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Critical Thinking Skills: Finding Compelling Ways to Teach Students to Think Analytically and Systematically in Political Science
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Critical Thinking: Teaching Students to Think
Analytically and Systematically about Political Science
Dr. Maria Rost Rublee Assistant Professor, Government and World Affairs University of Tampa I. Abstract Getting students to memorize facts is easy. Getting students to think through politically contentious issues in an analytical, systematic way is not. Yet while most political science professors prefer the second outcome, more often than we’d like, we end up settling for the first. This presentation is about finding compelling ways to engage students on critical thinking skills. I focus on two main issues: selection and presentation of materials. First, how do you narrow your choice of what critical thinking skills you will ask students to master? The topic could cover an entire semester, but most of us can only spare a week on the syllabus. I argue that by carefully selecting core aspects of critical thinking, which build on one another, you can arm students with a fair spread of analytical tools. Second, how do you present the material in a way that doesn’t leave students yawning? The term “critical thinking skills” is overused to the point of being meaningless for students; how do you re-infuse it with meaning? I use a two-track strategy. First, I give students examples that are immediately relevant to them, regardless of career field. When I illustrate that better critical thinking skills help them argue more persuasively, students engage more fully. Second, I give students many exercises and problems to help them work through the issues, so that a task such as understanding causation becomes second nature. My goal as a professor is for my students to value the product of critical thinking so highly that they will even question their own long-held assumptions. I look forward to feedback from my colleagues to help me refine or rethink my approach, to help take me further on that quest. II.
Selection of Critical Thinking Tools
While I am relatively new to full-time teaching, I am not new to teaching critical thinking skills. As a teaching assistant at the George Washington University, I helped teach students about a plethora of such skills: understanding and testing hypotheses; independent, intervening, and dependent variables; causation versus correlation; causal versus spurious correlations; necessary and sufficient variables; induction versus deduction; logical fallacies; and much more. Through several semesters as a teaching assistant, I gained a grasp on which of these topics the students actually used throughout the whole course. Based on this experience, I culled the list of critical thinking skills to include in my own courses. As an adjunct professor, I walked my students through understanding variables and hypotheses, induction and deduction, and necessary/sufficient. However, I realized that I had cut too much out: I often heard students falling into logical fallacies as they debated issues in class. I also
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| | Authors: Rublee, Maria Rost. |
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Critical Thinking: Teaching Students to Think
Analytically and Systematically about Political Science
Dr. Maria Rost Rublee
Assistant Professor, Government and World Affairs
University of Tampa
I. Abstract
Getting students to memorize facts is easy. Getting students to think through politically
contentious issues in an analytical, systematic way is not. Yet while most political science
professors prefer the second outcome, more often than we’d like, we end up settling for the first.
This presentation is about finding compelling ways to engage students on critical thinking skills.
I focus on two main issues: selection and presentation of materials. First, how do you narrow
your choice of what critical thinking skills you will ask students to master? The topic could
cover an entire semester, but most of us can only spare a week on the syllabus. I argue that by
carefully selecting core aspects of critical thinking, which build on one another, you can arm
students with a fair spread of analytical tools.
Second, how do you present the material in a way that doesn’t leave students yawning? The
term “critical thinking skills” is overused to the point of being meaningless for students; how do
you re-infuse it with meaning? I use a two-track strategy. First, I give students examples that
are immediately relevant to them, regardless of career field. When I illustrate that better critical
thinking skills help them argue more persuasively, students engage more fully. Second, I give
students many exercises and problems to help them work through the issues, so that a task such
as understanding causation becomes second nature.
My goal as a professor is for my students to value the product of critical thinking so highly that
they will even question their own long-held assumptions. I look forward to feedback from my
colleagues to help me refine or rethink my approach, to help take me further on that quest.
II.
Selection of Critical Thinking Tools
While I am relatively new to full-time teaching, I am not new to teaching critical thinking skills.
As a teaching assistant at the George Washington University, I helped teach students about a
plethora of such skills: understanding and testing hypotheses; independent, intervening, and
dependent variables; causation versus correlation; causal versus spurious correlations; necessary
and sufficient variables; induction versus deduction; logical fallacies; and much more. Through
several semesters as a teaching assistant, I gained a grasp on which of these topics the students
actually used throughout the whole course.
Based on this experience, I culled the list of critical thinking skills to include in my own courses.
As an adjunct professor, I walked my students through understanding variables and hypotheses,
induction and deduction, and necessary/sufficient. However, I realized that I had cut too much
out: I often heard students falling into logical fallacies as they debated issues in class. I also
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