Education Commons^™

Serendipity And Persistence: A Journey Building A Rich Music-Making Culture In Public Schools, Constance Cook

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

I am a music teacher in the public schools. This synthesis project presents a Practitioner’s Portfolio to convey my efforts over the last decade and more in pursuit of a rich culture of music in public schools. Readers should see someone who persists when faced with personal, pedagogical, intellectual, and institutional challenges. Moreover, that persistence is conducive of the serendipity through which opportunities open up to be an agent of change. What is also evident to me as I assembled the Portfolio was that the Kodály model of artist, scholar, and pedagogue seems to have been the underpinning for much …

Children's Story: Per-Se-Vere, Virginia De La Garza

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

We constantly come across problems or challenges that have no predetermined answer or solution. Perseverance is a very important disposition that makes us persist in the search of something we have started. I believe that people who want to persevere not only need to be motivated but, more importantly, they need to understand what it takes to persevere or, in other words, know how to persevere. Developing strategies to face and overcome confusion, obstacles, and frustrations is needed for learning. The teaching of Intellectual Perseverance is frequently taken for granted or not taught appropriately. Attitudes, dispositions, and habits of mind …

Verifying The Teaching Of Analogies To Fourth Grade Students, Terese A. Byrne

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

The proliferation of technology and the information it makes available to all has forced education to realign itself to meet the changing needs of today's students. A shift away from amassing information, toward the development of critical thinking skills, presents teachers with new questions. What skills are appropriate to teach at a given age or level, and how can those skills be developed? This project takes one of those skills, analogies, and investigates the degree of success a teacher might expect in teaching them to fourth grade students. The project was designed as a data generating study. Fifty-seven fourth grade …

The Cultivation Of Thinking Dispositions In Grades Three And Four, Linda L. Taylor

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Thinking dispositions are the internal motivation for thinking critically and creatively. Successful critical thinkers use theirs without another person directing them to use the skills. Many individuals, having acquired these skills, fail to use them. Tishman and Perkins suggest that inadequate development of the dispositions necessary to invoke the thinking skills account for the second behavior. In my work as an enrichment specialist, I have found support for this view. In this paper I present a case study of my work with third and fourth grade students, which focuses on developing the attitudes and dispositions needed for successful critical and …

First Graders Solving Problems, Mary H. Burke

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

First graders become good problem solvers when given the opportunity to practice problem solving skills. It is necessary for such practice to take place in a risk-free environment that treats errors as valuable learning experiences rather than something to always avoid. This thesis integrates academic subject matter, school life interactions, and out of school experiences into the first graders' development of critical thinking skills and strategies necessary for them to become good problem solvers. The thesis explains in several different academic subject areas the implementation of critical and creative thinking pedagogy essential for the development of a sound foundation for …

Thinking And Learning Through Creative Movement In The Classroom, Katherine M. Nauman-Borton

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

In the past decade, the American school system has come under scrutiny. American children are scoring lower than children from other countries on standardized tests. What can be done to ensure that American students are able to compete in the technological world of today? Many educators believe that in order for children to fulfill their potential, they must be given more than information and knowledge. They must be taught how to think, how to use the knowledge they learn in school. Researchers such as Robert H. Ennis (1987, 1993) and Matthew Lipman (1995) believe thinking must be advanced in the …

Children's Safety Zone And Gateways To Life-Long Learing, Anne J. Mcdonough

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

The major purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between a psychologically safe environment, which the author has termed Children's Safety Zone, and positive learning structures. Together they can of a practical new model for decentralized teaching. Educators create the conditions in which learning discoveries can be made; therefore, an exploration into children's motivations, achievements, learning abilities, intelligences, and values can affect how to effectively approach their learning discoveries. It is the assumption of this thesis that education needs to produce learners who have encountered and acquired a sense of responsibility and control of their own learning. Motivating …

Critical Thinking In Elementary Science Instruction Using Portfolios And Cooperative Learning, Lisa A. Hayes

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Elementary science education often does not reflect the processes used n professional science. Students are instructed in a recipe-oriented way to follow predetermine procedures in order to come to predetermined results. The embedding of critical thinking skills instruction into science curriculum makes it possible for science instruction to more closely resemble professional science. This curriculum development thesis utilizes critical thinking skills and instructional strategies as a basis for embedding critical thinking skills instruction into a series of lessons on the topic of sound. Each lesson includes objectives for science content and thinking skills, a motivational activity, use of portfolios for …

Analysis Of Mccarthy Learning Styles And Integration Of Critical And Creative Thinking, Lucille Nancy Maugeri Mckain

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Bernice McCarthy has devised an instructional and organizational model that has been used in the United States since 1979. The model addresses an experiential cycle of learning that takes one from personal meaning to creativity. The use of this model helps people to understand and respect others, to communicate, and to think at higher levels.

