1
Critical Thinking
in the Oxford Tutorial
by Rush Cosgrove
Thesis submitted to the University of Oxford in partial
fulfillment for the degree of M.Sc. in Higher Education
Trinity Term, 2009
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Table of Contents
Abstract…..…………………………….……….…………..……………………..4
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………5
Introduction…………………….…………………………….…………….……6
Chapter One: Literature Review…….……………………………………….9
1.1 – The Oxford Tutorial………..…………………………………….….9
1.1.1 – History: The Roots of Tutorial Pedagogy……….……………..9
1.1.2 – Theory: The Idea of the Tutorial……….……………....……..11
1.1.3 – Practice: State of the Field………………………...…………13
1.2 – Critical Thinking……………………………….…………………...17
1.2.1 – History: The Roots of Critical Thinking……………………...17
1.2.2 – Theory: The Idea of Critical Thinking……………….……….19
1.2.3 – Practice: Critical Thinking in Use……….…………………...22
1.3 – The Oxford Tutorial and Critical Thinking……………….………...24
Chapter Two: Central Research Questions………….…………...……….26
Chapter Three: Methodology…………………….……….…………………29
3.1 – Why these Methods?.............................................................................29
3.2 – Why these People?................................................................................32
3.3 – Why these Questions?...........................................................................33
3.4 – Trials and Triumphs…………………………………………………..33
3.5 – Data Analysis and Evaluation……..…………………………….……..36
Chapter Four: Tutors’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking in the Tutorial……………..…………………………………….………38
4.1 – Critical Thinking as Generally Conceived by Tutors…….…………...…39
4.2 – Targeting Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities……….………………..41
4.3 – Criteria Tutors Use to Evaluate Student Work and Thinking………..…..44
4.4 – Critical Thinking Often Implicit Rather than Explicit in Tutorials…...….46 4.5 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character
(Traits, Dispositions, and Habits of Thought)………………………………..49
4.6 – Conclusions…………………………………………………………..51
Chapter Five: Students’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking
in the Tutorial………………………………...………………………..53
5.1 – Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities………………………………….54
5.2 – Critical Thinking Often Implicit Rather than Explicit in Tutorials….……55 5.3 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character
(Traits, Dispositions, and Habits of Thought)…………………………….….60
5.4 – Conclusions……………………………….…………...……………..62
Chapter Six: Observations…………………………………...………………63
6.1 – Conclusions…………………………….…………………………….65
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Chapter Seven: Summary, Conclusions, and Questions…………….…..66
7.1 – Results from Tutor Interviews………………….……………………...66
7.2 – Results from Student Interviews……….………………………………67
7.3 – Hypotheses and Questions…………………………………………….68
References…………………………………………..……………….………….72
Appendix A: Interview Questions..……………………………….………...77
Appendix B: Interview/Observation Schedule,
Transcript Information……………………………………..………..78
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Abstract
Critical thinking is widely lauded as one of the most vital educational goals today.
Oxford’s tutorial system, in turn, is a historically celebrated and influential
approach to teaching. Yet, to date, little is known with regards to which critical
thinking skills and traits, if any, are being systematically fostered by teachers and
learned or developed by students in the tutorial. The primary purpose of this study
is to break ground in this important and under-researched area. It is a small scale
exploratory study based on qualitative interviews with three tutors and seven
students, including four tutorial observations within the Department of Politics.
The tentative results show that, with regards to critical thinking, tutors are
primarily concerned with students’ ability to clarify central questions, define key
terms, and question important assumptions within the writing of their tutorial
essays. Participating tutors seem less focused on students’ approach to evaluating
important intellectual treatises or constructs, with the manner in which they
understand and learn new ideas, or with their development of intellectual traits of
mind, all of which tutors seemed to believe would develop naturally.
Students, for their part, articulated their approach to writing essays, including
clarifying central questions, defining key terms, and questioning important
assumptions. They expressed no clear approach to intellectual evaluation or the
understanding of new ideas, nor did they appear to have deeply considered the
intellectual traits they considered most important. The main provisional
hypothesis is that students appear to internalize that which is explicit and required,
and to largely miss those aspects which are more implicit and optional. This
suggestion, if justified, has implications for tutorial pedagogy.
5
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to express my profound appreciation to my
supervisor, Geoffrey Walford, who has generously contributed much of his
valuable time to this project. His comments and suggestions made it possible to
sharpen the epistemological strength and empirical defensibility of this study, and
contributed greatly to its overall professionalism.
I would also like to thank the tutors and students who donated their time and
thoughts to this project. It goes without saying that the study would not have been
possible without them, but their openness and genuine interest made the process
enjoyable and insight-filled. Any critique of them in what follows is intended to
be constructive and not personal.
Finally, I would like to thank those friends and family who contributed their time,
energy, and wisdom to this work (most especially the rabbit and the owl). When I
was stuck in a rut you were there. When I was lost in a fog you helped clear the
air.
Needless to say, the final responsibility, together with the burden of any
shortcomings, rests solely upon the author.
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Introduction
Critical Thinking is one of the most lauded goals in education today. Paul
Ramsden, a leading voice in UK higher education, concludes that teachers from
every subject, though they may use varying language, seek to foster the
development of critical thinking (Ramsden, 2003, 22-25). This view is supported
by the Dearing (1997) and North (1997) Reports, which suggest that
undergraduates should develop skills such as “learning how to learn” and “critical
analysis.” In a meta-analysis focused on faculty perceptions and practice,
Gardiner (1995) found that of 40,000 faculty members included in the study, “97
percent of the respondents indicated the most important goal of undergraduate
education is to foster students’ ability to think critically (p. 8).” Gardiner’s
findings coincide with the results of a random study (Paul, et. al. 1997) of 38 US
public colleges and universities and 28 private ones focused on the question: To
what extent are faculty teaching for critical thinking? The study included faculty
from colleges and universities across California, and encompassed prestigious
universities such as Stanford, Cal Tech, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the
California State University System. The overwhelming majority of faculty in this
study claimed critical thinking to be a primary objective of their instruction
(89%).
The Oxford Tutorial is often viewed as a vehicle for developing critical
thinking. This is exemplified throughout Oxford course handbooks (which
frequently project that students should learn skills of “critical argumentation”,
“critical evaluation”, etc.). It is also exemplified in Palfreyman’s The Oxford
Tutorial (2008), in which many dons express conceptions of the tutorial based on
teaching students to think for themselves, to develop their own analyses, to
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construct their own arguments, to critically evaluate the reasoning of respected
authors in their field, etc., all of which are central components in critical thinking
(Ennis, 1995; McPeck, 1981, Nosich 2009; Passmore, 1972; Paul and Elder, 2002;
Peters, 1974; Scheffler, 1993; Scriven, 1997; Siegel, 1990).
Indeed, it would be peculiar were critical thinking not understood as a
essential to the tutorial. One cannot imagine an Oxford don refuting the
importance of critical thinking by saying something like: “I’m not interested in
the development of critical thinking in my students. I don’t want them to learn
how to ask and pursue significant questions in the field. I discourage them from
learning how to gather and evaluate information in order to answer those
questions, nor do I wish them to develop their own conclusions as a result. I like
my students to be conformists, to always go along with the mainstream views. I
want them to uncritically accept my views or those of other authority figures.”
Such an attitude would be nonsensical. The implication is clear, whether explicitly
or implicitly understood by tutors: critical thinking is an integral part of successful
tutorials.
But what do we know, directly and conclusively, about the tutorial system,
how it works, and whether it is actually fostering critical reasoning?
Unfortunately, very little. Robert Beck remarks “our admiration for the Oxford
tutorial rests on belief only…not on hard evidence” (Beck, 2008, 1); and Paul
Ashwin decries the “paucity of research into the Oxbridge Tutorial systems”
(Ashwin, 2005, 632). Indeed, except for historical accounts of the university in
general, we have only the recent studies of Ashwin (2005, 2008) and Ashwin and
Trigwell (2003), Moore’s The Tutorial System and its Future (1968), Beck’s “The
Pedagogy of the Oxford Tutorial” and Palfreyman’s The Oxford Tutorial (2008).
8
Only Ashwin and Trigwell’s studies are scientific in orientation, and none
explicitly or directly focuses on critical thinking.
Thus the study I have conducted is situated in a relatively rare and
privileged position: it is focused on a paradigm (the Oxford Tutorial) which is
highly important in and of itself, highly influential in the field of higher education
in general, and yet has been researched only superficially. This study is centered
on a topic (critical thinking) which is internationally esteemed and increasingly
embedded in the language of education from primary to postgraduate level, which
is assumed to be occurring in the Oxford Tutorial, and yet which has never been
researched directly in terms of the tutorial.
This study, then, is best seen as breaking ground rather than a finished
product; raising questions rather than coming to definitive conclusions;
exploratory rather than evaluative. Its importance is, to my mind, unquestionable.
Its generalizability must be explored in future studies. The purpose of this study is
simply to highlight the diversity of tutorial strategies for fostering critical
thinking; it is certainly not to evaluate or judge the efficacy of individual tutors,
subject departments, or the university as a whole. With a study of such a small
sample size, any notions of definitive generalizability are, of course,
inappropriate. Rather, I encourage readers to consider the extent to which any of
the ideas make sense in terms of your own experience, and whether the tentative
insights which emerge as a result of this study might provide new ideas to
consider with regards to the nature of critical thinking, the Oxford tutorial, and
their interconnections; either for general understanding, discussion, pedagogy, or
in any other direction.
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Chapter One: Literature Review
There is a clear historical, theoretical, and practical link between the
tutorial and critical thinking which I will here endeavor to relate. Before putting
the pieces together, however, I will attempt to disentangle the two in order to
focus on the core meanings of each. One important point to note here is that both
the tutorial and critical thinking are highly complex and variegated constructs
which exist both as abstract theoretical concepts (which are mostly agreed upon)
and as individual practical manifestations (which are often divergent).
1.1 – The Oxford Tutorial
1.1.1 – History: Roots of the Tutorial
Will G. Moore wrote the first treatise on the tutorial in 1968, and
complained that as the history of the tutorial had never been written (and still
hasn’t to this day), many important questions have remained unanswered and, in
some cases, largely unasked. However, in the two existing attempts to briefly
sketch its history, Moore (1968) and Markham (1967) argue that the idea of the
tutorial was first practiced in embryonic form by Socrates. While Moore is quick
to point out that the tutorial as it exists today is a distinct entity, he refers to the
tutorial quite often as a “Socratic method” and maintains that its core features (e.g.
eliciting and drawing students’ ideas out into the open; leading the student through
questioning to new discoveries; exposing contradictions, inconsistencies, or weak
points in the student’s arguments and beliefs, etc.) and the preference for process
over product or, as Moore puts it, “the why over the what” (Moore, 30), parallel
the Socratic dialogues.
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Mallet, in A History of the University of Oxford writes that “the
beginnings of the tutorial system are to be found early in Oxford history. The view
that the senior members of a college had some responsibility for the conduct and
instruction of their younger colleagues was a natural development of the collegiate
idea” (Mallet, volume iii, 57). However Moore argues that these “tutors” were
initially primarily concerned with the moral and financial activities of their
charges, not with their instruction (Moore, 2).
For hundreds of years and into the 19th
century the role of the tutor
continued to change, yet was still very different from what it is today. Green
(1961), the historian of Lincoln College, writes that “It is not very clear what the
College tutor in the 18th
century was expected to teach outside the lectures in Hall
where he presided over disputations or commented on the Greek Testament” (p
131). If Green is accurate, it seems that tutors today are far more clear as to their
purpose than tutors of the 18th
century.
Moore argues that the tutorial as it exists today began to take shape in the
19th
century and resulted primarily from both the “sense of vocation and purpose
[of the Tractarians and Oxford Movement], which was needed to defeat the
indolence of the eighteenth century”1 and the “breadth of view and the respect for
individual liberty” of dons such as Pattison and Hawkins (Moore, 7-9).
It is generally acknowledged that the pioneers of the new method were
Benjamin Jowett and his colleagues at Balliol (Davis and Hunt, 1963; Markham,
1975; Moore, 1968). Their approach was highly Socratic in nature. As Moore puts
it, “tutorials [of the 18th
century] were probably mostly lectures. Those given by
Jowett’s successors seem to have been in the nature of informal and inspired
1 For an interesting and enlightening picture of such indolence, see Tom Brown at Oxford.
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conversations” (Moore, 6). The close connection to Socrates is perhaps not a
coincidence, as Jowett was a classical scholar whose translations of all of Plato’s
works (and therefore all of the Socratic dialogues) fill five volumes and over
2,000 pages (Jowett, 1892).
