Fellow Tipsters, You may have heard that the 2012 platform of the Republican Party of Texas opposes the teaching of critical thinking skills. You can download it here:
http://www.texasgop.org/about-the-party The specific section can be found on page 20: "Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." I was alerted to this by a blog on the Washington Post site: Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html I put together a podcast episode on critical thinking, why it's important to the field of psychology and why it's so hard to teach. I drew heavily from Daniel Willingham's excellent article, Critical Thinking: Why is it so hard to Teach? which is available here: http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html I put my notes for the episode - which is likely to be a 2 or 3 parter - on a concept map here: http://go.comapping.com/comapping.html#mapid=123636&publishKey=1gD3WRHyfU The audio (and the above links) is available on my website here: http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2012/10/ep-183-critical-thinking-important-yes-but-can-we-teach-it-well/ Happy to hear your feedback, which I could include in part 2 of the episode. Michael Michael A. Britt, Ph.D. [email protected] http://www.ThePsychFiles.com Twitter: mbritt --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=21346 or send a blank email to leave-21346-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
