Dr. Mirko Farina's seminars on Critical Thinking

On February 13-18 Dr. Mirko Farina from King's College London gave a series of seminars on Critical Thinking and Higher Education

Seminar 1: Critical Thinking: an introduction

In the first part of the seminar an intuitive definition of critical thinking was offered and then some of the most defining characteristics of good critical thinkers were summarised. Having done that Dr. Farina returned to the original definition of critical thinking and enriched it by providing a brief historical excursus of how critical thinking is defined in academic works. In the second part of the seminar he reviewed a number of strategies for teaching critical thinking to students, including Toulmin's model of argumentation. He also briefly reviewed a number of methods for assessing critical thinking skills (such as the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, The Halpern Test, and The California Critical Thinking Skills Test). Dr. Farina concluded by reflecting on whether critical thinking skills and principles are universally applicable across mankind or whether instead they are culturally specific and therefore context dependent.

Seminar 2: Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking

First some many interesting relations (analogies and differences) between critical and creative thinking were explored. Then Dr. Farina offered a number of pedagogical perspectives on critical and creative thinking. He took a look at the cognitive dimensions of these constructs and reflect on how to articulate critical and creative thinking within different disciplines (humanities and sciences). And he concluded by summarising a number of strategies for teaching creative thinking in the classroom.

Seminar 3 Critical Thinking, Ethical Reasoning, and Daily Life

Dr. Farina reviewed the relations between critical thinking and ethical thinking, exploring point of contacts and potential relations between them. Then he reflected on how ethics can bring critical thinking alive and how, in turn, critical thinking can perfect ethical thinking. At the last part he focused on how to develop critical thinking skills and how to apply such skills in our daily life, showing that critical thinking is crucially important for our society.