1

Critical Thinking

in the Oxford Tutorial

by Rush Cosgrove

Thesis submitted to the University of Oxford in partial

fulfillment for the degree of M.Sc. in Higher Education

Trinity Term, 2009

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Table of Contents

Abstract…..…………………………….……….…………..……………………..4

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………5

Introduction…………………….…………………………….…………….……6

Chapter One: Literature Review…….……………………………………….9

1.1 – The Oxford Tutorial………..…………………………………….….9

1.1.1 – History: The Roots of Tutorial Pedagogy……….……………..9

1.1.2 – Theory: The Idea of the Tutorial……….……………....……..11

1.1.3 – Practice: State of the Field………………………...…………13

1.2 – Critical Thinking……………………………….…………………...17

1.2.1 – History: The Roots of Critical Thinking……………………...17

1.2.2 – Theory: The Idea of Critical Thinking……………….……….19

1.2.3 – Practice: Critical Thinking in Use……….…………………...22

1.3 – The Oxford Tutorial and Critical Thinking……………….………...24

Chapter Two: Central Research Questions………….…………...……….26

Chapter Three: Methodology…………………….……….…………………29

3.1 – Why these Methods?.............................................................................29

3.2 – Why these People?................................................................................32

3.3 – Why these Questions?...........................................................................33

3.4 – Trials and Triumphs…………………………………………………..33

3.5 – Data Analysis and Evaluation……..…………………………….……..36

Chapter Four: Tutors’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking in the Tutorial……………..…………………………………….………38

4.1 – Critical Thinking as Generally Conceived by Tutors…….…………...…39

4.2 – Targeting Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities……….………………..41

4.3 – Criteria Tutors Use to Evaluate Student Work and Thinking………..…..44

4.4 – Critical Thinking Often Implicit Rather than Explicit in Tutorials…...….46 4.5 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character

(Traits, Dispositions, and Habits of Thought)………………………………..49

4.6 – Conclusions…………………………………………………………..51

Chapter Five: Students’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking

in the Tutorial………………………………...………………………..53

5.1 – Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities………………………………….54

5.2 – Critical Thinking Often Implicit Rather than Explicit in Tutorials….……55 5.3 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character

(Traits, Dispositions, and Habits of Thought)…………………………….….60

5.4 – Conclusions……………………………….…………...……………..62

Chapter Six: Observations…………………………………...………………63

6.1 – Conclusions…………………………….…………………………….65

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Chapter Seven: Summary, Conclusions, and Questions…………….…..66

7.1 – Results from Tutor Interviews………………….……………………...66

7.2 – Results from Student Interviews……….………………………………67

7.3 – Hypotheses and Questions…………………………………………….68

References…………………………………………..……………….………….72

Appendix A: Interview Questions..……………………………….………...77

Appendix B: Interview/Observation Schedule,

Transcript Information……………………………………..………..78

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Abstract

Critical thinking is widely lauded as one of the most vital educational goals today.

Oxford’s tutorial system, in turn, is a historically celebrated and influential

approach to teaching. Yet, to date, little is known with regards to which critical

thinking skills and traits, if any, are being systematically fostered by teachers and

learned or developed by students in the tutorial. The primary purpose of this study

is to break ground in this important and under-researched area. It is a small scale

exploratory study based on qualitative interviews with three tutors and seven

students, including four tutorial observations within the Department of Politics.

The tentative results show that, with regards to critical thinking, tutors are

primarily concerned with students’ ability to clarify central questions, define key

terms, and question important assumptions within the writing of their tutorial

essays. Participating tutors seem less focused on students’ approach to evaluating

important intellectual treatises or constructs, with the manner in which they

understand and learn new ideas, or with their development of intellectual traits of

mind, all of which tutors seemed to believe would develop naturally.

