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Q and A
Q: Why do WSU and other educational
institutions need a critical thinking rubric?
A: Faculty at WSU all indicate that
they prioritize critical thinking as the most important quality that students
learn, but many of them say that they evaluate for how well they follow
directions and the quality of their grammar and punctuation. So while faculty
want critical thinking, they are not actually asking for it, nor are they
teaching it. Implementation of the rubric shows faculty members how to teach
to that goal.
Q: How does the rubric work?
A: The rubric works mainly by
demystifying the expectations that faculty have for students. We feel
that we have begun to change the environment in classrooms from
information retrieval based models to situations in which students can
engage with course material and become users of information rather than
recipients of it.
Q: Is it necessary for faculty members
to completely change the way they teach in order to incorporate the critical
thinking rubric into their courses?
A: No. Nearly all of the faculty who used
the rubric (90%) reported that they did not significantly change the way they
taught.
Q: Is the rubric geared toward a specific
discipline?
A: No. The rubric is geared toward critical
thinking, which is used across the disciplines, and is also inherently changeable
if a more discipline-specific tool is needed. It is important to note that, of the
faculty surveyed, 75% felt that other disciplines operated with the same definition
of critical thinking. In addition, only 50% of faculty members changed the rubric
when they used it in their courses.
Q: Who has actually used the rubric?
A: The original five faculty members studied
represented the disciplines of General Education, Crops and Soils Sciences, Marketing,
Physics, and Entomology. Since then, the rubric has been used for this project in
other disciplines including Music, Teaching and Learning, Philosophy, History, Business
Law, Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology, and World Civilizations.
Additionally, many faculty members use the critical thinking rubric but have chosen
not to participate in this particular study.
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