Wearing the Six Thinking Hats
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First of all, let's start the discussion about "How might the book: 'Critical Thinking and Learning' empower the teaching skills of any pre-or-in service EFL/ESL teacher? Mainly, it is appropriate to ask the following question: "What is a critical thinking? Most of theories had rounded this question due to the complexity it has for human beings; however, there is no a concrete answer about it. Some psychologists considered that logic, reasoning, memory, observation, analysis, and so forth, are part of the critical thinking, but the question is still without a unique answer to it. On the other hand, how might teachers of pre-or-in service EFL/ESL teach for the development of critical thinking? As teachers know, in the first stage, the pupil is understood as a passive recipient of habits of mind and action, acquiring these habits by mimesis rather than by reasoning.
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First, the fact that to educate a thinking person cannot, and should not, be just about educating him or her to think critically. In this we show respect for the whole person, and not just for the person who has developed the capacity for rationally based critical thought. EFL/ESL teachers have the benefit that they will notice when students acquire a critical thinking through the way the student changes his/her attitude, way of thinking, set of new goals, reach of new challenges, and so forth.
First, the fact that to educate a thinking person cannot, and should not, be just about educating him or her to think critically. In this we show respect for the whole person, and not just for the person who has developed the capacity for rationally based critical thought. EFL/ESL teachers have the benefit that they will notice when students acquire a critical thinking through the way the student changes his/her attitude, way of thinking, set of new goals, reach of new challenges, and so forth.
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_On the contrary,
learning by reasoning, involves considerable mental activity on the
part of the pupil, who, using her/his own capacity to reason has to
work out what to think and do, so that, the teacher has a lot of work
to do with it. In addition, it is important that EFL/ESL teachers know
that there a types of thinking (opinion, representation, reasoning,
problem-solving, conceiving, understanding, revealing,
informational-processing, narratology, and philosophizing, as well as
kinds of reasoning, which move from adaptive rationality, in which
human beings are rational in the adaptive sense because they are
equipped with reasoning strategies that enable them to achieve many
fundamental cognitive goals in their natural and social environments
even though their cognitive capacity is limited. The use of these
strategies is often spontaneous, unreflective, and largely unconscious.
They are built into the human mind by evolutionary forces or acquired through socialization, and critical rationality, which consists on a cognitive agent who is critically rational if s/he is able to assess the applicability and the limit of his/her adaptive strategies.
They are built into the human mind by evolutionary forces or acquired through socialization, and critical rationality, which consists on a cognitive agent who is critically rational if s/he is able to assess the applicability and the limit of his/her adaptive strategies.
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_The discussion
may turn into a main target, what happens when using a critical
thinking course?; it is very common that students are taught to apply a
set of fundamental principles of logic and to avoid falling into the
traps of a number of fallacious or biased patterns of thinking.
Besides, the debate then shifts from how best to teach, to how best to learn.
Needless to say, the fact that EFL/ESL teachers apply critical
thinking methods in a class can provide benefits as well as
contraindication when applying it.
For instance, EFL/ESL teachers will find out that reasoning and the critical assessment of one’s inheritance is not something that has to be learnt. It is not something that follows a more basic learning by training and that is only acquired at later stages in cognitive development.
For instance, EFL/ESL teachers will find out that reasoning and the critical assessment of one’s inheritance is not something that has to be learnt. It is not something that follows a more basic learning by training and that is only acquired at later stages in cognitive development.
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_The key issue here
is: what is the activity that constitutes a practice and what kind of
activity is it that is capable of closing down the slack between what
the teacher says and what the pupil learns?
In order to empower EFL/ESL teacher skills, teachers should employ classroom strategies that produce active rather than passive learners, given the demands of ‘the global economy’, which apparently needs active, creative, and critical workers who are ‘life-long’ and ‘life-wide’ learners. In addition, it would be good if educationists were aware of the differences and complexities within cultures before they examined and compared across cultures.
On the other hand, feedback and integration take an important role in this process. If teachers had a better understanding of the adaptive character of human reasoning, they would appreciate that students’ logical reasoning also has to be trained in a domain-specific or context-sensitive way. In other words, we should remind ourselves that the ability to reason needs to be developed and that it takes time for students to master this ability: merely learning the abstract principles has only a limited effect in improving students’ ability to deal with thinking problems in different contexts. And, of course, EFL/ESL teachers need to become ‘anthropologists’ of their own culture in order to understand how the normative assumptions underpinning their teaching practices can be problematic for international students or indeed, for other different students.
In order to empower EFL/ESL teacher skills, teachers should employ classroom strategies that produce active rather than passive learners, given the demands of ‘the global economy’, which apparently needs active, creative, and critical workers who are ‘life-long’ and ‘life-wide’ learners. In addition, it would be good if educationists were aware of the differences and complexities within cultures before they examined and compared across cultures.
