Every professor tells you they want you to think critically. Most of them don’t tell you how to do that. This lesson will teach you to how to use higher order and critical thinking skills.
How might geospatial analysts or various other types of professionals utilize critical thinking skills in the field? Why is this subject prominently placed at the beginning of this course?
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
If you have any questions now or at any point during this week, please feel free to post them to the GEOG 882 - General Discussion Forum in Canvas.
Lesson 1 will take us one week to complete. Please refer to the Calendar in Canvas for specific time frames and due dates. Specific directions for the assignments below can be found within this lesson.
* Students who register for this Penn State course gain access to assignments, all readings, and instructor feedback, and earn academic credit. Information about Penn State's Online Geospatial Education programs is available at the Geospatial Education Program Office [3].
Before we jump into the bulk of the lesson, I would like you to spend a few minutes reflecting on your own critical thinking skills. Please answer the reflection questions here and on the next two pages.
Remember your response here and compare it to the lesson material that follows.
Measured Reasons LLC is an organization that specializes in “assessing reasoning, thinking strategically, and educating for critical thinking.” The following activity was adapted from their Critical Thinking Mindset Self-Rating Form. Reflect on your thinking over the last two days and answer the following questions. If you have described yourself honestly, this self-rating form can offer a rough estimate of what you think your overall disposition toward critical thinking has been in the past two days.
Please complete the following self-rating form.
If your total is 14 ("correct" answers) or above, you are rating your disposition toward critical thinking over the past two days as generally positive. Scores of 10 or lower indicate a self-rating that is averse or hostile toward critical thinking over the past two days. Scores between 10 and 14 show that you would rate yourself as displaying an ambivalent or mixed overall disposition toward critical thinking over the past two days.
Interpret results on this tool cautiously. At best this tool offers only a rough approximation with regard to a brief moment in time. Other tools are more refined, such as the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, which gives results for each of the seven critical thinking habits of mind.
© 2009 Measured Reasons LLC [4], Hermosa Beach, CA. Used with permission.
What is critical thinking? What is critical thinking not? Thinking critically can help you work methodically through problems in the workplace. It may help you sift through relevant information more efficiently and help you prioritize tasks. In your personal life it can help you decipher things like medical information to help you be a better consumer and advocate for yourself. Please view the video below about critical thinking.
Peter A. Facione, an expert in the field, wrote a report that contains the following consensus statement regarding critical thinking (CT). A definition of critical thinking is contained within.
"We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one's personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society." -Dr. Peter A. Facione
Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. [5] Peter A. Facione, principle investigator, The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA, 1990.
"Creativity follows mastery, so mastery of skills is the first priority for young talent." -Benjamin Bloom
Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999) was a highly influential psychologist and educator. Bloom's Taxonomy is a foundation of modern education theory.
One way to foster critical thinking skills is to think about our own learning at a meta level. How do skills build upon one another? Benjamin Bloom developed a taxonomy that helps educators use shared vocabulary and/or verbs to align their teaching practices with outcomes and related assessments so that we can continually scaffold toward higher-order thinking.
For example, a very young child may think that the game of football is simply a mass of people jumping into a pile after an odd shaped ball. As they learn the subskills of catching and passing, they are demonstrating greater skill. Then later when a player has developed a playbook and can adapt to situations on the field, they are synthesizing their skills, while their coaches help them to evaluate their performance and up their skills for the next game. Where are you in your development with the material in this course? Where will you go next and what do you need to work on?
The video below provides some background about Bloom's taxonomy and its usefulness in an educational setting. Prior to viewing, reflect about a topic that you have considerable knowledge about and something that you have only a basic understanding or skill set with. Think about your own skill set within Bloom's taxonomy.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a system for organizing levels of knowledge. It is a spectrum of sorts that begins with memorizing basic facts or vocabulary and builds from there when the learner practices and applies learned knowledge to eventually solve problems and to be able to evaluate systems or create something new to add to the topic.
In the educational realm, Bloom’s has been used to help teachers connect their content and students with objectives or desired outcomes. Modern interpretations of Bloom’s focus more on the act of learning by utilizing verbs that scaffold for higher levels of skill and knowledge, building upon one another, so that learners can develop from basic factual memorization to more elaborate concepts that incorporate these facts. The verbs also lend themselves to learning a continuum of procedures that graduate accordingly and can help a learner understand and reflect about their own capabilities.
"You must crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run." -Unknown
What foundational subskills must we develop? In the field of Geospatial Intelligence, what are the building blocks that form one’s basis of understanding and what kinds of actions do we need to demonstrate to experience growth and learn and demonstrate knowledge?
The foundational skills pictured above must be mastered before an individual can master higher order thinking skills in the future. This often involves the memorization of basic facts and behaviors related to the subject at hand. This brings us to you, the student, interacting with online content. As the adage says, “you get out of it what you put into it.” So having a broader sense of "where you are coming from and where you’re going” can be empowering as you manage your own educational experience. This sort of reflective practice helps you be aware of your own thought processes and development so that you are in greater control of your own destiny. This self-understanding can be defined as your own metacognitive knowledge. Having metacognitve knowledge also helps you in future roles when you are asked to contribute in a team environment or when you’re helping a newer colleague onboard into a new role in an organization.
I sometimes hear some of my younger colleagues or students contending that rote memorization is an outmoded learning approach in our modern technological era where we have knowledge at our fingertips via a Google search on our phone. I strongly disagree with this.
Consider a child learning to read. The first thing they must master is memorization of the alphabet. Children learn (memorize) their ABC’s through repetition and song (did you learn to sing your ABC’s?). Being able to recite the alphabet, however, does not mean you comprehend that the letters represent sounds and have meaning. Learning to count is the formation of knowledge about numbers, their quantity, and numbers in sequence.
A learner at this stage in their development can be observed demonstrating:
Verbs that demonstrate knowledge:
list, define, tell, describe, identify, show, label, collect, examine, tabulate, quote, name, who, when, where, etc.
Consider our pupil once again. They have memorized their letters and numbers. They now need to understand that these letters and numbers have meaning. Letters have certain sounds. Numbers represent a numerical value such that one equals one star but three equals three stars and is more than one.
A learner at this stage in their development can be observed demonstrating the ability to:
Verbs that demonstrate comprehension:
summarize, describe, interpret, contrast, predict, associate, distinguish, estimate, differentiate, discuss, extend
Our student is progressing nicely. The next step is application or applying their knowledge and comprehension. As our pupil strings letters together into words and then sentences they are beginning the process of learning to write. As they take numbers and add, subtract, multiply, and divide them they are calculating new values. The next thing you know they are doing calculus and inventing artificial intelligence. Hopefully, having mastered these foundational skills, they will use their higher order thinking skills to make good decisions.
A learner at this stage in their development can be observed demonstrating their ability to:
Verbs that demonstrate application:
apply, demonstrate, calculate, complete, illustrate, show, solve, examine, modify, relate, change, classify, experiment, discover
These two pages offer a chance for you to apply what you've learned about Bloom's Foundational Skills. Consider some of the terms and verbs that will serve as building blocks as you become adept and fluent in thinking critically. Demonstrate your understanding of the levels for foundational skill development according to Bloom's Taxonomy.
An analyst must understand how to gather data that can tell where and when an event like a forest fire takes place. They’ll need to understand how to use software to gather the data. But synthesizing the data with other geographical concepts gets them closer to understanding why something happened. The synthesizing process demonstrates a higher level of thinking and understanding about the topic at hand and can contribute to a larger dialogue about addressing future forest fires.
So when someone can combine some background in climatology, along with patterns of data, and maybe some practical knowledge about how governmental mechanisms function in the field- then we are getting closer to answering why something like a forest fire happens and how to adapt our behavior or response accordingly.
Now that we’re moving on to the higher order thinking skills, I am going to use the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis as an example of how these skills were used in a real life situation. I am pulling much of the information about this from the fascinating book by J.A. Nathan, Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Consider the photo above, in which a person is observing several aerial photos. To the untrained eye these may be just pretty pictures. The question is, do they have the training to actually “analyze” the imagery to determine: what they see, where it is, when it is, and perhaps how it got there?
Analysis is, simply stated, taking things apart or deconstructing them.
