Critical thinking in criminology: critical reflections on learning and teaching

Fostering critical thinking abilities amongst students is one component of preparing them to navigate uncertain and complex social lives and employment circumstances. One conceptualisation of critical thinking, valuable in higher education, draws from critical theory to promote social justice and redress power inequities. This study explored how students’ critical thinking developed in a discrete core unit of criminology. Second and third year students were invited to participate in the research. Participants wrote critical reflections on how their thinking about crime and criminal justice had developed throughout the unit. Analysis of responses indicated that certain topics were salient to students, offering a way to engage them in deeper thinking. Students’ critical reflections showed evidence of personally relevant meaning-making, including the development of more nuanced thinking about crime and justice, and more compassionate rationales for aspiring to careers within the field. Implications for learning and teaching critical thinking in criminology are discussed.     

批判性思维教学在我国法律硕士教育中的误用及矫正

批判性思维教学在我国法律硕士教育中存在被误用的情形,这不仅导致学生批判性思维能力低下,还瓦解了学生对法律的信仰。批判性思维教学在我国法律硕士教育中异化成为批判而批判的教学,是受特定的社会条件和一些主观因素共同作用而形成的。矫正批判性思维教学在我国法律硕士教育中的误用,首先需要考虑法律人思维的保守性,其次是法学教师应真正领会批判性思维的核心内涵,避免为批判而批判的形式主义。     

Developing Empathy Through Design Thinking in Elementary Art Education

Past research has suggested incorporating design thinking in upper elementary art education helps students develop what are known as the Four Cs: collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. As an instructional strategy, design thinking focuses on empathy first and provides a structure for students to work through real-world, complex problems in small groups. This exploratory qualitative case study examined the effects of teaching empathy through design thinking in upper elementary art education. Eight teachers participated, representing public, private, charter, and independent school settings. Data included student observations, interviews, and journal reflections. An analysis of findings resulted in three conclusions: (a) design thinking can foster the development of empathy in preadolescents, (b) art education curricula at the upper elementary level can include design thinking, and (c) design thinking is a valid strategy for teaching empathy. Including empathy within art education promotes a classroom culture that is respectful and understanding of others, with students becoming advocates of justice, equity, and inclusion. As society continues to struggle with bullying, physical violence, and social unrest, teaching empathy has the potential to change how students relate to each other in the classroom, and, ultimately, in the world at large.     

Preparing Students for Social Action in a Social Justice Education Course: What Works?

The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions of how the curriculum and teaching strategies in a social justice education course prepared them for social action engagement. Past studies using a similar approach to teaching about social justice issues did not include student interviews. Students’ perspectives can shed light on how experiences in a social justice education course prepared them to challenge social oppression and work toward equity in their daily lives. Six students were interviewed one semester after they completed a social justice education course. Findings indicated teaching strategies (e.g., experiential activities) that included students’ lived experiences also increased their personal awareness, empathy, confidence, and knowledge about tools for social action. These teaching strategies were identified more often than content as key in preparing students to take action. Classroom implications are discussed.     

Teaching Globalization Issues to Education Students: What's the Point?

We argue that teaching the dynamics of globalization to education students is an important aspect of teaching for social justice and for the development of critical awareness, thinking, and sensitivity. We begin this position paper by briefly characterizing globalization and exploring a range of approaches to teaching this topic. We then describe some of the challenges and risks of teaching globalization issues. We reflect on the responses of our students, looking at such issues as guilt, paralysis, disconnection, fear, pity, and anger. We end by describing how teaching about globalization can support our broader goals as critical educators, which include helping students to disrupt commonsense understandings, to unlearn dominant ideologies, to think systemically, and to create new habits of learning.     

高职美术基础教育中创新思维培养方式探究

高职美术基础教育中加强创新思维的有效培养,响应了新时期中国特色社会主义推出的五育并举和加强学生综合素质教育的相关战略政策."解放天性"、"拓展思维",在美术基础教学中融入相关教学理念、创新教学思维.高职美术基础教育教师应当推动课堂教学与社会生活、自然世界的贴近,将理论教学与实践教学相结合,帮助学生将内化的灵感转变成形象化的思维.培养学生的创新思维,需要高职美术教师积极创新和转变教学策略、教学模式,深入分析当前教育教学的基本状况,提出针对性培养学生创新思维的方法策略.     

