Professors’ Expectations of Students’ Ability to Think

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Abstract
Recent evaluations of the state of higher education have suggested that students must not only learn subject matter content but must be able to think with it. Professors in tertiary education expect that their students will come equipped to handle certain kinds of information and certain kinds of learning tasks. To describe their expectations, faculty use phrases such as the ability to think logically, or to do independent work, or to use abstract terms. But to what extent do they suppose that their students will be able to think? In a study of some learning tasks in the university, professors from three universities and six different disciplines, representatives of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, pure and applied, were interviewed. Faculty expectations of students’ ability to think logically, independently, and abstractly were analysed to show consistencies and differences across disciplines.

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