Students, for their part, articulated their approach to writing essays, including

clarifying central questions, defining key terms, and questioning important

assumptions. They expressed no clear approach to intellectual evaluation or the

understanding of new ideas, nor did they appear to have deeply considered the

intellectual traits they considered most important. The main provisional

hypothesis is that students appear to internalize that which is explicit and required,

and to largely miss those aspects which are more implicit and optional. This

suggestion, if justified, has implications for tutorial pedagogy.

5

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to express my profound appreciation to my

supervisor, Geoffrey Walford, who has generously contributed much of his

valuable time to this project. His comments and suggestions made it possible to

sharpen the epistemological strength and empirical defensibility of this study, and

contributed greatly to its overall professionalism.

I would also like to thank the tutors and students who donated their time and

thoughts to this project. It goes without saying that the study would not have been

possible without them, but their openness and genuine interest made the process

enjoyable and insight-filled. Any critique of them in what follows is intended to

be constructive and not personal.

Finally, I would like to thank those friends and family who contributed their time,

energy, and wisdom to this work (most especially the rabbit and the owl). When I

was stuck in a rut you were there. When I was lost in a fog you helped clear the

air.

Needless to say, the final responsibility, together with the burden of any

shortcomings, rests solely upon the author.

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Introduction

Critical Thinking is one of the most lauded goals in education today. Paul

Ramsden, a leading voice in UK higher education, concludes that teachers from

every subject, though they may use varying language, seek to foster the

development of critical thinking (Ramsden, 2003, 22-25). This view is supported

by the Dearing (1997) and North (1997) Reports, which suggest that

undergraduates should develop skills such as “learning how to learn” and “critical

analysis.” In a meta-analysis focused on faculty perceptions and practice,

Gardiner (1995) found that of 40,000 faculty members included in the study, “97

percent of the respondents indicated the most important goal of undergraduate

education is to foster students’ ability to think critically (p. 8).” Gardiner’s

findings coincide with the results of a random study (Paul, et. al. 1997) of 38 US

public colleges and universities and 28 private ones focused on the question: To

what extent are faculty teaching for critical thinking? The study included faculty

from colleges and universities across California, and encompassed prestigious

universities such as Stanford, Cal Tech, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the

California State University System. The overwhelming majority of faculty in this

study claimed critical thinking to be a primary objective of their instruction

(89%).

The Oxford Tutorial is often viewed as a vehicle for developing critical

thinking. This is exemplified throughout Oxford course handbooks (which

frequently project that students should learn skills of “critical argumentation”,

“critical evaluation”, etc.). It is also exemplified in Palfreyman’s The Oxford

Tutorial (2008), in which many dons express conceptions of the tutorial based on

teaching students to think for themselves, to develop their own analyses, to

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construct their own arguments, to critically evaluate the reasoning of respected

authors in their field, etc., all of which are central components in critical thinking

(Ennis, 1995; McPeck, 1981, Nosich 2009; Passmore, 1972; Paul and Elder, 2002;

Peters, 1974; Scheffler, 1993; Scriven, 1997; Siegel, 1990).

Indeed, it would be peculiar were critical thinking not understood as a

essential to the tutorial. One cannot imagine an Oxford don refuting the

importance of critical thinking by saying something like: “I’m not interested in

the development of critical thinking in my students. I don’t want them to learn

how to ask and pursue significant questions in the field. I discourage them from

learning how to gather and evaluate information in order to answer those

questions, nor do I wish them to develop their own conclusions as a result. I like

my students to be conformists, to always go along with the mainstream views. I

want them to uncritically accept my views or those of other authority figures.”

Such an attitude would be nonsensical. The implication is clear, whether explicitly

or implicitly understood by tutors: critical thinking is an integral part of successful

tutorials.

But what do we know, directly and conclusively, about the tutorial system,

how it works, and whether it is actually fostering critical reasoning?

