Critical Thinking and Professionalism at the University Level
Professor Sophia Ming-Lee Wen
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference, University of Sussex, at Brighton, 2-5 September, 1999.
Department of Education,
National Taiwan Normal University
E-mail:
Key words are: critical thinking, professionalism, university teaching.
Abstract
In this paper I intend to share three perspectives with scholars in the conference. They are:
1)offer the developmental stages in the area of critical thinking, in terms of researches;
2) propose the significance of critical thinking to facilitate teachers' professionalism for teachers in universities; and
3) conclude with some remarks on the methods of teaching in universities in Taiwan, and introduce Socratic dialect as a method of critical thinking for teachers to promote their teaching quality and facilitate themselves as a professional.
Time is gone forever, once spent, and is ultimate equal opportunity employer.
Traditional educator might suggests to teach skillful, whereas a professional shows:
why we should teach student think and make judgement;
how we deregulate control instead of recognition of authority;
why emancipate our students' inner is more important than efficient practices;
how to turn your ingrained value system into an open-minded system.
A. The criteria for professionalism at the university level
The profession of teaching is taken as an important element for the achievement of educational reform on the one hand. On the other hand, the criteria for professionalism are hardly to reach a consensus, in particular, in the field of social sciences such as education. However, it does not mean that scholars in education deny the necessity of professionalism. It means that professionalism in education is hard to be justified due to the nature of education which its achievement can hardly be shown immediately.
As Judge, Lemosse, Paine & Sedlak stressed, higher education faculty members is demand to spend time in teaching and to perform it effectively through combing the financial squeeze and accountable work. (Judge, Lemosse, Paine & Sedlak, 1994, 201)
Yet, the government's vision of professionalism might be fundamentally anti-professional, which rests on the political policy. In this way, the meaning of profession is technicist, denying any meaningful role for educational theory. In other words, the nature of professionalism must be able to equip students with enough depth and breadth of knowledge. Further, it must empower students' ability of autonomy. As Hart argued,
"the notion of quality and it has been suggested that education in schools and universities would benefit from exposure to the kind of quality assurance procedures originally developed by industry to monitor and raise performance...the notion of quality which has emerged from industry is a very limited one and that importing the latter into education would change our educational thinking and practice in significant ways for the worse. What we need instead is a fuller appreciation of the kind of quality and standards wich are proper to education and which depend upon the exercise of personal judgement." (Hart, W.A., 1997, 295)
According to Hart's comments on the nature of profession as a university teacher, it seems to me that the government pays increase attention to practical skills to justify the quality of teaching, rather than to make a focus on thinking, such as creating alternative routes, varied perspectives and open-entry to dialogues. That is, from the view of the government, the professional establishment might have been portrayed as a deliver of the officially packaged basic knowledge of politics.
In contrast, professionalism as a teacher should focus on holistic learning and academic, personal and social development, not be narrowed to teacher competence rooted in teaching knowledge of "reading, writing and number." It can be said that professionalism in this paper within a much broader concept. For instance, it goes beyond being coping with the competitive, marketing pressure, in interested of control of knowledge and students etc, but must be an erosion of academic freedom, individual creation of thoughts, and justifying a claim for excellence. In a word, anti-professionalism implies the formal transmission of an established culture, whereas education is less precise and more open and flexibility.
B. The nature of professionalism
According to the above statement, the nature can be clarified into three parts:
a)the criteria for professionalism;
b)the tasks of professional teachers; and
c)professionalism in reality, in terms of putting it into practice.
(a) The criteria for professionalism
The criteria for professionalism in universities can be divided into five aspects. They are equipping students with enough depth and breadth of knowledge; facilitating students' ability of thinking rationally; improving quality of teaching continually, including knowledge and value of educational; education instead of training or indoctrination. What we can say is that 'training is for the purpose of perfecting the arts of practice" (Kimball, 1974, 49), whereas education implies enlightenment of reason.
(b) The tasks of professional teachers in universities
Similarly, the tasks of professional teachers in universities must be able to perform the following characteristics. It includes the following features. They are: guaranteeing to improving the quality of instruction; taking responsibility for the efficient management of teaching materials and methods to achieve the educational standards, in terms of personal, social and cultural development; inspiring student's incentive to learn how to learn; and promoting knowledge and ability of educational theory, teaching and researches.
