Critical and creative thinking

Tutor’s name: Svitlana Kovalyk Email: lana.kovalyk@uas.edu.mx

Students name:

Module 1 Basic concepts of critical and creative thinking

This course outlines the necessary tools for you to become critical as well as creative thinkers.In this
unit, you will start gaining a practical and solid foundation in the basic principles that underlie critical
thinking and creativity, you will become equipped to think in a more systematic, logical, and
imaginative manner.

You are required to download and print all necessary material.

Enjoy the unit.

Unit 1
Content
What is thinking?
Thinking.
Elements of thought.
Intellectual standards.
The importance of questioning.
Types of questions.
 The scientific process of questioning/observation process.
For example, why, so what process.
Bloom’s taxonomy questions.
Social thinking.

Task 1. Create a mind map. Write THINKING in the middle.

Sorry, we couldn't load this chart.

Task 2. Write your definition.

Thinking is

Task 3. Complete the charts.

chart 1 your ideas chart 2 according to Dr.Paul

elements elements

of of

thought thought

We all have a system to break down how we understand things, how we make sense of the world.
The ways we think are called the Elements of Thought.

The Elements of Thought is a model of thinking developed by Dr. Richard Paul to help us
understand how we can divide up the different parts of thinking.

Understanding the Elements of Thought allows us to take apart, in a logical and dispassionate way,
our thinking and the thinking of others.

When we think about something, we do lots of things at once. We look at it from a Point of View,
who we are, what we value. Then we think with a Purpose: Why in the world am I thinking about
this? Next, we have the Question at Issue that we’re trying to answer.

When we’re thinking, we are checking out all the Information about what we’re thinking about. We
look at the Interpretations and Inferences that we come to about the thing itself. We are also
figuring out what Concepts we need to know to understand it.

We base our thinking on the Assumptions that we take to be true already. And finally, we think about
the Implications and Consequences of our reasoning.
Dr. Paul placed the eight Elements into a wheel for a reason. None of them is more important than
another. Each is used when we think.

Task 4. Read the text below and analyze the chart that follows

nfortunately, most of the time we do not think well. We tend to favor decisions and ideas that favor us,
put our own group over other groups. We are ego-centric and socio-centric. For this reason, we need
to force ourselves to look at things the way they truly are. So, to assess the quality of our thinking, we
use the Intellectual Standards.

To evaluate thinking we must understand and apply universal intellectual standards. Reasonable
people judge reasoning using these universal standards.

When students internalize these standards and routinely use them, their thinking becomes more
clear, accurate, precise, relevant, deep, broad, logic, significant and fair.

Note that we focus here (and in the competencies) on a selection of standards. There are more
Intellectual Standards, but if you use these nine to assess thinking, then you are on your way to
thinking like a pro. Among others are credibility, sufficiency, reliability, and practicality.

The elements or structures of thought enable us to "take our thinking apart" and analyze it. The
intellectual standards are used to assess and evaluate the elements. The intellectual traits are
dispositions of mind embodied by the fair-minded critical thinker. To cultivate the mind, we need
command of these essential dimensions, and we need to consistently apply them as we think
through the many problems and issues in our lives.
A) Write the definition.

A standard is

B) Read the definition of each standard and explain it with your own words.

Clarity forces the thinking to be explained well so that it is easy to understand. When thinking is easy

to follow, it has Clarity.

Accuracy makes sure that all information is correct and free from error. If the thinking is reliable,
then it has Accuracy.

Precision goes one step further than Accuracy. It demands that the words and data used are exact.
If no more details could be added, then it has Precision.

Relevance means that everything included is important, that each part makes a difference. If
something is focused on what needs to be said, there is Relevance.

Depth makes the argument thorough. It forces us to explore the complexities. If an argument
includes all the nuances necessary to make the point, it has Depth.

Breadth demands that additional viewpoints are taken into account. Are all perspectives considered?
When all sides of an argument are discussed, then we find Breadth.

Logical means that an argument is reasonable, the thinking is consistent, and the conclusions follow
from the evidence. When something makes sense step-by-step, then it is Logical.

