Learning to Read Critically in Teaching and Learning

Louise Poulson, Mike Wallace, Louise Poulson, Mike Wallace

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781446231661
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

` Learning to Read Critically in Teaching and Learning offers a contribution to the debates on curriculum and pedagogy. The title itself is especially noteworthy since it indicates quite clearly that the reader is being encouraged both to learn and to develop their critical faculties on the topic of teaching and learning. This is a clever multi-layering of meaning that reflects the aims of the book extremely well? - School Leadership & Management

This book combines a teaching text with exemplary reports of research and a literature review by international scholars. Part One offers ideas on: how to become a critical reader and self-critical writer of literature; how to apply these insights in planning a written assignment, dissertation or thesis.

The student is provided with a framework for the critical analysis of any text and shown how to incorporate it in a literature review.

Part Two presents accounts of leading-edge research from well-known contributors, offering insights into key issues in the field of teaching and learning. These accounts reflect diverse theoretical approaches, national contexts, topics, research designs, methods of data collection and analysis, and styles of reporting. The student is invited to practice literature review skills by applying the critical analysis questions to any research report.

Part Three is a critical literature review of a substantive issue in teaching and learning. It shows how a high-quality literature review may be constructed and addresses key issues in the field.

This book is essential for students on research-based masters and doctorate courses in teaching and learning; and for students undertaking research training in the humanities and social sciences.

This series, edited by Mike Wallace, supports research-based teaching on masters and taught doctorate courses in the humanities and social sciences fields of enquiry. Each book is a ?three in one? text designed to assist advanced course tutors and dissertation supervisors with key research-based teaching tasks and aims to:

•develop students? critical understanding of research literature

•increase students? appreciation of what can be achieved in small-scale investigations similar to those which they undertake for their dissertation

•present students with major findings, generalisations and concepts connected to their particular field.

Part 1

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Becoming a critical consumer of the literature

Chapter 1

Critical reading for self-critical writing

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Mike Wallace and Louise Poulson

If you are a student studying for a masters or doctoral degree, you are likely to notice that the word ‘critical’ crops up repeatedly in phrases like ‘critical understanding’, ‘critical evaluation’, ‘critical engagement’, or ‘critical review’, together with the closely associated words ‘critique’ and ‘criticism’ – whether in the student handbook, course unit outlines or assignment titles. These words and phrases are all connected with something that course designers value, and they are giving you the opportunity to learn how to do it to the literature in your chosen area of study. Assessors, supervisors and examiners also value ‘critical’ activity. Criteria for assessing your course assignments, dissertation or thesis all convey the expectation that you will be able to demonstrate how you have learned to perform this activity in whatever written work you submit, often through some form of literature review. Demonstrating your competence in critical reading of the literature through the critical academic writing you produce for assessment will be a condition for the award of your qualification. So you will have to be critical in your reading from the point where you begin preparing to write your first assignment.

But what does it actually mean to be critical as a reader of literature and to demonstrate being critical as a writer in your area of study? And if you do not already know what it means and how to do it, how are you to learn? In our experience, many students are unsure what is involved in being critical but are unwilling to say so because they assume that they are expected already to know. Some lack confidence in their ability as ‘beginners’ or ‘amateurs’ to challenge the arguments and evidence put forward by respected academics and other professional writers, often very persuasively. Others have strong opinions about practice born of their years as practitioners in the area they have chosen to study. But they frequently find difficulty in justifying why these opinions are worth holding and in coping with challenges to their views.

In some cases, students’ previous academic training has emphasised deference to ‘older and wiser’ authority figures. Such students may naturally perceive that writers are expert purveyors of knowledge and wisdom that should not be questioned, but rather accepted and absorbed. The cultural adjustment to critical engagement with the ideas of those in ‘authority’ can be disorientating, but it must be achieved in order to meet the criteria for assessing postgraduate study in the western university tradition.

The process of academic enquiry reflected in postgraduate courses has its historical roots in this tradition. But with rapid globalisation it is increasingly being adopted in higher education institutions right across the world as a way of thinking and informing practical action. Here, while all individuals are entitled to respect as people, there is a cultural expectation that any person’s work may legitimately be challenged, exposed to criticism, and even rejected if there are strong enough grounds for doing so. Therefore, it is quite acceptable for students to question the ideas of leading academic figures in their area of study, as long as they can give convincing reasons for their view.

