Category: Unit 3

Monica,

Thank you for your post. I had not read the article by Calahan, but after reading your summary, I found myself relating the stages to my own experience in teaching just as you were evaluating where you are in your field of ministry.

The questions that you posed at the end of your post really got my mind thinking. Like you, I wondered if everyone automatically goes through this process. When I re-read your post however, I noticed Calahan’s quote explaining how novices become practitioners. “They grow in reading and assessing situations through comparing other situational experiences (Cahalan, 2017).” This implies that they reflect upon their previous experiences and apply what they have learned in new situations. In my unit 3 readings I have learned that many people are passive thinkers, avoiding engagement in active, critical thinking. Many are also ignorant of their thinking. I would hazard to guess that people that do not progress through the stages may be people who are not in the habit of engaging in personal reflection, or are unmotivated to do because they feel they already know everything they need to know, or perhaps feel overwhelmed and powerless to improve their performance.

So I feel that it really comes down to one’s mindset and how motivated one is to learn and grow. Now that I realize the huge impact that one’s thinking has upon one’s life, I am motivated to be more aware of my thought processes and I will begin to engage in critical thinking. I think that this is crucial for my own personal development, as well as for my development as a transformational servant leader.

The texts I selected were two web pages on The Foundation for Critical Thinking’s website: the pages entitled College and University students and Being a Critic of Your Own Thinking. I was really proud of myself for being able to summarize my notes into the following summary of key ideas in both articles. I found this to be a VERY useful exercise and I will use it in future!

1) Your thinking plays a powerful role in your life; thinking ‘well’ brings positive rewards while thinking ‘poorly’ brings negative consequences

2) The extent to which we become better quality thinkers is determined by the amount of time we dedicate towards this development, the quality of intellectual thought processes we engage in, and the depth of our commitment to becoming better quality thinkers

3) Four examples of ways to improve the quality of your thinking are: clarifying your thinking, maintaining relevance in thinking, questioning deeply and striving to be more reasonable in thinking

3a) -clarifying one’s thinking involves 2 things: clarifying your understanding of what others are saying and being aware of how clearly you are communicating to others

3b) -sticking to the point means being able to separate information that is relevant to the issue at hand from information that is not relevant

3c) -deep questioning involves asking questions skillfully to be able to get at the root of the problem or to fully understand a problem

3d) -being reasonable involves paying attention to when you or others are being unreasonable in a particular situation and asking yourself what the reason is for the behaviour. e.g. is a viewpoint being overlooked? Are there inherent biases? Am I really taking the best course of action for all involved? Are there better ideas for handling this?