Developing critical thinking skills, with Tine Reimers

Bonni [00:00:00] We often lament about our students lack of critical thinking skills. If we take the time to dig into what we mean we often come up with vastly differing perspectives on even what critical thinking skills are. On today’s episode, Tine Reimers helps us define the term and truly start developing our students critical thinking skills.

Production Credit [00:00:24] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:34] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni [00:01:00] I’m pleased today to welcome Tine Reimers and she’s the curriculum teaching and learning specialist in the center for innovation and excellence in learning at Vancouver Island University. Welcome Tina.

Tine [00:01:14] Oh well thank you for having me.

Bonni [00:01:16] I was pleased to be introduced to you by a past guest and I’m excited about today’s topic because it’s so important to our work such an important skill.

Bonni [00:01:25] And I’m also happy to be talking to someone who works in a center that’s focused on teaching and learning. I’d love to hear a bit about how did you first get involved and interested in that part of higher ed and also maybe specifically about critical thinking.

Tine [00:01:41] In graduate school. Actually when I was at UNC CHAPEL HILL, we had excellent training as teachers. I was teaching in the language department there in French and then I also got noticed that the way they had a teaching and learning center and got connected with them and started working there as a graduate student working on teaching and learning with other graduate students.

Tine [00:02:01] So very early on I noticed this as a path that I was really interested in toward bettering student learning and that eventually through various talks and skits through life became my profession to work in faculty development and so I got interested because my very early teaching experiences were informed by actually really good teaching practices and very careful training of me as a teacher.

Tine [00:02:24] I know that that’s fairly rare actually for university faculty to get such good training. And so I saw that as fascinating when I got sort of more interested in critical thinking was when I also started teaching great books courses and history of ideas and noticed how difficult it was for students to to take a survey course and get anything out of it and or read a text and get anything more than the words on the page.

Tine [00:02:51] And I started thinking about well how how does one get students to actually do the thinking that I’m expecting in my disciplines students to do when they’re analyzing a text. And that got me started down this whole idea of what this critical thinking mean what does it mean in a discipline. What does it mean to me what does it mean to students. And so that’s where it all started.

Bonni [00:03:12] One of the things we talked about over e-mail and over the phone is just if you get a group of faculty together you can pretty quickly get them to agree that our students aren’t thinking critically enough and how important that is and what a travesty it is cetera et cetera.

Bonni [00:03:27] And then if you ask the question well what do we mean when we say critical thinking that’s where things start to have a lot less agreement. Right.

Tine [00:03:37] Yeah both agreement and disagreement interestingly enough. But when when we have a discussion about what is critical thinking then we end up and put that sort of on posters on the sides of the wall just for everybody to look at.

Tine [00:03:50] It is such a complex set of ideas that people bring to the table about what critical thinking means. And part of the reason it’s complex is that thinking is different in different disciplines. There is a style and format of thinking in the sciences and a way of approaching a problem that is somewhat different from the arts and humanities that is somewhat different from if you’re teaching the trades.

Tine [00:04:15] Different disciplines take different avenues toward critical thinking and have slightly different definitions of it. And then we all bring our own personal definitions to the table on what critical thinking is as well.

Tine [00:04:27] So it becomes this big mass of really interesting stuff that is very hard to define in a sentence. Now what’s difficult about that is when faculty start operationalizing this sort of cloud of ideas in the classroom the difficult he is how to do that.

Tine [00:04:48] What is the concrete way that I am going to get my students to think critically in the specific way that I am thinking about critical thinking and if everybody even were to operationalize that.

Tine [00:05:01] The students have five classes a semester and they’re walking from one definition to the next definition in the space of a few minutes and have to perform these different styles of critical thinking that we wish them to have.

Tine [00:05:14] So between our not having formulated it very clearly for ourselves not having told our students what it is we mean by it but trying to operationalize it in our classes. Our students are faced with a bewildering array of things that happened to them in their classes. And then we say oh but they can’t think critically what’s wrong with them.

