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Doing a good teaching demo on critical thinking?

In our April "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

If you're asked to do a teaching demo on what you think is a difficult concept for students in a critical thinking course, is there an expectation you'll do something like necessary/sufficient; basic deductive proof; or is something outside the box potentially more acceptable given the nature of a CT class?

I am mostly concerned that the stuff I mentioned like necessary/sufficient, sound/unsound, deductive proof, etc, is actually pretty boring and overdone.

Good question. I'm inclined to think that "more creative is better", all things being equal, and that one should be all means get students involved in the classroom. But surely, it's important to do so in a way that is rigorous too. 

Do any readers have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

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4 responses to “Doing a good teaching demo on critical thinking?”

  1. Tammo

    I would suspect that doing something outside the box is fine, as long as the material you teach is seriously useful to critical thinking (and meets the brief of a difficult concept). I also suspect that it could be impressive if you find a “creative” way to teach “standard” concepts in a way that makes them easily accessible and gets student excited / engaged.
    My favorite critical thinking material is Jay Rosenberg’s The Practice of Philosophy. It has a really nice “case study” on the Ship of Theseus, which is written in a fun way and has helpful visuals. I use it at the beginning of my intro classes to introduce students to argument reconstructions and strategies for responding to arguments. Perhaps that is useful.

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  2. Bill Vanderburgh

    If you are doing this teaching demo in an ongoing Critical Thinking class, ask to see the syllabus/schedule of the course so that you know that students have the background to engage with the topic you choose. E.g., if they haven’t yet done symbolization, certain approaches to nec/suf won’t be successful.
    Don’t worry about “boring and overdone” topics: The brief makes it sound like they want to make sure you can cover those standard things effectively. Just do them in non-boring ways that demonstrate your knowledge and agility with good pedagogy, including student engagement.

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  3. Tim O’Keefe

    Try to find something you’ve already taught before that was successful and that can plausibly be taken as fitting into the box of “critical thinking concept,” rather than trying to whip up something totally new to fit the parameters of the demo. That’s more likely to result in a good demo.

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  4. Anon Postdoc

    I’m also a little worried about the concept of “overdone” here: surely every student needs to learn the concepts of necessary and sufficient conditions. Yes, each student (hopefully) only needs to learn it once. But that still requires us teaching it every year from here to eternity—since every year there are new students who haven’t learnt it yet.
    Of course, if “overdone” just means that you worry that the people attending your demo will have seen it too many times then I would go with Bill above and say that you should teach a standard topic in an interesting way.

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