Teaching for Critical Thinking: A Study of Teaching Strategies Employed by Instructors in Ontario Colleges Through...

It has been sixteen years since the New College Charter introduced general education courses into Ontario college programs with the purpose of strengthening student's communication skills, problem solving ability, critical thinking, and to provide some breadth of knowledge beyond their program's vocational field of study. There are no past or current evaluation tools used to determine whether these skills are, indeed, strengthened through general education courses. Despite the lack of measurement, we can examine the educational conditions under which general education courses are taught and determine whether those are the same conditions that strengthen or develop these skills. Specifically, this study examines the curriculum development and teaching strategies used by general education instructors at an Ontario college to determine whether the strategies coincide with those that adult education literature would suggest to strengthen or develop student's critical thinking skills.