Tine [00:05:37] And that is something that I work on with our faculty faculty when I do workshops to start thinking about what does it you mean about critical thinking what does it mean in your discipline about critical thinking and what does that mean. Students have to do in the classroom and what you need to tell students about that in the classroom that they understood where you’re going.

Bonni [00:06:00] One of the lenses that I know you use is a taxonomy of sorts although you definitely want to have right up front that this is in big bold letters. This is going to be some of the critical thinking theories and as you’ve already started to allude to there’s much more than the ones we’re going to tackle today and there’s also much more than the handout that you’ve provided that has some of these laid out.

Bonni [00:06:24] So I’m just going to mention real quick anyone that’s listening you’ll be able to download the handout that Tine has provided. It’s going to be a teachinginhighered.com/37. This is the thirty seventh episode and she’s got this for us.

Bonni [00:06:40] And then also links to anything else that we talk about we’ll be at that location too so if you’re more of a visual person what we’re looking at now is a chart that has the taxonomy of four different models across the top that will be walking through.

Bonni [00:06:54] And then we look at some of the big thinkers and some of the big concepts and each one of these so you’ll have that to be able to download as a future reference. Are we ready to start diving into some of these different models.

Tine [00:07:07] Yes. I’m so glad that you did that caviot there are limitations of any taxonomy because it taxonomy is designed to simplify complexity so you can digest things better and so some of the folks that I’m mentioning today would protest that they fit into several categories. And but I have sort of tried to make it digestible and that is a nice tool for me to think about what is the array of possibilities in critical thinking theory for me to use.

Bonni [00:07:38] Well it’s a wonderful tool. I absolutely loved having it and it’s going to be a fun one to have. It’s a resource. Let’s start with the first one of developmental what gets emphasized in the developmental view.

Tine [00:07:51] Well the folks that sort of think about the critical thinking as a developmental process are people who say there are stages or phases that people go through as they mature intellectually and they go from sort of a more simplistic idea of there’s truth and there’s not truth.

Tine [00:08:10] And my job is to go get the truth and everything is kind of black and white and to all the way up to a very sophisticated idea of reality as a contextual structure that includes human relations that includes differing perceptions and power and ideas.

Tine [00:08:29] And that one has to sort of figure out what is the evidence for an idea what is the context of an idea how does a concept connect to other concepts so. So everything in between. OK.

Tine [00:08:41] And so the idea here is when I call them developmental the idea here is that people think of these as phases that you go through as you mature intellectually and sort of have some of the top people who work in this area or have worked in this area are William Perry who talked about dualism and multiply them and commitment and relativism [00:09:03]blanky [0.0s] at all sort of updated that work by adding [00:09:06]Rylands [0.0s] Ways of Knowing adding the perspective of women.

Tine [00:09:11] William Perry worked in Harvard at a time where there were really only men there and so [00:09:15]blanky [0.0s] had all really updated that. We also have a more recent study in [00:09:19]King in Kitchener [0.5s] out of the University of Michigan that did a very similar kind of process of following students along and finding out how they mature intellectually.

Tine [00:09:30] And Susan Wolcott does a really interesting way of dividing up with the different phases look like the main idea is we develop intellectually over time as we get more sophisticated about our area of knowledge.

Bonni [00:09:44] I was listening to this past week that Inside Higher Ed podcast and they look at policy and higher ed and they were talking about actually it may not have been this last week so sorry I’m a little off on my timing but they were talking about the competency based learning models.

Bonni [00:09:59] And that’s one of the arguments they were having a debate on there. One of the arguments about well with competency based learning might shrink the time that it took someone to get a degree.

Bonni [00:10:12] And people that assert more of a developmental model I think might argue but time is necessary in order to go through some of these phases and if we if we shrink it too much we’re missing out on opportunities to raise critical thinking.

Tine [00:10:28] Indeed critical thinking is not something you can apply like peanut butter on bread. Is not this is not something that you just do to students and after a semester they’re done and there are critical thinkers. This is a complicated way of thinking about the world that takes time to develop an experience to develop.

