The intellectually engaged student

The intellectually engaged student:

* takes ownership of content through actively thinking it through.
* values questions more than answers
* seeks understanding over rote memorization
* assesses thinking for its clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, and significance
* seeks to identify key structural components in thinking (purposes, question at issue, information and data, , inferences and interpretations, concepts and theories, assumptions and presuppositions, implications and consequences, points of view and frames of reference
* reads, writes, listens, and speaks critically
* questions the thinking of others and expects his or her thinking to be questioned by others
* thinks for himself while respecting and empathically entering the point of view of others
* locates ultimate intellectual authority in evidence and reasoning, rather than in authority figures or "authoritative" beliefs or texts Under (well-designed) instruction, students learn how to analyze thinking, assess thinking, and re-construct thinking (improving it thereby). The thinking focused upon is that which is embedded in the content of established academic disciplines. As a result, students so taught become actively engaged in thinking historically, anthropologically, sociologically, politically, chemically, biologically, mathematically, ...


As an integral part of these processes, students learn how to read, write, speak, and listen in a new way (critically). Most importantly, they learn how to learn, using disciplined reading, writing, speaking, and listening as modalities in learning.
Source-Misplaced