Promoting the Integration Critical Thinking into Middle School Civics, Government, and Economics

The purpose of this web page is to give you, the reader, some insight as to what we learned. I want to thank Dr. Elder for her presentation, and much of the information found here is based on her work. The difference here is that I intend to apply the approaches she outlined to the Civics and History curriculum. That way, as you develop your History and Civics lessons, you can incorporate the basics of critical thinking into your own classroom activities.

Dr. Elder pointed out that thinking is a skill-set that we as teachers need to help develop in our students. Our thinking reflects our own experience first, and so it can be seen as egocentric. This fact makes our thinking, and in turn our ability to process information, limited. Critical thinking, on the other hand, helps us and our students widen their perspective to include the point-of-view of others. In any social studies classroom, learning will be more intense and more interesting when students and teachers can empathize with the viewpoints of their fellow students and teachers. If they become effective listeners by processing the message of those in the classroom through discussion and dialogue, the world of experience for the student become much broader and more inclusive. The challenge in the process of becoming more empathic as we interact with each other is that there is little feedback for the speaker to go on so that he or she knows that the listener is doing an effective job. It becomes imperative, then, that the teacher models effective listening skills by becoming empathic ourselves so that our students are confident that we hear and understand what they are saying in the process of intellectual discourse.

Dr. Elder reminded teachers to place thinking at the center of instruction so that students can develop the skills needed to become more effective at the process of learning about their subjects. A Civics teacher might have these elements of thinking visually available for students, and as class begins, the teacher would refer to these elements to get students to become more aware of their own thinking. Classroom topics that lend themselves to these elements include but are not limited to the example outlined in the chart below:

Topic: the Civil Rights Movement
Thinking...	Sample Illustration
must have a *purpose*.	to understand and apply the Equal protection Clause 14th Amendment of the Constitution
seeks to answer a *question*.	How were the civil rights of black Americans violated through the Jim Crow laws and segregation in public schools?
includes *information* based on evidence.	Students will read primary sources such as letters, court documents, and examine photographs of the Civil Rights Movement
arrives at *inferences* or interpretations that allow for conclusions.	African-Americans were treated as second class citizens up to and beyond the 1954 Brown decision. Many were willing to be beaten or killed in the struggle for equality.
is based on *assumptions* that may or may not be true.	All blacks in America were subjected to discrimination and segregation by law. (Not true in the north. Segregation was de facto rather than de jure).
takes the form of *concepts* to help us make sense of the world.	The idea of equal protection of the law is contained in the 14th Amendment and was the basis for the end of segregation in public schools and eventually all of American social life.
has *implications* and consequences.	American society experienced social upheaval during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement put many such movements into motion for other minority groups in the US. In spite of considerable progress, racial stereotyping and prejudice continue today.
comes from a *point of view.*	The problem of racial discrimination and prejudice in the United States is part of the history of the nation, and each minority group and majority group brings its own viewpoint to the discussion.

If we as teachers approach our students as thinkers, we will be more effective in helping them connect the content we are teaching to their thinking. One of our goals as teachers is to get our students to become excellent thinkers when they are faced with the challenges of our topics. Students demand relevance when learning about different things in school, so leading students to conclusions about why our topic is important will help them make sense of the information we are teaching. As intellectual guides, it is our responsibility to help students think through any given problem we place in front of them. Critical thinking provides them with the structures they need to handle the topic effectively.

We'll continue tomorrow with some strategies that we can use in the social studies classroom. For now, here's a summary of a set of characteristics of critical thinking.