MAGAZINES & JOURNALS
A glance at the September/October issue of "Change":
Teaching students to think
Professors should do more to teach their students to think,
because thinking fosters students' intellectual, moral, and
political development, argues Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, a
professor of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at the Union
Institute & University, in Ohio.
Thinking in an open-ended way, as distinct from exercising
deduction or rational deliberation, "is neither coerced nor
coercive," she writes. "It is exploratory, suggestive," and it
does not aim to prove any specific claim. Rather, by being
"open-minded, reflective, challenging," she says, students can
question creatively, not just assert from preconceptions, and
can listen to many sides of issues and become "capable of making
sensitive distinctions that hold differences in play rather than
dividing in order to exclude."
In classes she offers on thinking, Ms. Minnich has students
retrace their own thought processes, because that invariably
leads to fresh insights. Often these are of a moral kind, she
writes, because thinking lays the groundwork for, and rehearses,
"the freedom of mind we require to exercise discerning judgment
while living among people who differ from us." She also asks
students to think about others -- like Plato and Freud, for
example -- arrived at their ideas. Her goal is to encourage her
students "to use their intellectual discipline to reflect on
their own and others' lives," not just learn facts.
Thinking of that kind can be evaluated, she notes. She gauges,
for example, how well students, in their writing, think for
themselves rather than follow rules and conventions; anticipate
other perspectives; and use "the arts of rhetoric" to speak to
potential readers. She also examines whether students display
such qualities as originality, appeal to readers' emotions, and
show "reflexivity," in the sense that she can "see the author
thinking about his/her own thinking as it unfolds."
The article is not online. Information about the journal is
available at http://www.aahe.org/change/
Norman A. Stahl
Professor and Chair
Literacy Education
GA 147
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
Phone: (815) 753-9032
FAX: (815) 753-8563
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