The Role of Representation in Teaching and Learning Critical Thinking

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Curriculum design in recent years reflects the growing belief in the importance of developing thinking skills. In this paper, we focus on a particular theoretical approach to the study and teaching of thinking: cognitive science. We first give a very brief review of the recent research on critical thinking. We then concentrate on what cognitive science can add by looking at models of how people learn and how they transfer what they learn from one context to another. The main concept we focus on is representation and the crucial aspects of systems of representation and the meaningful transformation of information. We present examples of how representations can support, or hinder, problem solving and communication. We also discuss the social aspects of representation, the challenges of language use, and the paradoxes thrown up by attempting to guide students to be more critical thinkers.

This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit: