Secret students’ business: the mysteries of critical thinking

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Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 32: The Student Experience

July, 2009, 715 pages
Published by
Helen Wozniak and Sonia Bartoluzzi
ISBN
0 908557 78 7
Abstract 

The problematic issue of developing student critical thinking has been acknowledged in universities since before the 1990s. A long standing debate about what critical thinking is, and whether it consists of a generic or subject specific set of skills has somewhat dominated the literature, however the central theme of this research is the student perspective.

Within each discipline area there are key concepts that are vital to student learning. These are often referred to as threshold concepts which are described as transformative, integrative & irreversible (Meyer & Land, 2003). Critical thinking is a significant threshold concept which is essential for university study, professional skills development and lifelong learning.

This project has practical application as the researched information is helpful in providing materials to stimulate student critical thinking. Student identified processes have been used to develop online materials, including interactive activities and multimodal information. Part of the multimodal approach is a book of annotated student assignments from various disciplines highlighting different critical practices in different disciplines.

The online materials are particularly useful for students who study off campus, who are multilingual or who will benefit from learning at their own pace. The project has encountered difficulties in that the researchers function as academics outside mainstream teaching of degree courses, thus it is not as easy to embed materials into subjects and maintain a focus on critical thinking within the curriculum or have ready access to students. This paper evaluates an interdisciplinary online critical thinking project and its impact on the student experience.

Keywords: critical thinking, online learning, interdisciplinary