Abstract
CUHK aims to enhance students’ global competitiveness by internationalizing its curriculum such that it is globally oriented, locally grounded, and culturally inclusive. Critical thinking as the core competency of the 21st century has become one of the most desirable learning outcomes globally and at this university. Then how can we pedagogically cultivate and evaluate the invisible and crucial cognitive thinking in our teaching and learning? Combining the University’s Aligned Curriculum Model, its conceptual framework on Internationalization of Curriculum (IoC), and Paul and Elder’s (2008) Critical Thinking table, this project is to identify and develop some effective pedagogical practices on critical thinking with the teachers in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Specifically, it investigates how, and with what challenges, teachers infuse, cultivate, and evaluate students’ critical thinking in their lesson plan design, pedagogical activities selection, teaching and evaluation. By sharing pedagogical practices among colleagues both online and through workshops, we hope to reach a shared understanding of critical thinking as a concept and practice, provide collegial support to each other, build a more cohesive community of practice (CoP) at the institutional level, and enhance teachers’ and students’ critical thinking awareness across the entire university.
Brief write-up
Project Objectives
CUHK aims to enhance students’ global competitiveness, say, critical thinking, by internationalizing its curriculum such that it is globally oriented, locally grounded, and culturally inclusive. Combining the University’s Aligned Curriculum Model, its conceptual framework on Internationalization of Curriculum (IoC), and Paul and Elder’s (2008) Critical Thinking table, this project is to identify and develop some effective critical thinking pedagogical practices with the teachers in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, hoping to enhance a critical pedagogical consciousness among colleagues.
Activities, process and outcomes, and deliverables and evaluation
Between January 2018 – January 2019, the project has interviewed seven colleagues on their viewpoints of critical thinking, observed their teaching, and identified seven critical thinking pedagogical practices.
This research project finds all the seven teachers treat critical thinking as a higher-order skill that needs to be incorporated into their teaching at CUHK as a gesture to internationalize their curriculum and teaching. However, they feel the concept of critical thinking is broad and vague, and they usually don’t explicitly share with their students how the class activities are designed to cultivate their critical thinking. It is thus suggested that the University run a series of seminars on critical thinking as a generic and subject-specific skill and build a platform to share effective critical thinking pedagogies for teachers across campus.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
Research output includes a critical thinking vocabulary, a ppt report of teachers’ pedagogical practices on critical thinking cultivation, and a summative video-clip to introduce the pedagogies, all to be shared with students and colleagues through Blackboard and the university “Teaching and Learning Innovation Expo 2019”.