Tine [00:10:47] And so I agree with you that people who talk about the developmental process are going to say this is a lifetime that we learn this in. This is not a semester we learn this and this is something that takes lots of time and practice to do right.

Bonni [00:11:02] The next one are the learning styles bio neurological models of thought. Tell us about this.

Tine [00:11:11] This group included David Kolb James Zull and Jerome Bruner in this group a sort of strange collection of people for people.

Tine [00:11:18] For most people who study education and so forth. It mixes a strange group of people anyway. The reason I put them sort of in a group is that these are folks who decided to think about well how does the brain work and how not just the brain itself.

Tine [00:11:36] But how does learning go through a phase from experience through reflection on experience to new actions that are derived from that experience and David Kolb sort of made that nice circle. James Zull noticed that that is actually how the brain also functions that concrete experience leads to action to reflection on action to new actions and so forth.

Tine [00:12:04] Some people have resisted this idea of zone said he simplified things but actually he’s very useful in thinking about this circle of concrete experience leading to action leading to reflection that David Kolb was working on as well. And Jerome Bruner takes a slightly different trail there but he’s talking about modes of thought that are sort of biologically.

Tine [00:12:29] In early Jerome Brumer talks about biologically controlled modes of thought that that are about making stories and having the concrete experience create a story in your mind that you can then reflect upon and act upon.

Tine [00:12:49] And so there’s a certain circular place here where people are talking about learning styles or talking about bio neurological connections to how human beings learn in the first place. And when I say learning styles a lot of people are saying oh she’s talking about learning cells that’s all been thrown out.

Tine [00:13:06] Yes of course like learning cells are not a category a way of categorizing people but there are learning preferences and what these people talk about is more how do humans learn what is actually built into us in how we perceive the world and bring it into our experience and act on it.

Bonni [00:13:27] I’m so glad you brought up the concerns that have been risen around learning styles. I mean I can remember way back when I first started in corporate training that was what we would learn whether it was you learn some people are visual learners some people are kinesthetic learners.

Bonni [00:13:42] Some people are audio learners and so there was that framework and there’s actually an article I’ll post in the show notes from I believe it was wired magazine but if it’s not I’ll find the right one where I saw it but it’s becoming more mainstream now. The fact that there just isn’t peer reviewed research to back up these these ways.

Tine [00:14:05] The thing is that it had it had enormous persuasive power because it seemed intuitively obvious that there are preferences for learning and that people don’t all learn the same way and so people jumped on this idea that there are these kinds of learners.

Tine [00:14:21] There’s still some value there internal thinking about people do have preferences for learning but there is nobody who only learns through their eyes that doesn’t exist. There’s nobody who only learned through their ears that that’s where I think people started saying well wait a minute this is a little nutty.

Tine [00:14:38] We all learned through all of our senses we learn orally we learn through our ears we learn through our eyes. We learned through writing we learned through a lot of different ways. We just have preferences for one or the other and we need to stretch ourselves beyond our preferences so that we can learn most effectively.

Tine [00:14:54] And when you think about learning styles that way they make a little bit more sense than when you’re trying to make these categories of people which don’t exist.

Bonni [00:15:01] This email list that I belong to you probably do, too, the POD listserv I think that’s where I was saying just the ones that were it exploded in the last few did. Yes all these people jump on. I was actually quite informative I tucked that e-mail away for all the string of it.

Bonni [00:15:19] So the next one is categories of cognitive skills what gets emphasized in this view.

Tine [00:15:26] Well this is where most faculties start actually when they start thinking about critical thinking they start thinking about what are the different levels of thinking that I am looking for.

Tine [00:15:35] I want them to go beyond just knowing something and regurgitating it for me I want them to be able to analyze it I want them to be able to pull different concepts together and make some sense more or more complex sense of things.

Tine [00:15:49] And so Benjamin Bloom is definitely in this category and he is somebody I think most faculty are now aware of. Even 10 years ago that was quite different.

Tine [00:16:01] I find that fascinating in the last 10 years Benjamin Bloom has really become something that is run of the mill everybody knows about him because his classification his categories of cognitive skills are very useful to think about.

