Supporting Critical Thinking in PGT Provision

Dr Owen Gower, Director of UKCGE, welcomed attendees and introduced the speaker Dr Sophie Rutschmann (Director of MSc in Immunology and Academic Lead for Digital Education at Imperial College, London). The event began with breakout rooms and interactive discussions on the following topics:

• How is Critical Thinking taught in your institution? (as its own discipline, imbedded into another discipline, explicitly, …)
• In your own course (or the course you support), what opportunities have students to develop their CT skills?
• If you do, how do you evaluate CT learning gain with your students?
• Are there specific aspects of PG teaching that are particularly supportive of CT?
• With what you know now, what are the key Critical Thinking skills and dispositions our students will need for their future life?

Dr Rutschmann talked through the responses on Mentimeter before turning to her presentation about the work she has done on the MSc in Immunology at Imperial.

Firstly, she asked: ​“Why do we need to teach critical thinking?” To answer this question, she turned to the work of D. F. Halpern, who said: ​“If people cannot think intelligently about the myriad issues that confront them, then they are in danger of having all of the answers but still not knowing what the answers mean.” She spoke about some of the challenges we have as world citizens, such as being able to deal with information overload and with misinformation. 

She also provided a definition of critical thinking courtesy of Robert H. Ennis: ​“Reasonable, reflective thinking that is focussed on deciding what to believe or do”. As she remarked, the literature does present different schools of thought regarding this topic, but she found Ronald Barnett’s idea of ​“learning as being” as a useful way of thinking about it. Dr Rutschmann said that Barnett’s work led her to explore the idea of communities of practice.

Having explained the context, Dr Rutschmann then turned to several projects she has undertaken at Imperial. In the first instance, she interviewed PhD students about critical thinking and asked them what could support them with it. As she explained, one of the most transformative aspects of this work was the students’ discovery of what she called the ​“hidden side of science”. They were often surprised to find out that publications and supervisors are not always right – that data could be ambiguous or that people disagreed. She characterised academia in terms of an iceberg, with many things going on underneath which are not visible. 

Her second project was to bring these findings to the classroom, with a particular focus on embedding a sense of scientific community into the process. She invited speakers who could talk about the ​“backstage” aspects of academic publishing, and she held several sessions where students looked at data in a critical way, supported by more experienced academics.

Dr Rutschmann rounded up her presentation with a look at participants’ perceptions of the critical thinking module, which were generally positive. It was clear from the responses that it had touched on a range of subjects from professional identity and belonging to self-awareness, metacognition and self-regulation. She explained that she has kept the same format over time but changed the speaker every year for the ​‘story of a paper’ session, looking at academic publishing experiences. ​“Every year it’s clear that students continue to benefit from the module,” she said.