Day Two Exercise on Impediments

CRTW 201

Dr. Fike

This exercise borrows from N 44, exercise 1.7.

Step 1:  On your own, write down a list of impediments that may hinder your own critical thinking.  As you do so, make reference to N 18-23 (N's headings appear in the bullets below to get you started).  Then RANK your impediments in descending order of significance.  (5 minutes)

• Forming a Picture of the World on the Basis of the News
• Forming a Picture of the world on the Basis of Movies, TV, Advertising, Magazines
• All-or-nothing Thinking (Black-and-White Thinking), Us-Versus-Them Thinking, Stereotyping
• Fears
• Some Educational Practices Discourage Critical Thinking
• Egocentrism
• Developmental Patterns of Thinking
• Previous Commitments, Previous Personal Experience

Step 2:  Share your top impediments with persons in your quadrant.  Group members should ask follow-up questions.  Then, as a group, select two impediments to share with the whole class.  (10 minutes).

Step 3:  Share your group-selected impediments with the whole class.  Be sure to write down the impediments that the other groups note.

Step 4:  Back in your groups, select at least one of the impediments identified in step 3 and identify a strategy for coping with it.  As N writes, "Together, try to devise a practical strategy to counteract some of the influence that impediment has on critical thinking" (44).

Step 5:  Report your strategy to the whole class.

Step 6:  I will explain SEEI to you.  Then you will do an SEEI for one of your impediments.  Selected SEEIs will be shared with the class.  See N 33-35.  Example:

S:  Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking.

E:  In other words, it is self-reflective thinking.

E:  For example, we did some CT about the heart earlier today.

I:  It's "like a pair of binoculars:  it allows you to get up close, explore detail, put what you see in context, and understand more of what you are seeing" (N 37).  Or:  It's "like daily exercise" (N 47):  practice leads to improvement.