Significance compels us to include the most important ideas. We don’t want to leave out crucial facts
that would help to make a point. When everything that is essential is included, then we find
Significance.

Fairness means that the argument is balanced and free from bias. It pushes us to be impartial and
even handed toward other positions. When an argument is objective, there is Fairness.

C) In this task, you will learn the importance of being able to take a stance on an
issue and defending that stance with logic, reasoning, knowledge, and common
sense. You should try to apply Universal Intellectual Standards.
So, READ a list of scenarios that are based primarily on ethics and morality and
CHOOSE the answer you consider correct one. EXPLAIN your choice in writing
and COMPARE your answers in teams, DEFEND your viewpoint.
1. Richard finds an expensive looking ring in the school hallway one day. It has no name on it, and it’s
not near anyone’s locker. Should he:

A) Give it to lost and found

B) Ask if it belongs to anyone there

C) Keep it and not say anything

Reason: ___________________________________

2. Judy’s friend is stressed about an upcoming test. Judy already took the test and got 100%, so she
knows all the answers already. Should she:

A) Just give the answers to her friend

B) Use her knowledge to coach her friend

C) Not get involved at all

Reason: ___________________________________

3. Coach Nelson has caught two of his star basketball players vandalizing school property. The rule
is that they must be suspended. If that happens their team loses the upcoming semi-finals. If the
coach keeps quiet they’ll surely win, but he could lose his job. Should the coach:

A) Suspend the two players and obey the rules;

B) Pretend he never saw them

Reason: __________________________________

4. Nick overhears two students bragging about having posted some inappropriate images of a female
student online for a joke. Should he:

A) Mind his own business

B) Report the incident to the school principal

C) Confront the boys and defend the student

Reason: ___________________________________

5. You witness a bank robbery and follow the perpetrator down an alleyway. He stops at an
orphanage and gives them all the money. Would you:

A) Report the man to police since he committed a crime

B) Leave him alone because you saw him do a good deed

Reason: _________________________________

Task 5. What is the order of the scientific process?

situation:

steps examples

1.

2.

3.

Task 6. THINK critically by questioning, USE 'for example', 'why' and 'so what',
etc. to help with your questioning. see the example, and create one of your own.

For example, say you were thinking about the problems caused by high student fees. Start with the
topic and ask yourself: ‘Can I think of any examples?’

Basic idea: High student fees.

For example: Course costs are as high as $8,000 a year.

Why: More students want to study, so there is less tax money per student for higher education.
So, what? Poorer students might be put off studying.

Task 7. Answer the question. What are the Bloom’s taxonomy levels?
Task 8 .Critical thinking exercise: a tour guide for an alien.
This task encourages you to look much deeper at who we are both as individuals and as a society.
It’s about looking at what we do or what we value with a fresh perspective.

Each activity encourages you to answer the questions as a way of exploring assumptions and some
common situations in life that we take for granted.

There are 2 scenarios provided. The blank space is so that you can write your own. You can test your
fellow classmates with your scenarios in stylized interview sessions where one of you is the alien and
the other is the travel guide.

Scenario 1

You are conducting a tour for aliens who are visiting earth and observing humans. You’re all in their
spaceship when you fly over a football stadium. One of the aliens is confused and turns to you for
help. Try answering these questions:

What is a game, and why do humans play them?

What are “teams” and why are they so important for humans to be part of?

Why is it these games seem to get more attention than other matters on your planet, like disease
and poverty?

Why do humans get so emotional and even violent when watching games?

What would happen if no human could ever play these games again?

Scenario 2
You are chatting with a group of aliens on a tour of a local library. While you all mingle, one of the
aliens picks up a volume about the history of global war and conflict. The alien turns to you and asks
you these questions:

What is war and why do humans wage it upon each other?

Humans seem to feel that warfare is often the only way to resolve conflict.

Why is this so?

How do you decide who wins and, who loses?

How do you know this is accurate?

How does warfare affect those who can’t or won’t participate?

What legacy do you feel these wars will provide for your future generations?

Task 9. QUESTION yourself. K-W-L Chart assesses what you know about a
particular topic before and after you have engaged with it. FILL the columns with
what you Know about the topic, what you Want to know, and what you’ve
Learned.