1.1.2 – Theory: The Idea of the Tutorial
Will G. Moore sums up the essence of the tutorial quite usefully in what is
probably the first attempt at a comprehensive description of the Oxbridge tutorial
system:
“At its most simple, the tutorial is a weekly meeting of the
student with the teacher to whom he is specially
committed…and includes…a weekly essay, which is
presented orally, listened to by the tutor and discussed
immediately. The whole process…takes up little more than
an hour.
“It opens with a few questions as to how the student has
‘got on’ with his subject…then the reading, interrupted at
will by the tutor, and at times by the student, followed by
perfunctory praise or thanks and then detailed by comments,
which the student is free to take down or not as he
prefers…the final minutes are devoted to suggestions and
hints about next week’s subject and the session ends when
the next pupil knocks on the door…” (Moore, 1968, 15-16).
This summary thus illuminates the fundamental process inherent in the
idea of the tutorial. The actual details of this process in everyday practice can
often be quite different. Moore points out a few of these variations: that tutorials
commonly involve more than one student; science tutorials are often focused on
problems rather than essays; sometimes the essay is not read aloud but merely
summarized; sometimes the student produces no essay at all; the tutor may
lecture; the student may snore (Moore, 18-19).
Here are some of the varied ways in which insightful tutors and scholars
conceive of the purpose, aims, and method of the tutorial:
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• To develop “mental flexibility,” to have students “think for themselves,”
“to actively consider ways to evaluate evidence and make connections
among diverse pieces of evidence” (Beck, 2008).
• “It is a skeptical method using initial inquiry, criticism, theory analysis,
and comparison;” development of “metacognitive powers [which] refer to
the development of a student’s so called executive or active control in
thinking or reasoning about thinking and thinking about how one learns
(Flavell, 1979 in Beck, 2008),
• “improvement of students’ arguments” (Sabri, 2007),
• having a student know “why the tutor thinks it is a good essay…to
understand what makes a good piece of work a good piece of work”
(Mayr-Harting, 2006),
• “an attitude which sees the human condition as an endless process of
discovery…re-examination, revision of what we think we have
acquired…certainties no longer appear certain, wisdom is denounced as
treason, all is put into question and there is Unwertung aller Werte, a
revaluation of all values.” (Moore, 1968, 31-32)
One need only look at official course materials and the many dons who
contributed to Palfreyman’s The Oxford Tutorial (2008) for more examples. The
conclusion is clear: the Oxford tutorial seeks to develop inquisitive and
independent minds capable of complex problem solving through deep engagement
with significant ideas.
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1.1.3 – Practice: State of the Field
So what do we know, directly and conclusively, about the tutorial system,
how it works, and whether it is actually producing the goods it purports to?
Unfortunately, very little. Robert Beck remarks “our admiration for the Oxford
tutorial rests on belief only…not on hard evidence” (Beck, 2008, 1); and Paul
Ashwin decries the “paucity of research into the Oxbridge Tutorial systems”
(Ashwin, 2005, 632). Indeed, except for historical accounts of the university in
general, we have only the recent studies of Ashwin (2005, 2008) and Ashwin and
Trigwell (2003), Moore’s The Tutorial System and its Future (1968), Beck’s “The
Pedagogy of the Oxford Tutorial” and Palfreyman’s The Oxford Tutorial (2008).
Only Ashwin and Trigwell’s studies are scientific, and none explicitly or directly
focuses on critical thinking.
And what does this literature tell us? Putting aside the historical accounts
and the work of Ashwin and Trigwell for the moment, Moore’s treatise, Beck’s
essay, and Palfreyman’s anthology are, quite clearly and openly, biased defenses
of the tutorial. They highlight the best of the tutorial, but their silence regarding
potential problematics drowns out other voices which are equally important in
attempting to construct a fuller vision.
For example, Palfreyman introduces his book by describing it as one
which “brings together experienced Oxford Dons from across the academic
disciplines who discuss their personal belief in and commitment to the tutorial as
an utterly essential element in all Oxford’s degree subjects (emphasis in original,
Palfreyman, 2002, 1).” Moore’s loyalties are also clear. Though he recognizes the
fact that external pressures now threaten the tutorial, he sees the tutorial as an
approach worth preserving. In other words, he seems to take for granted the
14
notion that the tutorial in its current form is filling the need for which it is
intended. He says “what does concern us is to practice the method [the tutorial] as
long as conditions allow (Moore, 64).”
It might be said that Beck attempts a somewhat more scientific approach,
as his paper is informed by interviews with 30 Oxford dons. In it, however, he
ignores the literature which raises questions as to the effectiveness of the Oxford
tutorial (despite the fact that he shows awareness of such literature by citing
Ashwin). Beck’s essay consists largely of praise and admiration for the tutorial,
accolades that are only marginally supported by the interviews he conducted. He
concludes that the tutorial is a “natural, cultural practice…[which] satisfies every
requirement of a metacognitive and high-literacy education, not only teaching
students to think independently but self-consciously…” Given this view, it is not
surprising that Beck believes most Oxford students will “in the end learn to think
for themselves (Beck, 2008).”
To be sure, Moore, Beck, and Palfreyman belong in the same intellectual
camp: though their defenses may be logical, nuanced, articulate, and spirited, and
full of insight, they are, after all, still largely one-sided defenses. Their work is
useful in shedding light on that which is positive and successful about the tutorial,
of which to be sure there is much. Yet their approach is anecdotal, not rigorously
empirical.
For a different view of the tutorial, let us turn briefly to Ashwin and
Trigwell’s examinations of the tutorial, as well as a few personal accounts.
15
Ashwin’s two qualitative studies produced a nested hierarchy of
conceptions of the tutorial2 which loosely correlate with those developed by
Marton (Marton et. al., 1984) in his development of the notion of deep vs. surface
approaches to learning. These approaches were supported by a mountain of
evidence produced by further researchers (Watkins, 1983; Van Rossum and
Schenck, 1984; Gow and Kember, 1993; Ramsden, 2003; Ashwin, 2005, 2006;
etc.). In a quantitative study of 2330 Oxford undergraduates, Ashwin and Trigwell
(2003) concluded that those Oxford undergrads with a deep approach to learning
(tied to ideas such as questioning assumptions, connecting key concepts, thinking
through main implications, etc.) were much more successful in exams, judged
teaching quality to be higher, and felt more confident, supported, and motivated.
Ashwin and Trigwell (2003, 30) also found the opposite is to be true of students
who relied on surface approaches to learning.
But how many students approach their tutorials in a deep manner? In a
much smaller qualitative study (28 students), Ashwin concludes that nearly two
thirds of the students interviewed (18) adopted surface approaches (categories one
and two) and only three expressed a category four approach, the “deepest”
category (Ashwin, 2005, 640). According to Ashwin, tutors did not fare much
better: only five of 20 expressed a category four approach to teaching in the
tutorial (the same number as expressed a category one approach), and none of
2 For students, the categories are as follows: 1. Tutorials as the tutor explaining to the student what
the student does not understand; 2. Tutorials as the tutor showing the student how to see the
subject in the way the tutor does; 3. Tutorials as the tutor bringing things into relation to each other
to help the student develop a new perspective in the wider context of the discipline; 4. Tutorials as
the tutor and the student exchanging different points of view on the topic and both coming to a
new understanding.
For tutors: 1. tutorials as a place where tutors help students develop an understanding of concepts;
2. tutorials as a place where students see how to approach their discipline; 3. tutorials as a place
where evidence is critically discussed; 4. tutorials as a place where new positions on the topic are
developed and refined.
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these came from the sciences (despite the fact that 60% of interviewees were from
the sciences; Ashwin, 2006, 660). Applying Ashwin and Trigwell’s categories to
Moore, Beck, and the scholars contributing to The Oxford Tutorial, it may be
important to note that all seem to have deep conceptions of the tutorial (the
majority would probably be in Ashwin’s category four) and so they may be
unaware of the potential for a superficial tutorial caused by surface approaches to
instruction.
Further reason for questioning the mythical aura of the tutorial lies in
indirect studies and personal accounts. In a study of one Oxford college by Sell
and Robson (1998), only 58% of students found relationships with their tutors to
be helpful. In a portfolio account of his experiences in a tutor training program,
entitled “Asking too Much but Expecting too Little,” Graham Gee argues that the
timeframe in which students are required to write papers is extremely limited and
demanding (asking too much). According to Gee, this practice encourages a
superficial approach to learning and inadvertently results in students producing
essays which largely echo the thoughts of experts in the field. The tutor, in turn,
takes this predicament into account and judges work less harshly as a result
(expecting too little) (Gee, 2008). The potential for fostering shallow and sophistic
thinking here seems apparent, as students work to get by and give tutors what they
want.
Several personal accounts of the tutorial have been written by alumni, such
as those in My Oxford (1977) and Hall (1989), and these memoirs seem to tell a
different story from that told by Moore, Beck, and Palfreyman. Edward Gibbon,
for example, concluded that “the sum of my improvement at the University of
Oxford is confined to three to four Latin plays” (Gibbon in Moore, 1968, 4). F.G.
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Marcham and Edward Welles agreed that most of what they learned occurred
outside tutorials (Jenkins, 1989, 3, 28). What is more outstanding is how many
either do not mention the tutorial at all or do so only briefly. In Hall, out of 55
contributors, not one mentions the tutorial as playing a central and significant role
in their intellectual development, yet these essays have such lofty titles as
“Formative Years,” “Awakening World,” “and “The Making of a Diplomat.”
So what does this add up to? The defenders of the tutorial are mainly
experienced and articulate Oxford Dons who passionately argue for its necessity
and central role throughout the university. The attackers and the non-combatants
(though perhaps through silence this latter group speaks more loudly than the
former) are primarily former students who expose some of the weaknesses of the
tutorial. Both camps offer only anecdotal, though highly suggestive, evidence. In
the middle stand Ashwin and Trigwell who in the spirit of fair-minded critique
explore both the strengths and the weaknesses of the tutorial.
It is important to note that throughout the more than 800 year history of the
university, so little has been written exploring, explaining, or examining the
tutorial in any deep way – and that no studies or writings have focused on critical
thinking directly or explicitly. In terms of the extent to which the tutorial fosters
critical thinking, we have only hints and suggestions which provide stimulation
for the imagination, but fail to offer much in the way of objective evidence.
1.2 – Critical Thinking
1.2.1 – History: The Roots of Critical Thinking
Interestingly, the history of critical thinking has been given little attention;
yet, again like the tutorial, critical thinking theoreticians agree that the intellectual
18
roots for critical thinking also primarily began with Socrates’ form of questioning
(Lipman, 1995; Paul 1995; Thayer-Bacon 2000). They maintain that at the heart
of critical thinking is, among other qualities, a spirit of analyzing and evaluating
important ideas or beliefs in an effort to determine their quality and to improve
upon them, to discover unexamined assumptions and challenge them, to focus on
key concepts and deeply analyze them, etc., all of which are explicitly
demonstrated in Socrates’ dialogues.
Paul (1995) cites Glaser’s publication in 1941, An Experiment in the
Development of Critical Thinking, as the first full-fledged use of the term “critical
thinking.” However similar language was certainly used earlier than this. Sumner
talked of the “critical habit of thought” as far back as 1906 in Folkways (Sumner,
1940). Dewey’s (1916) concept of “reflexive thinking” and Newman’s vision of
the “philosophical habit” are also important in the intellectual tradition of critical
thinking. Each stresses abilities such as being able to weigh evidence and analyze
ideas, even if they run contrary to deeply held beliefs, as well as traits such as
being (in the face of attack) “patient, collected and majestically calm” (Newman,
1996, 100).
Critics of the notion of critical thinking, on the other hand, argue that it is
too ‘logical,’ and ‘male-centered,’ and negates ‘other ways of knowing’ (Brenner
& Parks, 2001; McLaren, 1994; Thayer-Bacon, 1993) and that it stifles creativity
and detaches humans from their human and non-human surroundings
(Doddington, 2007). However, Bailin and Siegel (2003) conclude that such
critiques fail to take into account recent developments in the field, and the
practical (and highly visible) literature focused on critical thinking. My own
survey of the literature supports the Bailin and Siegel conclusion, as does the work
19
of Esterle and Clurman (1993) Walters (1994) and others. For example, two works
by primary critical thinking theoreticians which tackle these issues are Elder and
Paul’s (2004) Miniature Guide to the Human Mind, which focuses on the
important interconnections between thinking, feeling and wanting and Paul and
Elder’s Thinker’s Guide to Critical and Creative Thinking (2005) which details
the implicit relationship between critical and creative thinking. These are just two
of the most obvious works overlooked by many critics.
