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Report: Students' Critical Thinking Needs Work

Posted on: Monday, 24 October 2005, 15:00 CDT

By RUTH-ELLEN COHEN; OF THE NEWS STAFF

AUGUSTA - Students need to develop their critical-thinking skills to be better prepared for the future, according to a new report on college readiness and writing.

The report, which states that college students need to be well versed in expository, critical and analytical writing so they can make persuasive arguments based on evidence, was released Saturday during the Maine Composition Coalition Conference at the University of Maine at Augusta.

Approximately 150 writing teachers from Maine's universities, community colleges and high schools gathered to discuss how to ease the transition from high school to college writing and to share writing assignments and strategies.

Several teachers from central, eastern and northern Maine agreed that high school students don't always apply their analytical abilities.

Russell Buker, who teaches English at Shead High School in Eastport, said he recently asked a class to write about the pros and cons involved with building an LNG terminal and then take a position and explain why they took that point of view. But Buker said he was disappointed when students simply reiterated facts they had read in the newspaper.

He said he threw the papers away and asked the students to start again.

Faculty from high schools and colleges have a lot to learn from each other, said Ann Dean, assistant professor of English and director of college writing at the University of Southern Maine, who wrote the report.

High school teachers may not know what is expected in the first year of college, while college professors may not know what students were doing in high school, said Dean.

The report was reviewed by 60 community college and four-year writing instructors who were part of University of Maine System Chancellor Joseph Westphal's Committee on College Readiness.

Ensuring that students are adequately prepared for college writing is vital because many students who graduate from Maine high schools aren't proficient in writing and must take remedial courses, which may keep them from graduating in four years, according to the report.

The new report describes criteria for placement in college writing courses, identifies disconnects between high school and college standards and expectations, and offers recommendations including:

. Aligning the 11th-grade state assessment with college standards and using 12th grade for remedial work if a student didn't meet the standard.

. Ensuring that all classes are rigorous and require good- quality writing.

. Clarifying what's expected of students by having universities share with high schools the types of tasks given to freshmen and also by having universities include placement criteria in their catalogues so the optimal college preparatory curriculum is understood up front.

. Continuing dialogue between high school and university faculties to help teachers on both sides of the transition understand students' needs and experiences.

As the state moves toward getting more students to pursue postsecondary education, "it seems important that we have conversations between levels that we haven't had before," said USM education professor Lynne Miller, who coordinated the distribution of the report to every high school in the state.

"We might not be on the same wavelength and be talking about the same kinds of skills," she said.

Later, participants divided into groups to discuss what the transition between high school and college writing might look like.

Requiring students to use higher-order thinking skills like comparing, contrasting, persuading and analyzing will help "bridge the gap between what we're asking high school writers to do and what we're asking college-level students to do," said Sherri Gould, a Nokomis Regional High School English teacher and Maine's 2005 Teacher of the Year.

The days of "asking students to summarize and retell are over," she said.

Patricia Burnes, University of Maine associate professor of English and coordinator of college composition, said some students "come to us more than ready to do the kind of writing and thinking we are asking of them. Others struggle.

"The ability to find and use evidence from reading in support of an assertion is not something they have had a lot of experience with."

Source: Bangor Daily News

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