Lakessiah Mosley-Franklin: Theories of Critical Thinking

We live in a society that revolves around technology.  Technology is utilized almost 24 hours a day.  I often share with my students that if they do not pursue a good education they will not be able to get a job not even on the garbage truck.  Waste management now only requires two men per truck because everything functions off of technology.  In my neighborhood the second guy only gets out to make sure that the garbage can is out of the street once it is put back down.  We can now track packages before they are delivered to us.  We have smart locks for our homes and garage codes.  Our phones are now able to be unlocked by facial recognition.  Technology is booming in this century!

All of the articles shared a great deal of information regarding technology and critical thinking.  However, in my current role as a literacy specialist Instructional Strategies would apply to my current role the most.  Instructional Strategies are powerful tools in teaching and learning.  This allows differentiation to take place in the classroom because we do not all learn the same.  According to (Bloom, Englehart, Furst, Hill & Krathwohl, 1956) teachers are teaming up to make learning engaging and real life problem solving.  This would not be possible without critical thinking and a deep understanding.  I also, use Bloom's Taxonomy on a daily basis in my current role.  I use it when training others as well as with my intervention group.  This is a great tool to help formulate those quality questions when assessing students.

I believe that if we all take the principles that we read about in the articles and apply them in our current role we would become very successful educators.  This would also allow results to surface on a daily bases.  Also, The articles shared research based strategies that are very helpful in my current role.  I believe that we must analyze data in everything that we do.  We can analyze data in our personal and professional lives.  I have always believed that without data all we have is an opinion.  If we propose an idea to someone we must be prepared to prove that it works.  I believe that we should take this same approach in educating others as well.