Box 1.1

Being critical: great expectations

References to being critical are commonplace in official statements describing advanced courses. Anything that applies to masters level also applies to doctorates. Here is a selection from a masters course at the University of Bath offered in 2002.

Aim

• to give participants opportunities to improve their skills of critical thinking and analysis.

Learning Objective

• to identify, and engage critically with, appropriate and representative literature in the field.

Assignment Assessment Criteria

• to what extent has the student made critical use of appropriate literature and professional experience
• to inform the focus of the study? to what extent has the student made critical use of the literature in the development of the study and its conclusions?

A national policy requirement

In 2001, the UK central government’s national framework for all higher education qualifications included the following descriptors.

Masters degrees are awarded to students who have demonstrated:

• a systematic understanding of knowledge, and a critical awareness of current problems and/or new insights, much of which is at, or informed by, the forefront of their academic discipline, field of study or area of professional practice;
• conceptual understanding that enables the student:
  • to evaluate critically current research and advanced scholarship in the discipline;
  • to evaluate methodologies and develop critiques of them and, where appropriate, to propose new hypotheses.

Indeed, the process of developing and refining knowledge and using it to inform efforts to improve practice proceeds through a never-ending sequence of claims to knowledge and counter-claims. There is a widely held belief among academics working in this tradition that no one can have a monopoly on what is to count as knowledge or on what will work in practice. Lack of agreement among experts is especially prevalent in social fields of enquiry because of the nature of the social sciences and of their application to practice. The social sciences are intrinsically value-laden ways of understanding. It is possible to adopt an explicitly value-oriented stance – positive or negative about the phenomenon being explored. It is equally possible to adopt a relatively impartial stance, but not one that is wholly neutral. Decisions on the focus for study reflect values about what is worth investigating in the first place. Carrying out a study will be implicitly and often explicitly underpinned by positive or negative values about the topic, about ideas informing which aspects of the topic should be attended to or ignored, and about the choice of methods of investigation. The practical use to which findings may be put through related policies is bound to reflect particular political values. Unsurprisingly, there is rarely consensus among academics or practitioners on the values informing their views. Nor is there any means of proving to everyone’s satisfaction which values are the right ones to hold.

Therefore, learning to be critical as you engage in academic enquiry implies accepting a particular approach to your work. We are probably all familiar with being critical in the sense of not accepting things that happen in our family, social and working lives with which we disagree, whatever our cultural background. But for students who do not have a western university cultural background it may require a bigger cultural step to feel comfortable with being publicly critical, according to the implicit rules of academic enquiry and debate, than it will be for students who have been immersed in this tradition.

A place for being critical in academic enquiry

Postgraduate courses and research programmes leading to academic qualifications are an induction into the world of academic enquiry, writing and ways of thinking. Your participation in them offers you a form of academic apprenticeship. There are many opportunities to learn from experts by observing how they contribute to this process, whether by interacting with them face-to-face or through the medium of their writing. Even more important is the extended opportunity for you to learn-by-doing through trying out academic activities including critically reviewing literature, presenting an argument at a seminar, applying an idea to see if it works in practice, and receiving expert feedback.

Your own academic expertise will develop through this apprenticeship experience. Your habitual way of thinking about your area of study will probably become more sophisticated. You will find yourself gaining knowledge about the field including some which is at the leading-edge of what any expert knows, about topical areas of debate where experts disagree, about the limits of what is known, and about the extent to which prescriptions for practice derived from one context can be applied to another. You will also develop insights into the critical nature of the academic enquiry that produces this knowledge and its areas of controversy. You will become familiar with the ways in which academics holding very different views about the same phenomenon will put forward their own argument persuasively while seeking to counter or to refute the arguments of other academics who oppose their view.

