Critical Thinking in the Sociology Classroom: Facilitating Movement from Vague Objective to Explicit Achievement

Browne, M. Neil; Litwin, James L.

doi:10.2307/1317994

Cited by 27 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Furthermore, such a strategy would leave unanswered the more important question of whether or not students acquired skills which would transfer to new situations. In fact, the literature is quite pessimistic about such a possibility (Baker 1981, p. 341) for it appears that the teaching of critical thinking and writing succeeds only when it is taught across the curriculum (Browne and Litwin 1987). In order to examine the transferability of skills, the authors had every student in their spring 1989 Marriage and Family classes (one section each) write an essay at the beginning of the semester defending their position on one of the five debate topics outlined earlier.…”

Section: Experiments 2: How Does Debating Affect Thinking and Writing mentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Critical Thinking and Writing through Debates: An Experimental Evaluation

Green¹,

Klug²

1990

Teaching Sociology

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Whitewater Faced with the desire to maintain high standards of scholarship in a context of large introductory level classes and limited resources, the authors experimented with several active learning techniques designed to develop critical thinking and writing skills. The tentative conclusions drawn are that the debateformat in the context of large classes is an effective way to modify students' opinions on social issues and to teach critical thinking and writing skills. Also discussed are several ethical issues involved in teaching critical thinking. BACKGROUND Probably all faculty think that the teaching of critical thinking and writing is a "good thing," just as motherhood and apple pie are good things. The problem, of course, is that unless one has plenty of teaching assistants, the conventional term paper isn't feasible in mass classes of 50, 100, or more because the grading load is simply too high. Moreover, if one has ambitions of having students not only write papers but rewrite them several times during a semester, the grading task becomes virtually impossible. So, perhaps reluctantly, we give up the goals of teaching critical thinking and writing and fall back on lecturing and multiple choice tests. But what if our consciences bother us? Our consciences bothered us, so for over ten years we have tinkered around in a variety * Charles S. Green Ilm was awarded the Hans O. Mauksch Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Sociology in 1989 by the ASA Section on Undergraduate Education. Award recipients are required to provide a talk at the following year' s meetings. Green's talk before the 1990 meetings was based on this article. The article is a revised version of a paper presented by both authors to the 1990 annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society in Chicago. The authors wish to acknowledge the help their colleagues rendered to this project by grading students' essays: Ronald Berger, Eugene Grigsby, Lanny Neider, Lawrence Neuman, and Richard Salem. We also wish to thank our colleague Patricia Searles as well as Dean Dom and Barbara Sherman Heyl for providing useful comments during various stages of the project, William Rau and Jean C. Karlen for comments during the Midwest meetings, and the three reviewers of this version: Louis E. Anderson, Eugene M. Labovitz, and Norma J. Shepelak. This article was copy edited by Donna Perdue.

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Section: Experiments 2: How Does Debating Affect Thinking and Writing mentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Critical Thinking and Writing through Debates: An Experimental Evaluation

Green¹,

Klug²

1990

Teaching Sociology

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“…For instance, Baker (1981) argued that the best researchers and educators teach students to develop their logical capacity. Browne and Litwin (1987) define critical thinking in terms of eight cognitive components, including assessment of logic, examination of metaphorical allusions, and generation of alternative inferences.…”

Section: Critical Thinking Critical Sociological Thinking and Highementioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Sociological Thinking and Higher-level Thinking: A Study of Sociologists’ Teaching Goals and Assignments

Kane

Otto

2017

Teach Sociol

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We argue that the literature on critical thinking in sociology has conflated two different skill sets: critical sociological thinking and higher-level thinking. To begin to examine how sociologists weigh and cultivate these skill sets, we interviewed 20 sociology instructors and conducted a content analysis of 26 assignments. We found that while multiple interviewees considered critical thinking to be too obvious a goal to warrant discussion, it did emerge as a criterion for evaluating assignments. In addition, we created a spectrum of writing tasks and found that only a minority of assignments (5 of 26) could be classified as eliciting higher-level thinking. These were found exclusively in advanced courses, where they were still outnumbered by assignments eliciting lower-level thinking by nearly 2 to 1.

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“…Although there is no clear consensus, most agree that critical thinking is not mere information recall or an application of ideas. Instead, critical thinking can be conceived of as a skill or a process, rather than a body of knowledge (Browne and Litwin 1987; Facione 2011). Critical thinking also involves attitudes, habits, values, and behavior.…”

Section: What Is Critical Thinking?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As will be seen, much scholarly discussion on critical thinking—especially in sociology—lacks a quantitative evaluation component. Instead, studies have tended to describe what critical thinking is (Baker 1981), strategies for teaching critical thinking (Buechler 2008; Burdette and McLaughlin 2010; Geersten 2003; Grauerholz and Bouma-Holtrop 2003; Malcom 2006; Rusche and Jason 2011), and how critical thinking happens within the classroom (Browne and Litwin 1987; Weast 1996).…”

Section: Critical Thinking Research: a Brief Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There appears to be widespread agreement that critical thinking is a crucial component of what should be taught in college classes (Baker 1981; Bradshaw and McPherron 1978; Browne and Keeley 1986; Browne and Litwin 1987; Hart Research Associates 2010; Pascarella and Terenzini 2005). Students also believe they are learning critical thinking (Howard and Zoeller 2007; Shepelak, Curry-Jackson, and Moore 1992), but recent evidence from Arum and Roksa (2010) indicates that almost half of all students they studied did not increase their level of critical thinking (as measured by performance on the Collegiate Learning Assessment [CLA]) in their first two years of college, with more than one-third showing no gains after four years.…”

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Assessing Change in Student Critical Thinking for Introduction to Sociology Classes

et al. 2013

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Although there is widespread agreement among academics that critical thinking is an important component to the college classroom, there is little empirical evidence to verify that it is being taught in courses. Using four sections of introductory sociology, we developed an experimental design using pretests and posttests to assess students’ critical thinking skills. Controlling for grade point average, cumulative credit hours completed, gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, instructor, and initial levels of critical thinking, being in the experimental group had a statistically significant impact on critical thinking at the end of the semester. Thus, inclusion of writing assignments and classroom discussion designed to enhance creative thought processes for the experimental group helped students improve from one-dimensional thinking toward more multistructural analysis.

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Critical Thinking in the Sociology Classroom: Facilitating Movement from Vague Objective to Explicit Achievement

Cited by 27 publications

References 27 publications

Teaching Critical Thinking and Writing through Debates: An Experimental Evaluation

Teaching Critical Thinking and Writing through Debates: An Experimental Evaluation

Critical Sociological Thinking and Higher-level Thinking: A Study of Sociologists’ Teaching Goals and Assignments

Assessing Change in Student Critical Thinking for Introduction to Sociology Classes

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