Abegglen, Sandra, and Tom Burns, Sandra Sinfield. “Utilizing Critical Writing Exercises to Foster Critical Thinking in Diverse First-Year Undergraduate Students and Prepare Them for Life Outside University.” Double Helix, vol. 4, 2016, pp. 1-11.

Summary

In “Utilizing Critical Writing Exercises to Foster Critical Thinking in Diverse First-Year Undergraduate Students and Prepare Them for Life Outside University” Sandra Abegglen, Tom Burns, and Sandra Sinfield portray a non-traditional academic skill module called Becoming an Educationalist that they conduct for first year BA students at the equally non-traditional London Metropolitan University, an inner-city university with a diverse student base in terms of nationality, age, race etc. Through multimodal work of all kinds these teachers attempt to help their students in discovering/enhancing their unique academic identities. Throughout the various projects the students undertake the teachers continually reinforce critical thought in both student and teacher to create more of a collaborative environment where the teacher learns and question along with the student.

Bank of Quotes

“Social constructionism therefore concludes that no true perception of reality exists, but that people construct their knowledge of the world, their common ways of understanding it, between them” (2)

“Our students, for example, either think that we want them to swallow whole the new ideas that we offer them or think criticality necessitates disagreement, opposition and negativity as well as the need to judge or find fault” (3)

“[Paulo Freire] argued for pedagogy that instead treats the learner as a co-creator of knowledge—a more mutual approach to education that considers all people incomplete and allows them to strive to become more fully human” (3)

Paulo Freire: ““Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence; . . . to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects” (6)

Social constructionism: For students in this area, this means, to accept there are multiple and often contradictory realities—hence, social phenomena need to be critically analysed and questioned” (7)

“[W]e aim to prepare diverse students for a life outside University by making our classroom a paradigmatic, dialogic, emancipatory and engaging space, where our students are valued for the selves they already are as they become academic (7)

“For our Becoming an Educationalist module, this means to open up discussions about what is meant by criticality in education studies, and also to critically question writing exercises and assessments that ask students to provide a critical analysis of social phenomena” (8)

Analytical Reflection

This article did not necessarily teach me new ideas, but more ways to implement them, to build a classroom where critical thought is truly valued. I chose this article because I believe that the ability to think critically has been under siege in America since before I was born due to it being the most important quality in a citizenry that are capable of thinking for themselves. If my students leave my classrooms with one quality improved, the ability to think, read, and write critically stands heads and shoulders above all others.

I love the idea of students and teachers working on a more even playing field as the traditional Socratic method of lecture has often, it not always, been dull for me and quickly sleep inducing. Together as teachers and students we can not only be critical of the world, but the very idea of  what it means to be critical itself. This article also made me wish that Western was more diverse in all the ways they describe London Metropolitan University as being as I think that would go a long way in terms of creating an environment where divergent/critical thought was more valued.