Unfortunately, very little. Robert Beck remarks “our admiration for the Oxford

tutorial rests on belief only…not on hard evidence” (Beck, 2008, 1); and Paul

Ashwin decries the “paucity of research into the Oxbridge Tutorial systems”

(Ashwin, 2005, 632). Indeed, except for historical accounts of the university in

general, we have only the recent studies of Ashwin (2005, 2008) and Ashwin and

Trigwell (2003), Moore’s The Tutorial System and its Future (1968), Beck’s “The

Pedagogy of the Oxford Tutorial” and Palfreyman’s The Oxford Tutorial (2008).

8

Only Ashwin and Trigwell’s studies are scientific in orientation, and none

explicitly or directly focuses on critical thinking.

Thus the study I have conducted is situated in a relatively rare and

privileged position: it is focused on a paradigm (the Oxford Tutorial) which is

highly important in and of itself, highly influential in the field of higher education

in general, and yet has been researched only superficially. This study is centered

on a topic (critical thinking) which is internationally esteemed and increasingly

embedded in the language of education from primary to postgraduate level, which

is assumed to be occurring in the Oxford Tutorial, and yet which has never been

researched directly in terms of the tutorial.

This study, then, is best seen as breaking ground rather than a finished

product; raising questions rather than coming to definitive conclusions;

exploratory rather than evaluative. Its importance is, to my mind, unquestionable.

Its generalizability must be explored in future studies. The purpose of this study is

simply to highlight the diversity of tutorial strategies for fostering critical

thinking; it is certainly not to evaluate or judge the efficacy of individual tutors,

subject departments, or the university as a whole. With a study of such a small

sample size, any notions of definitive generalizability are, of course,

inappropriate. Rather, I encourage readers to consider the extent to which any of

the ideas make sense in terms of your own experience, and whether the tentative

insights which emerge as a result of this study might provide new ideas to

consider with regards to the nature of critical thinking, the Oxford tutorial, and

their interconnections; either for general understanding, discussion, pedagogy, or

in any other direction.

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Chapter One: Literature Review

There is a clear historical, theoretical, and practical link between the

tutorial and critical thinking which I will here endeavor to relate. Before putting

the pieces together, however, I will attempt to disentangle the two in order to

focus on the core meanings of each. One important point to note here is that both

the tutorial and critical thinking are highly complex and variegated constructs

which exist both as abstract theoretical concepts (which are mostly agreed upon)

and as individual practical manifestations (which are often divergent).

1.1 – The Oxford Tutorial

1.1.1 – History: Roots of the Tutorial

Will G. Moore wrote the first treatise on the tutorial in 1968, and

complained that as the history of the tutorial had never been written (and still

hasn’t to this day), many important questions have remained unanswered and, in

some cases, largely unasked. However, in the two existing attempts to briefly

sketch its history, Moore (1968) and Markham (1967) argue that the idea of the

tutorial was first practiced in embryonic form by Socrates. While Moore is quick

to point out that the tutorial as it exists today is a distinct entity, he refers to the

tutorial quite often as a “Socratic method” and maintains that its core features (e.g.

eliciting and drawing students’ ideas out into the open; leading the student through

questioning to new discoveries; exposing contradictions, inconsistencies, or weak

points in the student’s arguments and beliefs, etc.) and the preference for process

over product or, as Moore puts it, “the why over the what” (Moore, 30), parallel

the Socratic dialogues.

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Mallet, in A History of the University of Oxford writes that “the

beginnings of the tutorial system are to be found early in Oxford history. The view

that the senior members of a college had some responsibility for the conduct and

instruction of their younger colleagues was a natural development of the collegiate

idea” (Mallet, volume iii, 57). However Moore argues that these “tutors” were

initially primarily concerned with the moral and financial activities of their

charges, not with their instruction (Moore, 2).

For hundreds of years and into the 19th

century the role of the tutor

continued to change, yet was still very different from what it is today. Green

(1961), the historian of Lincoln College, writes that “It is not very clear what the

College tutor in the 18th

century was expected to teach outside the lectures in Hall

where he presided over disputations or commented on the Greek Testament” (p

131). If Green is accurate, it seems that tutors today are far more clear as to their

purpose than tutors of the 18th

century.

