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1992

Teacher Education and Professional Development

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Education

Metacognition In The Elementary Classroom: An Exploration, Terri Anne Caffelle Dec 1992

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 …


Teacher As Researcher: A Two-Tiered Model, Barbara B. Nelson Dec 1992

Teacher As Researcher: A Two-Tiered Model, Barbara B. Nelson

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This thesis focuses on an investigation I undertook to enhance my effectiveness to teach mathematics, a subject to which I was assigned, but for which I had not been formally trained. It describes my attempt to construct knowledge through the clinical interview method as to how middle school students construct knowledge about integers and think about the knowledge they are constructing. On one level, I was attempting to learn how students come to understand the concept of integers; on a level, I was creating an understanding of how a teacher can construct knowledge about the construction of knowledge. This two-tiered …


Thinking About Grammar In The Middle School: A Study And Recommendations, Jennifer Ault Simmons Sep 1992

Thinking About Grammar In The Middle School: A Study And Recommendations, Jennifer Ault Simmons

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

The study involved 53 sixth graders in a small, rural town in southeastern Massachusetts. Its purpose was to identify some of the grammatical concepts held by these students. The survey is presented. Briefly, these students lack understanding of basic grammatical concepts (such as the subject/verb relationship and subject versus object). These and other misconceptions indicate that students do not understand the role of word function in language. A central finding about students' attitudes toward grammar study is that students do not realize that they have intuitive knowledge of their native language. Although students are not sure what grammar is, most …


Critical And Creative Thinking And Humor, Regina Temple Sep 1992

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 Sep 1992

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 May 1992

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 …


Using Stress Management To Promote Critical Thinking, Robert L. Schoenberg May 1992

Using Stress Management To Promote Critical Thinking, Robert L. Schoenberg

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This paper examines the effects of distress upon critical thinking and offers a variety of stress management techniques to enhance critical thinking skills. A major theme throughout this paper is that one cannot think clearly when one is distressed. The harmful effects of distress upon critical thinking are discussed in the content of the works of several authors in the field of stress management and cognitive psychology. Several different types of stress reduction techniques are presented and discussed. The critical thinking skills of metacognition, frame of reference and methodological believing are reviewed with a focus on how stress management can …