Task 10 Social thinking. Take notes

 Unit 2
Content
Basic thinking skills.
Multiple intelligences.
Learning styles.
Learning domains
Cognitive domain questions
The thought order method

Task 1. Practice your brain. Answer each question for each list.
To make it more challenging, try answering as quickly as you can against another person.

Name 3 people that:

1. Talk more than you
2. Talk less than you
3. Work hard
4. You think are smart
5. Wear costumes
6. Are teachers
7. Travel a lot
8. Are always nice to you

Name 3 things that:

1. Are square
2. Are orange
3. Smell good
4. Live in the water
5. Taste terrible
6. You enjoy doing
7. You don’t enjoy doing
8. People read

Task 2. READ the article about six types of critical thinking basic skills and
ANALYZE the information by pinpointing the most important features of each
skill.
A) READ the explanation about each type of critical thinking and COME up with
your own examples.
A) Create a short presentation for your classmates.
Basic skills that helps developing Critical thinking

The experts, when faced with the same problem you are working on, refer to their lists as including
cognitive skills and dispositions.

Critical thinking is a disposition.

As to the cognitive skills here is what the experts include as being at the very core of critical
thinking:

1. interpretation,
2. analysis,
3. evaluation,
4. inference,
5. explanation,
6. and self-regulation.

INTERPRETATION is “to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of
experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules, procedures, or criteria.”
Interpretation includes the sub-skills of categorization, decoding significance, and clarifying meaning.

1. recognizing a problem and describing it without bias

2. reading a person’s intentions in the expression on her face
3. distinguishing a main idea from subordinate ideas in a text
4. constructing a tentative categorization
5. way of organizing something you are studying
6. paraphrasing someone’s ideas in your own words
7. clarifying what a sign, chart or graph means
8. identifying an author’s purpose, theme, or point of view
9. clarifying what “offensive violence” mean

ANALYSIS is “to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements,
questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief,
judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions.”

Analysis includes examining ideas, detecting arguments, and analyzing arguments as sub-skills of
analysis.

1. identifying the similarities and differences between two approaches to the solution of a given
problem;
2. picking out the main claim made in a newspaper editorial and tracing back the various reasons
the editor offers in support of that claim;
3. identifying unstated assumptions;
4. constructing a way to represent a main conclusion and the various reasons given to support or
criticize it;
5. sketching the relationship of sentences or paragraphs to each other and to the purpose of the
passage;
6. graphically organizing this essay, in your own way, knowing that its purpose is to give a
preliminary idea about what critical thinking means.

INFERENCE means “to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to
form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to reduce the consequences
flowing from data,

statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or

other forms of representation.”

As sub-skills of inference the experts list querying evidence, conjecturing alternatives, and drawing
conclusions.

1. seeing the implications of the position someone is advocating;

2. drawing out or constructing meaning from the elements in a reading;
3. predicting what will happen next based what is known about the forces at work in a given
situation;
4. formulating a synthesis of related ideas into a coherent perspective;
5. after judging that it would be useful to you to resolve a given uncertainty, developing a workable
plan to gather that information;
6. when faced with a problem, developing a set of options for addressing it;
7. conducting a controlled experiment scientifically and applying the proper statistical methods to
attempt to confirm or disconfirm an empirical hypothesis.

EVALUATION is “to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts
or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to
assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements,
descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.”

1. judging an author’s or speaker’s credibility, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of

alternative interpretations, determining the credibility of a source of information, judging if two
statements contradict each other, or judging if the evidence at hand supports the conclusion
being drawn
2. recognizing the factors which make a person a credible witness regarding a given event or a
credible authority with regard to a given topic
3. judging if an argument’s conclusion follows either with certainty or with a high level of confidence
from its premises
4. judging the logical strength of arguments based on hypothetical situations
5. judging if a given argument is relevant or applicable or has implications for the situation at hand

EXPLANATION is being able to present in a cogent and coherent way the results of one’s reasoning.
This means to be able to give someone a full look at the big picture: both “to state and to justify that
reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual
considerations upon which one’s results were based; and to present one’s reasoning in the form of
cogent arguments.”

