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Paul-Elder framework (2001) has three components intellectual standards, elements of thought and intellectual traits. My personal interpretation for the figure above (University of LouiseVille, n.d.) is that the three components are placed in the form of a formula where the latter is the desired output obtained from the integration of the subsequent inputs. In other word, from an educator perspective, for students to develop their intellectual traits they should identify the elements of their thinking/reasoning, and universal intellectual standards that will enable them to evaluate their reasoning elements using the appropriate standards. In this post I will focus on these two dimensions essential for developing intellectual traits, let’s start by a brief explanation to the nine universal intellectual standards:
- Clarity: To what extent points given understood by myself and others
- Precision: To what extent the information exact and specific to the necessary level
- Accuracy: To what extent the information is correct and true
- Relevance: To what extent what the information is relevant to the issue in hand
- Depth: to what extent learners engaged the complexities of the topic
- Breadth: to what the information is associated to contexts and other relationships
- Logic: to what extent results are evident based and how logically and consistently it defends its position
- Fairness: to what extent is the ability to avoid bias?
- Significance: to what extent is the ability to focus on important aspects of the topic?
Now the question is how students can use those standards to evaluate the quality of their reasoning. As seen in the figure above, there are eight elements of thought/reasoning. In the following table I placed each of these eight elements with some of the appropriate standards that can this part in the form of questions.
| Element of Thought/Reasoning | Examples for appropriate standards |
| 1- Has purpose/goal: | Students can question the following questions to assess the purpose of their work:
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| 2- Is an attempt to solve some problem: | Students can assess if their solutions were formulated correctly if they check
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| 3- Is based on assumptions: | Students must articulate their assumptions and question
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| 4- Is done from some point of view: | When student articulate their point of view, they can question
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| 5- Is based on data, information and evidence: | When students gather evidence based data, the information should checked to be clear, fair, and accurate and they can question:
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| 6- Is expressed through concepts and ideas: | Students must identify their own level of understanding of concepts and question
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| 7- Contains inferences or interpretations by which we draw conclusions: | Students evaluate the inferences in their reasoning by checking:
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| 8- Has implications and consequence: | Students to come to evaluate implications in their reasoning by questioning :
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References:
- University of LouiseVille.n.d.).Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework. Retrieved from http://louisville.edu/ideastoaction/about/criticalthinking/framework
- The Critical Thinking community. (n.d.). Universal Intellectual Standards. Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/universal-intellectual-standards/527
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