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So how do we move students from factual to critical thinkers?
There is a high probability that the bulk of assessment your students have experienced has been at lower taxonomic levels. To expect students suddenly to blossom into great critical thinkers able to provide cogent, coherent answers to conceptual prompts posed in your class is unrealistic. There is a need to transition from factual to conceptual assessment prompts. This "lack of transitioning" is another area where "teacher blame" for lack of quality student answers falls. I recommend that you begin preparing your students for conceptual prompts by providing transitional prompts early in your course.
Part of the transition process is teaching some test-taking strategies. Loulou (1995, 2) suggests to students, "If you get stuck on a question try to remember a related fact. Start from the general and go to the specific… When answering an essay question, first decide precisely what the question is asking. If a question asks you to compare, do not explain."
I am defining transitional prompts as those whose stem is stated in conceptual verbiage but which also include "clues" or "hints" for students as to the direction a response to the prompt might take. Sutman suggests:
| In order to provide students with the opportunity to think about and apply science concepts and to formulate complete thoughts in English, teachers should pose open-ended questions for them to answer. Assistance can take the form of providing references [emphasis mine], helping students to use English to express their questions and answers; and helping them develop investigations that will lead to answers… [T]his approach may result in coverage of less content, [however] students will have a deeper understanding of the material that is covered, and will, ultimately, learn more because they learned not only some science concepts but also how to problem solve (Sutman, et. al., 1993, 3). |
Although Sutman is writing specifically about limited English speakers, we can consider most of our students to be "limited-critical thinkers" and apply his reasoning. We can provide "reference points" of differing degree. For example a transitional prompt might include any one three options shown in Table 3. Each succeeding type of clue provides less direction, helping students to move toward "assist-free" conceptual thinking.
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Type of Clue
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Sample Prompt
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| A list of terms to be included in the answer. |
Compare the rate of the water cycle in a desert to the rate in a tropical forest. Be sure to include the terms solar energy, precipitation, evaporation, humidity and ground water in your answer. |
| Reference to prior experience. |
Compare the rate of the water cycle in a desert to the rate in a tropical forest. Think about the experiment we did with the water in the 2-liter bottles. |
| Hints as to the type of terminology required for an acceptable answer. |
Compare the rate of the water cycle in a desert to the rate in a tropical forest. Be sure to include correctly-used vocabulary terms from this unit. |
Table 3. Types of Clues and Sample Transitional Prompts.
Another approach to the transition process is provided in the following example:
Brian, all 72 kg of him, bungee-jumps from a 100-m tower toward the river below. He falls 35 m before the bungee cord starts to stretch. This cord can stretch 40% of its length and has a breaking strength of 7000 N. Will this become a "free fall" for Brian, or will he "bounceback"?
Consider an alternate version of this problem, in which the last sentence is replaced by the following: "When the bungee cord has reached its maximum length, does the tension exceed the cord's breaking strength?" Several aspects of the first version make it more effective for encouraging students to think rather than simply to look for the appropriate quantities to "plug in" to a formula.
The first version does not specify what must be calculated; therefore, it requires students to decide for themselves just what the problem is and how their knowledge of physics can be used to solve it. Teachers can help students learn to solve problems of this type by first providing them with a set of general questions, such as: How are the objects and situations in the problem similar to any objects or situations that were discussed in physics? [Notice the reference to prior experience!] Which variables are already in physics terms and which can be converted to physics terms? [Notice the suggestion to consider past vocabulary!] Are all of the pieces of information in the problem relevant to its solution? [This hint is similar to Loulou's test taking suggestions!] (Potts, 1994, 2).
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Teaching & Learning Index
