Education Commons^™

Export Of Peter Taylor's Website, Peter John Taylor

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publication Series

The attached file is an export of Peter Taylor's website from January 28, 2020. Peter Taylor passed away on October 29, 2019.

To access the archived version of Professor Taylor's website, download and export the zipped/compressed file, and click on the "index.html" file in the folder "peter-taylor-website."

Instructional Strategies To Prepare Students For Success In Informal Learning Environments: Leveraging Metacognition And Critical Thinking To Develop Self-Regulated Learning Skills, Carolyn P. Commiso

Instructional Design Capstones Collection

This paper looks at how learning is evolving in the 21st century and what skills learners need to be successful in that environment. Based on existing research into the topic, this paper focuses on how learning is increasingly taking place in informal settings, through the lens of the Social Cognitive Learning and Cognitive Constructivism theories. The hypothesis is that students can be successful in these settings by mastering self-regulated learning strategies which can be developed through critical thinking and meta-cognitive skills. It assesses what instructional strategies can be used to develop these skills and enable continued learner success. In addition, …

Journeys: Changing Our Schools, Workplaces, And Lives Works-In-Progress From A Conference-Workshop To Mark 40 Years Of The Graduate Program In Critical & Creative Thinking, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers in Critical, Creative and Reflective Practice

A compilation of works-in-progress prepared for or during a conference-workshop to mark 40 years of the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The contributions illustrate how preparing for and participating in the conference-workshop provided an opportunity to reflect on ways that developing as a critical, creative, and reflective practitioner is like a journey into unfamiliar areas—journeying involves risk, opens up questions, creates more experiences than can be integrated at first, requires support, and yields personal and professional change.

The Social Construction Of Life: Critical Thinking About Biology In Society, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

This book aims to expand the boundaries of the influences that readers consider when interpreting the practices and products of the life sciences ("biology") and their impact on society. The chapter topics include: Interpreting Ideas of Nature; The structure of origin stories; Multiple layers in influencing an audience: The case of Darwin's On the Origin of Species; Metaphors of coordination and development; What causes a disease?—the consequences of hereditarianism in the case of pellagra; How changeable are IQ test scores?; Social negotiations around genetic screening; Intersecting processes involving genes and environment.

Each chapter consists of 5 parts:

1. Introduce simple …

Design For Living Complexities, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers in Critical, Creative and Reflective Practice

Lectures from a 12-session course that addresses the intersection of design with critical thinking. Design in this course means intentionality in construction, which involves a range of materials, a sequence of steps, and principles that inform the choice of materials and the steps. Design also always involves putting people, as well as materials, into place. This happens by working with the known properties of people, as well as the known properties of material, and trying out new arrangements to work around their constraints (at least temporarily). Critical thinking, as I define it, involves understanding ideas and practices better when we …

Teaching For Epidemiological Literacy: Description, Prescription, And Critical Thinking, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

This working paper describes contrasting ideas for a sequence of topics as presented to students in a graduate course on epidemiological literacy. The premise of the pedagogical approach is that researchers develop their epidemiological thinking and practice over time through interactions with other researchers who have a variety of in-practice commitments, such as to kinds of cases and methods of analysis, and not simply to a philosophical framework for explanation. In descriptively teasing out what epidemiologists do in practice through a topic-by-topic presentation, I am prescriptively encouraging discussants to draw purposefully from across the range of topics and contrasting …

Transitioning From Following To Making Your Own Path Through Critical And Creative Thinking, Cassie Tighe-Hansen

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

In my experience Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) will work to open minds and help transition a person. It can take someone from a place of not being open to challenges and having a closed mindset to one of openness and allowance for ambiguity and new ideas. This paper shows the transitions I have made in my career by way of a tragic incident and the structure I hope to create in a new class focusing on the college freshman. Included is a sample of the CCT curriculum I hope to teach to this class- both more thorough, concrete plans …

Pedagogy Of Curiosity: Initial Explorations Of Instructional Practice In A Critical Thinking And Curious Classroom, Michael Chalukian

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Through research on critical thinking, instructional practice, and curiosity I have developed the Pedagogy of Curiosity. This approach is implemented in the Curious classroom and a workshop for secondary teachers. The Curious classroom creates a structure and focus to encourage and develop curiosity and critical thinking of students. A questioning and research design redefines the learning expectations and the corresponding teacher and student roles in the classroom. An environment is constructed for students to take steps to become autonomous reflective learners.

This synthesis identifies two sources that inform my endeavor: 1) The accountability and results driven focus of No Child …

We Know More Than We Are, At First, Prepared To Acknowledge: Journeying To Develop Critical Thinking, Peter John Taylor

Working Papers in Critical, Creative and Reflective Practice

Exponents of critical thinking emphasize the teaching of skills and dispositions for scrutinizing the assumptions, reasoning, and evidence brought to bear on an issue by others and by oneself. In short, they promote thinking about thinking. But how do students come to see where there are issues to be opened up and identify them without relying on some authority? The current form of my evolving "answer" is that people need support to grapple with inevitable tensions in personal and intellectual development—support to undertake journeys that involve risk, open up questions, create more experiences than can be integrated at first sight, …