Dr. Denise Lutter, Teacher Center Director, gave the Bronxville Board of Education an overview of the faculty's critical thinking initiative, past, present, and future. Over the past two years professional development efforts have focused on subject-based definitions of critical thinking and ensuring that all students experience projects or units that promote higher-level thinking. The essential question guiding this work has been:
To what extent do our students produce high quality, original work that
demonstrates the capacity for analysis, reasoning, problem-solving, and
effective communication about complex, global issues?
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| Flossie Chua, Consultant from Harvard's Project Zero |
The next phase of this work focuses on assessment:
How do we know? Key features of the current year include
- The Humanities Research Seminar, a seminar offered in partnership with Sarah Lawrence, focusing on inquiry into social problems combined with community service in the region;
- Stepping Up to Questioning, the Elementary program emphasizing instructional strategies that help students to ask questions and reflect on their own learning;
- Action Research in partnership with Harvard's Project Zero, focusing on assessing depth of understanding in the various subjects; and
- External feedback from the Tri-State Consortium in May 2013.
Dr. Lutter's presentation can be found
here.
