Students will respect and use critical and creative thinking, skeptical inquiry, and, when possible, the scientific approach to solve problems related to behavior and mental processes.
For example, a student meeting this goal should be able to:
● Use critical thinking effectively.
● Engage in creative thinking.
● Use reasoning to recognize, develop, defend, and criticize arguments and other persuasive appeals.
● Approach problems effectively.
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Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree 1 I think that I achieved this goal. 1—2—3—4—5 2 JMU’s psychology program provided 1—2—3—4—5 opportunities to achieve this goal.
3 In the space below, provide your rationale for your two ratings above. For example, list the particular experiences that helped you achieve this goal, and offer any recom- mendations to the department to improve our ability to help students meet this goal.
Author Notes
We thank Kara Makara and Shannon Willison for their help with data analyses. We also thank Donna Sundre, Sue Lottridge, and Amy Thelk from the JMU Center for Assessment and Research for their help with assessment data related to general education. We are also grateful for Jane Halonen’s support on this project.
Address correspondence to Kevin J. Apple, Department of Psychology, MSC 7404, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807; e-mail: [email protected].
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Chapter 8
A Process Approach to Thinking Critically About Complex Concepts
Stacie M. Spencer and Marin Gillis
As instructors, we spend considerable time defining concepts and discussing how everyday words are used to represent complex concepts within our discipline. Students are good at memorizing definitions for exams, and many can generate examples of concepts from their own experiences; however, students struggle when asked to apply new concepts, and through application exercises, it becomes clear that the understanding of concepts is super- ficial. One of the challenges of teaching psychological concepts is that many of the con- cepts we use in psychology are used differently in everyday language. Another challenge is that in the psychology literature a concept may have multiple definitions or, in many cases, may be used without being defined. In order for students to learn a new concept in psychology, it is essential that they understand how that concept is used by the instructor and incorporate that definition into their concept schemas. The purpose of this chapter is to describe a methodology that we have found to be successful in overcoming these chal- lenges and in developing critical thinking skills. Our methodology employs concept mea- surement as the vehicle through which students develop deeper comprehension of a concept as well as develop the cognitive skills of a critical thinker.
Like many of the concepts we teach in psychology, critical thinking can be understood in a variety of ways (Appleby, 2006; Halonen, 1995). For the purposes of this discussion, Appleby’s definition of critical thinking, which focuses on the cognitive skills used to make decisions, will be employed (Appleby, 2006). Appleby’s six skills of a critical thinker are based on the Cognitive Domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (as cited in Appleby, 2006) and comprise retention (the ability to remember), comprehension (the ability to understand meaning), application (the ability to solve problems with the information learned), analysis (the ability to examine and understand the organization of the component parts of a whole), synthesis (the ability to create new wholes using separate component parts), and evaluation (the ability to critique information in order to assess validity), which reflect a progression of skills that move from a superficial to a deep level of thinking and knowledge.
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Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices Edited by D. S. Dunn, J. S. Halonen, and R. A. Smith
© 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-17402-2
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A Process Approach to Teaching Critical Thinking Skills
Table 8.1 summarizes a process approach to teaching concepts that can be used specifically to increase depth of understanding but can also be used to teach transferable critical thinking skills. In this approach, students systematically progress through Appleby’s six skills by engag- ing in the process of developing an instrument to measure a specific concept. The use of instrument development has been used successfully in test and measurement courses (Hynan
& Foster, 1997), and the evaluation of existing measures has been used successfully in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses to teach the importance of precise construct
Table 8.1. Process Steps for Teaching Concept Definitions through Instrument Development Step 1. Concept Definitions
Discussion Topic: Concept definitions
Individual Assessment: Exam items that require students to define and compare/contrast multiple definitions of the same concept.
Critical Thinking Skills: Retention and Comprehension Step 2. Instrument Components
Discussion Topic: Components of a measurement instrument Group Activity: Creation of a new instrument to measure the concept
Individual Assignment: Reaction paper that identifies the definition of the concept that was used to design the instrument and describes the decisions that were made to design the instrument.
Critical Thinking Skills: Application Step 3. Reliability and Validity Concepts Discussion Topic: Reliability and validity
Group Activity: Peer evaluation and feedback of group instruments Critical Thinking Skills: Analysis and Synthesis
Step 4. Evaluation of Existing Measurement Instruments
Discussion Topic: Differences between professional and lay instruments
Group Activity: Comparison of new instrument to established professional measures
Individual Assignment: Identification of a lay instrument online or in a magazine; reaction paper that evaluates the strengths/weaknesses of a specific professional and specific lay instrument and identifies how these instruments differ from one another and from the new instrument.
Critical Thinking Skill: Evaluation Step 5. Final Project
Group Activity: Discussion of evaluation assignments; Revise original group instrument Individual Assignment: Reaction paper that provides the concept definition that the new instrument best reflects, provides a rationale for each component of the instrument, describes changes made in the revision process, and indicates the sources for those changes (peer feedback, sample lay instrument, sample professional instrument).
Critical Thinking Skills: Retention, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation
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conceptualization, the use of multiple methods of construct measurement, and the impor- t ance of matching measurement to concept definitions (Brockway & Bryant, 1998).
The approach presented here is exemplified using the concept of stress (as taught in a Stress and Illness course), although this approach could be used for any concept in any course. Stress is an excellent example of a concept in psychology that is used differently in everyday language, has multiple definitions within the psychology literature, and is often used in the literature without definition. For example, stress is used frequently in everyday conversation as an indication of how we feel (“I’m so stressed out”), of the demands in our lives (“This job is so stressful”), or as an explanation for someone else’s behavior (“She snapped at you because she is under a lot of stress”). Within the literature, two common ways to define stress are as (a) the events in our lives that cause psychological or physical threat (stressors), or as (b) a change in physiological activity in response to a stressor (strain; Sarafino, 2002, p. 71). The differences in these definitions are significant, espe- cially if stress is being discussed as a predictor of illness.