Let us go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961. US photo reconnaissance aircraft took photos (see above) of odd installations in Cuba that were newly installed. Image interpreters used their knowledge and comprehension of image interpretation keys including: density, concentration, pattern, spatial association, and Soviet aircraft, missile, and vehicle identification guides to analyze the images. They used change detection to determine that what they were seeing was new as it was not on previous images. The fact that the density, concentration, and pattern of objects were regular and symmetrical indicated they were most likely human engineered. The shapes of objects on the ground matched those of Soviet missile systems and support equipment.
A learner at this stage in their development can be observed demonstrating their ability to:
Verbs that demonstrate analysis:
analyze, separate, order, explain, connect, classify, arrange, divide, compare, select, explain, infer
Nathan, J.A. (2000). Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
For our Cold War image analysts looking at Cuba they clearly have something that appears to be newly installed and human engineered. As they look at the location and time of these new installations, it is clear they are in relatively remote and easily securable areas. They see a specific pattern or layout. Given knowledge of the US-Soviet-Cuban relations at the time, the analysts know that the USSR is hostile to the US, and that the USSR and Cuba are allies. This leads to a hypothesis that these new installations may be Soviet installations. Comparing imagery of various Soviet military sites leads to the conclusion that these sites may house Soviet offensive surface-to-surface missiles.
A learner at this stage in their development can be observed demonstrating their ability to:
Verbs that demonstrate synthesis:
combine, integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, plan, create, design, invent, compose, formulate, prepare, generalize, rewrite
Nathan, J.A. (2000). Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
As our analysts evaluate the data available, they conclude these types of offensive missiles typically carry nuclear weapons. This means the Soviets have likely installed offensive nuclear weapons only 90 miles off the coast of the US capable of hitting Washington, D.C., and other targets on the Eastern Seaboard with less than ten minutes warning.
This information was critical to US President John F. Kennedy’s decision to blockade Cuba, and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was aerial imagery and interpretation that later assured President Kennedy that the Soviets had kept their word and removed the weapons from Cuba, thus averting a catastrophic war.
Note the air photos by themselves were just pictures. It took trained air photo interpreters using their foundational and higher order thinking skills and critical thinking to make the photos understandable and useful to policy makers and the public. The photos with associated interpretation were key evidence to make President Kennedy’s claims and actions credible.
A learner at this stage in their development can be observed demonstrating their ability to:
Verbs that demonstrate evaluation:
assess, decide, rank, grade, test, measure, recommend, convince, select, judge, explain, discriminate, support, conclude, compare, summarize
Nathan, J.A. (2000). Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
Please make sure you read Facione's Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts [2]. You will be assessed on this reading, as well as the rest of the lesson's content in the Lesson 1 quiz. Additionally, please watch the video below about Facione's Critical Thinking.
Facione, P. (2020). Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts [24].
The following six pages provide an example of higher order thinking in the context of a military operation by the 450th Movement Control Battalion in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
As heard in Facione's video on the previous page, "Critical thinking is the human process of forming reflective well-reasoned judgments about what to believe or what to do. As such, it relies on our skills of analysis, interpretation, inference, evaluation, explanation, and, most importantly, self-reflection."The experts also said that a true critical thinker has a critical spirit. This is not to say that they are by any means negative or mean. It does mean that they have:
"a probing inquisitiveness, keenness of mind, a zealous dedication to reason, and a hunger or eagerness for reliable information."
The following six pages provide an example of higher order thinking in the context of a military operation by the 450th Movement Control Battalion in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Know the difference between a fairy tale and a war story? A fairy tale starts with “Once upon a time.” A war story starts with “And this is no kidding.” Let’s use a war story from Operation Iraqi Freedom. If you want the long version you can read US Army Transportation School Historian Gregg Adam’s version here: 450th Transportation Battalion (USAR) | U.S. Army Transportation Corps and Transportation School | Fort Gregg-Adams, Virginia [27].
The battalion commander (BC) of the 450th Movement Control Battalion (MCB) arrived at Talil Airbase Iraq two weeks into Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. He was greeted by BG Jack Stultz with a sneer and the query “where the hell have you been?” BG Stultz explained that theater transportation (especially the movement of critical meals ready to eat —MREs—also known by the troops as meals refusing to exit, and bottled water to support the warfighters) was not working. The general’s actual language was much more colorful. The general wanted the problem fixed yesterday.
Having just arrived, the BC had little situational understanding. In other words, he didn’t know what was going on. He thought he had better gain that situational understanding or he would be at best out of a job, and at worst—dead.