The sub-skills under explanation are describing methods and results, justifying procedures, proposing
and defending with good reasons one’s causal and conceptual explanations of events or points of
view, and presenting full and well reasoned, arguments in the context of seeking the best
understandings possible.

1. to construct a chart which organizes one’s findings

2. to write down for future reference your current thinking on some important and complex matter
3. to cite the standards and contextual factors used to judge the quality of an interpretation of a
text
4. to state research results and describe the methods and criteria used to achieve those results
5. to appeal to established criteria as a way of showing the reasonableness of a given judgment
6. to design a graphic display which accurately represents the subordinate and superordinate
relationship among concepts or ideas
7. to cite the evidence that led you to accept or reject an author’s position on an issue
8. to list the factors that were considered in assigning a final course grade.

SELF-REGULATION is remarkable skill because it allows strong critical thinkers to improve their own
thinking. In a sense this is critical thinking applied to itself. Because of that some people want to call
this “metacognition,” meaning it raises thinking to another level. But “another level” really does not
fully capture it, because at that next level up what self-regulation does is look back at all the
dimensions of critical thinking and double check itself.

Self-regulation is like a recursive function in mathematical terms, which means it can apply to
everything, including itself.

You can monitor and correct an interpretation you offered.

You can examine and correct an inference you have drawn.

You can review and reformulate one of your own explanations.

You can even examine and correct your ability to examine and correct yourself!

It is as simple as stepping back and saying to yourself, “How am I doing? Have I missed anything
important? Let me double check before I go further.”

SELF-REGULATION means “self-consciously to monitor one’s cognitive activities, the elements used
in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis, and evaluation to
one’s own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting
either one’s reasoning or one’s results.”

The two sub-skills here are self-examination and self-correction.

1. to examine your views on a controversial issue with sensitivity to the possible influences of your
personal biases or self-interest;
2. to check yourself when listening to a speaker in order to be sure you are understanding what the
person is really saying without introducing your own ideas;
3. to monitor how well you seem to be understanding or comprehending what you are reading or
experiencing;
4. to remind yourself to separate your personal opinions and assumptions from those of the author
of a passage or text;
5. to double check yourself by recalculating the figures;
6. to vary your reading speed and method mindful of the type of material and your purpose for
reading;
7. to reconsider your interpretation or judgment in view of further analysis of the facts of the case;
8. to revise your answers in view of the errors you discovered in your work;
9. to change your conclusion in view of the realization that you had misjudged the importance of
certain factors when coming to your earlier decision.

Therefore, Critical thinking requires a conscious level of processing, analysis, creation and
evaluation of possible outcomes, and reflection

Task 3. list multiple intelligences

1

9. existentialist intelligence - the intelligence of big picture thinking. capacity or ability of an

individual to understand and contemplate philosophical topics relating to mankind's existence.

Task 4.Learning styles. Complete the chart.

Task 5. Learning domains. Draw triangles and complete them.

__________________ ___________________ _____________________

Task 6. Complete the chart.

knowledge dimensions examples

Task 7. Complete the chart.

cognitive dimension action verbs questions

Task 8. Create questions.

Little Red Riding Hood

dimensión questions
Task 9. Write the definition.

Thought Order method is

The key of this method is

Task 10. Put seven key questions that correspond to seven key concepts of the
research methodology in the correct order.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Task 11. Write your own examples

key concepts key questions

Task 12. Select one text to read related to English language learning, use the
following format for applying the order of thought method.

TOPIC What is it about?

 Final task
A) SELECT the broad theme and the area of concern and then NARROW a topic down.

Broad theme 1: EFL Learner and learning

Multiple Intelligence
Motivation, Interest, Aptitude, Attitude
Learning Styles, Learning strategies
Educational, adjustment problems of different levels of education

Broad theme 2: Teacher and classroom

Teaching strategies
Effective teaching
Classroom management

Narrowed topic: ________________________________________

B) DEFINE a common problem in the EFL classroom related to that topic.