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Teaching Learning Principles and Practices

Reflective Writing and Critical Thinking

Unit – 1

Sohail Sajid

Principal

New Life College of Nursing RN, DWA,DTA, Specialized in CHN, Post RN BScN

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Objectives

• Discuss thinking process, to understand the reflective observation.

• List and compare types of thinking • Define critical thinking• Discuss the components of critical thinking • Define reflection • Discuss types of reflection • Discuss process of reflection• Analyze the role of critical thinking in reflective

practice.

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Thinking

• Thinking means to use the mind in an active way to form connected ideas. In simple words, it means using knowledge that has been gathered in the mind.

• Types of Thinking provides a basic grounding in the psychology of thinking for students with little previous knowledge of cognitive psychology. This clear, well-structured overview explores the practical aspects and applications of everyday thinking, creative thinking, logical and scientific thinking, intelligent thinking and machine thinking. It also explore. It also explores 'failures of thinking', the biases and shortcuts that sometimes lead our thinking astray.

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Thinking Process

• Thought can refer to the ideas or arrangements of ideas that result from thinking, the act of producing thoughts, or the process of producing thoughts.

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Types of thinking

• Guilford JP has suggested that there are two distinct types of thinking.

• Convergent Thinking • Divergent thinking • Critical Thinking• Creative Thinking • Implementation thinking• Conceptual thinking• Innovative thinking

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Convergent Thinking

• In this type, we select a single correct answer or solution out of several alternatives.

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Divergent Thinking

• In this type, we generate many different solutions as possible. This type of thinking is quite often associated with critical thinking

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Critical Thinking

• According to Brook Field 1987, critical thinking is a process highly sensitive to context the emotional and rational dimension.

• In 1987 Kamp narrated, critical thinking is an attitude of inquiry, involving the use of facts, principles, theories, concepts judgments, interpretation and evaluation of arguments.

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Creative Thinking

• Creative thinking or original thinking is a way of generating ideas that can in some way be applied to the world. Creative thinking is able to break the bonds of traditional perception and habits and to bend the mind to new ideas and possibilities

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Implementation Thinking

• Implementation thinking is the ability to organize ideas and plans in a way that they will be effectively carried out.

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Conceptual Thinking

• Conceptual thinking consists of the ability to find connections or patterns between abstract ideas and then piece them together to form a complete picture.

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Innovative thinking

• Innovative thinking involves generating new ideas or new ways of approaching things to create possibilities and opportunities.

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Intuitive Thinking

• Intuitive thinking is the ability to take what you may sense or perceive to be true and, without knowledge or evidence, appropriately factor it in to the final decision.

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Components of Critical Thinking

• Every process or method is made of essential components, and critical thinking is no different. These components provide a structure to the process, which if incorporated, makes persuasive, truthful and supportive verbal communication possible to highly influence others’ points of view and message acceptance. The major components in critical thinking include:

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Components of Critical Thinking

• Perception• Assumptions• Emotion• Language• Argument• Fallacy• Logic, and problem solving.

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Perception

• Perception is considered to be the manner in which individuals receive, interpret and translate experiences. How individuals perceive things works to define how they think. Perception tends to provide individuals a significant filtering system.

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Assumptions

• Assumptions are central to critical thinking. They tend to be implied, where individuals are not always conscious of them. Assumptions are not always bad and often rest on the notion that some ideas are obvious. They tend to make individuals comfortable with their present beliefs, shutting out any alternatives.

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Emotion

• Trying to leave emotion out of almost anything is impossible as it is part of everything people do and think. Emotions are the number one cause of creating and putting into place thinking and operating barriers, which are continually used as a defense mechanism. Critical thinkers do not ignore or deny emotions but learn to accept and manage them.

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Language

• Thinking can’t be separated from language since both tend to have three primary purposes: to inform, persuade and explain. Language denotes (designates meanings) and connotes (implies or suggests something), and relies heavily on the use of metaphors. Metaphors are powerful language tools, which are able to influence how individuals think and problem solve. These figures of speech give great color and depth to one’s language. Metaphors can be short phrases, stories, or even poetic renditions and is a verbal message that listeners can easily interpret and visualize.

