Can't say how much I enjoyed every part of this. I've been planning for a long time to write some sort of short free ebook precisely on the topic of computational thinking, for college students of all subject matters. A kind of manual on how to develop those critical thinking skills taking what's best in the computational disciplines. What do you say? Should we do it?
(Btw I think you have a couple of sections repeated, from abstraction onwards, maybe it was my reader)
I'll dump a few random thoughts I had while reading here, in no particular order. I'm not sure whether some of these observations are "obvious" to others or not. They may be.
- I think a lot about teaching methods, which is understandable since it's what I do for a living. I've been doing quite a bit of additional thinking recently as I tried to identify the components in my teaching that matter most to me and benefit my student mostly. Why am I saying this? Because as I read the definitions you quoted of critical thinking, I couldn't help noting that they applied perfectly, almost word for word, to good teaching:
"the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action." Just alter the last few words, and this is a definition of teaching
- This is probably not that surprising, after all. Perhaps the skills needed to be good at critical thinking overlap significantly with the skills needed to be a good educator? Perhaps they're necessary skills (but not sufficient)
- In my effort to decide what's the most important aspect of my teaching, "clarity" is one of the concepts I ranked very highly–I've been using the term a lot more, and I think I included it in my new LinkedIn profile bio and X pinned post. So when you talked about the importance of clarity in the decomposition process, that again resonated with me as essential to good teaching, or rather, I shouldn't use "good", so I'll say "my preferred method" of teaching.
You claim that "Clear thinking is hard to achieve, yet it is a prerequisite for understanding and communicating ideas." The teaching process is trying to make this process easier for learners through the way educators communicate. And, as we often hear quoted, the best way to learn something well is to teach it, since you need to have that very clear perspective of the topic before you can teach it well.
- So, our job as educators is: first to reduce the entropy surrounding a certain topic as much as possible for ourselves, then to find ways of helping our students reduce their own entropy. Hope I'm using the entropy analogy well here! I skirted around this idea a bit, not using entropy but another concept from physics, in one of my Breaking the Rules (my _other_ Substack) articles: https://breakingtherules.substack.com/p/a-near-perfect-picture-ep-7
- Decomposition, Abstraction, Pattern recognition, and Algorithmic design: you already mention this yourself. This is a great framework for teaching any subject. I won't dwell on this further in these comments.
I'm looking forward to reading more in your next articles, and thinking (hopefully critically) more as a result…
Great read. I had many thoughts pop up as I read this. But I’ll need to reduce their entropy a bit further first before writing them out in a comment or three...
Talk about a cliffhanger! I love the way you broke this topic down, and provided examples to ground it in reality. I’m deeply concerned by the significant lack of critical thinking and curiosity I’ve been witnessing lately. Your essay helped me connect a few dots, regarding a piece I’m working on. Thank you. 🙏🏼 I look forward to reading more of your work.
Can't say how much I enjoyed every part of this. I've been planning for a long time to write some sort of short free ebook precisely on the topic of computational thinking, for college students of all subject matters. A kind of manual on how to develop those critical thinking skills taking what's best in the computational disciplines. What do you say? Should we do it?
(Btw I think you have a couple of sections repeated, from abstraction onwards, maybe it was my reader)
I'll dump a few random thoughts I had while reading here, in no particular order. I'm not sure whether some of these observations are "obvious" to others or not. They may be.
- I think a lot about teaching methods, which is understandable since it's what I do for a living. I've been doing quite a bit of additional thinking recently as I tried to identify the components in my teaching that matter most to me and benefit my student mostly. Why am I saying this? Because as I read the definitions you quoted of critical thinking, I couldn't help noting that they applied perfectly, almost word for word, to good teaching:
"the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action." Just alter the last few words, and this is a definition of teaching
- This is probably not that surprising, after all. Perhaps the skills needed to be good at critical thinking overlap significantly with the skills needed to be a good educator? Perhaps they're necessary skills (but not sufficient)
- In my effort to decide what's the most important aspect of my teaching, "clarity" is one of the concepts I ranked very highly–I've been using the term a lot more, and I think I included it in my new LinkedIn profile bio and X pinned post. So when you talked about the importance of clarity in the decomposition process, that again resonated with me as essential to good teaching, or rather, I shouldn't use "good", so I'll say "my preferred method" of teaching.
You claim that "Clear thinking is hard to achieve, yet it is a prerequisite for understanding and communicating ideas." The teaching process is trying to make this process easier for learners through the way educators communicate. And, as we often hear quoted, the best way to learn something well is to teach it, since you need to have that very clear perspective of the topic before you can teach it well.
- So, our job as educators is: first to reduce the entropy surrounding a certain topic as much as possible for ourselves, then to find ways of helping our students reduce their own entropy. Hope I'm using the entropy analogy well here! I skirted around this idea a bit, not using entropy but another concept from physics, in one of my Breaking the Rules (my _other_ Substack) articles: https://breakingtherules.substack.com/p/a-near-perfect-picture-ep-7
- Decomposition, Abstraction, Pattern recognition, and Algorithmic design: you already mention this yourself. This is a great framework for teaching any subject. I won't dwell on this further in these comments.
I'm looking forward to reading more in your next articles, and thinking (hopefully critically) more as a result…
Great read. I had many thoughts pop up as I read this. But I’ll need to reduce their entropy a bit further first before writing them out in a comment or three...
Talk about a cliffhanger! I love the way you broke this topic down, and provided examples to ground it in reality. I’m deeply concerned by the significant lack of critical thinking and curiosity I’ve been witnessing lately. Your essay helped me connect a few dots, regarding a piece I’m working on. Thank you. 🙏🏼 I look forward to reading more of your work.
Sounds perfect, can’t wait to see it!