2° Task. Stephen Brookfield on Creative & Critical Thinking

Stephen Brookfield on Creative & Critical Thinking

Doctor Stephen Brookfield
A professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, leading scholar on critical and creative thinking and adult learning. He has published 15 books on teaching adult learning, critical thinking, discussion methods and critical theory. His most recent book “Teaching for critical thinking”; tools and techniques to help students question their assumptions.

Dr. Stephen defined critical thinking as a process by which we become aware of the assumptions that frame the ways we think, like scholarship, life decisions, etc.

Creative thinker
- A creative thinker is able to view ideas and practices from multiple viewpoints. - A creative thinker can generate interpretations and perspectives and responses that are different from the mainstream.
-A creative thinker is able to communicate a thought through a variety of different ways visual, graphics, kinetic.
- A creative thinker has the ability to look at things from multiple viewpoints and have multiple responses.  

Kind of assumptions

·         Causal: Cause and effect

·         Prescriptive: Assumptions about how things should happen, we should behave

·         Paradigmatic: Framing, structuring assumptions viewed as obvious, common sense, taken for granted.

4 key intellectual traditions

v  Analytic Philosophy: A student who thinks critically is good at constructing and deconstructing arguments, knows

v  Natural Science: Critical thinking is basically the application of the scientific method

v  Critical Theory: Critical thinker is someone who has heightened political consciousness who is very alert to the way that power moves within this society

v  Pragmatism: Knowledge as something that’s constantly reinvented were open to new ways of thinking.

What most help students to think critically &/or creatively?

- Circle of voices (Group Activity): Group of five people. Individuals reflect on the discussion topic (1 minute). In the first round of this activity each person of the group has their turn to give their response to the question that they have thought about in the opening minute. In the second group you can only talk about what somebody else said which can be disagreements, questions, elaborations, illustrations.
- Chalk Talks: Instructor writes a question in the middle of the board, from 5 to 10 minutes of silence is declared, students write responses to the question on the board whenever they feel ready, those who are not writing you say your jobs is to look for connections between the post that are going up to draw lines when you see connections or to draw lines connecting comments that seem opposed to each other.

- Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ): Brief evaluation tool, it takes the last 5 minutes of class.
 1. Moment most engaged as learner
 2. Moment most distanced
 3. Action most helpful
 4. Action most confusing
 5. What surprised you most?

In conclusion, Dr. Brookfield give us a speech about the main concepts, kinds and techniques about creative and critical thinking in which plains how university instructors can challenge students' assumptions and model the exploration of alternative perspectives. He also presents several practical activities that encourage creative and critical thinking in the classroom.

Barriers

5. Barriers

The barrier that has an effect on me is the reluctance to criticise those with more expertise. Sometimes I only keep with me the arguments that others people have but it is important to ask and try to go through active questioning.  

Reflection

4. Reflection

No, I don't recognize anything about myself in Bodner's description because as a student is important also what we learn inside the classroom because at some point we will need that knowledge that we acquired years ago. However, what Bodner mentioned about that evidence from projects is true because we also have to go beyond the words and experiment the reality.

Challenging opinions

3.  Reflection: Challenging opinions

The thing I find most difficult about challenging the opinions of a person is to make the other person understand what I think and my point of view without ambiguities. I deal with this by making my self-understood since my first opinion and also to consider the other person point of view.

Influences on my thinking

2. Reflection: Influences on my thinking

The influences on my own thinking that I need to be most aware of so they don't prejudice my thinking is my religious beliefs because sometimes I tend to doubt about it. I deal with this by keeping in mind that I don't have to let myself be influenced change my beliefs by other people's beliefs. 

Emotional self-management

1. Reflection: Emotional self-management

For me, the emotions that are most difficult to manage when others disagree with me are: impatience, because I think that I have the reason and I want that the other person makes aware of my point of view. Angry, because sometimes I change my point of view in order to make that the other person have the reason but that person was wrong so, it makes me angry. Thoughtful, because sometimes I'm wrong with my answers so, it makes me think about my personal knowledge and also in the aspects that I have to improve. I will deal with these by taking into account that all people have different points of view and those for me could be wrong for me but right for them.