teaching a liberal art skill

Name

Name of Professor

Subject

Date

Teaching Critical Thinking

Introduction

The changes in the economic and social situation of the second half of the twentieth century have undoubtedly affected the resources for higher education . As the number of students increase and grow , the inadequacy of the resources has been also increasing , amplified by the denial of the higher education to admit the need to react and take action to improve academic excellence and performance

Several lecturers before are used to handle classes composed of 30 to 50

students , but now , they are encountering as much as 100 to 200 students (Ramsden , 2 . And because of that , the lecturers of today should expect that their students have extensive and wide-ranging skills and capability , thus , earlier knowledge cannot any longer be relied on especially in mathematics and science . It is a bit exaggerated to say that when the said changes are being taken into consideration as one , is an implication that the teacher is anticipated to be excellent and outstanding , that he can easily adjust his methods of teaching depending on the set of student he handles and to effortlessly deal with the large heterogeneous classes . And for this reason , teaching methods must be modified and improved to deal with classes nowadays that are not only larger , but also more diverse in their abilities (Brigss , 44

The issues of how can the teaching strategies be made effective and how can the teachers improve the way of their teaching have still been prevailing ever since the existence of mankind . The strategies should have significant effects in the students , and the quality and level of these effects should be determined for them to be effective

One of the skills of the learners that should be improved is the ability to think critically . Why ? It is because this type of thinking is crucial and important for successful working and performance in the real , modern world . This kind of thinking is a vital necessity for the citizens of the 21st century for every generation needs more education than the one came before because the world is becoming increasingly technical and complex . There is an increased demand for a new type of worker-the knowledge worker ' or the symbol analyst , a phrase that is used by the United States secretary of labor to describe someone who can carry out multistep operations , manipulate abstract and complex symbols and ideas , acquire a new information efficiently , and remain flexible enough to recognize the need for continuing change and for new paradigms for lifelong learning . Workers in almost every job category can expect to face novel problems in a workplace that is changing repeatedly . And for these , the ability to think critically has been undoubtedly important (Halpern , 2 . Critical thinking skills provide the students the capability of not only recognizing and understanding what they have read or what had been shown to them but also to put that understanding together without gradual and progressive guidance Critical thinking instructs students that knowledge is...