Critical Thinking Related News
Find articles related to critical thinking from sources all over the world.

News from previous months is available in the News Archives section.

Common Core Standards Set New Nationwide Bar for Student Assessment
By Dian Schaffhauser, The Journal
(June 3, 2010) A set of national standards in the United States for K-12 math and English could either hold the key to helping schools "share innovations across state borders" or "undermine the role of teachers and administrators," depending on who's assessing the news out of Suwanee, GA. Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwannee was the site where the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers announced the release of the Common Core State Standards this week. The standards are, according to its authors, a state-led effort to establish a shared set of clear educational goals that states can voluntarily adopt. They would replace what is being widely described as a "patchwork" of state-defined standards. Read the full article

The Four C's Critical for Today's Workforce
Talent Management Magazine
(April 20, 2010) As the U.S. economy begins to show signs of improvement, executives say they need a workforce fully equipped with skills beyond just the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic (the three R’s) in order to grow their businesses. Skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation (the four C’s) will become even more important to organizations in the future, according to a new survey conducted by American Management Association (AMA). Read the full article

Panel Releases Proposal to Set U.S. Standards for Education
By Sam Dillon, The New York Times
(March 10, 2010) Culminating a year’s work, a panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents released a set of proposed common academic standards on Wednesday. The standards, posted on the panel’s web site, lay out the panel’s vision of what American public school students should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation. Forty-eight states cooperated in producing the proposed standards, which amount to a new road map for American public education. If a majority of states were to adopt them over the next few months, which experts said was a growing possibility, the new standards would replace the nation’s motley current checkerboard of locally written standards, which vary greatly in content and sophistication. And adoption of the new standards would set off a vast new effort to rewrite textbooks and standardized tests. Read the full article

How Leaders Should Think Critically
By Bill Ferriter, Teacher Magazine
(January 20, 2010) I’ll admit that there aren’t many topics I’m more passionate about than interactive whiteboards in the classroom. Seen as the first step towards “21st century teaching and learning,” schools and districts run out and spend thousands of dollars on these gizmos, hanging them on walls and showing them off like proud hens that just laid the golden instructional egg. I gave mine away last summer. After about a year’s worth of experimenting, I determined that it was basically useless. Read the full article

How Leaders Should Think Critically
By John Baldoni, HarvardBusiness.org
(January 20, 2010) If you want to succeed in 21st Century business you need to become a critical thinker. Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Management figured this out a decade ago and as dean, has been working to transform his school's business curriculum with greater emphasis on critical thinking skills. As Lane Wallace explained in the New York Times, what Martin and many others are seeking to do is approach learning and problem solving from a multicultural platform that borrows from academia, business, the arts and even history.

Critical thinking has always been a prized attribute of leadership, but over the years, especially as business schools have emphasized quantitative skills over qualitative ones, critical thinking dropped by the wayside. Now as the rate of complexity rises, the need for critical thinking resurfaces. Read the full article

Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School?
By Lane Wallace, New York Times
(January 9, 2010) A DECADE ago, Roger Martin, the new dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, had an epiphany. The leadership at his son’s elementary school had asked him to meet with its retiring principal to figure out how it could replicate her success. He discovered that the principal thrived by thinking through clashing priorities and potential options, rather than hewing to any pre-planned strategy — the same approach taken by the managing partner of a successful international law firm in town.

“The ‘Eureka’ moment was when I could draw a data point between a hotshot, investment bank-oriented star lawyer and an elementary school principal,” Mr. Martin recalls. “I thought: ‘Holy smokes. In completely different situations, these people are thinking in very similar ways, and there may be something special about this pattern of thinking.’ ” Read the full article

Co-Teaching Integrates Special Education Students in Traditional Classrooms
By Dave Haney, Journal Star
(December 12, 2009) Peoria School District 150 is hoping a marriage among teachers will provide the "I do" vows for increased student achievement. A majority of Peoria's 200-plus special education teachers have paired up with regular grade-level teachers in classrooms districtwide this year, greatly expanding a years-old teaching model some say is long overdue and could propel the district to greater academic performance. Called co-teaching or inclusionary classrooms, the two teachers share the same classroom and responsibility for teaching both special education and regular students. The teaching model eliminates, in many cases, separate special education classrooms where those students traditionally have been isolated throughout most of an entire school day. Read the full article

Schools Struggle to Keep GATE Programs Afloat
By JORGE BARRIENTOS, Californian staff writer
(December 11, 2009) As a fourth-grade teacher at Independence Elementary School in Rosedale, Erika Tindell juggles between two groups of students in her class. In one group this past Wednesday, she had about 18 students doing typical fourth-grade reading comprehension work. In the other, eight of the Rosedale Union School District's smartest elementary students discussed ethics. 'You should treat someone the way you want to be treated,' 9-year-old Danny Elias said, referring to how the Golden Rule is relevant in their book, "Riding Freedom." It's a tough job teaching Gifted and Talented Education students, teachers say, because of their constant need to be challenged. It's especially tough now, as districts countywide are getting less money to support GATE students, and provide valuable teacher training. Read the full article

Report Finds Wide Disparities in Gifted Education
Associated Press (November 24, 2009)
“In the age of Sputnik, we put money into math and science, and we ended up on the moon,” said Del Siegle, a University of Connecticut researcher who wrote the report. “We really need to consider that again. We cannot afford as a country to ignore talent.”