Tine [00:16:13] How do I move my students from regurgitation of information and facts to a more complex idea of synthesizing concepts and figuring out how they fit together and evaluating arguments and coming up with evidence for arguments.

Tine [00:16:27] So Diane Halpern has always has also worked in this area and she just cuts it a little bit differently and make and has clarified a few of the differences between the different levels and has worked in this in his book on significant learning which what I really like about the aspect on this is that he has added sort of the integration and human dimension and carrying parts to it.

Tine [00:16:51] A lot of times the categories of cognitive skill club or group or whatever are thinking about it purely intellectually you know how can I get my students to go from this low low level of thinking to this high level of thinking and Dee Fink added in the affective piece the human connection piece that is very much part of the thinking and learning and and being in the world.

Tine [00:17:18] And so again a lot of these people would say But wait a minute we didn’t just do categories. We also talked developmentally and that’s again my taxonomy things them down to something much more simple than they really are but they really are useful in terms of the way they categorize cognitive skills and gives us give us targets for how we might enact that in the classroom.

Bonni [00:17:41] The last category is processes self in culture and society. Who are some of the big thinkers here and what gets emphasized.

Tine [00:17:50] You know I would I would definitely mention Richard Pollan and Linda Elder here. I also want to mention Donald Shern and Steven Brookfield to the idea here. And one of the things in my in my taxonomy when everybody gets to see it is that Dewey – good ole’ Dewey runs through all of this.

Tine [00:18:09] And I presume sort of in the developmental and on the processes of cells in culture and society side. The idea here is that as I am learning as I am figuring out how to get more complex in my thinking it is that everything has a context and everything that I believe has a must have a reason for believing but also has a cultural context has a societal context. I come from somewhere as do the people I’m talking to.

Tine [00:18:38] And so trying to figure out where do I fit in terms of how I will act in the world and how I will be in society and how who I am in myself in relation to society is part of becoming a whole human being who can think critically about their place in the world and about how to make the world better.

Tine [00:19:00] And it has emotional sides that has rational sides. It has definite reflective sides that we have to sit down and think how am I in the world why am I thinking the way I’m thinking and if I do something what are the results of that on other people and why does that matter.

Tine [00:19:18] And so the press perceives self and culture and society group. There are people who say the high end of thinking is an integrated human being someone who can be in the world in productive ways by reflecting on their actions and thinking about them.

Tine [00:19:36] And so you see some people think about critical thinking theories as if they were all discrete and different from one another and what I tried to do with this taxonomy is say I can draw from all of these very useful things for thinking about what my definition of critical thinking is and how I might start doing it.

Bonni [00:19:57] Do you have a definition that is just ready to go for your self.

Bonni [00:20:01] I know that you said-

Tine [00:20:02] Arg I’m sorry you asked me that question because I don’t have a definition that I can put in a sentence. I do have strategies for implementing things that will get you to a variety of these places. My definition actually includes parts of all of these.

Tine [00:20:18] I think the categories of cognitive skills give you targets to use in the classroom. The developmental model allows you to recognize students in their development as they go from first time when they’re freshmen and they want the facts from you.

Tine [00:20:35] They want you the teacher to tell them the truth and they want the right answer on the test and that’s all they want. I don’t have to be angry about that anymore because they’re being stupid. I can now say Ah I get it.

Tine [00:20:47] You are in a certain phase of intellectual development. Let me see how I can help you out of that. So and understanding how we are all human and how our brains function to collect information in perfect sections to make them into action to reflect upon them.

Tine [00:21:07] Understanding how the bio neurological piece fits into that helps me work on categories of cognitive skills on helping students through their developmental phases. And all of that aims at this idea of we want to make citizens of the world when we treat our students in our classes a certain way.

Tine [00:21:28] We should always be thinking what are they going to be carrying out of this place ten years from now that they can apply in the world that they can carry with them that will make them better citizens. And so to me has lots of words.

Tine [00:21:40] That’s my definition. Yes it is all of these things but they in the taxonomy give me tools to reach that last citizen.