1.2.2 – Theory: The Idea of Critical Thinking
Paul (1987) argues that there is a problem with the entire notion of attempting
to produce one-line definitions of complex concepts such as critical thinking.
Such “definitions” are, for Paul, inevitably incomplete and limiting. He points out
that “it is more desirable to retain a host of definitions, and this for two reasons:
(1) in order to maintain insight into the various dimensions of critical thinking that
alternative definitions highlight, and (2) to help oneself escape the limitations of
any given definition” (p 1-2). Here, then, are a few of the more widely known
definitions of critical thinking, in no particular order, each of which offers a
slightly different perspective:
• “Critical, when applied to persons who judge and to their judgments,
not only may, but in very precise use does, imply an effort to see a
thing clearly and truly so that not only the good in it may be
distinguished from the bad, but also that it as a whole may be fairly
judged or valued” (Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms, 1951)
• “(I) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the
problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences,
20
(2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3)
some skill in applying those methods.” (Glaser, 1941, 5-6)
• “Reasonable and reflective thinking about what to believe or do”
(Ennis, 1989)
• “The ability to participate in critical and open evaluation of rules and
principles in any area of life” (Scheffler, 1973, 62)
• “Thinking that devotes itself to the improvement of thinking” (Lipman,
1984, 51)
• “skillful, responsible thinking that is conducive to good judgment
because it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-
correcting.” (Lipman, 1995, 116)
• “Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-
monitored, and self-corrective thinking.” (Paul, 2008)
• “The disposition and skill to do X in such a way that E (the available
evidence from a field) is suspended (or temporarily rejected) as
sufficient to establish the truth or viability of P (some proposition or
action within X).” (McPeck, 1984, 13)
• “A critical thinker is…one who is appropriately moved by
reasons…critical thinking is impartial, consistent, and non-arbitrary,
and the critical thinker both acts and thinks in accordance with, and
values, consistency, fairness, and impartiality of judgment and action.”
(emphasis in original; Siegel, 1990, 23, 34)
Thus, it appears that there is no way to encompass critical thinking completely
and inexhaustibly in a brief description. There is no way to contain it in a one-
sentence “definition.” However, Paul and Elder (2009, 2-3) argue that, far from
21
being ambiguous, “at its core lies a foundational set of meanings which are
presupposed in all of its varied uses. This multiplicity is given by the fact that one
can pursue the improvement of thinking by somewhat different strategies of
somewhat different scope and trained on different foci.”
Internal debate in the field of critical thinking often centers on the
disagreements between theoreticians rather than on their agreement, obscuring the
core common ground which exists (Hale, 2008). Hale argues that each
theoretician may emphasize different aspects of critical thinking, but virtually all
agree that it entails analysis and evaluation with a view towards improvement, that
it includes the development of intellectual traits, and that it should be applied to
one’s own thinking, the thinking of others, and thinking within subject disciplines
(For examples, see Ennis, 1995; McPeck, 1981, Nosich 2009; Passmore, 1972;
Paul and Elder, 2002; Peters, 1974; Scheffler, 1993; Scriven, 1997; Siegel, 1990).
Thus, following this literature, we can divide critical thinking into broad
categories:
• Intellectual analysis, ability to divide important intellectual
constructs into constituent parts.
• Intellectual evaluation, ability to evaluate intellectual constructs.
• Intellectual improvement, the ability to correct weaknesses and
improve strengths identified through analysis and evaluation.
• The development of intellectual traits, or characteristics of mind
which are both necessary for the development of critical thinking
(e.g. intellectual perseverance) and need to be developed through
critical thinking (e.g. intellectual autonomy). These guard against
the development of sophistic or manipulative thinking.
22
• Knowledge of the problematics of thinking, or natural
tendencies, such as egocentrism and sociocentrism, which cause
deep and systemic problems in human life.
Furthermore, these dimensions can be applied in various contexts:
• To thinking generally (one’s own thinking, the thinking of a
professor, colleague, friend, politician, theoretician, parent,
lover…)
• To subject disciplines (each of which have their own forms of
analysis and evaluation)
• To personal life, both with regards to significant decisions (such as
how to decide on a career or purchase a car), as well as day to day
activities (such as health, diet, and exercise, parenting, voting and
politics, managing finances…)
These lists are not exhaustive, but illustrate some of the many ways in which
critical thinking can be applied, a number of which emerged in the study described
herein.
1.2.3 – Practice: Critical Thinking in Use
One implication of this broad and inclusive description is that virtually all
humans think critically at least to some degree, at least some of the time. This
criticality may be as implicit and specialized as questioning whether disliking the
taste of broccoli is sufficient reason to avoid eating it, or as systematic and global
as questioning the foundational assumptions in a discipline and developing a new
23
understanding of the field (and perhaps a new weltanschauung ) as a result.
Another implication is that CT’s potential manifestations and applications are
limited only by the number of combinations between unique individuals and
conceivable circumstances, which is to say: virtually endless.
With respect to the interviews and observations conducted in the course of
my thesis, conceptualizing critical thinking in this manner allowed for a broad
range of responses to qualify as critical thinking. Even students who have never
thought deeply (or, indeed, even superficially) about the term “critical thinking”
may nevertheless have hosts of strategies they use to study and learn effectively
(such as so-called “coping mechanisms” used by disadvantaged or disabled
students). Similarly, even professors who have not examined explicit theories of
critical thinking or made systematic attempts to integrate it into their tutorials may
be implicitly, perhaps even systematically, fostering key skills (such as the
questioning of assumptions). Indeed, common sense and anecdotal evidence
indicates that this is not only possibly, but almost certainly, true. For examples of
such subject specific approaches, see Passmore (1961), Becker (1998), and Carr
(1962).
The conception of critical thinking used in this study did not privilege any
one theoretician in my study, but was based on a broad concept of critical thinking
as detailed above. This conception was also inclusive of ideas of critical thinking
specific to individual subject disciplines (each of which exhibit or emphasize
different forms of analysis, evaluation, strategies, and traits), and indeed any
conception of critical thinking which could be logically or empirically defended,
in keeping with the terms established use.
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1.3 – The Oxford Tutorial and Critical Thinking
As should be clear by now, both critical thinking and the Oxford Tutorial
are in a similar ontological position: their origins are somewhat mysterious, in that
they are not directly traceable to a single person or moment in time; their roots
and intellectual tradition stretch back to the very beginnings of scholarly pursuit;
though core concepts are agreed upon, their natures are not uncontested; there is a
wide variance in their forms and manifestations; and both have their supporters
and critics.
This overlap and interconnection between the tutorial and critical thinking
is not coincidental. Based on their visions of the aims and purposes of the tutorial,
it seems clear that highly articulate tutors would agree that to the extent that the
Oxford tutorial does not significantly foster critical thinking in some important
sense, it is largely unsuccessful. Conversely, it also seems clear that the kind of
critical thinking skills, traits, and habits of mind described by key theoreticians in
critical thinking can only be developed by engaging in the kind of rigorous study
and research required by the tutorial. Glaser (1941) argues this point by citing one
of the most influential groups in American education, the Educational Policies
Commission of the National Educational Association:
“Critical judgment is developed …by long and continuous
practice under the criticism of someone qualified to evaluate the
decisions. The child must learn the value of evidence. He must
learn to defer judgment, to consider motives, to appraise
evidence, to classify it, to array it on one side or the other of his
question, and to use it in drawing conclusions. This is not the
result of a special course of study, or of a particular part of the
educative procedure; it results from every phase of learning and
characterizes every step of thinking.” (p. 35).
The study I have conducted, then, is situated in a relatively rare and
privileged position: it is focused on a paradigm (the Oxford Tutorial) which is
highly important in and of itself, highly influential in the field of higher education
25
in general, and yet has been researched only superficially. It is centered on a topic
(critical thinking) which is internationally valued, which is increasingly embedded
in the language of the purposes, missions, and standards of education from
primary to postgraduate level, and yet which has never been researched directly in
terms of the tutorial.
26
Chapter Two: Central Research Questions
The purpose of this study is to examine the Oxford Tutorial (OT) to
determine the extent to which it fosters critical thinking skills and traits in
students. In other words, the goal is to shed light on some of the various forms and
manifestations of critical thinking which are being fostered by professors and
learned by students, as well as to discover areas of critical thinking which may be
overlooked. To put this in the form of a question, “What critical thinking skills
and traits are presently fostered by tutors and internalized by students within the
Oxford Tutorial, and which forms are seemingly less valued or perhaps not as
deeply understood?”
I begin with these three assumptions: 1) that most students (and indeed
many teachers) have probably not thought explicitly and systematically about the
idea of critical thinking, and thus their conceptions of it are likely to be implicit
rather than explicit in their practice; 2) that nevertheless both tutors and students
will have developed a range of critical thinking skills and traits and; 3) that
perceptions of and emphases on critical thinking will vary widely.
My goal, then, is to draw out participating tutors’ and students’ explicit
and implicit (sub- or semi-conscious) ideas about critical thinking and to attempt
to discern the extent to which these ideas are successfully applied both within and
beyond the tutorial. In order to do this, at least three issues and their related sub-
questions must be explored.
First, both tutors’ and students’ conceptions of critical thinking must be
uncovered and given voice. Here the question is “How is critical thinking
perceived and understood by participating tutors and students?” The goal is not to
27
look for any “correct” answer, but rather to explore what some tutors and students
think critical thinking is and how they believe they use it.
Second, it is important to determine how these conceptions have
developed. For example, this research does not assume that any notions of critical
thinking expressed by students are mainly, or even largely, a result of their tutorial
experience. Two key questions here are: in the case of tutors, “Are conceptions of
critical thinking primarily based on the work of specific theoreticians, or have
they been developed in other, more implicit ways (e.g. by forming habits of
thought from their previous professors, or through departmental culture and
attitudes)?” In the case of students, “Are conceptions mainly a result of their
tutorial experience or are other factors responsible, such as their parents, informal
reading and discussion groups, previous schooling, or student societies?”
Finally, this study is not confined to analyzing perceptions and beliefs
only. It is also concerned with whether and to what extent critical thinking (in
some significant sense) is actually being practiced by tutors and students. In the
case of teachers, what specific strategies are being used within the tutorial to
foster student development of critical thinking? In the case of students, in what
manner and to what extent are their conceptions of critical thinking remaining at
the abstract level versus being applied in various domains of their life (both within
and beyond the tutorial)? How successful are they in deploying those concepts in
their intellectual (and even personal) life?
28
The above forms a neat hierarchy which can be expressed in the following
manner:
1. Subject to the provisional and tentative nature of this study, what skills,
abilities, and traits of critical thinking are fostered by participating
tutors and internalized by students in the Oxford Tutorial, and which
are either not fostered or fostered only to a small degree?
a. What are participating tutors’ and students’ conceptions of critical
thinking?
b. How did tutors and students develop these conceptions?
c. What evidence is there that these conceptions are being
successfully practiced, both within and beyond the tutorial?
d. What critical thinking skills, abilities and traits are not being
fostered in the tutorial practice of the participating tutors?
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Chapter Three: Methodology
The methodological basis of this study is qualitative and
phenomenological. Interviews of thirty minutes to an hour were conducted with
three tutors and seven students. The questions list can be seen in appendix A.
Additionally, four tutorials were observed, two with tutor C and one each with
tutors A and B.
3.1 – Why these Methods?
This study documents in detail (transcripts totalling over 100 pages)
attempts on the part of three tutors to foster critical thinking within the Oxford
tutorial, to discover what seems to be successful and what unsuccessful in this
limited sample size, and to hypothesize as to the reasons behind those successes
and struggles. It is not to make judgements about the tutorial system as a whole, or
even about individual tutors. Rather, my hope was to identify and outline the
status of critical thinking in the mind and teaching of participant tutors and in the
mind and learning of their students, and to raise questions regarding what seemed
effective and what ineffective within the small data set which this study
assembles.
In designing this study, it seemed clear that the most fruitful methods were
qualitative. The first two main sub-questions, (a) and (b) above, seemed best
explored through the use of interviews. The purpose of the interviews was to
establish tutors’ and students’ perceptions of how they believe they are,
respectfully, teaching or learning critical thinking. I employed semi-structured
interviews so as to focus the interviews on necessary components in a stable and
predictable way (Rapley, 2004; Shank and Brown, 2007), while also allowing for
30
flexibility to explore topics spontaneously as they arose (Marton & Booth, 1997;
Pring, 2000; Rubin and Rubin, 1995). Finally, previous studies focusing on
similar themes, such as those on deep and surface learning (Marton, et. al, 1984)
and those conducted on the tutorial itself (Ashwin 2005, 2006), were also
primarily grounded in the use of semi-structured interviews.
