Theories of Critical Thinking

           Attributed to Albert Einstein is the quote, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with the problems longer (Calaprice, 2011, p. 481).”  While there is no direct context for the saying, it gets to the heart of critical thinking. Ever used the speed control on a car? Once it’s on, our focus often drops about how fast we’re going, and if we have adaptive speed control, where our vehicle adjusts its speed based on the distance we are from the car in front of us, judgement and response relative to our distance also drops. Many of the decisions we make in our everyday lives often mimic this. We depend on the information and analysis someone else has done to guide how we act. Recipes, hotels, restaurants, books, movies, a new CD, or countless other services or purchases are often made based on the information from a friend, relative, a review by a critic, or advertisement. The actions taken reflect the analysis of someone else, or as in our opening example, a machine. We passively accept someone else’s conclusion and act. What happens, or should happen, when we are responsible and accountable for drawing a conclusion?

        Einstein’s quote about “…staying with problems longer” reflects the intellectual investment required when we think critically. We, alone, or with others, are responsible for conducting research, where data is collected and analyzed, options are considered, and finally, after thoughtful reasoning has been conducted, a conclusion is drawn and a decision is made. For this short blog post, we will look at a few theories central to critical thinking, and then briefly discuss their importance as we apply them to our work.

Deep Learning

        How we educate; the pedagogy, technology, and the relationship between educator and student has undergone a massive shift in the last several decades, and while far from maturation, has altered the depth of learning and our expectations for how what we learn will be used (Fullan & Langworthy,  2014). The old pedagogy, as described by Fullan and  Langworthy, provided content to learners, with some leverage of technology by the instructor, who then evaluated students on their mastery of it. Students learned content, but were limited both in how they learned and opportunities to apply, analyze, and innovate using it. New pedagogies, leveraging the emergence of ubiquitous technology, now provide the opportunity, when educators and students have access to it, to create a seamless partnership where together they discover and master existing content, and then create and use new knowledge benefiting themselves and the organizations they belong, and will belong, to in the future (Fullan & Langworthy,  2014). Why is this concept of benefit important?

        My life, as far as I can remember, long before I understood the terminology used to describe it, was to innovate and then to implement and leverage the changes required to leverage the innovation for the benefit of myself and whatever organization I belonged to. An example:  As a boy scout, leading my troop as the senior patrol leader, I was tasked with setting up camp whatever the weather or time of day for over 140 members, using 35 plus tents. The first time I did it was a disaster, taking several hours, at night, in the rain, with the expectation that all the tents would line up within a foot like something resembling the camp of a Roman legion. We were a military-sponsored troop during the Vietnam era. I was chewed out and advised I better come up with something. Quickly. Now. How? The troop chairman told me, remember the Romans, and think.

        I went back to my tent, grabbed a pad of graph paper, and the light bulb went on. I drew on the grid where everything should go, and then, the next morning, asked the troop chairman to go out and buy 1,000 feet of clothesline. He smiled, did not ask why, went and returned, then gathering the troop, we took the lines to a large field, and then using one of the lengths of rope, tied it into 10-foot lengths, positioned the scouts into squares feet ten feet apart, took the ropes, and created a large grid that mimicked my graph paper. Some torn pieces of cloth, along with some permanent markers, tied on to the grid indicated what would go where. When done, we carefully rolled up the rope grid. That evening, when dark, we unrolled it again on the field, and taking each corner, pulled it taught, and using my graph paper map and the pieces of cloth tied to the grid, find where they would put up their tent in the future. After a few practices rounds, we could unroll the rope, pull it taught into a grid, and have the boys find their spots in less than ten minutes. The trick: Remembering how the Romans had done it and updating it for our situation. Content, problem, solution, benefit, and value achieved. The key: Partnership between a trusted mentor(teacher) and myself.

        Deep learning, and the technology required to enable it, are still works in progress, as the attempt to rapidly deploy distance and blended learning during the COVID pandemic has demonstrated. Applying “old” pedagogical collateral to “new” pedagogy is reminiscent of trying to cook turkeys in microwave ovens when they first appeared. Cooked yes, well, no. Educators and students both have roles to play in the design, development, deployment, and use of technology to meet the expectations of all stakeholders, including those of parents and administrators. Demonstrated value provides the “fuel” to achieve the “velocity” required for deep learning to achieve effective “lift-off.”

        Partnership, between educator and student, mutual trust, their “new” relationship as co-creators and beneficiaries of the potential value of knowledge creation, application, utility, and benefit form, with technology, a triad that can result in deep learning (Fullan & Langworthy,  2014). I use the word can, because as in all things in our world today, economics dictates what will be funded. Fullan and Langworthy place a heavier burden on teachers as “activators” of learning in their new relationships with their students than they have historically had. My experience in business informs me that funding, a clear roadmap, education, program and change management, support and engagement by staff and leadership, and realized value, are all critical to success. Teachers as front-line troops must embrace authentically the “new” pedagogy.

Bloom’s Taxonomy & Technology

        Bloom’s Taxonomy, published in  1956, provided a four-level hierarchical structure for stratifying the objectives of what educators want students to know from the least complex objective to the highest (Huitt, 2011). Subsequently, as additional research was conducted, the model was revised adding two more elements, that combined, resulted in a five-level model of increasing rigor:

• Knowledge
• Comprehension.
• Application
• Analysis.
• Synthesis / evaluation (Huitt, 2011).

