Developing Critical Thinking 9
Developing Critical Thinking:
Information Literacy Models, Non-Fiction Writing and Improved Assessment
Laura C. Scott
EDUW 691
St. Mary’s University
November 1, 2003
Developing Critical Thinking:
Information Literacy Models, Non-Fiction Writing and Improved Assessment
In developing a focus for research that would both enhance my teaching practice and be relevant and useful to my district, I chose to explore ways our district could improve critical thinking skills of our students. At a recent in service, the district staff identified this as an area of concern. Individual staff members observed that students seemed unable to generalize concepts from one curricular area and apply them to another. Additionally, it was noted that, while overall the districts’ performance on standardized tests was exceptional at nearly all grade levels, questions on which students did perform poorly seemed, almost universally, to entail analysis, synthesis, or evaluation of information. Our principal noted that students were mastering content knowledge, but were then unable to utilize higher-order thinking to solve new problems related to that knowledge (S. Anderson, personal communication, September 2003). The staff also expressed concern that students graduated from Iola were still unable to apply knowledge, concepts, and skills learned at school to real-world situations. Furthermore, my own teaching practice convinces me that the skills needed to navigate the “real world” of the 21st century are more complex than ever. Consequently, it became clear that my research needed to focus on investigating best practices for improving critical thinking skills across the curriculum, and to work toward implementing this goal in our district.
What I found, as my query began to unfold, surprised me. Repeatedly, critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills—learners engaged in higher-order thinking processes—were linked to the use of information technology literacy. The meaning of “Info. Tech. Lit.” has evolved quite a bit in the last decade, with the growth of the Internet and the sheer scope of information now available. Rather than pertaining solely to the acquisition of computer hardware and software competencies, isolated in and of themselves, it now means the ability to use computer-based technologies as tools for creative expression, knowledge reformulation, and information synthesis. According to the National Research Council, (as cited by Arp and Woodward, 2002) being fluent with information technology, or being “FIT,” means that students can use information technology skills “in complex, sustained situations [which] encapsulate high-level thinking” (p. 125). In the same vein, the American Association of School Librarians and Association for Educational Communications and Technology have promulgated information technology standards describing FIT students as those who can
access information efficiently and effectively, evaluate information critically and competently, and use information accurately and creatively (p. 126).
It is hard to overemphasize the impact that the digital age has had on the amount of information now available to any student with Internet access. With huge capital expenditures made by school districts nationwide to acquire computer-based technology tools, it must be asked, how can these resources be used best? Is it possible to utilize this very technology to help guide students as to what to do with the vast store of information at their fingertips? There is a shift in the way educators are viewing the role of computer-based information technology skills. Rather than a vehicle for mere fact accumulation, these skills can be well integrated as means to execute curricular projects that require critical thinking and problem solving. Moreover, these skills can be used to reformulate curricula so that many more tasks can require these higher-order thinking skills. When we ask ourselves what it should mean to be a literate high school graduate in the Information Age, the answer must include the ability to find, sort, discriminate, evaluate, process, synthesize and reflect on the incredible amount of information that exists. In short, it means the ability to think critically.
What, then, is the best way to use technology as a tool to aid student-citizens in the age of “info-glut”? There are several information-processing models, with similar attributes, which researchers seem to agree can create the necessary framework upon which to build curricular goals. There is general agreement that technology is best used to organize, communicate, research and problem-solve, when its skills are taught in concert with content area curricula and assignments, using an information processing model. One such model, the Big6 Model, entails a six-step approach to teaching students “how and when and why to apply technology skills to solve problems…flexibly, creatively and purposefully” (Eisenberg & Johnson, 2003, ¶7). The Big6 Model uses the following steps to complete research assignments:
1) Task definition: what information is needed? –what is the essential question
2) Information seeking strategies: where and how is the information best obtained
3) Locating and accessing the information
4) Using the information: of what is available, what is the best – is there more
5) Synthesizing the information: organizing and communicating the research results
6) Evaluating the information: reflecting on the process (¶17).