On the other hand, feedback and integration take an important role in this process. If teachers had a better understanding of the adaptive character of human reasoning, they would appreciate that students’ logical reasoning also has to be trained in a domain-specific or context-sensitive way. In other words, we should remind ourselves that the ability to reason needs to be developed and that it takes time for students to master this ability: merely learning the abstract principles has only a limited effect in improving students’ ability to deal with thinking problems in different contexts. And, of course, EFL/ESL teachers need to become ‘anthropologists’ of their own culture in order to understand how the normative assumptions underpinning their teaching practices can be problematic for international students or indeed, for other different students.
Title. Haz clic aquí para modificar.
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_It is necessary to
consider that if students are taught to be more aware of the natural
and cultural contexts in which their thinking patterns are embedded,
they should become more sensitive to their own ways of thinking and
less likely to misapply them or make hasty judgments based on them. It
is not difficult for teachers to see that their own countries have
changed dramatically in the last two or three decades. As a result,
EFL/ESL teachers should provide their students the necessary confidence
to make them aware of the thinking process.
“If we assume that the pupil is a subject with a capacity for reasoning, a capacity for directing and organizing their behavior to make sense of themselves and others. If weassume that, then we say plenty when we say,for example, criticalthinking is no long seen in contrast to feeling, but can now be seen to includeemotion, as long as reason is still seen as primary.
“If we assume that the pupil is a subject with a capacity for reasoning, a capacity for directing and organizing their behavior to make sense of themselves and others. If weassume that, then we say plenty when we say,for example, criticalthinking is no long seen in contrast to feeling, but can now be seen to includeemotion, as long as reason is still seen as primary.
Title. Haz clic aquí para modificar.
![Picture](/uploads/9/1/3/3/9133862/5287031.jpg?145)
_First, the fact
that to educate a thinking person cannot, and should not, be just about
educating him or her to think critically. In this we show respect for
the whole person, and not just for the person who has developed the
capacity for rationally based critical thought. EFL/ESL teachers have
the benefit that they will notice when students acquire a critical
thinking through the way the student changes his/her attitude, way of
thinking, set of new goals, reach of new challenges, and so forth.
Unfortunately, in this book there were just questions without proper answers since there are several important philosophical arguments that attempt to show that the very concept of systematic human irrationality, different ways of thinking and reasoning. Moreover, there is much evidence that human reasoning is not normatively appropriate. Many experiments are able to show significant differences between how people actually reason and the correct way of reasoning in those experimental set-ups. However, once we move beyond small scale reasoning experiments, it becomes harder to specify with the same precision what counts as normatively appropriate cognition.
The lack of training in teaching students from different cultural backgrounds has not helped matters, and lecturers understandably often feel that the demands placed on them are unreasonable. EFL/ESL teachers should notice the fact that because someone may reach a conclusion by some brilliant critical reasoning, it doesn’t follow that his conclusion is morally acceptable.
At last, human beings are not ideally rational in the sense that they are not very good at applying fundamental principles of logic to solve non-obvious reasoning tasks. In order to overcome the problem of the computational complexity that comes with ideal rationality, people in different cultures or environments would develop domain-specific strategies to cope with problems that are crucial to their survival or that occur commonly in their daily lives.
Unfortunately, in this book there were just questions without proper answers since there are several important philosophical arguments that attempt to show that the very concept of systematic human irrationality, different ways of thinking and reasoning. Moreover, there is much evidence that human reasoning is not normatively appropriate. Many experiments are able to show significant differences between how people actually reason and the correct way of reasoning in those experimental set-ups. However, once we move beyond small scale reasoning experiments, it becomes harder to specify with the same precision what counts as normatively appropriate cognition.
The lack of training in teaching students from different cultural backgrounds has not helped matters, and lecturers understandably often feel that the demands placed on them are unreasonable. EFL/ESL teachers should notice the fact that because someone may reach a conclusion by some brilliant critical reasoning, it doesn’t follow that his conclusion is morally acceptable.
At last, human beings are not ideally rational in the sense that they are not very good at applying fundamental principles of logic to solve non-obvious reasoning tasks. In order to overcome the problem of the computational complexity that comes with ideal rationality, people in different cultures or environments would develop domain-specific strategies to cope with problems that are crucial to their survival or that occur commonly in their daily lives.
Title. Haz clic aquí para modificar.
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_Basically, this
discussion presented different points of view regarding the way in
which the book “Critical Thinking and Learning” can empower EFL/ESL
teaching in pre-or-in service. As a conclusion, even though there are
no clues for a real meaning of critical thinking, this does not mean
that an EFL/ESL teacher cannot provide students methods for them to
analyze objectively the reality that surround them.