Department Colloquium – Diane Halpern

Diane Halpern | Dean of Social Sciences at Minerva Schools at KGI and McElwee Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College
Title | Teaching for Critical Thinking: The Why of Higher Education
Abstract
The data are clear: we can teach critical thinking skills so that they generalize across domains and last long into the future. Our primary goal as instructors is not anything that happens in our classes or on our campus. The sole reason we have universities and other formal settings for learning is the belief that whatever is learned in these buildings will be applied in some other setting where we are not present, such as the workplace or at the home or in the community. How can we teach critical thinking for transfer? In this presentation we will identify those critical thinking skills that we want to develop in our students and discuss ways to enhance their learning and probability of transfer as well as how to assess critical thinking to know if we have been successful in achieving these goals.