Moore argues that the tutorial as it exists today began to take shape in the

19th

century and resulted primarily from both the “sense of vocation and purpose

[of the Tractarians and Oxford Movement], which was needed to defeat the

indolence of the eighteenth century”1 and the “breadth of view and the respect for

individual liberty” of dons such as Pattison and Hawkins (Moore, 7-9).

It is generally acknowledged that the pioneers of the new method were

Benjamin Jowett and his colleagues at Balliol (Davis and Hunt, 1963; Markham,

1975; Moore, 1968). Their approach was highly Socratic in nature. As Moore puts

it, “tutorials [of the 18th

century] were probably mostly lectures. Those given by

Jowett’s successors seem to have been in the nature of informal and inspired

1 For an interesting and enlightening picture of such indolence, see Tom Brown at Oxford.

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conversations” (Moore, 6). The close connection to Socrates is perhaps not a

coincidence, as Jowett was a classical scholar whose translations of all of Plato’s

works (and therefore all of the Socratic dialogues) fill five volumes and over

2,000 pages (Jowett, 1892).

1.1.2 – Theory: The Idea of the Tutorial

Will G. Moore sums up the essence of the tutorial quite usefully in what is

probably the first attempt at a comprehensive description of the Oxbridge tutorial

system:

“At its most simple, the tutorial is a weekly meeting of the

student with the teacher to whom he is specially

committed…and includes…a weekly essay, which is

presented orally, listened to by the tutor and discussed

immediately. The whole process…takes up little more than

an hour.

“It opens with a few questions as to how the student has

‘got on’ with his subject…then the reading, interrupted at

will by the tutor, and at times by the student, followed by

perfunctory praise or thanks and then detailed by comments,

which the student is free to take down or not as he

prefers…the final minutes are devoted to suggestions and

hints about next week’s subject and the session ends when

the next pupil knocks on the door…” (Moore, 1968, 15-16).

This summary thus illuminates the fundamental process inherent in the

idea of the tutorial. The actual details of this process in everyday practice can

often be quite different. Moore points out a few of these variations: that tutorials

commonly involve more than one student; science tutorials are often focused on

problems rather than essays; sometimes the essay is not read aloud but merely

summarized; sometimes the student produces no essay at all; the tutor may

lecture; the student may snore (Moore, 18-19).

Here are some of the varied ways in which insightful tutors and scholars

conceive of the purpose, aims, and method of the tutorial:

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• To develop “mental flexibility,” to have students “think for themselves,”

“to actively consider ways to evaluate evidence and make connections

among diverse pieces of evidence” (Beck, 2008).

• “It is a skeptical method using initial inquiry, criticism, theory analysis,

and comparison;” development of “metacognitive powers [which] refer to

the development of a student’s so called executive or active control in

thinking or reasoning about thinking and thinking about how one learns

(Flavell, 1979 in Beck, 2008),

• “improvement of students’ arguments” (Sabri, 2007),

• having a student know “why the tutor thinks it is a good essay…to

understand what makes a good piece of work a good piece of work”

(Mayr-Harting, 2006),

• “an attitude which sees the human condition as an endless process of

discovery…re-examination, revision of what we think we have

acquired…certainties no longer appear certain, wisdom is denounced as

treason, all is put into question and there is Unwertung aller Werte, a

revaluation of all values.” (Moore, 1968, 31-32)

One need only look at official course materials and the many dons who

contributed to Palfreyman’s The Oxford Tutorial (2008) for more examples. The

conclusion is clear: the Oxford tutorial seeks to develop inquisitive and

independent minds capable of complex problem solving through deep engagement

with significant ideas.

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1.1.3 – Practice: State of the Field

So what do we know, directly and conclusively, about the tutorial system,

how it works, and whether it is actually producing the goods it purports to?

