1. T E A C H I N G S T R A T E G I E S T O P R O M O T E
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G
UNIT 3

2. Higher order thinking skills
 Higher order thinking skills are needed by every
individual to lead a successful life.

3. TEACHING AND LEARNING IN 21ST CENTURY
1. There is more information available for learners now
than ever before.
2. The pace of social change continues to increase.
3. The universe is becoming a connected whole more than
ever before.
4. Our mass media showers down on us with its so called
“expert” discourse.
5. We are surrounded by weak arguments promoted with
considerably wider range of resources such as social
media.
6. Students need to learn how to manipulate and process
information more than just check to see how full their
knowledge bank is.

4. COOPERATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING
 Cooperative teaching and learning gained its strength with the
emergence of two major schools of thought one is
“Constructivism” and the other is “Connectivism”.
 Cooperative teaching and learning is an approach to group
work that minimizes the occurrence of unpleasant experiences
and maximizes the learning with a sense of achievement and
satisfaction that result from working with a high-performance
team.
 To accomplish their group’s task, students must exchange
ideas, make plans, and propose solutions. Thinking through
an idea and presenting it collectively can be very helpful and
understood by others in a better way.
 Such interaction promotes intellectual growth. The exchange
of different ideas and viewpoints can enhance the growth and
inspire broader thinking.

5. Deeper levels of Cooperative Learning
 Positive interdependence. Team members are obliged to rely on
one another to achieve the goal. If any team members fail to do their
part, everyone suffers consequences.
 Individual accountability. All students in a group are held
accountable for doing their share of the work and for mastery of all
of the material to be learned.
 Face-to-face promotive interaction. Although some of the
group work may be parceled out and done individually, some must
be done interactively, with group members providing one another
with feedback, challenging reasoning and conclusions, and perhaps
most importantly, teaching and encouraging one another.
 Appropriate use of collaborative skills. Students are
encouraged and helped to develop and practice trust-building,
communication, and conflict management skills.
 Group processing. Team members set group tasks, periodically
assess what they are doing well as a team, and identify changes they
will make to function more effectively in the future.

6. Reasons for Adopting Cooperative learning
 Helps to actively engage more children in learning than
do teacher centered or lecture-oriented methodologies.
Leading the learning process keeps them engaged
 Encourages students to support their classmates in a
group rather than to compete against each other. In this
way, students can combine their skills and talents and
help others. Social interaction helps in promoting social
inclusion
 Working in groups students can bring multidimensional
thoughts and discussions over a single subject. Thinking
through even opposite view points and sharing openly,
the learners learn to discuss and raise questions.

7. Changed Role of Teacher
• Learning Resources
• Learning Outcomes
Managing
• Activity details
• Group assignments
Instructing
• Group work
• Overcome the difficulties
Assisting

8. DISCUSSION AND DEBATE
 Schools should teach students how to learn and how to think
critically through debate.
 Instead, our government indoctrination facilities teach
students what to think, the students’ minds should be given
the liberty to think and discuss.
 If we only make them listen and watch passively the students
are being made just another brick in the wall instead of
teaching them how to construct their own of knowledge.
 When they receive conflicting information they are unable to
sort through it, but instead make emotional decisions on what
to believe based on their group identity or trusted influential
figures.
 True learning takes place only through critical discourse.

9. Critical Discourse
 Discussion and debate provides the potential for independent,
dynamic and free thought and dialogue.
 Critical debate cannot easily be controlled, and its process
asks for active thinking.
 Classrooms are highly important places to teach students
intellectual survival skills instead of submission and
surrender their own thoughts.
 Debate teaches content as well as process and requires
information acquisition and management.
 Different aspects of an issue must be investigated and
understood by the debater.
 Debaters learn how to gather information and marshal that
knowledge for their purposes.
 The process of such discourse is dynamic, fluid, and changing.

10. How to conduct classroom debate?
 Set clear goals as per learning outcomes
 Prepare probing questions as per students interest
and level of previous knowledge
 Communicate the rules and expectations
 Help making mix-diverse groups
 Include the whole class – call out the silent ones
 Help bringing in relevant information
 Help drawing broader conclusions instead of
agreement.
 Leave food for thought –unanswered questions.

11. Types of Debates
 Four Corners Debate:
 Putting forward one question or statement
 Letting the groups take four positions
 Giving them time to develop their argument in their own
corner
 Then come to center, in a circle to debate
 Role play debate
 Describe multiple roles – e.g. democrats vs autocrats;
conservatives vs liberals or Policeman vs Citizen; Doctor vs
Patient; Employer vs employee; etc
 Give one topic to ponder and defend their perspective

12. Types of Debates …contd.
 Fishbowl debates
 Grouping chairs are placed in a circle pattern. Several chairs are then
placed inside the circle for teams representing the different positions
of the debate. Chairs can also be added for several students
representing the audience.
 To bolster attention among those outside the fishbowl, an empty
chair can be added, which is free game, allowing someone from the
outside to enter the fishbowl to ask a question or make an argument.
 Think-pair-share debates
 Ask students to think and make notes alone about the issue.
 After personal reflection is completed, they search for a partner of
opposite opinion and pairs are formed.
 The pairs then work together, comparing their notes and creating
lists to support both sides of the issue.

13. Types of Debates …contd.
 Meeting-house debates
 The Lincoln-Douglas debate model. In a meeting house debate each
team makes an opening argument. The class is then given the
opportunity to question each side. The professor serves as
moderator, ensuring each side gets an equal amount of time to argue.
In order to encourage more class participation and limit certain
students from dominating the questioning, the professor could
assign cards to each student.
 Problem-solving debate
 It typically involves eight students. Four students are assigned to
each team. One student from each side presents a solution to given
problem based on historical and philosophical arguments. The next
two students take the position on why solutions are or are not
justified. The third set of students proposes a plan that would carry-
out their position. The final two students summarize the position of
their team and provide a closing argument.

14. Question Answer Forums
 Questioning plays a critical role in the way instructors
structure the class environment, organize the content of
the course and has deep implications in the way that
students assimilate the information that is presented and
discussed in class.
 If teachers and students utilize questions effectively,
students will discover that the question is a very valuable
learning tool. It is a device through which they can
organize their thinking to achieve certain objectives. This
type of knowledge creation is possible if students are
given major roles in their learning process.

15. Teacher vs Student Questions
 Teachers pose questions
for :
 Deeper Understanding
 For enhancing knowledge
 For application purposes
 For analytical reasoning
 For critical discussion
 For enabling them to
think beyond the text
books
 Students pose questions
for:
 Clarification
 More details
 Exemplifying
 For analysis
 For disagreeing
 For bringing novelty

16. Classroom Assessment Techniques
 FORMATIVE
ASSESSMENT
 Classroom Assessment
Techniques that respond
directly to concerns
about deeper levels of
learning and higher
order thinking.
 Helps to improve the
process
 SUMMATIVE
ASSESSMENT
 To assess the level of
learning and thinking
with respect to
psychomotor, cognitive
and affective domain.
 Helps to assess for
further plan

17. Classroom Assessment
 Individual Assessment
Every student must be
monitored and evaluated
even in group work and
discussion as well as
through individual test,
questions and puzzles
 Group Assessment
Group activity assessment
should include specific
criteria regarding
cooperation,
communication,
collaboration and team
work.

18. Performance based assessment
 In performance-based assessments, the tasks should clearly and
explicitly assess the targets which are being measured by the
teacher (Doyle, 1983)
 "the degree to which evidence and theory support the
interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of
tests"(Miller & Linn, 2000, p. 367).
 The tasks should also have understandable and clear criteria for
scoring, allowing the teacher to evaluate the results objectively,
fairly, and consistently. In other words, this means that the tasks
should be reliable (Williams & Ryan, 2000).
 In addition, in these kinds of tests, the students have an option to
participate in the process (for example, to define scoring rubrics, or
clarify the performance criteria); while in traditional paper and
pencil assessments, the students simply provide responses.
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19. Thanks
Any Question?