Recordings

Conference talks were recorded and are now available on this page.
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Welcoming Remarks

Welcoming Remarks - Developing Minds: Critical Thinking in Curriculum Development

00:00   Welcoming Remarks

01:04   Elder Margaret’s Welcome and Territory Acknowledgement

03:25   Minister Jinny Sims’ opening remarks

04:22   “What brought me from a classroom into the role I play today?”

07:07   “Critical thinking and a critical examination of our social fabric has to be an integral part of our learning process.”

15:23   “Critical thinking and the transfer of the skills you teach is the foundational piece for the Twenty-First Century”

15:53   Jane Pulkingham, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

16:38   “Developing strong Critical Thinking skills is essential in our work in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences”

25:36   Kris Magnusson, Dean of the Faculty of Education

29:29   The new BC Curriculum “is an attempt to foster deeper learning rather than the short term acquisition of a deluge of content”

 

Plenary

Peter Ellerton: (Plenary) Reasoning as a Social Competence: Collaboratively Developed Thinking Communities 

00:00   Thank you to the organizers

02:28   Introduction to Peter Ellerton

04:05   Peter Ellerton’s Keynote Address

7:34     “We must present not only our assertions and beliefs and whatever we value, but we must give other people reasons why they ought to as well. And the critical thing is that these reasons need to be accessible to others.”

8:32     “There is no ‘view from nowhere’”

11:54   “If all ideas are equal, then all ideas are worthless. There are some ideas that are better than others. Now that doesn’t mean to say that that’s without context. But in whatever context we operate, some ideas are better than others. ”

13:30   “Reason is a social competence. It doesn’t even make sense to say the word rationale by ourselves. We can only be rationale together…We are all co-inquirers”

17:55   “What we need to focus on is what excellent teachers think.”  

25:35   “What is the schematic structure of expertise in teaching for thinking?”

27:00   “Critical thinking as metacognitive evaluation”

28:06   “We need to let go of the notion that we’re going to be producing some kind of finished product at the end of our schooling.”

32:00   “We can think in a more sophisticated way with more sophisticated content.”

36:51   “Evaluating thinking is a little problematic because we’re not, perhaps, sure what we mean by thinking or what we’re looking for when we say that.”

41:27   “Doing things with knowledge is what we mean when we say think.”

44:51   “It is the mark of intelligence to progress in an uncertain world.”

45:30   The Critical Thinking Matrix

47:37   “Why Philosophy”

50:23   Threshold Concepts in Critical Thinking

55:28   “Once you think you’ve got it, you have purged the need for reflection; and we can’t have that, we have to have some sense of reflective capability, some sense of fallibahility.”

55:50   “Thinking is the point because whatever is happening in a student’s mind is the most important thing that’s happening in a classroom at any given time.”

56:08   In summary

57:09   “Teaching for thinking is a disruptive pedagogy.”

 

PowerTalk 1

Nic Fillion and Dale Martelli: Overview of Critical Thinking in the BC K-12 Curriculum Revisions: Implications for Post-Secondary Teaching and Learning

00:00   Introduction to Nic Fillion and Dale Martelli and The Position Paper

01:42   Overview of Critical Thinking in the BC K-12 Curriculum Revisions: Implications for Post-Secondary Teaching and Learning

04:22   Objective of the Critical Thinking reform in BC K-12 Curriculum

07:17   Prime Goal of Public Schools Intellectual Development—to develop the ability of students to analyze critically, reason and think independently, and acquire basic learning skills and bodies of knowledge; to develop in students a lifelong appreciation of learning, a curiosity about the world around them and a capacity for creative thought and expression. (1989)

09:02   The Core Competencies, Communication, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Positive Personal and Cultural Identity, Personal Awareness and Responsibility, Social Responsibility

10:18   There is still a chance that critical thinking will be on the back burner. In fact, there seems to be no requirement that CT be explicitly part of teachers’ course design, beside curricular competencies.

13:37   Draft of the Social Studies Social Justice 12 Curriculum Competencies and Content— “We want to draw your attention to the fact that the word Critical Thinking does not show up or any of the related words.”

15:04   “But there is a very important distinction between prescription and substantive guidance and we believe that there is a crying need for substantive guidance.”

17:09   The danger of external lobbying groups defining Critical Thinking for us.