Bonni [00:21:49] It reminds me so much of studying instructional design. And yeah it would be fun for me to actually put together a taxonomy and to challenge myself to do that. I’m sure others have done that too.

Bonni [00:21:59] But just the idea that you can draw from all these different experts and throw out decades really of the study of instructional design and then as you start to apply it.

Bonni [00:22:11] Yes it’s it’s both an art and a science at the same time and you’re able to both in the preplanning for classes and constructing that but then also in the moment as you described you’re with that student they’re struggling and instead of getting angry.

Bonni [00:22:24] I can draw from this and find the richness of an explanation for why they might be behaving like a confused fact finder as an example and that brings some clarity in that very moment in more spontaneous ways.

Bonni [00:22:38] So that’s really helpful as you describe it. It’s actually as it reminds me a lot of that. Well let’s talk then you said you have some suggestions then to people who say I know I want to increase critical thinking and they’re kind of more on the coming up with what their own definition is for themselves and also in their discipline. They want to draw from some of this how can we get started.

Tine [00:22:59] My first suggestion is invert the classroom and what I mean by that. So these days we’re hearing a lot about flipping the classroom. That is one way to go but most people don’t actually invert the classroom when they look at the classroom.

Tine [00:23:12] What I’m meaning here is invert the classroom room intellectually gives the students practice in situations of ambiguity and uncertainty. The thing is that experts in a discipline research are always researchers are always sorting through either too much or too little information to make their best guesses about how the world works in there or whatever the questions are that they work and then they’re disciplined and then they test those guesses.

Tine [00:23:42] And that is how knowledge is made. OK so when we think at a very high level in our disciplines what we are doing is sorting through all of this information and making decisions about what is extraneous information what is good information what is information we can use and discovering the gaps in the information where we just don’t know anything at all.

Tine [00:24:02] And that is the shape of thinking in a discipline the same shape of thinking has to happen in the classroom. So when I say invert the classroom I say give students something to work on during the classroom hour while you’ve got them face to face or online give them something to work on that they do not have adequate tools to answer.

Tine [00:24:23] They have to sort through too much information. They have to sort through not enough information and make assumptions and then test their assumptions. When we start with theory we are doing the students a grave disservice.

Tine [00:24:37] We are doing it out of the goodness of our hearts. We’re doing it because we want them to understand and we want them not to go down little rabbit holes that are taking them in the wrong direction. The problem is that’s not how disciplinary thinking works.

Tine [00:24:50] Rabbit holes are part of thinking oh that didn’t work. Got to try it again. Let’s see if this will work. That didn’t work. Let’s compare those two ways of doing things and see why. The first one didn’t work and the second one did work.

Tine [00:25:03] That’s disciplinary thinking and we don’t give our students any time to do practice at a lower level of that shape of thinking give them stuff they can’t do make the muddle it make them do this in class in groups together and accept any answer that they come up with and discuss all of those answers before you get to theory before you get to the quote unquote right answer that was a massive tirade.

Bonni [00:25:35] I loved it. Now I you know that I teach in business and so of course we can study business and we can assign probabilities. But one of the things is when you’re we were looking in class the other day at a startup business and so many of them end up failing and it was so delightful to me to have the students this is such a funny thing to say.

Bonni [00:25:55] They left very confused and a little frustrated and I was so excited. And a couple a couple of the students come up to me they said that was really hard and I’m confused and I said well let’s think back because we actually got to listen to a story of a guy who’s starting up a business he said did he sound confused.

Bonni [00:26:12] Oh yeah and I said What. Member when he talked to his wife and they’re concerned about their finances and how much they’re going to have to risk to do this and how much are they willing to risk. Does he seem like he has all the answers.

Bonni [00:26:22] That’s kind of what it’s like in the business world. Then there are the external environment can change something can happen that’s completely outside of your control and that’s what business is about is a lot of this ambiguity so I’m actually excited that you’re frustrated. Welcome to the world of business.

Tine [00:26:38] Exactly the confusion and frustration is part of the learning process.

Tine [00:26:42] And when we clean it up and give students this perfect picture of our disciplines there is no way for them into it. It just looks like a block of cement that is completely finished and they can’t get into it.