Tools of inaction: the impasse between teaching social issues and creating social change

Within the field of teacher education, increased emphasis has been placed on social justice education (SJE). This qualitative study examined a group of beginning teachers who voluntarily participated in a social justice critical inquiry project (CIP). The findings indicate that while many of them were successful at teaching social issues, they provided few to no opportunities for their students to engage in social action and they themselves did not participate in activism. To explain this, the participants used the following four tools of inaction: tools of substitution, postponement, displacement, and dismissal. These tools relieved the tension of not taking action and allowed the participants to postpone, justify, or redirect the responsibility of becoming active in struggling for sustainable social change. Understanding the use of these tools can help teacher educators to understand the process of development of social justice educators.     

10 Content-Area Literacy Strategies for Art,Mathematics, Music,and Physical Education

Content-area literacy involves the use of research-based learning strategies that help students effectively and efficiently gain content knowledge. Its use is fundamental to all content areas, not just to those that rely heavily on printed materials. One of the major goals of content-area instruction is to produce critical thinkers and problem solvers, and content-area literacy is a tool that teachers use to help students achieve this goal. Through this author's teaching experiences, she (Ming) learned about literacy strategies that are useful in art, mathematics, music, and physical education. Thus, in this article, she discusses the importance of using literacy in content-area instruction. Specifically, she talks about how literacy strengthens students’ language arts skills, shares 10 content-area literacy strategies that can be integrated into the four content areas, and provides specific examples of what they would look like in each area.     

Write Now! Using reflective writing beyond the humanities and social sciences

Writing is an important teaching and learning tool that fosters active and critical thinking. There are multiple pressures for disciplines outside the humanities and social sciences to integrate writing in their courses. The shift from teaching solely discipline-specific skills to including writing in a meaningful way can be a daunting process. An instructor and education reference librarian at a public, four-year research university infused an urban planning course with reflective writing exercises. The collaboration proved effective in increasing students’ perceived writing abilities and active thinking via increased immediacy, frequency of writing and active learning.     

Critical thinking and the disciplines reconsidered

This paper argues that Moore's specifist defence of critical thinking as ‘diverse modes of thought in the disciplines’, which appeared in Higher Education Research & Development, 30(3), 2011, is flawed as it entrenches relativist attitudes toward the important skill of critical thinking. The paper outlines the critical thinking debate, distinguishes between ‘top-down’, ‘bottom-up’ and ‘relativist’ approaches and locates Moore's account therein. It uses examples from one discipline-specific area, namely, the discipline of Literature, to show that the generalist approach to critical thinking does not ‘leave something out’ and outlines why teaching ‘generic’ critical thinking skills is central to tertiary education, teaching and learning, and employment opportunities for students. The paper also defends the assessment of critical thinking skills.     

论高校美术教育中创造思维能力的培养

高校美术教育是素质教育的重要组成部分,是艺术专业的一门必修课。当前我国高校美术教育存在的问题如何解决,怎样运用想象教学去培养学生的创造性思维能力,并营造培养创造性思维能力的环境,为我国培养一批又一批高素质、有创新意识和创造能力、社会急需的美术实用人才显得尤为突出和重要。     

Portfolio Development in a Secondary Teaching Credential Art Programme

This paper describes portfolio development by pre-service art teachers in a secondary teaching programme at California State University, Los Angeles, USA. A portfolio reflects knowledge, skills, and beliefs about teaching in general and teaching art specifically. It displays one’s learning experiences as they are collected, organized, and refined to provide a critical framework and rich portrayal of one’s best work. The article addresses the questions of what a portfolio in art education is, what its goals are, how one creates a portfolio, how one assesses portfolios once they are developed, what the issues and challenges surrounding the use of portfolios as assessment tools are, and finally, some likely future developments of portfolio assessment in teacher education.     

Critically Teaching Criticality?: Modeling Social and Pedagogical Inquiry with Literary Texts

Within US teacher preparation programs, critical pedagogy and a desire for social change can lead teacher educators to prioritize transformation of prospective teachers’ beliefs through self-reflection. In pursuit of effective critical pedagogies, teacher educators also need to examine their own practices and beliefs. This self-study, a manifestation of teaching as inquiry, reframes evaluations of teaching away from what students do toward what teachers do. Here I undertake a reflexive examination of my own recursive practice as a teacher educator in children’s literature. Drawing upon a complex notion of teaching and learning, I argue that student learning outcomes are unpredictable, and as a result, successful teacher education should model self-inquiry as a vital part of teaching. Findings show that teaching choices (and omissions) in response to students’ responses led to unintended outcomes that undermined my motivations. I conclude that teacher educators’ self-inquiry and reflection in broader social contexts offers access to critical ways of thinking that underlie their work toward developing similar capacities among their prospective teacher students.     