19:05   Places to improve: 1) BC-specific material; 2) A better, more cohesive metacognitive framework; 3) Promote open access material; 4) Use of technologies; and 5) Have a wide array of disciplinary applications

21:16   How are we going to do this? Develop an online platform: editorial team, creative/user interactions, volunteer contributions, and participative exchange of ideas

22:41   Human Resources in our communities and Solid Pathways as a model for how to create that

25:42   “Finally, as critical thinking and personalized learning become more emphasized, it will be important for postsecondary institutions to adopt more holistic admission criteria.”

PowerTalk 2

Chas Desjarlais and Amy Parent: Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Critical Thinking

00:00   Introduction to Chas Desjarlais and Amy Parent

01:16   Searching for the Bone Needle: Critical Thinking in the B.C. Core Curriculum

02:05   Story-work Mode

05:10   “How do we design Critical Thinking to develop de-colonizing and indigenizing capacities for our students?”

05:22   Chas Desjarlais

08:22   Central Question from a Student to their Teacher: “Are you confident you can design a curriculum which will equip me to live in my world?”

09:50   Relevance—Holistic Approach to Critical Thought

11:59   “When we talk about Critical Thinking, it is a process and context is important.”

13:16   Critical Thinking and Indigenous Knowledge—holistic, interconnected, relational, and contextual

17:01   “Education can take place in many different environments.”

17:51   Respect—Can our current education system allow for this?

18:54   “When we talk about Indigenization of the BC curriculum, we’re at the first stage of Indigenization.”

20:18   Reciprocity—Braiding Knowledges

22:39   Amy Parent

25:17   Working to identify and disrupt Colonial-Settler narratives

26:05   Respect—Not just Critical Thinking / but also feeling, doing and being as part of a holistic lifelong / life wide learning process

27:30   “Certain elements of the curriculum need to be hidden no more.”

28:00   Relevance—Understanding of the ways in which history, power, capitalism, and patriarchy impact knowledge production in the curriculum.

29:35   Reciprocity—Understanding the need to develop authentic reciprocal and respectful relationships with Indigenous peoples.

31:50   “Imagine what actions you might take in terms of bringing Indigenous knowledge reciprocally into our curriculum.” 

PowerTalk 3

Jennifer Wang: Theoretical Matters: Critical Thinking from Secondary to Post-Secondary

00:00   Introduction to Jennifer Wang

00:36   Theoretical Matters: Critical Thinking from Secondary to Post-Secondary

01:39   My goal in this presentation is to give you a sense of how Critical Thinking is taught as a philosophy course at the post-secondary level

02:23   I think of Critical Thinking as a set of reasoning tools that can be applied to different subject matters.

02:56   The central focus of Critical Thinking in Philosophy Departments is argument analysis

04:59   Example of arguments analysis

08:21   Topics in Critical Thinking: While argument analysis is the central focus, I also teach student specific reasoning tools including: Logic, Probability, Decision Theory, and Statistical Reasoning

08:45   Other topics that could be taught in a Critical Thinking course: Cognitive Biases, Common fallacies, Categorical syllogisms, and Venn diagrams.

09:33   Example: The Base Rate Fallacy

12:15   A Resource: Wireless Philosophy/Kham Academy, http://www.wi-phi.com/

 

PowerTalk 4

Natalia Gajdamaschko: Practical Matters: Critical Thinking and Cognitive Development

00:00   Introduction Natalia Gajdamaschko

00:36   Practical Matters: Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy in 21st Century Classroom

02:26   Antipodes of Critical Thinking; the question of antipodes is what if we do not have Critical Thinking?

03:14   “Why is it so important, practically for us, to teach Critical Thinking?”

06:12   We have to talk seriously about teaching Critical Thinking

10:19   Ready Made Images, Ready-Made Knowledge

11:27   “If you want to achieve a practical result for Critical Thinking you have to organize and design the activities, design the linear activities so it will be a student walk and not your talk. It is only when you do not provide Ready-Made Knowledge that a student can actually develop conceptually and reflect on it.”

12:44   Practical solution for Teachers, The Lie Detector Methodology

14:14   Freeing ourselves from Dogmatic Conceptions

16:14   Role of Dialogue

17:40   Examples from Vygotsky’s ZPD (oral, inner and written speech, spontaneous and systemic concepts)

 

Summary and Closing Remarks

Breakout session summaries

00:00   Thank you too all the speakers, organizers, and participants

03:37   Morning Breakout Session Summaries

18:47   Afternoon Breakout Session Summaries

31:09   Next steps…