To reduce interviewer bias in directing interviewees towards particular
answers, there was no limit put on responses and interviewees were allowed to
finish their thought fully before the next question was asked (Seale, 1999).
As the tutorial is an informal environment, I also thought that a
conversational and exploratory tone would be both familiar and comfortable for
the participants, and thus most would most likely encourage openness and critical
reflectiveness about experiences within the tutorial.
To answer sub-question (c) above, it seemed prudent to directly observe
tutorials. This was necessary to determine the extent to which conceptions
articulated in the interviews were actualized in the practice of the tutorial. Another
advantage was that observations sometimes illuminated potential reasons why
some attempts to foster critical thinking were lost on students. Finally,
observations enabled the identification of manifestations of critical thinking
which, for any number of reasons, were not expressed in the interviews by either
tutor or student, but were nevertheless present.
Rather than judging tutors’ actions within the tutorial against a previously
defined idea of critical thinking, conceptions tentatively identified during the
interviews provided the framework and focus for the observations. This approach
had multiple advantages, as it countered many of the common shortcomings of
observational studies. For example, Pring (2000, 35) warns that observations are
31
often crippled in three significant areas: 1) objectives are often unclear (just
“taking a look to see what happens”); 2) what is “observed” is inherently biased as
it is “filtered…through the understandings, preferences and beliefs of the
observer” (2000, 35), and; 3) it is difficult to connect product (what is said or
done) with process (the thinking behind the action).
The design of this study specifically limits these pitfalls in the following
manner: 1) the objectives are defined in the participants own language; 2)
verification of these conceptions is the main goal (which limits “filtering” or bias)
and; 3) the product can be linked with the process, as the interviews highlighted
and made explicit the thinking which led to the actions. While the nature of
subjectivity raised in objections two and three can obviously never be fully
eliminated, the steps taken in this research serve to minimize their influence.
Finally, as a researcher with a background in oral history with an
awareness of the importance of preserving primary sources, all the data collected
through interviews and observations was fully transcribed, anonymized, and
deposited in a digital archive in the Bodleian library. The resulting documents
contain over 60,000 words, totalling over 100 pages, which will stand for future
researchers to re-visit and re-analyze. Certainly a sidenote to this particular project
in terms of its immediate outcome, in my mind it may be its most significant
contribution to future research; historians, perhaps many years from now, may
seek to understand the tutorial in the early 21st century and find these transcripts to
be some of the few extant records available. While this may seem unlikely, we
might also ask how valuable records of perceptions of the tutorial hundreds of
years ago might be to us now, and how they might be treated were they extant
today.
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3.2 – Why these People?
Due to the exploratory and tentative nature of the study, and without the
intention of generalizing from so small a sample (Robson, 2002), there was no
need for random sampling. I therefore followed an informal path to finding
participants. I attended a lecture in the International Relations department for my
own interests and engaged in a conversation with the presenter afterwords. I told
him of my research. He suggested that I speak to one of the politics tutors who
was also interested in the pedagogy of the tutorial. The suggested tutor readily
agreed to participate in the study and suggested four other politics tutors who
might be interested.
To explore both sides of the tutorial experience, and to compare those
perceptions against each other, it was necessary to interview not simply tutors and
students but tutors and their students. Thus, student participants were selected
from those being taught by the participating tutors. Second year students were
chosen as they have more tutorial experience (and potentially more maturity and
reflectiveness) yet do not have the burden of impending finals, which might have
introduced a level of stress and potential for negativity among student participants.
All participants were emailed invitations to join the study. The email
contained a brief summary of the project and an explanation of how the researcher
had obtained their email address (i.e. word of mouth). The appropriate information
sheet (see Appendices A and B) was attached, and participants were encouraged
to ask any questions they cared to. It was made clear, especially in the case of
students whose tutors had already agreed to be part of the project, that they were
under no obligation to participate.
33
Five tutors were contacted, of which three participated. One declined due
to excessive time commitments during the term. The other did not respond to the
original email, nor to a follow-up sent two weeks later. Eight students were
contacted, of which seven participated. One simply did not respond to emails.
3.3 – Why these Questions?
The question list (see appendix A) was developed with a view to covering
the most significant aspects of critical thinking, while also minimizing the number
of questions asked in order to maximize depth and allow time for elaboration. The
questions were loosely based on the interview protocol used by Paul et. al. (1997),
in a study of conceptions of critical thinking among public and private university
professors, but was modified for the specific purposes of this study. Paul et. al.
were concerned with evaluating professors’ conceptions of critical thinking,
whereas my focus was much more investigative, exploratory, descriptive and
provisional. To more fully examine and evaluate the tutorial system and its
relationship to critical thinking, a much larger and longer project needs to be
developed. I leave this for future researchers.
3.4 – Trials and Triumphs
Few research projects develop flawlessly, and this investigation was no
exception. During the process I learned many lessons and made a few mistakes
which will change the way I approach research in the future. Below are just a few
highlights, in chronological order.
Though this project is in itself a kind of pilot, the first thing I would do
differently would be to talk more frequently to undergraduates informally about
34
their tutorial experience throughout the year. Though I did this quite often, it
usually lasted no more than a few minutes and could certainly have been done in a
more disciplined and systematic manner. Though these conversations certainly
informed and improved my questioning, I could have made more use of this
resource to, as it were, pre-pilot my pilot study.
Because I was concerned (having been warned) that obtaining access to
willing participants would be difficult, perhaps prohibitively so, I followed an
informal trail which led to the tutors who eventually agreed to be in the study.
Luckily, the three tutors happened to have different degrees of experience with
tutorial teaching. Unfortunately, however, all were male. A female perspective
might have proven valuable. Furthermore, all were former Oxford undergraduates,
and so had firsthand experience of the tutorial as a student. Much of their
conceptions of critical thinking and its role in tutorial instruction seemed to be
informed in large part by their own experiences with it as a pupil. It might have
been illuminating to have at least one tutor who had no personal or prior
knowledge of the system and who therefore developed an approach from an
outsider’s perspective.
I was lucky that the first student I interviewed was particularly insightful
and, of his own volition, spoke on many aspects of the tutorial experience of
which I had no knowledge and thus would not have thought to pursue. As a result
of our discussion I added two questions to my protocol: one probing student
confusion over the tutorial process as well as one probing for depth of
understanding of the material.
During the course of conducting interviews there were other successes and
failures. The biggest failure was in not asking for enough examples. When
35
transcribing later I was struck by how vague and amorphous many of the answers
were. I continually expected the next thing I would type to be: “INTERVIEWER:
Can you give me an example?” Yet I so often neglected to ask this simple
question. The result is that it is difficult to tell sometimes whether students’
responses actually represent true insights or mere intellectual fluff, as there is
nothing concrete with which to connect it. This is perhaps an argument for spacing
interviews out farther and transcribing simultaneously.
On the positive side, I was conscious that as the interviews progressed I
was using a more conversational and informal tone. When asking about specific
behaviors which students might be afraid or anxious to admit, I often attempted to
relate to them by saying things like “Some students have said that they often feel
they have to do x in order to complete y” or “I’ve often noticed a tendency in
myself to do z when a happens – is that something which you do as well?” This
seemed to relax the students and allow them to discuss touchy subjects (such as
engaging with the material superficially or, in their terms, “bullshitting a tutorial”)
as it was couched in terms of the pressures they faced which encouraged them
behave in these ways. This allowed for a more open interview which undoubtedly
resulted in some insights which would not have arisen otherwise.
I was also lucky that, due to a scheduling complication and communication
failure, I was able to interview one of the tutors both before and directly after the
tutorial. This enabled me to ask questions regarding specific behaviors within the
tutorial, and produced greater insight into his reasoning behind his attempts to
engage his students’ intellects. In order to capture more such insights, I might
have considered a short ten-minute debrief with each tutor after observing their
tutorials.
36
3.5 – Data Analysis and Evaluation
All the data collected during this project was analyzed and evaluated
primarily according to the categories listed on page ten. That is, tutors’ and
students’ responses were critiqued based on the extent to which they could clearly
and elaborately articulate how they performed intellectual analysis and intellectual
evaluation, how they developed strategies for intellectual improvement, the
importance they placed on the development of intellectual traits, and whether and
to what extent they applied any of these skills and traits to thinking generally, to
subject disciplines, and to their personal lives. These concerns reflected themes
that run through virtually all conceptualizations of critical thinking.
In the data collection and analysis phase, attempts were made to document
those critical thinking skills which tutors and students value and exhibit. Here,
tutors and students were encouraged to explicate their conceptions of critical
thinking in their own words. In both interviews and observations, everything said
which could reasonably be understood as critical thinking was pursued and
credited. The purpose was to be as inclusive and open-minded as possible. The
key question was “what critical thinking skills, abilities and/or traits are clearly
explained and exemplified?” One underlying assumption was that those skills and
traits which and faculty use to analyze, critique, and re-construct beliefs, concepts,
and reasoning should be provisionally credited as critical thinking.
In the data evaluation phase, all of the above was subjected to scrutiny.
Areas which seem unclearly articulated or applied were noted and recorded. The
purpose was to juxtapose tutors’ and students’ conceptions of critical thinking
against broader and more detailed understandings as explicated by recognized
critical thinking theoreticians. The key question was “what critical thinking skills
37
and traits seem to be undervalued or neglected?” The underlying assumption was
that to the extent that students are not taught to value or employ recognized
dimensions of critical thinking in their academic and personal lives, to that extent
critical thinking constructs were unlikely to become effective tools for the analysis
and critique of thought.
It seems clear that tutors would recognize critical thinking concepts as
necessary presuppositions for the critique of thought: at least insofar as thought is
taken to include claims to knowledge, insight, or quality of reasoning. For
example, no tutor would say “I don’t want my students to develop the ability to
follow out the implications of a line of reasoning” or “I don’t think it is important
for students to be able to accurately articulate the reasoning of an author.”
Therefore, successful articulations and development of critical thinking were
stated and discussed, with implications for the importance of such developments
drawn out. Conversely, unclear articulation and seemingly unsuccessful
development of critical thinking was also analyzed. The purpose was not to praise
or negate tutors. It was rather to gain insight into that which is effective, as well as
that which is ineffective, in developing fairminded criticality in students within
the tutorial.
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Chapter Four: Tutors’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking
The bulk of the analysis in this section results directly from the tutor
interviews, though some few references are made to both the student interviews
and the observations. In light of space limitations, as well as the sheer mass of
data obtained in the interviews, only the most significance findings are
highlighted. Furthermore, the main purpose of this section is to bring participating
tutors’ conceptions of critical thinking into the open so that they may be noted and
discussed. It is therefore less focused on evaluation. Later sections address the
efficacy of these approaches in more depth.
It is important to remember that this project is based on a small sample
size, and therefore whose interpretation must be regarded as tentative and
provisional. In subsequent studies, larger data samples may allow for more
definitive conclusions regarding questions and issues raised but not settled in this
study. This study is therefore conditional in nature. It opens issues, defines
problems, and suggests plausible hypotheses.
The primary questions made explicit in this chapter are as follows:
1. How do participating tutors conceptualize critical thinking?
2. How do participating tutors view the tutorial in terms of its overall
effectiveness in fostering critical thinking?
3. What criteria are used to evaluate student work and thinking in the
tutorial?
4. What intellectual traits or dispositions do tutors foster in the tutorial?
5. To what extent is critical thinking fostered implicitly versus explicitly?
39
6. What specific intellectual skills do participating tutors believe are
important for students to learn in their tutorials?
4.1 – Critical Thinking as Generally Conceived by Tutors
One result of this phase of the research was a remarkable compatibility
between the three tutors’ general conceptions of critical thinking. Participating
tutors’ main concerns with regards to critical analysis were threefold: that central
questions are stated clearly and precisely, that core concepts are analyzed (with
key terms being properly explained), and that key assumptions are laid bare. It
seemed that, in the minds of these tutors, once this is accomplished the most
important critical thinking components have been satisfied. What remains for
them then is the mastery of the content on the basis of the ground-establishing
critical analysis. Critical thinking, on this view, sets the background logic in
which the central content (or argument) can be intellectually explicated and
pursued. Now a debate can take place that focuses on argumentation and counter
argumentation. The extent to which these discussions are critically based or
simply “bullshitting” (in the words of some of the students) is discussed in the
next two chapters.