The first of the cognitive skills is interpretation. Interpretation means to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules procedures, or criteria. So, step one was to understand the mission and the commander’s desired effect. This was easy. Do not let US Vth Corps starve or die of thirst. The next step towards situational awareness was how to navigate the battlefield without getting killed. If you can’t move around the battlefield safely then you can’t gain information. The solution in unarmored HUMVEEs was to drive fast and bristle with weapons so no one dared mess with you. The next step was to get out on the road, to talk to everyone involved, observe the current operation and operating procedures, and develop that situational awareness of the process from the origin depots in Kuwait up to the destination at Balad Airbase (later Logistics Support Area Anaconda and later Joint Base Balad) 40km north of Baghdad. Gaining situational understanding was the interpretation phase.
The three sub-skills of interpretation are categorization, decoding significance, and clarifying meaning.
The second cognitive skill is analysis. Analysis is to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions. In normal English it means to take things apart to understand how they work.
Having gained situational understanding via extensive visits to every transportation node, base, and unit, the BC and his staff were able to start deconstructing and charting many moving pieces of the theater distribution effort. Some parts of the operation seemed very clear cut. Other parts of the operation were hampered by differing perceptions, variable willingness, and in some cases outright lies, fraud, theft, and waste. Not everything was black and white—that was for sure. Oh—and don’t forget the enemy had a vote and they showed their displeasure with the US presence.
The three sub-skills of analysis are examining ideas, detecting arguments, and analyzing arguments.
The BC and his movement controllers—having utilized interpretation and analysis —now turned to evaluation. Evaluation is to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person's perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.
The BC and his movement controllers' evaluation determined that theater distribution did not suffer from one problem, but from a series of problems starting at the origin and perpetuating all the way through delivery at the destination. These problems fed into one another creating a cascading effect. There were no simple answers. To solve this challenge would require a fairly complex plan with buy-in from numerous stakeholders (some of whom were hostile to each other, and many of whom had their own agendas and priorities).
The next cognitive skill is inference. Inference is to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to deduce the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation. Some might say inference is the ability to read between the lines.
The BC, his staff, and his unit commanders learned to read between the lines very quickly. As former President Ronald Reagan said when talking about arms control, “Trust but verify.” It was not that people often lied (although some did), but that people had bad information due to the fog of war, or their situational understanding was poor. Thus, while movement controllers analyzed the theater distribution system, they also had to probe deeper to read between the lines. This often meant observing operations from start to finish to get the real story, making friends with people to gain their trust and get their candid insights (versus the party line), and auditing and crunching data to see if the reports matched the actual performance. When people are tired, dirty, hungry and in danger you ought not be surprised that they make mistakes, sometimes cut corners, or even do unethical things to get by. Inference helps you get past that to see the real picture.
The three sub-skills of inference are querying evidence, conjecturing alternatives, and drawing conclusions.
All the previous cognitive skills are useless if you can not explain yourself in a way that will achieve your desired effect and complete your mission. Explanation is to state the results of one's reasoning; to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one's results were based; and to present one's reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.
The BC’s challenge was to clearly explain all the problems in the system in a clear and concise matter, and then to present a plan that would satisfy all the competing stakeholders. Obviously, the movement controllers had to develop a plan before they could present it. To do so they worked with their staff counterparts of the stakeholder units so the plan was feasible and acceptable to them. The BC worked with his counterparts to socialize the plan and ensure no one was going to look (too) bad. By the time it was time to explain the situation and the plan to the brass, the key players were on board. The plan was not perfect and the colonels and generals made a few changes, but you have to give a little to get a lot.
The sub-skills under explanation are stating results, justifying procedures, and presenting arguments.
The highest level of critical thinking is recursive self-regulation. Recursive is a math term meaning to infinitely divide into itself. Self-Regulation is to self-consciously monitor one's cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis and evaluation to one's own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validation, or correcting either one's reasoning or one's results.
Emergency medical personnel use critical thinking and a series of protocols to determine what is wrong with the patient and how to treat them. The final step in their approach is to re-assess the patient to see if their condition, signs, and symptoms have changed thus requiring a change in treatment.