From Our Readers: The Truth about Boston School Desegregation

Abstract

The question of how to teach effectively from a clear social justice perspective that empowers, encourages students to think critically, and models social change has been a consistent challenge for progressive educators. This article intends to shed light on this issue by demonstrating how educators can utilize a social justice pedagogical lens to treat their content in ways that meet their commitment to empowering education. Specifically, this article clarifies what social justice education is by introducing readers to five key components useful in teaching from a social justice perspective: tools for content mastery, tools for critical thinking, tools for action and social change, tools for personal reflection, and tools for awareness of multicultural group dynamics. While no pedagogical approach is a panacea, this approach offers readers five specific areas to focus on in their teaching and their efforts at working toward social justice in their classrooms.     

Art and Design Education in the Ecology of Care

In the light of challenges arising from contemporary issues such as inclusivity, sustainability and justice, the connections between art, design and caring appears to be pertinent. What role can artists and designers play in the ecology of care? How can we lead art and design students to connect and lend their creative skills to care needs? Drawing on the ethics of care and a relational view on health this article highlights the various teaching approaches and initiatives introduced at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, to support and guide students to realise various art and design for health and wellbeing projects that provide opportunities for students to part take in ecology of care using their creative skills. Although creative explorations at the intersection of art, design and caring is still at an early stage, outcomes from this ongoing effort have been encouraging in response to the shifting social needs to create a more inclusive and flourishing society in Singapore.     

高职英语教学培养学生思辨能力的策略研究

目前高等职业技术院校英语教学严重缺乏对学生思辨能力的培养,文章从思辨能力的内涵出发,探讨在英语课堂中培养高职生思辨能力的意义,并结合教学实践提出培养其思辨能力的有效策略。     

Engaging with issues of emotionality in mathematics teacher education for social justice

This article focuses on the relationship between social justice, emotionality and mathematics teaching in the context of the education of prospective teachers of mathematics. A relational approach to social justice calls for giving attention to enacting socially just relationships in mathematics classrooms. Emotionality and social justice in teaching mathematics variously intersect, interrelate or interweave. An intervention, using creative action methods, with a cohort of prospective teachers addressing these issues is described to illustrate the connection between emotionality and social justice in the context of mathematics teacher education. Creative action methods involve a variety of dramatic, interactive and experiential tools that can promote personal and group engagement and embodied reflection. The intervention aimed to engage the prospective teachers with some key issues for social justice in mathematics education through dialogue about the emotionality of teaching and learning mathematics. Some of the possibilities and limits of using such methods are considered.     

合作学习和大学生批判性思维品质的培养

随着我国社会经济文化的不断发展．在面对不断出现的新问题时,大学生们缺乏分析问题和解决问题的能力．凸显出学生批判性思维的缺失．而批判性思维品质对于学生批判性思维的形成具有关键作用。合作学习作为我国现阶段教学组织形式改革的主流．对学生新的思维方式的形成有一定作用。所以,探讨如何在合作学习的过程中培养学生的批判性思维品质．对学生批判性思维的形成有重要意义。     

互动模式在高校美术教学中的应用

新课改的推广,有效地推动着对学生开展素质教育。作为高校的美术教育,也面临着新的改革。其教学模式改革将更加适应现代教育发展的必然趋势。传统的“填鸭式”教学模式限制了学生的创造性思维,不利于学生的全面发展。互动教学模式主要以学生为q-心,启发学生造性思维,调动学生学习的积极性,从而培养学生形成良好的自主学习习惯。可以说,互动教学模式是新课改理念下较为理想的教学方式。能够有效的活跃课堂氛围;激活学生对美术的学习动机,使美术课堂教学达到事半功倍的效果。     

课堂教学管理艺术形成探微

确立现代教学与现代管理的观念，掌握基本的教学管理方法是形成课堂教学管理艺术的基础。现代教学管理观念包括学生是教学主体的观念、教学管理是服务的观念、教学管理创造与维护教学活动的观念等。教师应学会使用自我管理、分组控制、激励等现代管理方法。教学管理艺术形成的内容包括沟通与化解矛盾艺术的形成、表扬与批评艺术的形成等。在形成化解矛盾艺术的过程中。教师应学会使用分析问题。区分矛盾，“制造”矛盾，让学生解决矛盾的能力。为了形成表扬的艺术．教师应掌握表扬的方法，在教学实践中应学会表扬的设计。批评手段的有效使用对教学的顺利进行．学生学习任务的完成有十分重要的意义。掌握批评原则、学会批评设计有利于形成批评艺术。