When specifically asked for their conception of critical thinking, the
degree of explicitness and detail varied among tutors, as might be expected. Tutor
A stressed all of the following: the importance of focusing on core questions,
assessing the extent to which answers seem logical, considering the empirical
basis of the assumptions, and seeking the correct answer. He said:
“I suppose what I would expect [critical thinking] to cover is a thought process which does a variety of things, in no particular
ordering. But, in considering a problem, or an issue, [it] tries to
isolate the absolutely core question or questions that are involved,
40
attempts to look rigorously at both the logic of suggestive answers
and at the empirical basis of any empirical assumptions that have
been made. And following that, it is an item of methodology by
which those empirical assumptions would arrive.” (Tutor A)
Tutor C, in contrast, resisted articulating critical thinking in general terms
and thought it should vary with the content:
“I mean critical thinking isn’t something in abstract. It’s not
something that can be taken on its own…And I wouldn’t actually
want to say therefore this kind of thinking or even this kind of
criticism because that ought to be determined by the material itself.” (Tutor C)
Tutor B gave the most detailed explanation of critical thinking, articulating
a series of critical thinking skills and traits:
“Umm…(long pause)…I suppose the capacity to reflect critically,
although that’s not really helpful. To reflect critically on what you read, what you learn, what people tell you. To develop your own way
of thinking about the material that isn’t reliant on what anybody else
has produced. To actually second guess the authors, to think “ok, is
what they’re saying supported by the evidence? Does this argument
hold? Is it logical? What’s the ideology that’s being supported by this
particular line of argument? Is the interpretation colored by that
ideology?” And to come to your own conclusions, to be willing to think for yourself. …And to criticize – to be able to criticize
established, you know, orthodox voices. The big names - not to be
afraid of having irreverence for these people...That’s not really a
coherent answer but I suppose just not to accept anything on face
value and to constantly be asking questions of the material in a
critical vein.” (Tutor B)
Tutor B, like tutors A and C, did not appear to the interviewer, at least at
first, to have an explicitly developed conception of critical thinking at the
forefront of his mind. It seems he may have been working out his idea of critical
thinking while articulating it (which raises the question of a possible lack of deep
prior reflection on the idea).
However it is interesting to note the highly specific explanation of this
response. For example, there are at least three intellectual traits implicit in this
articulation: intellectual autonomy (“developing your own way of thinking about
the material, coming to your own conclusions”), intellectual courage (“be able to
41
criticize established, orthodox voices”), and fairmindedness (“Is the interpretation
colored by that ideology?”), all of which are frequently cited as important
characteristics of a critical thinker (Glaser, 1941; Ennis, 1962; Passmore, 1972;
Johnson and Blair, 1977; Siegel, 1980, Paul and Elder, 2008). In addition, the
following critical thinking abilities were highlighted by this tutor: identifying the
evidence, questioning whether the argument is logical, asking essential questions.
Still, within the broad umbrella which the above descriptions represent,
each tutor highlighted and emphasized specific aspects of critical thinking. These
specifics stood out during the interviews as they were repeated often during the
interview without prompting from the researcher. None of these specifics were
inconsistent with general articulations, nor did they contradict other tutors
individual emphases; rather, they formed an overlapping and interwoven web of
understanding.
4.2 – Targeting Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities
It is clear from the articulations above that all three tutors are attempting to
foster various intellectual skills and discipline, though they don’t always cite the
same ones. The primary intellectual skills revealed in the interviews were:
1. defining the meaning of terms, noticing how thinkers modify
meanings, judging whether these changes are justified in context.
2. constructing arguments - noticing assumptions and conclusions,
making sure the information supports the argument (so the argument
logically follows).
3. staying focused on the question at issue.
4. showing you can effectively deal with objections to your argument.
5. considering issues from alternative perspectives.
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6. clarifying your thinking.
Though cited less, students were also encouraged to:
7. read with empathy and for understanding
8. notice contradictions and inconsistencies
9. critically examine sources
Once again, all of these proposed critical thinking principles are consistent
with each other, and with articulations by primary critical thinking theoreticians
(Glaser, 1941; Ennis, 1962; Siegel, 1980; Paul and Elder, 2008, etc.). All three
tutors emphasized the importance of carefully analyzing the question at issue, as
well as the key concepts (usually referred to as “terms”) within the question. All
emphasized the importance of explicating assumptions inherent in student
arguments and in specific texts. One tutor summed up this core idea in the
following way:
“In considering a problem, or an issue, [a critical thinker] tries to
isolate the absolutely core question or questions that are involved,
attempts to look rigorously at both the logic of suggestive answers
and at the empirical basis of any empirical assumptions that have been made. And following that, it is an item of methodology...”
(Tutor A)
Interestingly, though conceptual analysis was taken by all to be crucial for
critical thinking, none of the faculty proposed a theory or conception of
conceptual analysis (such as is found in John Wilson’s Thinking with Concepts
1987). Instead, they seemed to view such analysis as implicit in a critical reading
of the assigned text. However, in a similar way, none of the tutors proposed a
theory for how students should approach critical reading either (such is as found
in Paul and Elder’s How to Read a Paragraph, appropriately subtitled: “The Art
43
of Close Reading”, 2006). For example, it was hard to know what to make of
Tutor A’s idea of critical reading since, in explicating it, he went on to say: “you
aren’t really thinking when you’re reading.”
Tutor B had the most developed approach to conceptual analysis. He
attempted to help students think deeply about concepts and the problematic ways
they are sometimes used by students. Still, the explanation for how he
accomplished this task is somewhat puzzling. Consider the following extended
passage. It seems as if there is an underlying core idea here, however this core
may or may not be clear to his students:
“So for example there’s a week where democratic peace theory is
the topic. And democratic peace theory is the idea that no
democracies have ever gone to war with each other. And there’s lots
of different questions you can ask about that topic. But the one that I
ask is, I give a quotation from Clinton’s national security advisor
saying that, you know, “spreading democracy is good because it
opens up markets and makes for peace.” And the essay is “well does
democratic peace theory mean that democratic states should promote
democracy?” So, what does that do? Well, it flags that the academic literature
can be used to support particular policy outcomes, so there’s a
literature that goes back to Kant…
So what does that imply, to the policy world? That shows that,
you know, policy can draw on academia in better or worse ways, for
a start. It shows that theory is not ivory tower but has real world
implications. It gets them to think that, maybe something they took for granted as being good, democracy promotion, maybe has
imperialistic connotations…But it also invites you to reflect on the
validity of the literature itself, because of course if the literature is
wrong then you’re basing policy on a wrong set of assertions and
assumptions.
It also gets them to think about the nature of democracy, because
the only way which that assertion holds, that democracies don’t go to
war with each other, is by defining democracy in a particular way,
and defining war in a particular way. So they get to think about the
assumptions that underlie theories, why the assumptions are framed
in that particular way, why we say “x is democratic, y is not”, and the
fairly arbitrary way they’re classified and the politicized nature of
that classification…
So a lot of this is about the questions that are asked, and they
might get some, probably not all of those things that I’ve mentioned.
But those are the things that that question allows you to do in a way
that a question like, you know, “does democratic peace theory hold
among emerging democracies?” doesn’t. Because that’s just saying
44
“well, democratic peace theory says this, but some people have said
that.” You know, that doesn’t get them to think very critically except
in a sense that some people in the literature have criticized it. But that
I think doesn’t go far enough.” (Tutor B)
While this last passage suggests a variety of ways to stimulate students’ to
think on multiple levels, the extent to which these strategies are successful is
unclear. Though tutor B’s question, “does democratic peace theory mean that
democratic states should promote democracy?”, seems to allow more room for
critical thinking than “does democratic peace theory hold among emerging
democracies?” However, without further analysis, it does not go beyond asking
the question. It therefore can be answered deeply or superficially, critically or
uncritically. To the extent that students are unaware of the multiple levels in
which they are expected to engage the material, as well as the method through
which they should approach these levels, confusion and misunderstanding is a
possible, if not plausible, result. This point is illustrated by one of tutor B’s
students in the next chapter who expresses what appears to be an uncritical
evaluation of democratic peace theory.
4.3 – Criteria Tutors Use to Evaluate Student Work and Thinking
With regard to important intellectual criteria used for evaluation, the tutors
appeared to have well developed, if highly personal, systems which include the
following components: logic, consistency, reasonability, accuracy, coherence,
breadth, precision, clarity, and relevance. It appeared, however, that these criteria
and suggestions for their use were rarely communicated explicitly to students. In
fact, much of participating tutors’ strategies seemed to be implicit. This lack of
explicitness is important. As Pedder (2006) points out, one important quality for
effective teaching is to clearly define learning tasks for students. Without this
45
explicitness, students can become confused or uncertain as to how those tasks
should be accomplished. This should not be counter-intuitive. One does not teach
correct form for a jump-shot by telling the players to “throw the ball at the hoop”.
Rather, it is done with careful attention to the minute details of body mechanics,
wrist flick, proper rotation, concentration, etc. etc. The effect of this implicitness
on students’ development of critical thinking will be explored in the chapter on
students which follows.
When asked what criteria they used to evaluate student work (intellectual
evaluation, both internal and external, being an essential component of critical
thinking), participating tutors’ comments were mixed. On the one hand, initially,
all three tutors seemed to have difficulty stating the criteria they use. This can be
seen in the following passage:
“[Evaluation] involves something which I’m not going to be able to
define for you, which is a concept I have of intellectual judgement.
Very roughly I mean “there are three different things you could say
about this. One of them is important, which is the important
one?”…and that’s a much more amorphous concept. And it’s not
something you can teach, it’s something you hope the student will
acquire in the process of the whole set of tutorials in which they seek
to answer questions.” (Tutor A)
On the other hand, when pressed, all three tutors were able to detail
standards they encourage and expect. Thus the unclear response above can be
contrasted with a much stronger articulation (highlighted in bold), as follows:
“… there’s the argument itself, you know, “does it flow logically
from point to point?” “is it supported by evidence” “is the argument
logical?” “is it coherent, rather than contradictory?” “is it
persuasive?” “does it make sense [clarity]?” … If a particular policy
is suggested, “what’s the basis for it [questioning assumptions]?
Would it have the supposed outcome [testing implications]? How
can we tell?” (Tutor B)
46
Even the tutor who initially responded with the view that critical thinking
cannot be articulated in the abstract outlined standards he uses in judging papers
(again noting the intellectual standards in bold):
“How widely have they read in order to see what other approaches
people have, or what the weaknesses of that claim might be? And to
what extent have they engaged with the material and looked beyond
it [tracing out implications]? Or simply got stuck with
it?...sometimes they need more examples, sometimes they need better
examples [accuracy]…or they need to give a bit more detail
[precision]... Hopefully clarity, to synthesize a huge body of
information and to strike through it, to look at its strengths and
weaknesses, to re-present it systematically [logic].” (Tutor C)
In short, taken together, and with some analysis, these passages show that
these tutors share and emphasize intellectual standards for evaluating reasoning,
namely: logic, consistency, reasonability, accuracy, coherence, breadth, precision,
clarity, precision, and relevance, all of which are significantly highlighted in the
literature on critical thinking. It seems clear, then, that some tutors have a rather
well developed system for critique, though they may have never discussed it
explicitly with students.
4.4 – Critical Thinking Often Implicit Rather than Explicit in Tutorials
It seems that the intellectual moves tutors make (in questioning and
challenging students) are often implicit rather than explicit. The clearest example
of this, of course, is Tutor C’s belief that critical thinking doesn’t exist in the
abstract. But he was not alone in this belief. Tutor A objected to the label “critical
thinking” and equated critical thinking with thinking itself:
“There’s no difference between “critical thinking” – if it must be
identified and given a label – in an undergraduate essay, and the
process of external and self criticism that goes through in publishing
an academic article. There is only one – I mean I suppose that the reason I object to it being given a label is that when you talk about
“critical thinking” and it implies that there are other forms of
thinking, and no there aren’t... There are other ways of emoting about
47
things. There are ways of expressing oneself – which is not thinking
– but thinking is critical thinking, that’s what it’s all about. Otherwise
it is just letting ideas meamble through your mind” (Tutor A)
This answer seems to suggest a problematic notion of critical thinking and
its relationship with thinking. If thinking and critical thinking are the same, then
thinking is always of the same high quality as critical thinking.