When such a model is employed to achieve content-area objectives, it addresses curricular, literacy, and critical-thinking goals. Kuhlthau (2003, ¶17) proposes a similar structure, enumerated slightly differently. Students are guided through the following stages:
1) Initiation: contemplating task and identify possible questions or topics- uncertainty
2) Selection: choosing an engaging or essential question to explore- optimism
3) Exploration: encountering inconsistent information- confusion
4) Formulation: creating a focused perspective- clarity
5) Collection: compiling information based on that focus- confidence
6) Presentation: presenting the findings to the community- satisfaction/disappointment
7) Assessment: reflecting on the process, content and result of learning- ownership.
Another such possible model to use toward developing critical thinking skills within the existing curriculum is the Rankin-Hughes Framework of Thinking Skills (Rankin & Hughes, 1987). This model identifies six kinds of thinking skills and has been used as a basis for classifying test items on TerraNova tests. These skills include:
1) Gathering information by observation, recall or questioning
2) Organizing information by representing, comparing, classifying or ordering
3) Analyzing information by identifying attributes and components, determining accuracy and adequacy, recognizing relationships and patterns, and identifying central elements
4) Generating ideas by inferring, predicting or restructuring
5) Synthesizing elements by summarizing or integrating, and
6) Evaluating outcomes by establishing criteria and verifying accuracy.
The opportunity presented to teachers thanks to today’s plethora of resources calls for a shift in instructional approach. All content areas can now take advantage of research-based learning, with emphasis away from direct instruction, toward construction and discovery. There is much about the techniques of information literacy that are optimal for teaching the way students learn best. Cognitive research shows that learning is most effective when four characteristics are present: active task engagement, group interaction, frequent feedback, and real-world connection or application (Roschelle, Pea, Hoadley, Gordin & Means, 2000). Technology, when used effectively within content-area objectives, can enhance teaching methods well matched to the way children learn.
For example, we have all observed children intensely engaged in playing a computer game, lost without sense of time, completely absorbed in their cyber-world. As noted by Jones (1998), Csikszentmaihalyi describes this state as “flow,” or the experience of total involvement in, and enjoyment of, a given task. We all have had this flow sensation, whether while involved in a physical activity or reading a riveting book. Tasks that provide the element of flow are those that can be completed, have clear goals, give immediate feedback or gratification and deep but effortless involvement, and afford a sense of altered time (Jones, 1998). Learners need “efficient, seemingly effortless skills related to one’s ability level (experiential cognition) and the ability to assimilate and accommodate new information (reflective cognition) in order to do most activities well enough to reach a state of flow” (p. 208). Perhaps that is why sixth-graders, in my observation, thoroughly enjoy strategy games such as SimCity and Oregon Trail - because they must employ higher-order thinking and problem solving skills in order to continue play and win the game. The user must look at a larger problem and plan strategically to solve it; therefore, strategy games provide great feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction. Perhaps the cognitive scaffolding tools outlined above can provide teachers with the means to create learning environments and tasks that implement the astounding resources now available in classrooms, in order to promote the kind of active engagement and self-efficacy that computer-based strategy games provide. Perhaps teachers can build curricular goals to create what Reiber, as cited by Jones (p. 208), calls “endogenous learning environments;” that is, those in which content and structure are so closely related that students will not realize where content stops and the “game,” or learning task, begins.
When the teacher creates the scaffold on which students can build their own learning, using information processing models, then basic skill acquisition naturally occurs in tandem with higher-order processes. Critical thinking skills can be elucidated if, (and perhaps, only if) we teachers ask the right questions, structure projects the right way, such that students are required to make choices, and create original answers. Fortunately, information and computer-based technology skills not only aid this process, but can uniquely support it, especially in the areas of active engagement and immediate feedback (Eisenberg & Johnson, 2003).