(c) Professionalism in reality - effectiveness
Professional knowledge and skills should be put into practice, therefore the author will deal with the concrete achievement or functions of professionalism. That is, effectiveness can be shown from the professionalism in reality. Five ways can be justified the effectiveness of teaching as a professionalism in universities. They are: working harder, faster and better; smarter and making proper judgements; leading his/her life more rational; overcoming the gravity of habits; and empower him/her to face the problem in a best possible way, and to meet the need in the most effective way.
After discussion the nature of professionalism, the paper will deal with the nature of critical thinking and the relationship between critical thinking instruction and professionalism.
C. The definition of critical thinking
There are many scholars who had made a definition for critical thinking among the American and British. Some of them define critical thinking as reasoning abilities, (Ennis, 1962; McPeck, 1981; Schrag, 1988, Gibson, 1986; Baron, 1988; Blair, 1988; Lipman, 1989; Siegel, 1988) others define it as problem-solving skills.(Shor, 1980; Ennis, 1985) In this paper I am not interested in dealing with the argument of the proper definition for critical thinking. Instead, I will propose my definition for critical thinking, after taking part in several times of Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform held by Richard Paul. Though my definition for critical thinking might be not perfect enough to be on behalf of scholars in the same Conference, yet it is at the very least our consensus in a sense. Further, we are devoting ourselves on the further researches based upon redefining what critical thinking is.
This paper shows part of my achievements in critical thinking both in instruction and researches at my University. I am proud of it, and as far as my acknowledge, some of my students and my colleagues are booming in doing researches on critical thinking, either editing teaching materials or doing experiments during their teachings. Also, I have been found that critical thinking is not only accepted by my students in University, but also be explored a step further to their teaching life, being as a High school teacher. That is the reason why I am confident and glad to share with my achievements with you during this Conference.
I will show up the definition of critical thinking we reached, before I move my idea to explain how critical thinking works effectively in professional life. The definition of critical thinking is as follows:
Critical thinking is a dialectical practice of mind of an autonomous person, by which the mental activities of inquiry, reflection, emancipation and reconstruction can promote a rational life.
With this definition, I will explain the nature, meaning and the contents of every mental activity so that the significance of critical thinking for promoting teachers' professional ability at the university level can be shown.
D. The four activities of a critical thinker
As an autonomous person, critical thinking is a key component to reflect upon ideologies and irrational. The nature, meaning and concrete contents of the four mental activities of a critical thinker will be explained so that the function of critical thinking in instruction will be pointed out. Moreover, the relation between critical thinking and professionalism will be shown up.
The ability of inquiry is shown from, for instance, questioning at issues, reasoning analysis and evaluation, clarifying assumption, identifying illogical conclusion. The ability of reflection is an ability to shown from making justifying and/or giving criticism based upon good reasons. Siegel approved that critical thinking must be appropriately moved by reasons, and assess beliefs and acts in accordance with reason. (Siegel, 1988, 23)
Finally, the ability of construction is composed of three possiblities:
a)reconfirmed the used value system;
b)corrected the used one; and
c)renewed the used belief.
In this sense, critical thinking indicates one can emancipate oneself from one's ideology and cultural value system when a person who think critically. Therefore, critical thinking can provide one with confidence to express his/her ideas, and defend himself/herself from irrational authorities. It is by this way, the task for individual enlightenment becomes possible. So is the ability of autonomy.
In this sense, the four basic components of critical thinking create ways to emancipate yourself from ideology and coercion, and then to reconstruct your new value system. Further, it is the function of critical thinking that a teacher design him/her teaching materials and methods effectively. In addition, he/she will be willing to inspire his/her students to think by themselves. That is, students will be used to focus on illustrating their ideas during their learning. It is in this way that students can focus on combining their used ideas with new ideas after reconstruction. Therefore, critical thinking teaching can be design to facilitate students learning how to organize their thoughts and empower their thinking ability through critical thinking. In this case, what we can justify is that teaching critically is a significant way to provide teachers with how to activate student's inner mind out. Therefore, students are capable of highlighting a highly successful development of the abilities of the raising crucial issues, solving-problem, and concepts organization etc. through dialogical exchange, panel discussions, Socratic questioning.