Due to their implicit rather than explicit conception of critical thinking,
tutors were not always clear as to their intellectual expectations of students. In
other words, they sometimes asked questions which to them seemed perfectly
clear, but could have been interpreted in any number of ways by students. For
example, tutor C’s most often cited method for teaching critical thinking was to
“push the thinking,” which seemed, to this interviewer, somewhat ambiguous. He
put it this way:
“[I’m] trying to get the students to ask a question which will allow
them to step back slightly from what they just said or from what
they’ve done and frame it slightly differently, and then push into detail again, and then step back again and then push forward again… the
tutorial is then a possibility to re-cap and nuance some of what they’ve
done. You know, in the first place. But then to push them to frame
their thinking so that they can sit back from the immediacy of the
tutorial and push their understanding forward.” (Tutor C)
Perhaps his students understand perfectly, but it is unclear to this
researcher what was meant by such things as “stepping back” and “pushing
forward.” Does “pushing forward” mean following out the implications of a line
of reasoning? Does it mean comparing it with another author’s reasoning? Does it
mean applying an idea to a new context? Throughout his interview Tutor C often
spoke in metaphors, giving little explanation and few concrete details as to what
the student was expected to do in terms of thinking and reasoning.
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Here is another passage in which Tutor C explains how he thinks of
himself as raising the level of student thinking in the subject:
“…they talk more in the beginning and I’ll start to try and bring
things together as we move towards the end. So there’s a sense in
which I want them to throw stuff out because they’ve been doing a
lot of work that week… And then you get to the point where there are
natural pauses in their thinking…and that’s where I come in to bring
it in a different direction. And then we’re moving toward the end of the tutorial and I’m trying to gather up those thoughts, not always
entirely explicitly and saying “ok that’s good so the answer is this
this and this.” But more trying to bring themes together so that when
they go out of the tutorial they’ve hopefully got something where
they go and sit down and make some notes and think about it, and
probably that will have raised more questions for them than
answered. But it will have raised questions on a slightly higher level and have given them a slightly different way of doing things.” (Tutor
C)
For Tutor C, the key question is: “do we manage to take the students
somewhere in [the tutorial] that re-orients or transforms their thinking about the
subject?” His hope is that by stimulating their thinking in different directions,
students will critically reflect on their own beliefs and be in a better position to
raise them to a higher level as a result. It is unclear whether and to what extent
this, in Tutor C’s own words, “rather shambolic approach” results in students
developing deeper insights into the material and critical insights into how one
thinks about alternative perspectives or whether it passes through students’ minds
largely undigested.
It seems as if keeping things at the implicit level is not unusual. When
asked if there was any departmental ethos with regards to conducting tutorials,
Tutor B replied “You can devise it any way you want. So there is no ethos. The
ethos is, if anything, pluralism.” Tutor A largely agreed, and recounted a story of a
colleague who had a difficult time learning how to conduct tutorials. He says:
“I have a colleague in the next door office…and he came to Oxford never having given or had a tutorial…and he said he found it very
difficult because no one would tell him. He’d ask “how should I do
it?” and out of that deference that we all have to each other’s
49
freedom, nobody would answer. They’d all say things like “oh
whatever you want”. And at the end…he had to ask his students.
Which, all credit to him that he had the modesty to do that. It’s a trial
and error process. Some approaches work, some don’t. There is
increasingly a tendency to try to formalize it, to give people rules. On occasion I have to preside over training sessions for graduate students
in this. I try not to make it too obvious that I think this is an utterly
pointless activity because if they’re any good they will throw the
rules away or write them for themselves. But it is very difficult. And
there are tips you can give. And one of them is to remind them that
tutorials are conversations.” (Tutor A)
To some extent Tutor A sees the problem in this, yet he believes that
anyone qualified to be a tutor should be able to do so without guidance or
instruction. Tutor B, on the other hand, seemed of all tutors to be the most
committed to the idea that critical thinking should be made explicit, rather than
remain implicit. He said:
“I think if you leave it implicit, the belief I suppose is that they’ll get
it by osmosis over time or something. But I don’t think that’s true. I think people, a lot of people, they just don’t know what’s going on.
They don’t really get it and so they’re confused and quite distressed I
would imagine. … So I think it’s very important to be explicit, and
that’s the only way they start to get it. And when I did start to do that,
I found it was useful and I saw some students make very rapid
progress.” (Tutor B)
Tutor B’s insight into how a lack of explicitness can lead to student
confusion is supported by the results of the student interviews, which is explored
in the next chapter.
4.5 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character (Traits, Dispositions, and
Habits of Thought)
The importance of developing intellectual traits or dispositions tended to
be more implicit than the targeting of intellectual skills or abilities. The
intellectual trait advocated the most by tutors seemed to be intellectual
independence (thinking for oneself). To a lesser extent intellectual perseverance
(working through complexities in arguments and issues) intellectual humility
50
(readily conceding when you really don’t know something to be true), and
intellectual empathy (entering deeply into points of view you do not hold in order
to understand and give them credit, even when they conflict with your own) were
also mentioned upon further probing
When asked about the concept of intellectual traits or dispositions, all of
the tutors seemed almost taken aback. It appeared that part of this was due to a
problem of communication (one interpreted my question to be asking about
forming someone’s “character” in the 19th
century sense of conventional
morality). Even after clarification tutors seemed uninterested in the idea and did
not articulate clearly the intellectual traits they valued. This would appear to be
evidence that the issue is not at the forefront of their minds. This becomes more
apparent if we examine the manner in which the three tutors explained their
orientation to intellectual traits. Here are the three tutors’ responses juxtaposed:
Tutor A: “[One would be] reading with sympathy. I have very
considerable impatience with 18 year olds who think that actually
Emmanuel Kant was so dumb that they can simply
reject…(chuckling)…But to read it to make it useful. You know, if
there are different ways you can take a sentence or paragraph, and
one would lead to some productive thought, read it that way rather
than reading it the way which allows you to score points off him. I
have problems with our philosophers here, because the way
philosophy is taught at Oxford, is almost entirely destructive. You are trained to go for the jugular and to take that reading which will best
enable you to show that Kant was incoherent. I have no patience with
that. Now that’s a sort of character trait. But it’s very much within
the notion of intellectual life. Humility, modesty, I mean yes. But as
awareness of one’s inevitable intellectual limitations...Never being
unnerved? Well you have an obligation, up to a point, to treat the
most shocking things that you can read or hear with equal, as it were, intellectual balance, as others.”
Tutor B: “I don’t mark people down for not showing them that, you
know, or for not going the whole way down the possible critical
route. Most don’t. Most students are rather conformist…So, yeah I
mean traits of mind are, yeah I do think, irreverence I think is an
important one. I don’t mean that in a sort of rude way. But not to
look at me as somebody that has the answers or is “the teacher”…But
not as an authority in that they should be skeptical…I suppose I’m
more explicit in the written form, there’s where I do encourage
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people to have the irreverence for authority and not to just, you
know, accept what they’re given. And then that comes out in various
degrees, implicit or explicit. And it shows up in the marks and the
comments that I give them on their essays and the feedback they get
in the tutorials. I don’t explicitly say, you know, to give them a test in the beginning and say “don’t trust literature” (chuckles) or anything
like that.”
Tutor C: “We can instrumentalize and kind of make banal what
they’re doing but there are skills - how does one read? How does one
sit down and read a piece of philosophy?...I don’t know. All I can say
is that when they say “it’s really hard” and I say “yeah, and when you
get to that point where the words are flapping around in front of you
– don’t have a cup of tea, don’t have a cigarette, keep reading.”
That’s the advice I give them.”
Each tutor seemed to believe that intellectual traits as such more or less
take care of themselves. Tutor A’s idea that traits are “very much within the
notion of intellectual life” sums it up: participating tutors seemed, when prompted,
to express support for the development of intellectual traits, but they also seemed
to assume that the important traits would naturally develop in the course of an
undergraduate’s tutorial experience. Because intellectual traits were so little
mentioned, it is reasonable to question whether and to what extent, sophistic
thinking is being inadvertently fostered. The students appear to have some sense
of this danger. Some expressed concern that the tutorial might reward
“bullshitting” and clever, if sometimes dishonest, argumentation over careful and
fairminded deliberation. More on this in the next chapter.
4.6 – Conclusions:
Taking the interviews together, it would seem that all three tutors
encourage some important critical thinking on the part of students. It seems, for
example, that each of them encourages students to think for themselves in a
variety of way: by developing their own position or argument on issues, avoiding
oversimplification, giving reasons, evaluating evidence, exploring beliefs and
52
theories, clarifying the meanings of important terms, uncovering assumptions,
staying focused on the question at issue, and looking at things from differing
viewpoints.
But it is not as clear the extent to which these intellectual skills are being
effectively internalized by their students as a result. Much of what is done by
these tutors seems to be highly implicit. Tutors, even those who articulate a belief
in making as much explicit as possible (as Tutors A and B did), still leave much
unspoken or unanalyzed (as has been highlighted above). For example, instead of
asking direct questions such as “What assumptions are underlying this particular
viewpoint?” They sometimes asked more vague questions like “What’s the basis
for that (which could be a probe for assumptions, information, or even
conclusions)?” It seems pertinent here to revisit tutor B’s insight that leaving
things at the implicit level results in students who “don’t get it.” The extent to
which students successfully internalize that which their tutors seek to foster is
explored in the next chapter.
53
Chapter Five: Students’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking
Remembering again that all of this study’s conclusions are tentative and
provisional, nevertheless there is an interesting and possibly important similarity
between the dominant faculty and student view of critical thinking. Like the three
faculty, the student picture of the tutorial is focused on some important critical
thinking moves: clarifying key questions, concepts, and assumptions in the
reading of assigned texts. In other areas, such as the internalization of new ideas,
intellectual evaluation, and the development of intellectual traits, student
responses were not clear.
As one would expect, the faculty are more intellectually and
methodologically sophisticated about how one goes about reasoning through
contentious issues in a content domain. On the whole the seven students were less
clear about how these crucial goals are accomplished. Perhaps contributing to this
confusion, some of the faculty “moves” are implicit and tacit, buried, perhaps, in
what participating tutors have subconsciously learned through their academic
career. This becomes a point of frustration for some students.
Especially true at the beginning of their tutorial experience, some students
voiced frustration in being asked to follow a process that had not been adequately
spelled out or modeled. Thus they sometimes felt unsure about how one comes to
terms with the question at issue, how one identifies or analyzes key concepts, how
one lays bare unspoken assumptions. It is important to remember Resnick’s
(1989) twenty year old insight into learning: that successful learners are
intentional agents cognizant and articulate about the strategies they use to process
and internalize new ideas. By not being more explicit, it seems possible that
54
participating tutors may be contributing to student confusion, frustration, and
inefficiency.
Student’s fears that they might look foolish played a role here. This
suggests the possibility that to the extent that the “process” students are expected
to follow is opaque and undefined, student anxiety and confusion is a plausible
result. What is more, anxiety and confusion would seem to discourage rather than
foster student intellectual autonomy and productive engagement with the content.
Here are some student thoughts demonstrating confusion, and even fear, with
respect to the tutorial process:
C: Well I think that’s the thing with the tutorial system is that
your tutors are very rarely actually explaining things to you...So I
remember the first time I came up here and I got an email saying
“read these chapters in a book, read this book as well, and write
this essay”. And I hadn’t received any tuition, hadn’t been to
lectures, this is completely new!...So I had three days to read 200
pages and write an essay on a subject I’d never done before. So
you can’t be, in a tutorial, like with this essay that you think is
utter shit and you don’t really understand what you’ve written…
and I’d be so nervous about that in the tutorial that it was really
difficult to actually learn anything, because I was so nervous
about the whole thing.
G: Last term I was shit scared. I couldn’t talk in tutorials I was so
scared. I literally couldn’t talk in tutorials.
As was discussed in the last chapter and as the above highlights, much of
what is sought after within the tutorial is kept at the implicit level. It can therefore
only be glimpsed fleetingly through experience, trial and error. This leaves much
to chance in terms of what students will internalize in a deep and transformative
way.
5.1 – Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities
Yet as students progress through their studies, they seem to begin to
develop much deeper and more powerful understandings of the nature and
55
significance of critical thinking within the tutorial. One thing is certain: the
students in this study began to pick up on those skills which are explicitly and
systematically required of them. This is clear from the fact that all seven students
interviewed mentioned that the first task when writing an essay was to precisely
articulate the meaning behind key concepts in the question being asked, as well as
to identify the assumptions underlying their use:
C: So I’ve actually been taught how to do that. Teachers and
tutors have recommended that I do that. And the idea of starting
an essay by testing assumptions and explaining terms and that
sort of thing, that’s only something I’ve done recently… So I
remember essays from even last term. I hadn’t really explained
the question. I hadn’t really teased out any assumptions in the
question, I hadn’t done any of that. And my tutors had hit me up
on that. So it’s since then that I’ve taken that into account.
