Imagine that, as an educator, one of your long-term goals for students is that they acquire critical thinking skills: You want them to evaluate the soundness of logical arguments in persuasive essays, determine whether scientific research studies truly support certain conclusions, and so on. At a school board meeting, a father of one of your students complains about your emphasis on critical thinking. He insists that the purpose of education should be simply to teach students facts that experts have determined to be true in various academic disciplines. Of the following ways in which you might respond to the father, which one is most accurate and defensible?
a. Standards developed by professional groups in various academic disciplines often include critical thinking.
b. Critical thinking is the most basic cognitive process identified in the recent revision of Bloom's taxonomy; all other cognitive processes build on it.
c. Students are more motivated by long-term, abstract goals than by shorter, concrete objectives.
d. Virtually any instructional method you might usewhether it be a lecture, mastery learning, cooperative learning, or some other approachrequires students to engage in critical thinking.
Question 2
Four students in Mr. Kent's physical education class have just done poorly on the school district's physical fitness test. Which student is exhibiting a mastery avoidance goal?
a. Muriel gets As in all of her other classes, so she doesn't mind getting a C in physical education.
b. Robert knows he is a great baseball player, and when he comes up to bat, he tells himself, Now, don't strike out
c. Patrice is very upset about her poor performance and plans to work very hard to do better next year because she doesn't want her friends to think she's a klutz.
d. Oliver is going to come back after class to look at his scores and ask Mr. Kent for suggestions about how to improve in his weak areas.
This girl has a long leg cast, which was applied after surgery to correct her clubfoot.
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