E. Critical thinking and professionalism, in terms of teaching effectiveness
Obviously, critical thinking in instruction is essential not only to effective teaching, in terms of teaching methods and material designed, but also to develop student's independent thinking. In other words, inspiring student's motivation and courage to express their own ideas, to share their ideas with others, and to create their own value system.
As we have known, systematic questioning and learning in a free situation will be crucial to encourage students to integrate what they learned with imagination. It is a way to create a new idea. In fact, it is a goal for instruction to ask students to be a subject. It is clear that the any kind of "move" from students will be a vital to decide which level a teacher reaches during his/her instruction. According to my teaching experiences, students might have learnt thousands of concepts in, which enable them to pass any examination excellently. However, it is hard for them to place what they have in minds into practical life, or to locate them in relation to previous concepts they have already got in their minds. In this way, the process of learning critically empowers students to be sensitive to concepts, which are unjustifiable inferences and dominant dogma. Also, after critical thinking teaching, students will apply their reason in forming disciplined habits of thoughts and concepts. Further, critical judgement is always relevant to thinking precisely and deliberately, instead of thinking routinely. In a word, critical thinkers must engage themselves in processes of reasoned creation to sort new concepts.
In sum, the pedagogical principles for critical thinking instruction should lie on the principle of democracy. The author summarizes them as follows:
a) different groups need various approaches;
b) democractic atmosphere: I-Thou and free expression;
c) dialectic questioning in a Socratic way of dialectic;
d) open-ended questions and answers;
e) encouraging imagination and creativity.
Conclusion: the requisition of professionalism for the 21th Century With accelerating change and the increasing complexity of problems facing us at the dawn of the 21th Century, we should strive to compete within the new global realities, in terms of economy, politics, and human relationship. Therefore, identifying the target of problems is necessary for moving a better life. That is, a highly-skilled performance must begin with a world class public education system. Eventually, a new requirement for a new era will be no place to hide. In teaching, the requirement of professionalism then becomes important to help our students to improve their abilities to recognise what they need and should choose. In this case, our professional ability and responsibility with critical thinking extends to assert our subject teaching knowledge, secure the materials and resources available to meet the requisitions of a deep and comprehensive understanding. That is the reason why this article argues that the establishment of professionalism should begin with thinking critically. Also, in teaching at the university level, education has emphasised passive learning, lower-order training, and indoctrination should be taken away, and emerging to a movement of critical thinking. As Paul reminding us of that university system instituted a graduation requirement in critical thinking intended to achieve:
An understanding of the relationship of language of logic, leading to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. (Paul, 1995, 37)
References:
Blair, J.A. (1988), "Teaching informal logic Using 'logical self defense'. in Fisher, A. (1985), Critical Thinking. Norwich: University of East Anglia.
Ennis, R.H. (1962), "A concept of critical thinking" in Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 32, no.1, pp. 88-111.
Ennis, R.H. (1985), "Critical thinking and curriculum" in National Forum, vol. LXV, no. 1, pp.28-32.
Gibson, R. (1986), Critical Theory and Education. Oxford: Hodder and Stoughton.
Hart, W.A. (1997), "The Qualitymongers", in Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol.31, no.2, pp. 295-308.
Judge, H., Lemosse, M., Paine, L & Sedlak, M. (1994), The University and the Teachers: France, the United States, England. Oxford: Oxford Studies in Comaprative Education.
Kimball, S.T. (1974), Culture and the Educative Process. New York & London: Teachers College Press.
Kurfiss, J.G. (1988), Critical Thinking: theory, research, problem, and possibilities. Association for the study of Higher Eduation.
Lipman, M. (1989), Critical Thinking: critical issues. New Jersey: Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children.
McPeck, J.E. (1981), Critical Thinking and Education. Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Paul, R. (1995), Critical Thinking: how to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Schrag, F. (1988), Thinking in School and Society. New York & London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Shor, I. (1980), Critical Thinking and Everyday Life. Canada: Black Rose Books.
Siegel, H. (1988), Educating Reason: rationality, critical thinking and education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.