Tine [00:26:54] If we give them medals if we give them problems that we can’t solve and tell them you have to solve them though you have to try that is going to help and there are actually ways of doing this that are structured that help students through it because they are structured and and so students frustration is good.

Tine [00:27:14] There has comes a time where student frustration leads to giving up and you can’t go that far right. One of the models I think is to be found in Mickelson’s team based learning and I don’t mean the whole I will be talking about the whole team just learning a little bit. But he has a model for Team Task design that is really good for any discipline that you can do.

Tine [00:27:38] And the idea here is that you have students in teams and we can talk about team leader more if we want to. And you give each team a significant problem to work on and when I say significant problem nothing easy. Something hard something that is a place where students stumble in the conceptual framework that you’re trying to teach them.

Tine [00:28:00] Give them a significant problem to work on have them work on it as a group and have given the same problem to all the groups in the class as they are working on the problem. Give them a limited set of choices as right answers and so this sounds like a multiple choice test. It looks just like a multiple choice test but what it is is that you give them a number of limited options to pick from and you ask them which is the best answer to this problem.

Tine [00:28:31] And they have to figure through why all these four or five or things are or are not the best answer to the problem. They choose whichever one and then you ask them to report simultaneously either by voting on little cards or you know A B C D E but the simultaneous report in class is really important.

Tine [00:28:53] You’ve had now the groups work on the same problem. It’s a significant problem and they’ve had to choose a specific choice. They vote and now you have a picture. You can do this with clickers so you can do this with just with little cards in class.

Tine [00:29:06] You have a picture of the class and what the different student groups think about the problem you’re going to have five different answers in a room. Great. Now you just say Okay who said the people who said why did you say D.

Tine [00:29:21] Who said a people who said A why did you say. And you let them give all the reasons and you never tell them which ones correct you just let them give their reasons and lead a discussion that shows that some answers have better evidence for them than other answers so that the right answer arises out of the discussion and not out of the teacher’s mouth.

Bonni [00:29:44] It sounds like two that were able to show them that there isn’t right. Wrong. Much of our disciplines. There are there maybe better.

Tine [00:29:54] Exactly because a discipline that has completely finished answering all the questions is not a discipline that’s where astrology went. They answered all the questions and then they died.

Tine [00:30:05] Okay now we have astronomy that’s different. We don’t have any answers in astronomy. We have only questions in astronomy so we have a situation where disciplines are full of no answers. That’s the point of a discipline. Students don’t know that the way we teach it.

Bonni [00:30:23] For those of us who have been working on building critical thinking skills for awhile what are some next steps for people that that can take it to the next level.

Tine [00:30:32] The two things I would say is one of them is flipping the classroom making sure that any coverage of material happens outside of class and all of your class period is around problem solving and sticking to your guns.

Tine [00:30:48] I often hear from faculty Well yeah I can see the utility of that and they want to do that but my students are going to hate it. And then my student evaluations are gonna go down and what’s going to happen then and in the I. No no and no.

Tine [00:31:03] If you do this carefully with support for your students your students will resist by mid-term your students will be in disarray by the end when they’re doing their student evaluations. They will be ok with it. If you have explained it properly to them there’s a great kind of old article on that from the National Teaching and Learning Forum.

Tine [00:31:26] This was by Gary Smith and he wrote something called the First day questions for the learner centred classroom. And he was dealing with the problem of students saying I can’t do this and why aren’t you teaching me.

Tine [00:31:38] And he has a really neat way of getting students on board with the kind of footing the classroom and problem solving them talking about. The other thing that I would say is look at Michaelsen and thinks team based learning approach that once I started teaching with team based learning I cannot go back because the most exciting things happen intellectually in my class than have ever happened in all my 20 years of experience in the classroom. Look at that book. Get help doing it.

Tine [00:32:07] And the caveat is don’t do team-based learning piecemeal. The whole thing holds together and you have to kind of do it the whole format for it to work and make things happen. If you want to do just a piece of it take that what we call for s approach the one that I talked about the team test design with significant problems same problem specific choice and simultaneous report. That’s sort of TBL light.

