AShley Rogers Critical Theory

Research Report

Critical thinking is a process in which one can attempt to comprehend something beyond their current comprehension level – to come to understand, and contradict something that society believes. In this case, it would be in the ways of teaching. That being, the methods a teacher uses within a classroom, and even the education itself – is it truly the ideal thing for people to go through? And is it truly beneficial for us? These are some of the questions that critical theorists ask themselves when developing new techniques to use in our education.

The first situation I will explain about for critical thinking relating to education is the methods used by Paino Maria, and Chin Jeffery. These two had combined the idea of critical theory with the game of Monopoly. The two had considered the fact that monopoly can actually be an educational game – using real life situations such as travelling, and money expenses – and social sciences. But, they had modified the game slightly to help it be used as an educational simulation. The goals of such a simulation were to help improve the comprehension skills of the students’ critical thinking.

The next is a question that a Pinto Laura Elizabeth had posed. This question was whether or not teachers were truly insinuating what critical thinking is or just teaching from textbooks. This mostly related to the teaching methods of teachers in a secondary education. In the article, Elizabeth had explained that Ontario is the only North American English-speaking area that teaches philosophy in the secondary education. By knowing this, Elizabeth had begun to look at what kind of textbooks teachers used for teaching. By this research she had revealed that in truth at least fourteen teachers did not agree with the textbooks they used when teaching philosophy.

Bowers C.A had begun to question pedagogy, and came up with the thesis of pedagogy being an oxymoron. To begin with my explanation, pedagogy is the art and science of how something is taught and how a student learns it. An oxymoron in this case, is directing the fact that this statement is contradicting itself. In this article he had addressed people such as Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux explaining who they emphasized decolonization.

Critical thinking was introduced by one named Simone when he had performed critical literacy inside a high school – the article was written by Johnson Elisabeth. For this lesson it took a lot of communication. Johnson Elisabeth had studied a classroom exchange about student publication. During her analyzing, the person she watched – named Simone – had used a great amount of communication techniques, that being her speech, laughter and even gestures. Simone had also worked in silences, and pauses when needed during her presentation. Johnson Elisabeth had then concluded that she was a critically literate person by her methods and variety of gestures and communication methods – things such as this, shows that critical theory is not a hard concept that only those who have studied years can understand. Even one, like a high school student can even achieve comprehension.

Watson Sunnie Lee, and Watson William R. had done their thesis on a review of critical theory. In this article it has addressed social sciences – that philosophy – and the state of education. In the article the two had reviewed the protocols and concerns of educational research. They had also described the goal of CST [critical systems theory] for reducing the risk of burdening categories and how people interpret information.

In conclusion, critical thinking is a system that can bring people in many directions, and lead them on many paths. It can address an education directly – for example teaching methods and what is taught – or a more mental concept – for example that being how one understands information given to them. It can be understood and evaluated in different ways, though usually when thinking of education there is a limited amount of ways to consider things.