Abstract
From 2012 to 2015 I was the first Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking at Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY. To the best of my knowledge it is the only such endowed position devoted solely to this at a major North American university. It was made possible by a generous 3 million dollar gift from an anonymous alumnus who wished to honor a retired faculty member who had taught for 51 years. The honoree was revered for his devotion to Bloom’s taxonomy and his academic rigor, which infused case studies and the Socratic method. A primary motivation for the chair was a belief that an alarming number of college graduates lack the necessary critical thinking skills in order to advance successfully in their careers. My responsibilities included collaborative leadership, advocacy and oversight for critical thinking across the entire campus. It provided a unique opportunity to reflect on the current state of critical thinking instruction–very broadly construed, as well as to examine its specific role at RIT, an institution with its own unique history, mission, and character.
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Notes
This paper is a revised version of an invited talk presented at RACT 2015 in Lund, Sweden. I would like to acknowledge Frank Zenker’s friendship, encouragement and support as well as his many critical insights that have significantly strengthened my own thoughts on this topic. I’m also very grateful to the comments of the two anonymous peer reviewers, which have greatly improved this paper.
For revisions to Bloom’s taxonomy see (Krathwohl 2002).
“Thinking about Making” is a graduate course currently offered within our College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. For more on making and handicraft as a mode of critical thought see (Somerson and Hermano 2013), (Pallasmaa 2009), (Turkle 2007). For an appreciation of the intellectual demands, rigor, and critical reflection required by common work, yet all too frequently unacknowledged see (Rose 2004).
(Collini 2013) Stefan Collini’s frequent reviews and essays on educational reform in Great Britain for the London Review of Books provide a trenchant critique of the current state of affairs with great relevance to North America that should be heeded.
Nick Sousanis’s doctoral dissertation at Teacher’s College at Columbia University which has recently been published to great critical acclaim provides a notable example. (Sousanis 2015)
This more capacious conception of critical thinking is beyond the scope and focus of the present paper, but I do plan to address it in a future publication.
The work of Margaret Boden is exceptional in this regard, as is the research and scholarship published in the American Journal of Play.
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Sheffield, C.B. Promoting Critical Thinking in Higher Education: My Experiences as the Inaugural Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking at Rochester Institute of Technology. Topoi 37, 155–163 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9392-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9392-1