Tine [00:32:36] If you were really going to do TBL don’t leave out any pieces because it only works if you do it all otherwise your teams turn back into groups and the role of decision making and responsibility to their peers is lost. So that’s my suggestion for advanced people. TBL and flipping the classroom.

Bonni [00:32:54] I’m so glad that you brought that up back in episode twenty five. Dr. Chrissy Spencer talked about that very thing she talked about that she sort of sharing her own process of what she’s learned and what works and what doesn’t work.

Bonni [00:33:07] Specifically the topic was making large classes interactive but much of her advice applies to any size of class in fact I would say all her advice applies but she shared that she attempted to implement pieces of team based learning. And it did not work.

Tine [00:33:23] No no if you do it in just little pieces it will not work and there are a lot of disappointed faculty members out there who now say that TBL doesn’t work and I fundamentally strongly agree it doesn’t work if you don’t do it right.

Tine [00:33:38] Absolutely. But man does it work. If you really take all the parts together in it is it takes work to redo a class as a team based learning class. But it is fighting when you see the students engage.

Bonni [00:33:53] Well this is the point in the show when we get to our recommendations and as I mentioned to you I’m going to pass mine over to you because this is so great you’ve got so many resources. And by the way speaking of which it’s teachinginhighered.com/37. What are your recommendations for us as we close out our time today.

Tine [00:34:11] I’ve been reading two books which really talk not directly about what to do in the classroom but they give us all the reasons we need for doing exactly what I’ve been talking about about critical thinking inverting the classroom and giving students experience problem solving.

Tine [00:34:27] The first one is On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. He talks about how the brain works and how we are human and why the brain is a learning machine and how the brain looks forward and anticipate what’s going to happen in the world experiences the world. It’s never what we anticipate reflects on that. And that is the learning.

Tine [00:34:49] The reflection on what my experience has brought me. And then you bring a new framework to your next experience. This is a very teeny nutshell of what he talks about. He has some chapters that really get very deep into like how the neurons work. That’s not the piece that’s interesting to me.

Tine [00:35:05] Actually it is interesting to me but interesting for the purposes of critical thinking is what he says about how the brain flash mind accumulates knowledge about the world and learns and related to this.

Tine [00:35:20] Also Reality is Broken by Jane McGonnigal is a wonderful wonderful book. What she is writing about is video games and she’s writing out about gaming and why gaming is addictive and she is writing about why gaming is addictive in positive ways.

Tine [00:35:35] Why is it that people will get into a video game and just get lost in it and keep working and working and working and overcoming challenges. Her understanding of games as reaching the human needs of competence and accomplishment of connectedness to one another and of autonomy in learning are exactly what we’re talking about when we’re saying critical thinking in the classroom.

Tine [00:36:02] And so if we can make our classrooms do what Jeff Harkin says the brain wants to do and do what Jane McGonigal says games do. We would have real learning classrooms.

Bonni [00:36:17] They both sound wonderful you’re going to add even more to my to be read list and I appreciate it. I always get it. I also appreciate so much the time your of all the guests I’ve had you put so much preparation time in in advance I know we spent some time on the phone and I treasure that opportunity to get to chat with you a bit and then also just the resources.

Bonni [00:36:38] But we’re going to have on the show notes as far as links and the document you created with the taxonomy I just really treasure that. And thank you for investing in the Teaching in Higher Ed community and being today’s guest.

Tine [00:36:50] Well this was a pleasure and I wish all the people listening. Good luck in their development of critical thinking activities in their classroom.

Bonni [00:36:58] Thanks once again to Tine Reimers for joining me to talk about all these important topics about developing critical thinking. If you’d like to comment on today’s episode please go to teachinginhighered.com/37.

Bonni [00:37:13] And if you’d like to give feedback on the podcast in general that’s teachinginhighered.com/feedback. I welcome you subscribing to our weekly update which includes an article on teaching for productivity and also the show notes from all of these episodes that’s a teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

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