Rebecca Stobaugh is an associate professor at Western Kentucky University, where she teaches assessment and unit-planning courses in the teacher education program. She also supervises first-year teachers and consults with school districts on critical thinking, instructional strategies, assessment, technology integration, and other topics. Previously, she served as a middle and high school teacher and a middle school principal.
Rebecca has authored several books, including Assessing Critical Thinking in Middle and High Schools, Assessing Critical Thinking in Elementary Schools, Real-World Learning Framework for Elementary Schools, Real-World Learning Framework for Secondary Schools, and Critical Thinking in the Classroom. Rebecca regularly serves on accreditation teams and writes grants to support K–12 professional development. She is the executive director and former president of Kentucky ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development). Rebecca received the 2004 Social Studies Teacher of the Year Award from the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies.
She earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown College, a master’s degree from the University of Kentucky, and a doctorate in K–12 education leadership from the University of Louisville.
To book Rebecca Stobaugh for professional development, contact [email protected].
About the Contributors
Lauren Tanner is a curriculum coordinator and former English and language arts high school teacher in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She has been teaching since 2011 and has served as the head of the English department, on multiple literacy committees, and as a testing coordinator. She has a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and is pursuing a Rank I in administration.
Alicia Wittmer is an elementary school teacher and was previously a reading interventionist. She fell in love with teaching and working with students while growing up in northern Kentucky. She has a master’s degree in gifted education and talent development, as well as a gifted endorsement from Western Kentucky University.
Introduction
When students enter Mrs. Tanner’s language arts classroom, they see their work posted on the wall. As class begins, they lead a discussion about their reading assignment from the night before. They pose questions to one another and share their thinking without fear of being wrong. Mrs. Tanner communicates the learning target for the day, but not the product. Students have a choice in how they demonstrate proficiency on the learning target. With classroom tasks framed around broad questions, students move around the room to the various furniture arrangements: workstations for individual reflection, group conversations, teacher-student conferences, and technology applications. Throughout the unit, students design authentic products like writing letters to the editor and hosting school poetry nights.
This model represents a new and necessary approach to instruction and learning. It is a model that shifts away from a culture of stand-and-deliver instruction to one that emphasizes a culture of thinking. With an increase in engagement and intentional thinking strategies, students can experience long-term understanding of the content. They learn and develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that will serve them well in their lives beyond school.
The purpose of this book is to offer you strategies that will help you transform your classroom from one of passive knowledge consumption to one of active engagement with activities that foster cognitive engagement and develop deep-level processing. It is about creating a thinking classroom culture.
But first, let’s take a quick look at the changing demands of the professional workplace and the policy and assessment systems that make this book’s content and strategies so valuable to both you and your students. Then, we’ll establish the full scope of what you’ll find in this book.
Changing Workplace Demands
Workforce needs are rapidly changing. In the 20th century, if a person could quickly produce facts and memorize information, he or she was considered intelligent. Through modern technology, anyone can retrieve information on almost anything within seconds. But how often is that information reliable or valid? How often does the user know how to interpret that information and make the most use of it?
The new, valued commodity for the 21st century is refined thinking skills. In The Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum, 2016), interviewers asked chief human resources and strategy officers from leading companies what employment skills they require. Table I.1 (page 2) highlights the changing needs industry experts expect as we transition from 2015 to 2020. Notice the increasing value of the bolded skills.
Table I.1: Top-Ten Skills for Employment
| In 2015 | In 2020 |
| 1. Complex problem solving 2. Coordinating with others 3. People management 4. Critical thinking 5. Negotiation 6. Quality control 7. Service orientation 8. Judgment and decision making 9. Active listening 10. Creativity | 1. Complex problem solving 2. Critical thinking 3. Creativity 4. People management 5. Coordinating with others 6. Emotional intelligence 7. Judgment and decision making 8. Service orientation 9. Negotiation 10. Cognitive flexibility |
Source: World Economic Forum, 2016.
Clearly, skills related to critical thinking are increasing in importance. Similarly, in a Hart Research Associates (2013) survey, 93 percent of employers agreed a job candidate’s “demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems [was] more important than their undergraduate major” (p. 1). Job expectations are changing!
In the Wall Street Journal, reporter Kate Davidson (2016) writes, “Companies have automated or outsourced many routine tasks, and the jobs that remain often require workers to take on broader responsibilities that demand critical thinking, empathy or other abilities that computers can’t easily simulate.” In researching qualities of Google’s top employees, surprisingly, Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss (2017) finds the company regards STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) expertise to be less important than six other key identifiers: (1) being a good coach, (2) communicating and listening effectively, (3) valuing different perspectives, (4) demonstrating compassion toward colleagues, (5) exhibiting strong critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, and (6) formulating connections between complicated concepts.
Despite all this, schools are not consistently preparing students for this world. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (n.d.) states, “Somewhere along the road from education to employment, the system is not routinely equipping all students with all the skills they need to succeed” (p. 2). The skills the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (n.d.) cites as necessary align very closely with those that business leaders noted in table I.1.
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Problem solving and critical thinking
• Organization
•