The BC and the movement controllers sold their plan to the brass and implemented it in conjunction with all their partners and stakeholders. No matter how well you think you did, self-regulation is essential so you do not succumb to arrogance and hubris. Situations change, personnel and units change, the enemy has a vote, and sometimes stuff just happens. You must constantly reassess the situation and your understanding and when the situation and your understanding change—change your approach with it.
When the 450th MCB relocated to Kuwait to conduct theater movement control operations from Camp Arifjan, the BC saw an opportunity to have his very own railroad—and not a scale model one. The Iraqi Republican Railroad (IRR) was reestablishing scheduled operations and the BC wanted to run the Army’s part of it. You don’t get to be a BC by not being an empire builder and maybe having a little arrogant streak. At first, the IRR worked fairly well. Then the war transitioned to the insurgency phase and the situation changed. But despite the staff’s evaluation, analysis, and inference that the IRR was extremely vulnerable to insurgent attack, the BC was blinded by previous success. Fortunately for the BC, a major general with great wisdom took him aside and told him that while he was highly aggressive, he was also being a numbskull. The general forbade any further involvement with the IRR. Within a few weeks, the IRR ceased operating due to constant insurgent attacks. The BC dodged a bullet on that one and the mentorship of senior officers may have saved some of his soldiers' lives. You can figure out the moral of this story.
In conclusion, remember that if you can’t do it with style—then don’t do it.
The two sub-skills here are self-examination and self-correction.
What kind of a person would be apt to use their critical thinking skills? Take a moment and reflect about people you interact with on a daily basis, whom you consider to posess critical thinking skills. What adjectives or dispositions characterize behaviors that are demonstrated? How can you add to your own critical thinking skill set? Facione's research in conjunction with expert opinion have devised the seven dispositions toward critical thinking below.
Take a look at the website for "The Critical Thinking Community [32]." As you can see there is a lot of thought and effort that goes into this important topic. The Foundation for Critical Thinking (which hosts the aforementioned website) publishes a series of excellent small books such as:
These books are available as hard copies from the Penn State Libraries [33].
In this lesson about the importance of critical thinking we covered:
Your last challenge this week is to take Lesson 1 - GRADED Quiz (#1) on this week's material.
Return to Lesson 1 in Canvas. Look for the Lesson 1 - GRADED Quiz (#1), where you will find the twenty-five question quiz on this week's readings. You will have unlimited time, and it is open book, but be forewarned. This is a tough quiz. To do well, you must have read and studied the readings.
Before you move on to Lesson 2, double-check the Lesson 1 Checklist [34] to make sure you have completed all the required activities for this lesson.
Links
[1] https://www.defense.gov/
[2] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog882/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog882/files/file/Critical%20Thinking%20What%20it%20is%20and%20why%20it%20counts_0.pdf
[3] http://gis.e-education.psu.edu
[4] https://www.measuredreasons.com/#xl_xr_page_resources
[5] https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/CT-Expert-Report.pdf
[6] https://www.youtube.com/@sprouts
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayefSTAnCR8
[8] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bloom%E2%80%99s_Taxonomy_Verbs.png
[9] https://www.fractuslearning.com/blooms-taxonomy-verbs-free-chart/
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Creative_Commons
[11] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
[12] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BloomsTaxonomy.png
[13] https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
[14] https://unsplash.com/photos/KV9F7Ypl2N0
[15] https://unsplash.com/@jerry_318?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
[16] https://unsplash.com/
[17] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
[18] https://unsplash.com/photos/TVSRWmnW8Us
[19] https://unsplash.com/@thutra0803
[20] https://unsplash.com/photos/EL4CGRnwwNc
[21] https://unsplash.com/@antenna
[22] https://catalog.archives.gov/
[23] https://www.dia.mil/
[24] https://www.insightassessment.com/wp-content/uploads/ia/pdf/whatwhy.pdf
[25] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-critical-thinking-skills-Facione-2013-p-5_fig1_349993589
[26] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
[27] https://transportation.army.mil/history/unit_history/450tb.html
[28] https://unsplash.com/photos/Oalh2MojUuk
[29] https://unsplash.com/@jasongoodman_youxventures
[30] https://unsplash.com/photos/V5vqWC9gyEU
[31] https://unsplash.com/@lunarts
[32] https://www.criticalthinking.org/
[33] https://libraries.psu.edu/
[34] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog882_2023/node/2177