I hope everyone would see that reasoning as not just an attack on the
measurement of "critical thinking" but on the entire enterprise of
psychological science given that most of what we attempt to operationalize is
just as qualitative a dimension as critical thinking. The everyday task of the
social scientist is to take qualities and operationalize them as quantities. I
think you could replace the words, "critical thinking" in the argument below
with any topic that psychological science has attempted to measure
("intelligence") and say the same thing. The final arbiter is whether or not,
within a particular theoretical context and culture, the measurement can be
shown to be reliable and to make valid predictions.
Rick
Dr. Rick Froman, Chair
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Box 3055
x7295
[email protected]
http://tinyurl.com/DrFroman
Proverbs 14:15 "A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought
to his steps."
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 7:58 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] The Assessment Impasse :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher
Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
A piece on why "objective assessment" of a construct like "critical
thinking" is probably a chimera:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/02/05/griffin
Here's a taste:
"...if we were measuring gravity, we could probably rely upon gravity
existing and acting the same way regardless of whether it is being
investigated by a physicist in Indiana or a physicist in India.
Furthermore, it seems likely that gravity would carry on, dragging every
bouncy thing back to earth, even if the human race were wiped out by
aliens.
"Could the same thing be said of critical thinking? If there were no
humans to think, would critical thinking exist? (Please don't bring up
chimpanzees - that's different.) Critical thinking probably exists only
as we humans think it up, and it is therefore socially constructed,
highly dependent upon specific social, historical, and cultural
contexts, and doomed forever to evolve as the people who use it evolve.
Definitions of critical thinking have meaning to the persons who use
them communally in everyday discourse, thereby developing common
understandings of them based in real-life situations over time, but the
definitions are not portable from Indiana to India in the same way
gravity is."
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-2100 ex. 66164
[email protected]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
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