The federal government spent just $7.5 million last year on research and grants for the estimated 3 million gifted children in the U.S. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have tried to eliminate that money entirely, but Congress put it back into the budget each year.

Gifted programs are typically paid for by local districts or states and vary dramatically. In some states, it’s as stark as one county with multiple gifted programs — magnet schools, honors courses and separate classrooms for advanced learners — next to a county with nothing. Read the full article

U.S. Math Scores Hit a Wall
The Wall Street Journal (October 15, 2009)
Fewer than four of 10 fourth- and eighth-graders are proficient in mathematics, according to a highly regarded federal test given in early 2009, adding to recent evidence that the U.S. drive to become more economically competitive by overhauling public education may be falling short. The National Assessment of Educational Progress -- often called the "nation's report card" -- found fourth-graders had made no learning gains since the last time the NAEP math test was given, in 2007. Previously, fourth-graders had made scoring gains on every NAEP math test given since 1990. Significant scoring gaps between white students and their Hispanic and African-American peers also haven't changed much in recent years, the test results showed. Read the full article

Online Youth Need Critical Thinking Skills
CNET News (July 21, 2009)
I both envy and worry about young people who are growing up in the age of the Internet. I envy them for their lifelong access to a media that's diversified enough to bring them news, information, and opinion from an enormous number of sources. There's something to be said for having access to thousands of media outlets. Unlike those of us who grew up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, young people who smartly use the Internet to consume news today don't have to worry about everything being filtered by a small, elite, and typically white male cadre of journalists working for one of only three broadcast networks or one or two local newspapers. And it's no longer a one-way street. Today's news consumers can also be producers thanks to blogs, social-networking sites, YouTube, podcasting, and microblogs like Twitter. Read the full article

Help Students Build Critical Thinking Skills
Bright Hub (May 18, 2009)
This article presents two activities to help students build their critical thinking skills. Using one's mind to "question everything" is a very important skill to hone during the high school years. It is extremely important to help students develop critical thinking skills to enable them to achieve success in college and future careers. So much of education is passive; students often spend too much time simply listening without being given a chance to develop their opinions and practice their critical thinking and speaking skills. Read the full article

Teachers Also Educate About The Real World
CNJ Online (May 16, 2009)
About this time of year it seems appropriate, and perhaps essential, to focus on lessons learned from educators. A new crop of graduates at varying levels will soon move to the next step, whether that step is first grade or the so-called “real world.” In truth, good teachers remind students the classroom is the “real world.” Such lessons are not always welcomed with open arms. Today’s educator seems to be required to do more with less. More disciplining with less options, more results with less time, and more nurturing with less context. These would probably not be complaints on the part of many teachers, simply a statement of facts. What teacher taught you that your best was expected, in a “no excuses” world? Read the full article

What We Learn From School Tests
The New York Times (Apr. 28, 2009)
The good news: the average reading and math scores for the nation’s 9- and 13-year-olds are up since the early 1970s. The bad news: the scores for 17-year-olds are unchanged in the same periods. Those were the findings, released on Tuesday, of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test considered to be the best measure of long-term trends in math and reading abilities. Among the other findings: black and Hispanic students at all levels scored much higher than they did three decades ago, but most of the gains were made in the 1970s and 1980s, and have stagnated in recent years. What does the report, which has mounds of other data, say about school reform and what improves public education the most?

Real Learning Demands The Long Road
Times Union (Apr. 26, 2009)
Enthralled with getting as much done in the least time possible, our quick-fix culture thrives on shortcuts. With graduations around the corner, here is a thought. When it comes to what graduations symbolize — learning — there are no shortcuts. Learning requires the long road of time, discipline, struggle and commitment. In his 1961 book, "The Image," the late Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Boorstin differentiates the "traveler" and the "tourist." The distinction aptly applies to learning. Traveling (from the French word that means travail) has to do with struggle. The traveler leaves the comfort of the familiar, faces risks and often encounters a troublesome, even perilous, journey. Yet in discovering new horizons, the benefits are immeasurable. Read the full article

How To Raise Our I.Q.
The New York Times (Apr. 15, 2009)
Poor people have I.Q.’s significantly lower than those of rich people, and the awkward conventional wisdom has been that this is in large part a function of genetics. After all, a series of studies seemed to indicate that I.Q. is largely inherited. Identical twins raised apart, for example, have I.Q.’s that are remarkably similar. They are even closer on average than those of fraternal twins who grow up together. If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong. Read the full article

You Do The Math: Explaining Basic Concepts Behind Math Problems Improves Children's Learning
Science Daily (Apr. 12, 2009)
New research from Vanderbilt University has found students benefit more from being taught the concepts behind math problems rather than the exact procedures to solve the problems. The findings offer teachers new insights on how best to shape math instruction to have the greatest impact on student learning. Read the full article

CWA Panel: The Value Of Teaching Critical Thinking
Daily Camera (Apr. 6, 2009)
Sanjoy Mahajan is convinced that memorizing multiplication tables is a waste of time. A professor at MIT teaching classes in math, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, Mahajan said most math education misses the point. Instead of drilling students on math facts, he said, educators need to teach students how numbers work "If people have a feeling for numbers, of the relative scale, they would have a much better chance of participating in the public process," he said. "People come out of college not able to reason. People are accepting all kinds of insanity and illogic." Mahajan is one of three participants scheduled to speak on today's "Teaching What to Think or How to Think" panel at the Conference on World Affairs. Read the full article

Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis?
Science Daily (Jan. 29, 2009)
As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles. Read the full article