ABSTRACT
Daniel Willingham shared that, from a cognitive scientist’s point of view, three types of thinking fall under the umbrella of critical thinking: reasoning, making judgments/decisions, and problem solving. During a professional development workshop, one teacher disagreed with the idea that critical thinking is not a skill. In the process of her argument, she explained that cooking is a skill that can never be mastered because the complexity grows, just like thinking critically. When students are viewed through a lens of achievement, opportunities for critical thinking are fewer for those students who are on the perceived lower end. The professional development also included critical thinking professional development sessions. Part of the critical thinking professional learning sessions highlighted places where critical thinking processes were already embedded in their curriculum. Embedding opportunities to reason in different ways with a variety of materials as often as possible was a goal for the classrooms.
