Teaching the course 'Critical Thinking' at AVANS
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March 27, 2017

Teaching the course 'Critical Thinking' at AVANS

From February until March 2017, I taught the course ‘Critical Thinking’ (in Dutch: Kritisch Denken) at the AVANS Hogeschool in Den Bosch. Together with Loes Hoefnagels, a lecturer working at the AVANS Den Bosch, we developed this course.

We structured the course in six different themes, including:

  1. interpreting
  2. analysing
  3. evaluating
  4. concluding
  5. explaining
  6. self-regulating

We used the methodology called 'Kritisch Denken: Redeneren en Betogen met Rationale' of Timo ter Berg. In his book, Timo ter Berg uses the methodology developed by Tim van Gelder that he describes in his article Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science that was published in 2005. I met Timo ter Berg in Amsterdam and further discussed / fine-tuned the course that Loes and I developed with him.In the past years, I only taught courses at universities (including at Tilburg University, the University of Amsterdam and Trisakti University in Indonesia). It was the first time for me to teach at a Hogeschool, but I really enjoyed it and it was a very nice experience. If they would ask me again to give the course next year, I would definitely say "yes"!