A Practical guide to Fostering Critical Thinking in First Grade Through Graduate School Using Children’s Literature, in Particular Picture Books

Abstract

Introduction:  The proliferation of articles, curricular materials, conferences dealing with the nature and development of critical thinking and the coining of the word «edutainment» may be taken as an indication of the serious and extensive concern educators and others have in fostering critical thinking among today’s students and by implication, tomorrow’s adults. The following is a way of utilizing children’s literature, in particular picture books, to foster critical thinking. It differs from approaches which equate a part of critical thinking, analytic thinking, with the whole of critical thinking as well as from those which separate critical thinking from the environment out of which and in terms of which it arises and develops. It is similar to those approaches which consider critical thinking to be an awareness of and facility in employing the many processes people use in daily living to perceive, imagine, intellectualize, decide and evaluate; i.e., to think and to think about their thinking. It is also similar to those approaches which regard critical thinking as an environmental emergent; i.e., as conditioned by the interacting of physical, emotional, interpersonal and institutional forces which affect how people think and think about their thinking. It is supposes that thinking and critical thinking result from processes of active, mutual and interdependent engagements centering around specific issues within specified environments. It involves responding to oral and visual material, the picture book, and responding to the original response through group discussion and other activities. It begins with shared personal experience, proceeds to open ended yet directed discussion, culminates in universal or philosophic considerations and returns to the level of the, hopefully, enriched personally experienced. To facilitate this kind of multifaceted and some times confusing engagement, the following practical fourfold procedure of selecting, preparing, discussing and following up is offered as well as a brief traditional critical thinking discussion orientation.