He is the co-editor of The Canadian Anthology of Social Studies (Pacific Educational Press, 1999) and of the Critical Challenges Across the Curriculum series—an award winning series of 21 teaching resources on critical thinking.

Catherine Edwards, the director of Pacific Educational Press, an educational publishing company located in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, interviewed Roland in Vancouver.

Catherine: Why is it important to teach critical thinking in our schools?

Roland: There are two main reasons. First, critical thinking is clearly an important goal of education. Every curriculum document mentions it and it is recognized as an essential life skill. Everyone needs the ability to make thoughtful judgments about who and what information to believe, which product would better meets our needs, what options we should pursue, and so on.

Another, less widely recognized reason for teaching critical thinking is that involving students in thinking critically about subject matter is a very effective way of helping students understand the content. Students who receive information passively are far less likely to understand and retain what they heard or read about than are students who have been invited to digest, scrutinize, apply, and test this information. In other words, critical thinking is not simply an important goal of education, it is also a powerful method of teaching.

Catherine: Can you briefly describe the critical thinking model you’ve developed which underpins the publications of the Critical Thinking Consortium?

Roland: Our model is based on scholarly research and professional work with thousands of teachers. This has convinced us that developing critical thinkers requires teacher effort at every level in the educational system using a four-pronged approach.

First, create a critical community. Critical thinking cannot be learned independently of the broader forces operating within the classroom and the school. Consequently, it is essential to foster “critical” communities where teachers and students interact in mutually supportive ways to nurture critical reflection. The point of a critical community is to create an environment, or climate, that embodies and reinforces the tools of thought.

Second, provide students with critical challenges. A critical challenge is the term we use to describe a problem that invites students to think critically.

If a situation is not problematic (that is, there is only one plausible option or a correct answer is obvious) then it does not call for critical thinking—it is not a critical challenge. Teachers are encouraged to create abundant occasions where students are challenged in this way.
Third, teach the intellectual tools students need to think critically about the critical challenges they are provided. The ability to think critically develops over a lifetime by acquiring and refining the vast repertoire of tools that an expert would draw upon in responding to problematic situations.

And lastly, assess for the tools. It is not sufficient merely to teach the tools. Because assessment influences what is learned, we must also assess for critical thinking. Teachers signal to students what is and is not important by assigning marks to some assignments and not to others, and by ”weighting” parts of assignments with different values. If student mastery of the tools is not assessed, not only are students (and teachers) left in the dark about their growth, but they are implicitly encouraged to believe that critical thinking is unimportant.

Catherine: What makes your model different from other approaches to critical thinking?

Roland: Our approach differs from other common models in many ways. Let me focus on two differences—our content-embedded approach and our emphasis on teaching the intellectual tools.

Our approach is to embed critical thinking by presenting questions or challenges that invite critical student reflection about the content of the curriculum. We do not support the view that critical thinking is a generic set of skills or processes that can be developed independent of content and context. Nor do we believe that critical thinking can adequately be addressed as an add-on to the curriculum. Instead, critical thinking must be seen as a way to teach the content of the curriculum. Teachers can help students understand the subject matter, rather than merely recalling it, by providing continuing opportunities for thoughtful analysis of issues that are central to the subject matter.

A second distinguishing feature of our approach is the systematic teaching of the intellectual “tools” needed for critical thinking. Much of the frustration that teachers experience when attempting to engage students in thinking critically stems from the fact that students often lack the required concepts, attitudes, knowledge, criteria, or strategies—in short, they lack the tools needed to do a reasonably competent job. It is often assumed that the mere provision of invitations to think will improve students’ reflective competence. No doubt some students will improve by figuring things out for themselves, but most of the rest will be perform at much higher levels if they are supplied with the requisite tools to do the job.

Catherine: Can you tell me something about your group, The Critical Thinking Consortium. Who are the members of the consortium? How do the members contribute? Why have they come together to form this consortium?

Roland: The Critical Thinking Consortium—or TC2 for short—was founded in 1993 by a dozen educational groups in British Columbia who believed that we needed to provide long-term sustained support if critical thinking was to become more than a mere wish on the educational agenda. Since that time, we have worked with over 25,000 educators and our institutional membership has grown to 42 school districts, faculties of education and other educational organizations in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and BC. As well, we have an affiliate network of schools in India and have begun working with schools in the United States.

Catherine: How are the individual publications developed?

Roland: All of our resources are developed by teachers—often as part of a workshop where they are learning to use our model more effectively. Those lessons which are judged to be of interest to other teachers are moved through a development and editing process which I supervise as the senior editor for our series.

Catherine: How do you feel teachers can best use the publications in their already-crowded timetables?

Roland: The content-embedded nature of our resources are designed expressly because of the press on teachers’ time. Teachers don’t have the liberty to teach the content and also to teach critical thinking. This is why all of our resources focus on the prescribed content of the curriculum so that teachers achieve two things at once: teach subject matter in a way that is often more engaging and meaningful to students and, concurrently, nurture students’ ability and inclination to think critically.

Catherine: You also offer professional development seminars for teachers. How do you think this enhances the books and helps teachers to incorporate critical thinking into their classrooms? Do you feel that sufficient material is in the books themselves for teachers that don’t have access to the workshops?

Roland: Many teachers who already understand what it means to teach using a critical thinking method can simply pick up our resources and run with them—our suggested teaching activities are very carefully laid out and we provide ready-to-duplicate masters for every aspect of each lesson. But even these teachers benefit from our workshops because many of them want to go beyond simply using pre-published resources and learn to use our model to develop their own critical thinking lessons. Teachers who are less familiar with the mindset and the routines involved in a critical thinking approach find our workshops especially helpful as a complement to the resources we have published.

Catherine: What are the future publication plans of TC2? What new topics are you planning to cover?
Our main thrusts are to develop resources in science and mathematics and we are in the early stages of a larger initiative, called The Thoughtful Books Series, to help parents and teachers use children’s literature to promote critical literacy and social responsibility.

The publications of the Critical Thinking Consortium are available from Pacific Educational Press. For more information and a list of titles or to arrange a workshop in your school or school district, please contact the press: telephone 604.879.5385 or email pep@interchange.ubc.ca.