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Argument

• An argument is a claim, which is used to persuade that something is (or is not) true, or should (or should not) be done. An argument contains three basic elements: an issue, one or more reasons or premises, and one or more conclusions. An argument can be either valid or invalid based on its structure and only premises & conclusions are reached, which are either true or false.

• The goal of critical thinking is to implement a sound argument, which has both a valid or proper structure and contains true premises. This is where using logic makes all the difference.

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Fallacy

• Reasoning that doesn’t meet the criteria for being a sound argument is considered incorrect, or misleading. A misleading notion comes from incorrect patterns of reasoning. However, it does not always mean that the conclusion is false, but it does underscore the fact that the reasoning used to support it is not valid, based on true premises, or complete and does not include all necessary relevant information.

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Logic

• Logic incorporates two methods or types of reasoning: deductive and inductive. Deductive reasoning relies on facts, certainty, validity, truth of premises sound arguments and supported conclusions. Inductive reasoning relies on diverse facts, probability, generalizations, hypotheses, analogies and inductive strength.

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Problem Solving Through Logic

• A logic problem is like any problem. It requires:• Understanding the problem. In other words,

listen, read & take heed.• Identifying all of the “unknowns” as well as the

“known.”• Interpreting relationships between them (visual

aids can help).• Generating a strategy from steps two and three.• Applying the strategy and solving the problem.• Repeating the process if it is necessary.

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Reflection

• reflection in the context of learning is a generic term for those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciations”

• Boud 1985

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Reflection• The definition of a reflection is a thought or

writing about something, particular in the past, or what one sees when looking into a mirror or body of water.– An example of reflection is an article written

by an author discussing how he feels he has grown in the past year in his writing style.

– An example of reflection is what a girl sees in the mirror when she puts on her makeup.

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Reflection

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What is Reflective Practice?

• Ongoing process of examining and refining practice• Taking the opportunity to think about the work you

are doing, as you do it, or after you have done it.• ‘… looking back on an experience and making sense

of it to identify what to do in the future.’(Drew and Bingham, 2001)

‘…do something, think about it what you did, come to conclusions about what you did and plan to try again.’

(Kolb 1984)

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What is Reflective Practice?

The art of writing things down helps you to clarify your thoughts and emotions, to work out strategies, and to focus on your development and progress…’

(Cottrell, 2001)

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Types of Reflection

Schon 1987. Two types of reflection

Reflection in action ( think on your feet)

Reflection on action ( retrospective thinking )

Useful in unique thinking

Specially useful when know learnt theories don’t seems to apply

Schon D 1987. Educating the reflective practitioners.

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Process of Reflection

Getting Started: Methods of reflection• For both instructors and consultants, the process

of reflection (both reflection-in-action and meta-reflection) can be strengthened with conscious, deliberate attention to the method of observation. Observation focuses on concrete, observable phenomena that are specific rather than general, drawing from sensory experience. Observations focus on what actions and behavior people do rather than on who they are.

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Process of Reflection

• When written down, observations rely upon descriptive, concrete language rather than evaluative, abstract language. Ideally, observations include not only single instances of a particular action or behavior but patterns and repetitions.

• Along with observations, another method of reflection is interpretation. Interpretation focuses on the meaning and significance of what is being observed. Thus, interpretations are grounded in observable phenomena. 

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Process of Reflection

• Reflective practice requires that instructional consultants make this connection clear rather than hidden. For instance, instead of simply offering an interpretation of a behavior (“You were frustrated”), a reviewer would include observations of actions or behaviors that led to that interpretation (“You shake your head several times, paced back and forth, and then got very quiet when students did not stop talking.”)

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Reflective Learning

• Reflective learning is the process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern, prompt by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self, and which results in a changed conceptual perspective. We suggest that this process is central to understanding the experiential learning process.

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Analyze the role of critical thinking in reflective practice. cont…  

Role of Reflective Practice?• Improving your teaching practice• Learning from reflective practice•  Enhancing problem solving skills• Becoming a critical thinker• Making Decisions

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Analyze the role of critical thinking in reflective practice.

