STRUCTURE OF THE GUIDEBOOK

Critical thinking competency is directly connected with independent decision making process. Thus, the complexity (profoundness) of the applied critial thinking depends on the complexity of the situation in which decisions needs to be made:

A)     Example Situation 1: We are forced to make intuitive decisions; or to make decisions based on our own stereotypes when we are in absence of time.  In such situations, we can not talk about  application of critical thinking;

B)       Example Situation 2: In some cases, having collected the information from diverse sources is enough to make decisions. This would be an example of the situation in which critical thinking is applied in decision making at its first level;

C)      Example Situation 3: We often find ourselves in the situation in which the information from diverse sources is not explicit enough and needs to be understood more profoundly. More time is needed to understand the terminology, key concepts and notions applied, in order to be able to make a decision;       

D)     Example Situation 4: Sometimes, knowing and understanding different alternatives is not enough to be able to make an adequate decision, because we are not sure about the degree to which it is applicable in our context, in our particular situation which needs problem solving and here, experimenting and applying in practice of several alternatives can help us in excluding those alternatives which are inadequate for the situation we are in;

E)      Example Situation 5: It might turn out that none of the existent alternatives can work out according to our expectations, and then, we need to proceed with a deep analyses of the details, which can indicate some aspects that might be improved or efficientized, or changed, so that as a result we can give our preference to one of the solutions;

F)      Example Situation 6: When none of the solutions are applicable, we need to synthesize new solutions. For that purpose, we can use creative cognitive instruments that can help us generate those solutions.

G)     Example Situation 7: There are situations in which the “outside” pressure on us to make a decision is very high, and we need to evaluate all the solutions from the personal values’ perspective, in order to be able to make an independent decision.

In this Guidebook we look at critical thinking competency (the general competency) in very deep details, analyzing it from Bloom’s Taxonomy perspective, and identifying specific competencies for each type of cognitive processes: information, understanding and interpretation, application, analyses, synthesis and evaluation.

Thus, as a result, we have described the following aspects for each type of the cognitive processes:

1. A learning situation in which a specific competency is demonstrated – these situations can be simulated (mocked) in the class together with the students; or it can be described in the textbook through the case studies; during the module when a particular subject of study is presented.

1. Main attidues, skills and knowledge for a specific competency.

1. Metacognitive associated processes – these are related in most of the cases with the students’ capacity to ‘suspend’ the thought from jumping towards the evaluation stage (decision making phase), and rather apply diverse cognitive processes to achieve a more profound thinking.

1. Teaching – learning – evaluation strategies – a wide variety of tools that can be applied by the teachers or the authors of curriculum, textbook, others, in order to develop the specific competency;

1. Didactic tasks – set of objectives and didactic tasks implemented for the purpose of exercising diverse cognitive processes;

1. Along with general didactic/teaching tasks, we provide examples of tasks based on a specific theme/topic – related to Turtles in Moldova. (Note: any theme/topic can be analysed using the proposed model for curriculum development). 

Nota Bene: Specific critical thinking competencies can not be applied absolutely separately from one another. In reality, there is no order or consequtiveness in application of the cognitive processes. Cognitive processes of different level are very much interrelated and interconnected during the learning processes. The purpose of this instrument is not a “gentle separation” of each specific competency, but is to rather propose a list of specific tasks that can contribute to the development of each specific competency.