One aspect of your thinking that you will surely notice changing is your ability to adopt a critical stance towards others’ claims to knowledge about aspects of the area of study, and a self-critical stance towards your efforts to produce knowledge through your research and writing. The notion of ‘being critical’ tends to have a particular meaning in the academic world, reflecting values deriving from the western university cultural tradition. Here is our definition. Being critical in academic enquiry means:

• adopting an attitude of scepticism or reasoned doubt towards your own and others’ knowledge in the field of enquiry (e.g. a theory, research findings or prescriptions for improving practice) and the processes of producing this knowledge (e.g. ‘armchair’ theorising, research investigations, reflecting on practice);
• habitually questioning the quality of your own and others’ specific claims to knowledge about the field and the means by which these claims were generated;
• scrutinising claims to see how far they are convincing in the light of checking (e.g. whether the components of a theory are logically consistent, whether there is sufficient evidence to back a generalisation based on research findings, or whether the values underlying prescriptions for improving practice are acceptable);
• respecting others as people at all times. Challenging others’ work is acceptable, but challenging their worth as people is not;
• being open-minded, willing to be convinced if scrutiny removes your doubts, or to remain unconvinced if it does not;
• being constructive by putting your attitude of scepticism and your open-mindedness to work in attempting to achieve a worthwhile goal. Challenging others’ work to find a better way of doing things is acceptable, but indulging in destructive criticism of others’ work just to demonstrate your intellectual prowess at their expense is not.

Easier said than done, of course. But the more you learn to be critical, the more you take responsibility for your academic learning activity and efforts to inform your own and others’ practice (rather than being merely the passive receiver of others’ wisdom, or the over-active promoter of your unjustified opinions that leave others unconvinced). Through engaging critically with the literature relating to your field of enquiry in a constructive way, you develop your capacity to understand and evaluate practice, research, theories and policies. You may also inform your efforts to conduct research and possibly to commission investigations, and to apply practical prescriptions derived from the literature.

Your ability to take responsibility for your academic learning rests on becoming a critical consumer of literature who is also a self-critical writer. In our view, it is essential that you apply to your own work the same critical approach that you are learning to apply to others’ writing. For the academics who assess your work will be critical readers of what you have written. The assessment criteria will in all probability include the extent to which your work demonstrates your ability to be critical in engaging with the literature.

In Table 1.1 we have highlighted the link between elements of your endeavours in your academic apprenticeship as a critical reader and their application to your writing for assessment by other critical readers. Those entailed in critical reading will be discussed in the remainder of this chapter, and their reflection in self-critical writing will be considered in Chapter 2. For now, we wish to draw your attention to the way each element of critical reading has its counterpart in self-critical writing. Whatever you look for as a critical reader of literature, your assessors will also look for in your writing when judging the extent to which your account of what you have read meets the assessment criteria.

Table 1.1 Linking a critical approach to your reading with a self-critical approach to your writing

As a critical reader of the literature, you:

As a self-critical writer of assessed work, you:

consider the authors’ purpose in writing the account examine the structure of the account to help you understand how the authors develop their argument seek to identify the main claims the authors make in putting forward their argument adopt a sceptical stance towards the authors’ claims, checking whether they support convincingly what they assert question whether the authors have sufficient backing for the generalisations they make check what the authors mean by key terms in the account and whether they use these terms consistently consider whether and how any values guiding the authors’ work may affect what they claim distinguish between respecting the authors as people and being sceptical about what they write keep an open mind, retaining a conditional willingness to be convinced check that everything the authors have written is relevant to their purpose in writing the account and the argument they develop expect to be given the information that is needed for you to be in a position to check any other literature sources to which the authors refer

state your purpose in what you write to make it clear to your readers create a logical structure for your account that assists you with developing your argument, and make it clear to your readers state your own main claims clearly to help your readers understand your argument assume that your readers adopt a sceptical stance to your work, so you must convince them by supporting your claims as far as possible avoid making sweeping generalisations in your writing which you cannot justify to your readers define the key terms you employ in your account so that your readers are clear what you mean and use these terms consistently make explicit any values that guide what you write avoid attacking authors as people but are sceptical about what they write assume that your readers are open-minded about your work and are willing to be convinced if you can adequately support your claims sustain your focus throughout your account, and avoid irrelevancies and digressions in what you write ensure that your referencing in the text and the reference list is complete and accurate so that your readers are in a position to check your sources

For instance, you may wish to know what the authors’ purpose was in writing their account of, say, some research they have conducted. Knowing their purpose will help you to identify whatever argument they are developing and why they are developing it, and how they are attempting to support their argument through their claims to knowledge based on what they have found. You should similarly clarify and state your purpose in what you write as a self-critical writer reviewing this research. Your assessors will wish to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Part 1 Becoming a critical consumer of the literature
• Part 2 Meeting the challenge of reporting research
• Part 3 Meeting the challenge of reporting a review of the literature
• 1 Useful sources of guidance
• 2 Blank form for the critical analysis of a text
• Author index
• General index