• Improving your own organizational skills• Managing personal change•  Acknowledging personal values•  Taking your own advice

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Improving your teaching practice

• If you take the time to reflect on your teaching, and reflect on how different parts of what you do work well, where aspects of your teaching can be improved, and how problems which arise could be solved, that is bound to help you to improve your teaching.

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Learning from reflective practice

• There is a good range of evidence that purposeful reflection helps ‘deep’ learning take place, and for you as a teacher, it will help you to make connections between different aspects of your teaching and what goes on around your teaching. Reflective practice will help you gain new learning and use it in your teaching.

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Enhancing problem solving skills

• When starting off with reflecting on your teaching you may tend to concentrate on problems which arise. By carefully and honestly considering and analyzing those problems, you will improve your own capacity to find solutions.

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Becoming a critical thinker

• Critical thinking is about ‘thinking well’, and ‘taking charge’ of your own thinking (Elder and Paul, 1994), and reflective practice will help you recognize and adjust what you think to take account of changes in circumstances, and by doing that help you to be better equipped to find solutions which work.

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Making Decisions

• As you reflect on your practice, you will find you need to make decisions about what to do (or not to do) next. You may well have a number of choices which you have to weigh up, and deciding which one to take can be difficult. If you regularly reflect on your teaching in depth, you are regularly going to come across the need to make decisions, but the results of your reflective practice will help you to make those decisions in a more informed, thoughtful and objective manner. 

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Improving your own organizational skills

• You will notice as this section progresses that the benefits of reflective practice can reaching into every aspect of your professional work as a teacher. If you are thinking carefully about what you are doing, identifying possible actions and choices, trying out solutions, and adjusting what you do to take account of the results, this involves a good deal of organization. By breaking down issues and problems into steps or stages, you will get better at organizing your time and your activity to concentrate on the important, ‘solution- focused’ actions.

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Managing Personal Change

• Working in education involves managing regular, rapid, and often confusing change, which can be one of the most difficult aspects of being a teacher. If you are using the techniques of reflective practice, which involves, calm, thoughtful, honest, critical and organized thinking and action, this should introduce a calming and less emotional response to that change. As reflective practice is itself focused on seeking positive improvements and solutions, managing change more effectively should take place.

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Acknowledging Personal Values• There will be things which take place within

your professional situation as a teacher which you will whole heartedly agree with, and others which will worry or alarm you. This is because they may agree or disagree with your own personal values such as what you believe in, and what you think is wrong or right. How these are affected by teaching will vary, but you will almost certainly come across major clashes of values as part of your work.

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Acknowledging personal values

• Reflective practice is an excellent way of acknowledging and recognizing that those values exist and have an effect, but which concentrates on helping you to choose approaches and actions which can help you to resolve those clashes without it adversely affecting the professional balance of your work as a teacher.

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Taking your own advice

• Teachers are often more critical of their own teaching than anyone else, and it could be possible for this to develop into an attitude about teaching which is negative and destructive. The techniques and approaches of reflective practice will place you in a position where you are an informed, positive agent in your own development and improvement and one where you can ‘take your own advice’ with a confidence that it is reflective, focused and informed advice.

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Recognizing emancipator benefits

• If you reflect on the nine benefits of reflective practice which have so far been described, you will clearly see that this is a model of practice which represents the teacher as someone with influence over their own teaching and their own destiny as a teacher. This is what is at the heart of reflective practice, and as such it should help considerably to free you from some of the burdens which can weigh teachers down, and refresh your confidence and your teaching.

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Role of Critical Thinking1.Improved attention and observation. 2. Knowledge of how to get your own point across more easily. 3. Skills of analysis that you can choose to apply in a variety of situations. 4. Higher test score on class and standardized tests. 5. Improved student understanding of their own thought process. 

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Role of Critical Thinking6. Improved student ability to transfer learned content skills to new applications. 7. Skilled decision making and problem solving. 8. Intelligent choices in human relationships. 9. Skilled public and personal choices. 10. How to write different level questions in three areas; Knowledge, Comprehension and Application 

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Any Question

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Thank you