This thesis offers the McCarthy model as a foundation for structuring learning experiences. It begins with a literature review which discusses the theoretical origins of McCarthy's model. In evaluating this model for its inherent critical and creative thinking skills, however, the author finds several areas …

Metacognition In The Elementary Classroom: An Exploration, Terri Anne Caffelle

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Metacognition is a practice which enables students to monitor their thought processes in order to think critically. Research indicates that when students are aware of their thinking they become better thinkers. The purpose of this thesis is to encourage teachers to give more attention to metacognition in the classroom. A review of the literature on metacognition is given. Next, classroom lessons are outlined which introduce fourth grade students to metacognition in the context of math problem solving. Finally, an initial assessment is given of how students' metacognitive and problem solving abilities have changed as a results of the curriculum. Before …

Critical And Creative Thinking And Humor, Regina Temple

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Schools need to be more creative in helping students devise adaptive methods so as the ability to analyze, compare/contrast, and evaluate, and creative thinking behaviors, such as fluency, flexibility, and originality, are needed to solve the complex problems which students face in today's world. This thesis suggests the idea that humor, particularly humor resulting from the recognition and resolution of incongruity, found in jokes, puns, metaphors and visual representations, is related to and can facilitate the basic processes of critical and creative thinking, and hence facilitate complex problem solving. This thesis examines the importance of finding ways to initiate humor …

Building A Home For Thinking Transfer, Margaret M. Burke

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Thinking skills development is an important educational goal if students are expected to cope with the challenges of today's rapidly changing world. Teachers attempt to build the foundation for thinking by applying innovative programs that introduce and reinforce critical and creative thinking skills. Yet, educational practitioners and experts in the critical thinking field recognize that even those students who demonstrate mature thinking in school frequently fail to transfer thinking skills outside the classroom. To maximize the possibility for transfer two approaches to thinking skills development were chosen for this thesis. First, methods employed in the classroom included direct instruction in …

Creative Problem Solving: Nine Model Lessons On The Rainforest, Christine Morton

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

The need for imparting critical and creative thinking skills to students has never been greater. No longer can students be expected to absorb passively each aspect of their education without the means of understanding more fully the nature and content of the learning experience. The amount of information currently available for teaching purposes alone is truly staggering. Just as the instructor must choose the most appropriate material for a curriculum, so too must the student decide what will be the moist useful to study from this endeavor. Teachers need to become developers of critical and creative thinking skills, and advocates …

The Reference Connection: Teaching Thinking Skills Within The Library Reference Interview, Cynthia K. Fusco

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Library research is a thinking process composed of discrete, identifiable critical and creative thinking skills. These skills may be taught in school libraries as part of the reference interview, a conversation that occurs between librarians and student researchers. In order for this to take place, it is first necessary to understand the political importance of the definitional problems associated with the instructional role of the school librarian, to identify the steps in the research process and their related thinking skills, and to acknowledge the cognitive and affective aspects of the research process. School librarians who wish to include teachings part …

Cooperative Learning On Mathematical Problem Solving: Reflections By A Traditional Teacher And Her Students, Diana Metsisto

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

As our society becomes more technologically complex, the educational system preparing our students to become citizens of this society must adapt to met changing demands. Mathematical literacy of the 21st century will require a different model of mathematics education than that which served in the past. This thesis argues for a model of mathematics education which includes as key components: problem solving, question posing, cooperative learning, concrete manipulatives, and teaching for thinking. This new model sets forth guidelines for a facilitative approach to the teaching of mathematics as opposed to the more traditional, authoritative model. This facilitative model is based …

Critical Thinking In Reading: A Whole Language Approach, Deborah Anne Adkins

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

The importance of good instruction in reading education has long been recognized. What constitutes good instruction and what materials should be used have been the focus of much debate, however, over the years. Two relatively new movements in education have recently added fuel to that debate, namely the movements in critical thinking and whole language. The fundamental purpose of the thinking skills movement is the development of higher level thinking in students. In the area of reading this means that students should be challenged by questions and problems in literature which cause them to go beyond a literal understanding. They …

Introducing Problem Solving Through Literature At The Elementary Level, Margaret S. Harbert

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

There has been much publicity the past few years, regarding students' lack of basic skills, their inability to think clearly, and their poor use of problem solving strategies. To focus on this need, the following program has been designed to help elementary teachers introduce problem solving in an organized manner adding very little, if any extra material to the curriculum. The program aims to help students solve problems, critically, creatively, and systematically. Problem solving was chosen as the target area since the skills and strategies used are closely related to those used in reading comprehension, answering questions logically, and general …