Hello critical thinkers!
We are excited to have three presentations at our JALT 2019 CT SIG Forum. It is going to be a really interesting time. We also will be holding our annual general meeting right afterward so stick around for an update on what the SIG was up to in 2019.
JALT 2019 Line-up
John Peloghitis & Guy Smith: Facilitating Debiasing in a Reading and Writing Course
A primary goal in teaching critical thinking is to reduce the impact that cognitive biases have on learners so they may make more rational decisions. The attempt to mitigate biases is also known as debiasing. Recent studies have found that using an intuitive approach to reduce cognitive biases is not an effective method of instruction. The following presentation reports on the effort to move away from an intuitive approach in teaching debiasing to one that incorporates a more effective and sophisticated perspective. Material will be presented from a first-year reading and writing course to illustrate some of these proposed changes.
Michael Hofmeyr: Skill-Building and Scaffolding Ideas for Training Great Debaters
Class debate is an excellent way for teachers to encourage learners’ development of critical thinking skills. At the intermediate proficiency level and above, debate activities may also be successfully integrated into English oral communication courses within the Japanese educational context. Nevertheless, without careful planning and consideration for the particular needs of Japanese language learners, teaching may quickly take an unfortunate turn for the inefficacious. This presentation will briefly outline the approach I follow with my own debate course on current affairs and draw attention to techniques that can enable learners to actively and confidently engage in classroom debate.
James D. Dunn: Critical thinking vs. higher-order thinking skills – what is the difference?
Critical thinking is a buzz-word in many textbooks. However, there still seems to be a misunderstanding as to what critical thinking activities are in the language learner setting. This presentation will go over some examples of “critical thinking” activities in textbooks and show where they excel and where they leave critical thinking lacking. Further to this, original critical thinking prints based on popular textbooks will be shared with the audience. The hope is that educators may return to their classrooms with ideas in mind and examples in hand as to what they could do to encourage critical thinking beyond the confines of the textbook.
Hokkaido Feb. 1-2, 2020
We are also excited to have been invited to participate in the 2020 Hokkaido JALT Chapter Winter Conference. We will be hosting a JALT Critical Thinking room with presentations by YOU.
We understand that not everyone has the research budget to travel to Hokkaido for a presentation so we are going to offer a special dispensation for CT SIG members who will be traveling to Sapporo to present for us.
Keep an eye out for the call for papers that will be showing up soon.
Stay critical,
The CT SIG Executive Board