INTEGRATING WRITING WITH CONTEMPORARY MATHEMATICS TO DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

Globalization, compounded by the rapid societal evolution being propelled by advancing technology, is increasing the necessity for astute critical thinking skills, yet many students arrive at the university with these skills underdeveloped. Such higher-level thinking involves analyzing, evaluating, and creating (the topmost three levels of thinking in Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain revised by Anderson in 2001). Several researchers in the late 1990s into the 2000s have shown that processing new information using these thinking skills increases students. information retention. In addition, thinking critically helps prepare students to become successful global citizens because they can make the decisions and solve the problems of modern life more astutely, having both the knowledge retained and the thinking skills developed to do so. One teaching strategy shown by researchers since the 1960s and 1970s to be an effective learning and thinking tool is writing. Writing enables the writer to capture otherwise random thoughts by placing them on a writing surface where they become concrete and thus more readily examined and manipulated. Consequently, writing should be an effective tool for enabling math students to retain the mathematical principles being developed in the classroom as well as for aiding them to improve their critical thinking abilities needed for applying their mathematical understandings to problems of the modern world. By incorporating writing that emphasizes critical thinking into the math classroom, this study seeks an answer to two questions: (1) how can mathematics professors, who usually are non-writing specialists, incorporate writing into the math class comfortably and effectively and (2) how can writing strategies used within math courses enhance both students' knowledge retention and their critical thinking abilities? A variety of carefully tailored writing tools (such as three-minute recollection papers and targeted journal assignments, among others) and related materials are used in several Contemporary Mathematics university classes both to reinforce the math principles and to develop students. critical thinking. Pre-tests and post-tests of students. critical thinking ability are used to determine effectiveness of the tailored writing strategies.