Programs

Critical Thinking International Programs

CTI's skilled and experienced educators offer workshops, professional development materials, and consultant services designed to promote critical thinking, active and cooperative learning and democratic citizenship. CTI delivers training workshops around the world. Our trainers have worked extensively in Central Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, and Africa offering programs on:

• active learning and critical thinking
  
  
• best practices in teaching reading and promoting literacy
  
  
• the writing and publication of instructional materials
  
  
• policy and teaching practices in bilingual education and second language acquisition
  
  
• course development and teaching improvement in higher education

Be sure to read "How to Start a CTI project" for a better idea of how CTI designs its initiatives.

 

Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking (RWCT)

The Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking program (RWCT) is based on the idea that democratic practices in schools play an important role in the transition toward more open societies. RWCT is now active in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as in Latin America. RWCT introduces research-based, instructional methods to teachers and teacher educators. These methods are designed to help students think reflectively, take ownership for their personal learning, understand the logic of arguments, listen attentively, debate confidently and become independent, life-long learners. The program can be used in all grades and subjects with existing curricula.

RWCT methods are adapted for classrooms in order to promote:

• Active Inquiry
• Student-Initiated Learning
• Problem-Solving
• Critical Thinking
• Cooperative Learning
• Writing And Reading Processes
• Alternative Assessments

Originally, RWCT was funded by the Open Society Institute (OSI) — which promotes worldwide educational, social and legal reform — and the International Reading Association, a non-governmental organization of professional educators. More than 25 National Soros Foundations in participating countries identified teacher-leaders to work with 70 professional educators from the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. The western volunteers served in-country as workshop leaders, delivering a comprehensive series of professional activities to participants. These volunteers were able to certify leaders in each of the participating countries. These leaders have formed the RWCT International Consortium, of which CTI is a member.

The RWCT guidebooks have recently been revised and updated by CTI's directors. The workshops offered by CTI and the RWCT International Consortium model interactive instruction and learning. They are built around demonstration lessons, with opportunities for discussion, practice, and questions.

A Self-sustaining Model

RWCT training begins when certified RWCT trainers are identified to work with an in-country leadership team. Participants for the project are chosen by the in-country coordinators; typically the participant group represents university faculty, members of the district inspectorate of the Ministry of Education, trainers from in-service teacher training institutes, and outstanding classroom teachers, able to eventually demonstrate and teach these methods to others.

RWCT is based on a "train-the trainer" model. Certified trainers offer a series of workshops over a 12-18 month time period. During this time participants practice the methods demonstrated, adapt them to their own classrooms and circumstances, and substitute national texts for those introduced in training workshops. They also meet on a monthly basis with colleagues to discuss their progress, and are observed in the classroom. RWCT trainers recognize that local educators' knowledge is critical to the overall success of the project. RWCT is designed to invite modifications that resonate within each country.

When they are ready, the first generation participants begin to train other teachers. The cadre of trainers is increased as selected second generation participants also become part of the local leadership core. To increase the efficacy of the dissemination effort and to ensure institutionalization, an institutionalization strategy is developed within each country.

RWCT is Responsive

It is:

• Classroom-based
   Participants leave RWCT workshops ready to implement the strategies they have learned in their own classrooms.

• Flexible
   RWCT is effectively implemented in primary and secondary classrooms, in pedagogical high schools, and in university classrooms, across many disciplines in many different countries.

• Adaptable to local conditions
   RWCT is designed for use with existing curricula and existing materials.

• Designed to build local capacity
   Mentored by a select group of international educators, RWCT builds a corps of skilled, in-country teacher trainers giving each country the capacity for national expansion.

RWCT Maintains High Standards

Monitoring and assessment are important components of every RWCT project. In conjunction with each training workshop, teacher educators visit participants' classrooms and meet to discuss implementation of the methods and strategies introduced. An assessment process with rubrics have been developed to help assess progress and provide feedback. (For more information, see this article in the Christian Science Monitor, or this report from the Kosovo Education Center)

The standards for RWCT certification for both teachers and trainers have been developed by an international board. Participants are awarded certification based on their understanding and practice of RWCT methods.

Before participants are certified as trainers they must present evidence of a working familiarity with RWCT methods as well as an understanding of the project's purposes. Many teacher trainers have created portfolios, videotaped lessons, collected student work samples and engaged with more experienced staff in extensive interviews.

RWCT is now, more than ever, dependent on local funding and fund-raising.

 

Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum (CTAC)

The Critical thinking Across the Curriculum Program (C-TAC) is designed to help university instructors create more dynamic classrooms in which students are invited to think critically and engage actively in their own learning.

Why C-TAC
The modern university is squeezed between its traditional mission of providing detached and scholarly reflection on the world, and its obligation to prepare young people to navigate their way through a future whose uncertainties are its most discernible features. The imperative to reform teaching is felt at all levels. Distinguished universities are called to provide distinguished teaching as well as scholarship and research. While teaching without good scholarship is an empty exercise, sharing scholarship without empowering students to think productively within the disciplines falls short of what is expected from a higher education.

C-TAC trainers believe that

Active learning and critical thinking lead to usable knowledge.
As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1910/1957) wrote many years ago, and the psychologist Howard Gardner (1991) has demonstrated   more recently, a distinction can be made among passively acquired knowledge (school knowledge), knowledge derived unreflectively from experience (intuitive knowledge), and scientifically validated concepts and thought processes that provide informed ways of understanding the world and solving problems (disciplinary knowledge and thinking). Disciplinary thinking is acquired by active means. Indeed, unless it is acquired, we are likely to do our day-to-day thinking with our intuitive knowledge (which is often flawed) and use our school knowledge to pass tests and impress strangers at social gatherings. Disciplinary knowledge and thinking--the kind of thinking that is used by scientists, literary critics, and social philosophers--is arguably a more fitting goal of higher education. We want our students not only to know the core concepts that have come down to us through the disciplines, but also to be able to practice the systematic and informed habits of thought that created those insights, and that will lead our students to create more knowledge, and solutions to problems, even problems their professors cannot foresee.

Active learning promotes habits of life-long learning.
An education that includes learning to learn does not start becoming out-dated upon graduation, but rather prepares students to keep up an intellectual conversation with the world that continues to help their minds to grow.

Active learning leads to tolerant and interdependent social behavior.
In truth, some of the most valuable lessons from university are social ones. As the name “university” implies, students in higher education should come to know not only unfamiliar ideas, but people who are unlike themselves. Classes that promote active learning and critical thinking are better places to get to know other students-not only to make friends, but to understand and be able to transcend differences.

Students are more engaged when active means of instruction are used.
Over the past ten years, the Harvard Assessment Seminars (Light, 2000) have investigated the question of what makes education effective in college. These things help:

•  clearly expressed expectations,

•  frequent writing assignments,

•  many projects rather than one paper or examination at the end,

•  interactive questions,

•  studying and working together,

•  relating the course work to the world outside of the classroom.

Posted on June 24, 2005 12:33 AM