Dr. Roland Case

Dr. Roland Case is professor of curriculum and social studies at Simon Fraser University (on leave 2003-2005). He is a co-founder of TC2—The Critical Thinking Consortium—an association of 30 school districts, post-secondary institutions and teacher organizations working to support critical thinking from kindergarten to graduate school. With this group, Dr. Case has worked with 15,000 classroom teachers to embed critical thinking into their practice. His several hundred academic and professional presentations have been to audiences across Canada and the United States and in England, Israel, Russia and India. Dr. Case is senior editor of Critical Challenges Across the Curriculum--an award winning series of 20 teaching resources for critical thinking. Besides his work in critical thinking, Dr. Case has authored or edited books on judicial reasoning, law-related education, social studies teaching and program evaluation

Abstract:
"Nurturing the imagination through critical thinking"

Popular opinion typically holds that critical and imaginative thinking are competing goals, steering students in different, if not opposing, educational directions. In stereotypical fashion, critical thinking is equated with convergent thinking and imaginative thinking is aligned with divergent thinking. While many may recognize the significant contribution of a rich imagination to solving problems and other "critically-minded" pursuits, it is rare that educators will suggest that critical thinking can contribute significantly to developing the imagination. As suggested by the title of his presentation talk, Roland believes that the intellectual resources or "tools" that support students' ability to think critically are in large measure the same kinds of resources needed to nurture students' imagination. Building on a widely used model of critical thinking implemented by The Critical Thinking Consortium, Roland will discuss and illustrate the power of this approach in fostering students' imagination.

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