        My experience over the last forty years in technology and business, from university through senior leadership, paralleled the taxonomy. The more quickly I could leverage what I learned to do and improve, benefited me and the enterprise I worked for. The model, while representative of what educators would like to achieve and businesses require to be competitive, had up to the emergence of instructional technology, been challenging to leverage in traditional classroom learning (Kuhn, 2008, p. 18). The emergence of instructional technology, as Kuhn reports, now enables teachers to provide multiple vectors to integrate the five levels of the taxonomy in a way to serve learners’ needs across multiple intelligences or  learning styles, benefiting educators and students and the organizations they join later in life.

         The “new” pedagogy we discussed earlier, and its success, depend in large part on educators’ ability to move from delivering knowledge and validating comprehension to partnering with students as they both utilize technology to amplify learning through the five levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and using what they have learned as a springboard for innovation and creativity.

Diffusion of Innovation

Innovation in and of itself does not provide an advantage. It must be superior to the “what was” state and provide an effective springboard to the next “to be” one. Rogers, in his discussion of the innovation adoption process, highlighted the concept of relative advantage as perceived by individuals and its impact on the rate of adoption (1963, p.70). Advantage or the perception of it, from my experience, like beauty is often in the eyes of the beholder, as it is sold to them by the person or group wishing to innovate. While those passionate about innovation are eager to promote the benefits of it, programs must not be oversold. Organizations wishing to sustain a culture of innovation, in my experience,  must ensure that the process undergoing change, and the technology enabling it, successfully achieve the goals established and deliver the economic benefits that were forecasted.

Adopters

Adopters are classified by Rogers into five categories using terms that are well known to technologists and businesspersons:

• Innovators.
• Early adopters.
• Early majority.
• Late majority.
• Laggards.

        Few want to be laggards because too late, can equate with organizational decay. Equally true, is few existing organizations, in my experience, wish to be innovators because being on the ‘leading” edge is often perceived as being on the “bleeding” edge, with the blood being dollars and the impact economic disaster. If the last fifty years had shown us anything, it is that few, if any, organizations, unless saved by the government, are too big to fail. For educators, if you substitute student achievement for dollars the analogy may apply. If we throw out innovators and laggards, where should smart organizations be?

            Hobbs, in her keynote, discusses the empowerment of learners with digital and media literacy describing a continuous cycle that includes act, access, analyze & evaluate, create, and reflect (Hobbs, 2011). Although Hobbs is targeting educators in her keynote, the point at which organizations adopt innovation, and their success in doing so, as my experience and those of my peers inform me is dependent on their maturity in managing change and their level of technological literacy, digital, and infrastructure. All too often, immature organizations hire outside firms to do the heavy lifting only to watch the change collapse when they depart.

Organizational and Societal Impacts

        Why are these concepts important? Economic outcomes drive investment and engagement by citizens and the decisions they make for themselves and their families. Organizations today occupy a technological ecosystem that is a constant state of flux, where winners adopt wisely, deploy rapidly, and deliver value in excess of the expectations established initially. Learning by definition is continuous, and often non-linear, requiring designer, instructor, student, and user to partner seamlessly, quickly identifying what delivers value and what does not. Smart innovation deployed quickly and effectively provides a competitive advantage to players at all levels, from sole proprietorships to multinational corporations. The United States once ranked as first in the world in innovation, today is ranked ninth on the Bloomberg Innovation Index (Damm, 2020).

        Deep learning, does not just move student and teachers up through Bloom’s Taxonomy as they master, apply and leverage content, while continuously innovating, but enables them to move up through  Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, improving their and subsequent generations' prosperity. While changes made to how we educate may take decades to manifest themselves in the general population, demonstrated benefits may lead to accelerated investment and investment in education at all levels and ages are badly needed if the United States is to remain a viable competitor in the global economy. Innovation, and its successful adoption, is critical, but competency should form the foundation for doing so.

References

Calaprice, A. (Ed.). (2011). The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt7s22s

Damm, C. (2020, January26). These are the world's most innovative countries. The US isn't even in the top 5. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-10-most-innovative-countries-bloomberg-says-2020-1

Fullan, M. & Langworthy, M. (2014). A rich seam: How new pedagogies find deep learning. London: Pearson. Retrieved from https://www.pearson.com/content/dam/one-dot-com/one-dot-com/global/Files/about-pearson/innovation/open-ideas/ARichSeamEnglish.pdf

Hobbs, R. (2011). Empowering learners with digital and media literacy. Knowledge Quest, 39(5), 12-17. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Huitt, W. (2011). Bloom et al.'s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/bloom.pdf

Kuhn, M. S. (2008). Connecting depth and balance in class. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(1), 18-21. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Maslow, A. H. (1987). Motivation and personality (3rd ed.). Pearson Education.

Rogers, E. M. (1963). The adoption process II. Journal of Cooperative Extension, 1(2), 69-75. Retrieved from http://www.joe.org/joe/1963summer/1963-2-a2.pdf

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