This entire approach represents a shift in methodology of teaching and learning that is exciting. Because of the ready availability of information now, how and what students learn can improve, and so can instruction. Rather than ask students to perform topical research, we can ask students to learn faster, and delve more deeply into content-area problems, and put much of the responsibility for learning into their hands, by utilizing the cognitive strategies inherent in the framework of information literacy. As Barton (2002) asserts, some important shifts in learning and instruction include:
1) From direct instruction to construction and discovery: students learn by doing
2) From teacher-centered to learner-centered: focus is on the learner
3) From absorbing pre-selected facts to discovering relevant information: engagement of higher-order thinking skills, analysis and synthesis
4) From school-based to life-based learning: learners constantly revise their own knowledge base and become used to learning this way
5) From passivity to engagement: students are motivated and feel responsible for progress and ownership of knowledge
6) From teacher as transmitter to teacher as facilitator.
This poses exciting changes for instructors, as well as students. Teachers can become less “the sage on the stage,” directing information outward, and more facilitators, or the “guide on the side” in the students’ discovery of curricular concepts and knowledge. More importantly, students’ own research queries will lead toward deeper understanding, as they themselves construct meaning out of informational chaos. This prepares them to become self-directed, life-long learners (McKenzie, 1998).
Critical Thinking: The Process Evolves
Along the lines of Stiggins’ idea that the learning process ought to be driven by the expected outcome, (1997) the North Central Association Goal Committee in our district decided that, having chosen increased critical thinking as a goal, we needed to identify a way to assess whether or not students’ reasoning abilities were improving. It made sense to let the assessment drive the goal process. Once reaching this conclusion, much of the ambiguity of the critical thinking goal became clearer.
Prior to this, we had spent a good deal of time gathering materials and research, and trying to delineate our goal. As the first part of this paper indicates, I became primarily interested in information literacy as a means to improved critical thinking. However, it became evident to our group that this may be a means to an end, and could definitely be part of the pedagogical picture, but was not the only vehicle we needed to attack our overarching goal. Once we focused on assessment, we concluded that that an emphasis on writing across the curriculum might solve out dilemma. First, it was something we could assess. Secondly, it dovetailed with a previously identified goal of incorporating the 6 + 1 traits writing model school-wide. For me, another plus was that increased non-fiction writing can smoothly incorporate information literacy models as tools; this made it seemed more likely to me, convinced as I am by my research, that critical thinking might appreciably improve with this approach. Something like the Big 6 model could be incorporated district-wide to teach research techniques and to enhance the writing process. Lastly, much of the research also indicated that increased non-fiction writing, in and of itself, tended to improve reasoning ability on standardized tests.
As a result, the committee has recommended that all teachers increase the opportunities for non-fiction writing during their lessons. The staff was given a day-long in service on specific ways to include quick-writes and key word summaries, among other writing strategies. Teachers received quick reference flip charts to create questions or writing prompts that address the various Bloom’s taxonomy levels. The committee identified a few critical thinking assessments, but decided that the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay test (Ennis & Weir, 1985) was the best available; it was piloted with this year’s junior class as a baseline, so we can gauge subsequent class’s success in improved reasoning abilities. We are hoping it will show steadily improving scores as we become more successful at implementing wide-spread non-fiction writing across all curricula.
I am gratified that, without knowing it at first, the media specialist and I are of one mind on the subject of information literacy and the Big 6 model. I gasped happily when I saw a bookmark in the library depicting the 6-step method and told her about my research. She was equally delighted that I was familiar with the model. She and I have collaborated in several projects very successfully so I am hopeful that we can spearhead a wider collaboration among middle and high school teachers, at least, to utilize this easy, logical, useful and proven research framework.
It would be wonderful if we, as a committee and a district, have stumbled onto the golden bullet, the sure-fire method to improve all students’ critical thinking abilities. Our committee will continue to monitor the strategy of increased writing. Perhaps we should recommend some accountability, or a target for exactly what constitutes an “increase” in content-area writing. Certainly I think we need to get commitment from the staff that they will contribute toward meeting the goal in the ways we have chosen—again, the purposeful use of the Big 6 might be especially helpful in this. A joint, well-articulated approach will be the only way we will know if our strategy is working.