E: well first of all, in an essay, I look at the title of the essay,
whereas before I would have looked at it and just gone straight
into it and answered it, now I like to define the terms, which
almost takes half an essay sometimes, to find out what everyone
means by the terms they used and what they’re asking really as
opposed to the surface meaning of the question, which I’ve never done before. And that’s kind of a big change.
Tutors’ emphasis on these three intellectual skills (defining key concepts,
clarifying central questions, and bringing to light important assumptions) within
the realm of writing an essay has apparently translated into meaningful and
significant learning on the part of participating students. Unfortunately, the lack of
explicit direction regarding other intellectual tasks left the students unsure and
often confused as to how to perform them.
5.2 – Critical Thinking Often Seen Implicitly Rather than Explicitly in
Tutorials
There were at least two important intellectual activities which students
seemed confused as to how to engage in critically: 1) learning new ideas (the
56
process of which was often seen as divorced from critical thinking) and; 2)
intellectual evaluation (which participating students said they most commonly
based on intuition). It is perhaps not coincidental that these two areas were the
weakest and most implicit in the faculty responses.
Before looking at these two weaknesses in student responses, it may be
useful to explore one potential problem with fostering critical thinking in an
implicit or limited way. As was highlighted in the previous section, students seem
to have developed critical thinking skills focusing on concepts, assumptions, and
questions. However, students seem to use these skills in a highly restricted way:
INTERVIEWER: and do you find that you’re generally doing
that not only in politics but in philosophy as well? Do you find
yourself writing sentences and thinking “wait a second, I’ve
assumed something here that maybe I shouldn’t”? or does it
maybe stay confined to politics?
I: I think it stays confined.
INTERVIEWER: and do you find that this spills over into other
things beyond your specific work? Do you find you’re doing that
in the way that you decide to do all kinds of things?
D: I think it still stays very much within the realm of the written
word.
F: I don’t think I go into a politics essay and then go into my
economics essay saying “Right - what I did in my politics essay,
when I looked at my assumptions, and it went really well”…you
just treat it as almost a completely different thing, whereas I guess if you think about it you really shouldn’t because it is the
same process I guess.
INTERVIEWER: do you think it would be helpful to use one to
help the other?
F: yeah definitely.
The last response by student F seems to imply that had he been encouraged
to think about the connections between politics and economics he would have
developed his writing and thinking skills much more effectively, as insights from
57
one discipline would have enriched and deepened insights from the other. In this
case, making these connections more explicit may have significantly helped this
student.
Now let us look at the manner in which students approach the
internalization of new ideas. Two factors: 1) the abovementioned lack of transfer
and, 2) tutors’ own ideas regarding a separation between “clarifying” or “filling in
gaps of knowledge” and true “critical thinking”, seemed to contribute to many
students seeing a disconnect between understanding, on the one hand, and critical
thinking, on the other. Most students in the study seemed to reflect their tutors’
belief that one must have command of a mass of facts before one could begin to
think critically about them:
INTERVIEWER: so you said in philosophy you need to think a lot before you can analyze – what does thinking entail that’s not
analysis?
I: I think it’s understanding. That’s what I mean by it…I think for
me critical thinking is less a role because I’m trying to get the
basics down and I’ll think through the issues once I look at them
again. Whereas I need the issues at the moment.
D: I think in certain areas where people have been, as long as you
have enough depth of knowledge that they can critically think
about things. Because if they’ve only been doing stuff for a
couple of days or a couple of lessons then they’re not really
going to have the resources to think critically about it they’re just
going to be picking away an argument based on not very much.
C: I just want to say that there is a difference between critical
thinking and learning…stuff. Like reading an article and loads of
books. I think the tutorial system probably is good at stimulating
a critical way of thinking and being able to encourage you to
make an argument and analyze things and figure out how to
construct your thoughts into a coherent structure. It does that
quite successfully but that’s at the detriment of actually learning
the stuff that you’re meant to read.
Note that these answers preclude a deep approach to making sense of new
ideas. Most participating student articulations explaining how they internalized
new ideas were vague or technical, rather than clear and critical. For example,
58
student D remarked that his strategy was “once I’ve done all my reading I’ll make
notes on each of the papers, each of the papers that are vaguely useful, and just
sort of take out useful quotations and try to synthesize all that into a plan.” We
might juxtapose this remark against a deeper, hypothetical, response such as:
“When I am attempting to understand the reasoning of a particular philosopher,
the first thing I look for is the key concept that seems to tie together the entire
theory. Then I look at the assumptions on which that theory is based and the key
question which the philosopher seems to be focused on. I then move to follow out
the implications of the theory, asking ‘if this is true, how does it change the way I
should live, the way society should be structured, etc?’” Such intellectual moves
are essential to deep understanding, and they seem to be missing from the
approach participating students used in analyzing the passages they were
interpreting.
To the extent that students are not being explicitly taught how to perform
intellectual analysis as the vehicle to understanding a text, they are missing a
significant domain for critical thought (the domain, for example, of close reading).
Such approaches have been developed and articulated in the work of every major
critical thinking theoretician (Ennis, 1991; Nosich, 2009; Paul and Elder, 2008;
Siegel 1990; Scriven and Fisher 1997; etc. etc.).
Another important area in which participating students seemed to lack a
coherent theory was in the realm of evaluation. Only one student gave a clear and
elaborate response to the question “how do you judge the quality of an author’s
reasoning or written work?” This student had been taught formal logic (a system
for judging arguments based on a few important but highly specific formal criteria
which do not lend themselves to the evaluation of intellectual constructs other
59
than arguments). As it is the first module in the PPE course, and therefore
presumably has been taken by all students in the study save one who was not in
PPE, it is surprising that the other students did not articulate the same ideas.
Rather, the other students seemed to be guided by intuition. Here were some
explanations of how students describe themselves engaging in intellectual
evaluation:
I: a big part of it is my own intuitive instinct, my own
preconceptions of that argument. And so in which case if I start
to follow an argument and it corresponds with something I find
quite - if I find something that’s quite intuitive then that’s quite
helpful in judging articles.
G: I find it really hard to read someone’s essay and critique it. I
don’t know why, it’s like impossible – it’s like gibberish I don’t
know why!... But in the end I just kind of… [go] through the plan
of his essay and then just underneath in a different color pen, like
on the computer still, Just say like whether I think this is a good
or bad idea, but I think that’s a bit sort of childish.
INTERVIEWER: so when you’re trying to decide what’s right
and what’s not, what kinds of things are you looking for?
D: I think you always have to try and find where the source is
and if you disagree with them and try to work out where the root
of the disagreement is.
F: yeah well you often just get a - it sounds really like stupid but
it’s almost just sort of what you…what you think sounds right.
It’s almost like an impulse. It’s almost an impulse decision. Its
just what seems more convincing, what fits the evidence from
real life? What actually happens? Like we were doing something
on democracy this week, like peace between democracies. And
even though you think it through and you’ve got the evidence
before you and there’s loads of people slating the idea that
democracies are more peaceful, but you still like – in my head
you just have this view that “no I live in the world and when I
think of democracies, say, I just think they are more peaceful
countries”. It’s a silly thing but it’s something you need to have
or you’d be sort of out of touch.
INTERVIEWER: so more intuitive then?
F: yeah that’s the word yeah…
Thus, student critique is largely based on “whether or not they agree” with
the point. Paul and Elder (2008) identify this as an “egocentric standard,” which
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they term “it’s true because I believe it.” Under this paradigm, students use their
own beliefs, rather than independent criteria such as those articulated by the tutors
(clarity, logic, depth, etc.), as the primary determiners of what is and is not so. In
other words, arguments are true and largely unproblematic if their conclusions
coincide with the beliefs of the student, and false and problematic to the extent
that they conflict with those beliefs. This manner of evaluation is inconsistent with
the spirit of critical inquiry and can lead to sophistry, as highlighted in the next
section.
5.3 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character (Traits, Dispositions, and
Habits of Thought)
As was highlighted in the chapter on tutors, there was a striking lack of
emphasis on the development of intellectual traits. One result of their absence is
the potential for fostering intellectual sophistry or what Richard Paul calls “weak-
sense critical thinking” (Paul, 1992). This can briefly be described as skilled but
selfish thinking formulated at the expense of the rights and needs of others. If the
goal is simply to “win” the argument, students may ignore insights in arguments
to which they are not sympathetic and instead “attack” or “destroy” them
(terminology that was used frequently in the student interviews). Recall that Tutor
A spoke of this problem quite directly and forcefully when he attacked the way
philosophy is taught at Oxford.
Yet though this was recognized as a problem, and tutor A did articulate a
vision of intellectual empathy and humility in reading to “lead to some productive
thought…rather than reading it the way which allows you to score points,” this
seemed to be a peripheral, rather than central, concern and not an essential
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component of the way in which he conducted tutorials. The result of this approach
on the students is suggested in the following:
C: I think some people have a knack for bullshit. To be honest a
lot of people on my course do. I mean it just comes with the
territory right? This is a politicians degree, of course they’re
going to be good at bullshit (laughing). So for some people it just
comes like that. Like in my ethics tutorials last term, the guy I
had tutorials with, he would do no reading but he was still able to just talk, like for lengths. He could have kept going if the tutor
hadn’t stopped him (laughing) even though he hadn’t really done
anything. (Student J, p9)
E (a non-PPE student): I think it’s a PPE trait. Like it actually is!
(laughing) and I really dislike it in people. That problem – they
use so many words just to kind of talk talk talk talk talk to try and prove their point. You don’t know if they believe the point…
INTERVIEWER: and do you find that that method of doing
things is rewarded by their tutor and the system in general or is
the tutor saying “well be a bit more nuanced and maybe you
shouldn’t argue so vociferously” etc. etc.
E: I do think it is rewarded because they do tend to become better
at thinking on their feet so they tend to learn to blag it almost,
which they do quite a lot.
INTERVIEWER: and the tutors don’t seem to sort of crack down
on that?
E: no I don’t think so. I think I spend, well I’ve spent most of my
X tutes in silence just kind of – from PPEist to PPEist, and unless
there’s an issue that particularly grasps me I don’t tend to speak
because I just watch. It’s like a ping-pong game. And if you try
and speak you’ve got to speak across someone, there’s not an
opportunity.
The dangers of instruction which encourages “scoring points” and
“proving your point” over an openminded and empathetic exchange of ideas,
especially considering that some of these students will likely become future
political and financial world leaders, should be particularly poignant in the wake
of the current global economic collapse (which seems at least in part to be due to
questionable thinking on the part of many in the financial community who
gambled the savings of others in order to gain profit for themselves).
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5.4 – Conclusions
To be sure, the seven students within this study seem to be internalizing
some valuable skills of critical analysis as a result of the tutorial. Defining key
terms, bringing important assumptions to the surface, and clarifying core
questions, as well as looking for clarity and consistency of an argument - are all
valuable critical intellectual abilities. At least two students were also able to give
an example of how they used these abilities not only in their studies but in their
lives as well. All this is certainly a sign of important intellectual development.
However, to this interviewer, there were some things that were missing
from tutorial instruction (or so implicit that students were unable to pick up on it),
which has been highlighted in this chapter. The most significant areas which
appear to be neglected are the understanding of new ideas, intellectual evaluation,
and the development of intellectual traits. With regards to these vitally important
skills, the participant students seemed to be largely left to their own devices,
leading this researcher to a few significant questions. If we do not teach students
how to analyze and deeply understand new ideas, are we not contributing to
student confusion and mislearning? If we do not teach an effective and defensible
set of intellectual criteria to be used for intellectual judgement, are we not
encouraging uncritical relativism and/or intellectual sophistry? If we do not
highlight the importance of intellectual traits, do we not open the doors for the
development of highly skilled but largely egocentric and manipulative thinkers?
While this study cannot make definitive claims with regards to any of the above,
their potential significance would seem to suggest hypotheses that have
implications for the design of tutorial pedagogy. I leave their further investigation
for future researchers.
63
Chapter Six: Observations
The observations essentially confirmed, and at least partially explained,
the findings in chapters four and five. It is not possible, due to space limitations, to
analyze and evaluate the tutorial sessions to the same degree of detail as the
interviews, nor would it be particularly fruitful. Due to the “rather shambolic”
(Tutor C) nature of much of what was observed within the tutorial, the data
gathered during the tutorials produced few insights into the development of
critical thinking in students. Most of the focus seemed to be on the content of the
course, with critical thinking playing an implicit and background role.
Tutorials conducted by tutors A and C were primarily focused on the
content of the course and there was little evidence of a systematic approach to
critical thinking. Throughout, the intellectual agenda of these tutors was
sometimes unclear to this researcher, and it is uncertain if their students were
aware of the intellectual moves being made and asked of them. Tutor B was much
more systematic in his approach. Below is a brief summary of the character of
each tutor as they conducted tutorials.
