Teaching Patterns of Critical Thinking: The 3CA Model—Concept Maps, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Assessment

Abstract

This is a research report of teaching patterns of critical thinking using the competency-based 3CA (an acronym for the educational practices of Concept maps, Critical thinking, Collaboration, and Assessment) model of classroom instruction to change the grammar of schooling. Critical thinking is defined as the “WH questions”: “what, when, where, how, who, and why” taken from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. These questions are threaded through the practices of concept maps, collaboration, and assessment. This conceptualization of patterns of thinking is influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conceptualization of the relations between the language games of practice and language games in the mind. This study compares individual and collaborative approaches to teaching the critical thinking “WH questions” in a child development class. Students in the individual groups used more “what questions,” whereas students in the collaborative group used more “why and how questions.”