November 2006
1. Could there be a creative and collaborative approach to critical thinking?
- The trope of academic writing is authority.
- Fact: academic thinking always already implies textual ownership.
- The term “critical thinking” needs unpacking.
- Critical thinking should be driven by disciplinary conventions.
- The usual method is “Back to basics” (Hacker, Alred, et al).
- A more open-ended context might be worth experimental usage.
2. Critical thinking as awareness of the reader’s mind.
- A conversation between the writer and a text.
- Polyphonic conversations that include the reader.
- Rubrics as an index of the reader’s perceptions.
- Writer individuation (reciprocal with reader’s ego)
3. Critical thinking as architecture.
- Using thought to divide and rebuild textual space
- Categories as building blocks
- “Moves” in writing (includes traditional categories, i.e. cause ~~> effect).
- Writing as flow, critical thinking as segmentation, re-direction
- Suggestions for classroom use? Small-groups, peer review, discussion boards?
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