Tutor C, again, described his own approach as “rather shambolic.” He also
described his approach as one where “[the students] talk more in the beginning” as
he gets them to “throw things out there” and in the end he ties up the pieces and
gives them things to think about. This is exactly what happened. Once the
discussion started the students were certainly “throwing things out there,” even if
that meant that what was “thrown out” was confused or poorly supported. While
Tutor C did ask questions of clarification, the bulk of the discussion was tied up in
debate over the content, with critical moves being used occasionally and then only
implicitly.
64
Interestingly, in the tutorial on Political Sociology (in which he had less
expertise), Tutor C asked more probing and critical questions then he did in the
Political Theory tutorial. Perhaps because he knew less content within it he felt
more compelled to question rather than clarify through statements. In both
tutorials he spoke more toward the end, as he attempted to “sum things up.” His
students took few notes. It was thus unclear whether or not his summary was
digested by the students, nor was it obvious that the questions he raised in the
process were seen by the students as important and worthy of investigation or if
they simply passed them by.
Tutor A used the full hour to read and comment on the student’s essay.
While this had the effect of focusing the tutorial on specific points, and thus
potentially helping the student to improve his writing, to this researcher it seemed
that most of the intellectual work was being done by the tutor. In other words,
when the student used a concept, such as “culture,” without clearly identifying
what was meant by it, Tutor A would discuss numerous possible meanings of the
term and how they might be used in the context of the paper. It was thus unclear
the extent to which the student was able to follow and digest the tutor’s point. The
student took no notes.
Tutor B, again, was the most systematic. This is possibly due to the fact
that he was the only tutor to have read and marked his students’ essays in advance.
Despite his students having significant difficulty with the material, he did not
lecture to them but rather persisted in asking questions, bringing in brief examples
from their work or the literature to stimulate their thinking. He brought in practical
examples that were relevant and which moved the discussion forward. He asked
for clarification and elaboration numerous times. He redirected questions to the
65
students to let them struggle with them. More than once he asked the students to
consider alternative points of view. He pushed his students to think through the
implications of the theory. Unfortunately, most of this was done implicitly and in
vague language. For example, instead of saying “When writing an essay, think
about the most relevant and significant facts for your argument and focus on
those,” he told his students “when writing an essay, focus on one thing at a time
and be more explicit.” It was unclear whether his students understood and
appreciated the moves he was making. The students took more notes than their
counterparts in the other tutorials, but still few.
6.1 – Conclusions
The overall picture brought to light by the observations was one in which
participating tutors played a key role in guiding and shaping the thinking of their
students, albeit much of which was at an implicit level. It would seem, given the
insights from the student interviews, that there is much potential for the
development of critical thinking that is missed as a result of this implicitness.
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Chapter Seven: Summary, Conclusions, and Questions
This section contains a summary of the key conclusions resulting from the
faculty and student interviews. This summary is followed by my hypotheses,
based on the findings in the study, along with questions which I believe warrant
further exploration.
It is important to remember the small sample size of this study (three tutors
and seven students). All conclusions refer only to the Oxford tutors and students
in the study.
7.1 – Results from Teacher Interviews:
Tutors in the study:
1. articulated very similar conceptions of critical thinking. For the most part,
they
a. were encouraging some significant critical analysis on the part of
students, to a large extent implicitly.
b. were using a range of intellectual standards in evaluation of student
work, though to a large extent implicitly.
c. had very little to say with regard to intellectual traits.
2. viewed comprehension as separate from critical thinking, and so implied
that it is not important to use critical thinking to achieve comprehension.
In doing so, they often equated critical thinking with the secondary step of
“criticizing” or “critiquing.”
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7.2 – Results from Student Interviews
For the most part, students in the study:
3. like their tutors, articulated conceptions of critical thinking which were, on
the whole, convergent. That which was clearly articulated by students was
highly correlative with that which tutors explicitly emphasized and
required.
a. All students demonstrated some evidence of critical analytical skills,
primarily applied to clarifying key concepts, questions, and
assumptions before writing an essay.
b. Students seemed to base most of their evaluation on intuition and
“what they agreed or disagreed with.”
c. Students had very little to say with regards to intellectual traits but
cited numerous examples of students lacking such traits (which
inappropriate behavior they believed was in some cases inadvertently
encouraged by tutors).
4. expressed a high degree of confusion and some fear over the tutorial
process in the beginning of their undergraduate experience.
5. did not appear to transfer skills learned in one discipline to another
(despite the transdisciplinary nature of their course), or even from writing
within one discipline to conversing within that discipline.
6. All viewed comprehension as separate from critical thinking and,
therefore, also negated its role in comprehension and equated it with
“criticizing” or “critiquing.”
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7.3 – Hypotheses and Questions
(Note that in this section, all numbers refer to the numbers in the previous
summary section.)
That participating tutors’ conceptions of critical thinking had a high degree
of convergence (1) was somewhat surprising, especially given the prevailing
perception that the tutorial is a highly divergent practice which results from a
unique intellectual interplay between tutor and student(s). The results of this study
indicate that, to the degree that participating tutors are effectively fostering critical
thinking, their approaches, though perhaps different in appearance, are highly
similar in substance and aim (e.g. the development of students’ ability to clarify
key questions, concepts, and assumptions). To the degree that this is true across
the university (which requires further investigation to determine), one hypothesis
for improving tutorial supervision would be to make more explicit the key abilities
Oxford tutors would like to see fostered in student thought. That tutors seemed to
have implicitly developed systems of analysis with a high degree of overlap (1a)
indicates that much of these abilities are already agreed upon and are ready to be
systematized. What is needed is to bring these commonly held ideas to the explicit
level. This articulation need not be static but can be, and likely would be,
dynamic, matching the evolving sensitivities of the faculty. Questions for future
research:
1. How do tutors’ conceptions of critical thinking vary within departments,
as well as across departments?
2. Does any department promote distinctive approaches to conducting
tutorials or do all departments leave it to the individual tutor, as was the
case in the department involved in this study?
69
3. What are the implications of the answer to the above question for student
learning?
4. With regard to those tutors who are more effective at fostering critical
thinking, what pedagogical strategies were used by these tutors, and how
might these strategies be shared with other, less effective, tutors?
The fact that participating students’ conceptions of critical thinking,
especially with regard to critical analysis, were highly convergent with each other
(3a) and with their tutors (3) implies that understanding and internalization may
improve when agreed-upon are discussed explicitly and adopted by multiple
tutors. That students seem, on the whole, to be much less clear about how to
perform intellectual evaluation (3b), as well as how they should go about learning
new ideas (6) seems to be correlated with their tutors’ much more implicit
understanding of intellectual standards (1b) and their own separation of
comprehension from critical thinking (2). The hypothesis here is that what is
communicated explicitly and systematically discussed and required is more likely
to result in deep and significant student learning than that which is covered
implicitly and episodically. Questions for future research:
5. How do tutors perform intellectual evaluation?
6. How, and to what extent, is this intellectual process communicated to
students?
7. How do students perform intellectual evaluation? How do they learn or
develop such systems?
8. How do students understand and internalize new ideas? How do they
learn or develop such systems?
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Some students expressed confusion and fear as to the purpose of the
tutorial system (4). To the degree that student learning is impaired by a
misunderstanding of how to engage in the tutorial effectively and substantively, it
would seem useful to attempt to clarify its purpose as well as the intellectual
processes that will be used in the tutorial. Perhaps a brief discussion in the first
term as to its nature and intent may be helpful. This might be an occasion to
indicate those key abilities which the tutor values and how the student might go
about approaching tutorial preparation in order to develop these abilities.
Questions for future research:
9. To what extent are introductions such as the one described above already
a part of induction programs?
10. Absent, or in addition to, such programs, how do students develop their
understanding of the tutorial?
11. How does this understanding evolve over the course of their
undergraduate experience?
12. Is there a correlation between depth of understanding of critical thinking
and successful engagement in the tutorial, on exams, and in their
careers?
That both tutors and students seemed to place little value on the
development of intellectual traits (1c and 3c) is potentially problematic. That a
significant number of both tutors and students in the study expressed concerns
over a perceived disregard for important intellectual dispositions such as
intellectual empathy and fairmindedness indicates that this may be widespread.
One tutor categorized it as a problem in the way the subject of philosophy is
71
taught (indicating that all philosophy students are potentially being encouraged to
follow an intellectually questionable paradigm), and many students characterized
it as a widespread problem, two even calling it a “PPE trait” (indicating that the
paradigm extends beyond philosophy to include at least politics and economics).
Oxford tutors, presumably, are not attempting to foster the development of
sophistic minds, yet it seems that some tutors are unaware or unconcerned that
some of their students may be developing skills of intellectual manipulation.
Questions for future research:
13. In all subjects, what are tutors conceptions of the formation of
intellectual character traits and to what extent are these traits valued?
14. What practices are inadvertently in place that either reward or discourage
the development of intellectual traits across the disciplines?
The Oxford tutorial is a powerful and influential model for fostering
intellectual development, and as such it deserves to be understood at a much
deeper level than is currently known. To the degree that this study has raised
significant questions and laid the groundwork for their investigation, it has been
successful. Had this researcher more time and resources with which to explore the
above, the data set would have been much larger. As it stands, my hope is that
critical re-examination serves to suggest some few insights into the nature of the
tutorial, its practice, its relationship to critical thinking, what seems to be effective
and what seems to need improvement. The questions which this study has raised I
leave to future scientists and researchers.
72
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Appendix A: List of Questions Asked in the Interviews
For Tutors:
• What is your conception of critical thinking?
o Is your conception explicit or is it more intuitive?
o Are there parts of critical thinking?
� Analysis, evaluation, synthesis?
o How is it similar to or different from other forms of thinking, such as
creative thinking or ethical reasoning?
o Do you see critical thinking in politics as being different in any way from
critical thinking in other disciplines or domains of life?
• How important is critical thinking in your tutorials?
o Are tutorials conducive to teaching for critical thinking?
o Do you feel confident that your students leave your tutorials better
equipped to think critically as a result?
• How do you go about teaching critical thinking in your tutorials?
o What are some practical strategies that you use to get your students to
think critically regarding the subject material?
• How did you develop your conception of critical thinking?
o Is it primarily your own, from the work of a specific theoretician, learned
from previous professors?
• What sorts of criteria do you use for giving feedback to your students?
o Do you discuss these criteria with your students explicitly?
• Do you look to develop intellectual traits?
o What are they?
For students:
• What is your conception of critical thinking? o What kinds of actions does it entail?
o How might you describe the opposite of critical thinking?
o Are there aspects of it that are specific to politics?
• How important is critical thinking in your life or studies?
o How often to you use it?
• How did you develop this conception?
o Previous education, tutorials, parents?
• Within the tutorial:
o What role does critical thinking play?
o Have any of your tutors ever discussed critical thinking explicitly with you?
o What do you think your current tutor’s idea of critical thinking is?
o Can you think of any strategies that your tutor uses to get you to think
critically?
• Regarding marking of papers:
o What sorts of criteria are your papers judged on?
o What kinds of comments do you receive regarding your work?
• Do you feel that you are developing your critical thinking skills as a result of your tutorial experience?
78
Appendix B: Interview/Observation Schedule
and Transcript Information
Tutors: A –May 12
th, 2009 – 36:58 – 5,595 words, 9.3 pages
B –May 13th
, 2009 – 54:06 – 6,881 words, 11 pages
C –May 24th
/25th
2009 – 1:01:35 – 9,883 words, 16.5 pages
Students: D – May 19
th, 2009 – 32:39 – 5,464 words, 10 pages
E – May 20th
, 2009 – 30:19 – 5,192 words, 9.5 pages
F – May 21st, 2009 – 39:08 – 5,774 words, 11 pages
G – May 22nd
, 2009 – 33:46 – 5,833 words, 11 pages.
H – May 22nd
, 2009 – 31:32 – 4,571 words, 7.5 pages
I – May 25th
, 2009 – 36:44 – 3,908 words – 7 pages
J – May 18th
, 2009 – 59:48 – 9,812 words, 15.3 pages
Observations of Tutorials: Tutor A – May 29
th, 2009 – 53:34 – not fully transcribed
Tutor B – May 28th
, 2009 – 46:37 – not fully transcribed
Tutor C, first group – May 26th
, 2009 – 1:01:54 – not fully transcribed
Tutor C, second group – May 26th
, 2009 – 57:14 – not fully transcribed
Word count of transcriptions, without the observations = 62,913 words (108
pages)
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