Unfortunately, very little. Robert Beck remarks “our admiration for the Oxford

tutorial rests on belief only…not on hard evidence” (Beck, 2008, 1); and Paul

Ashwin decries the “paucity of research into the Oxbridge Tutorial systems”

(Ashwin, 2005, 632). Indeed, except for historical accounts of the university in

general, we have only the recent studies of Ashwin (2005, 2008) and Ashwin and

Trigwell (2003), Moore’s The Tutorial System and its Future (1968), Beck’s “The

Pedagogy of the Oxford Tutorial” and Palfreyman’s The Oxford Tutorial (2008).

Only Ashwin and Trigwell’s studies are scientific, and none explicitly or directly

focuses on critical thinking.

And what does this literature tell us? Putting aside the historical accounts

and the work of Ashwin and Trigwell for the moment, Moore’s treatise, Beck’s

essay, and Palfreyman’s anthology are, quite clearly and openly, biased defenses

of the tutorial. They highlight the best of the tutorial, but their silence regarding

potential problematics drowns out other voices which are equally important in

attempting to construct a fuller vision.

For example, Palfreyman introduces his book by describing it as one

which “brings together experienced Oxford Dons from across the academic

disciplines who discuss their personal belief in and commitment to the tutorial as

an utterly essential element in all Oxford’s degree subjects (emphasis in original,

Palfreyman, 2002, 1).” Moore’s loyalties are also clear. Though he recognizes the

fact that external pressures now threaten the tutorial, he sees the tutorial as an

approach worth preserving. In other words, he seems to take for granted the

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notion that the tutorial in its current form is filling the need for which it is

intended. He says “what does concern us is to practice the method [the tutorial] as

long as conditions allow (Moore, 64).”

It might be said that Beck attempts a somewhat more scientific approach,

as his paper is informed by interviews with 30 Oxford dons. In it, however, he

ignores the literature which raises questions as to the effectiveness of the Oxford

tutorial (despite the fact that he shows awareness of such literature by citing

Ashwin). Beck’s essay consists largely of praise and admiration for the tutorial,

accolades that are only marginally supported by the interviews he conducted. He

concludes that the tutorial is a “natural, cultural practice…[which] satisfies every

requirement of a metacognitive and high-literacy education, not only teaching

students to think independently but self-consciously…” Given this view, it is not

surprising that Beck believes most Oxford students will “in the end learn to think

for themselves (Beck, 2008).”

To be sure, Moore, Beck, and Palfreyman belong in the same intellectual

camp: though their defenses may be logical, nuanced, articulate, and spirited, and

full of insight, they are, after all, still largely one-sided defenses. Their work is

useful in shedding light on that which is positive and successful about the tutorial,

of which to be sure there is much. Yet their approach is anecdotal, not rigorously

empirical.

For a different view of the tutorial, let us turn briefly to Ashwin and

Trigwell’s examinations of the tutorial, as well as a few personal accounts.

15

Ashwin’s two qualitative studies produced a nested hierarchy of

conceptions of the tutorial2 which loosely correlate with those developed by

Marton (Marton et. al., 1984) in his development of the notion of deep vs. surface

approaches to learning. These approaches were supported by a mountain of

evidence produced by further researchers (Watkins, 1983; Van Rossum and

Schenck, 1984; Gow and Kember, 1993; Ramsden, 2003; Ashwin, 2005, 2006;

etc.). In a quantitative study of 2330 Oxford undergraduates, Ashwin and Trigwell

(2003) concluded that those Oxford undergrads with a deep approach to learning

(tied to ideas such as questioning assumptions, connecting key concepts, thinking

through main implications, etc.) were much more successful in exams, judged

teaching quality to be higher, and felt more confident, supported, and motivated.

Ashwin and Trigwell (2003, 30) also found the opposite is to be true of students

who relied on surface approaches to learning.

But how many students approach their tutorials in a deep manner? In a

much smaller qualitative study (28 students), Ashwin concludes that nearly two

thirds of the students interviewed (18) adopted surface approaches (categories one

and two) and only three expressed a category four approach, the “deepest”

category (Ashwin, 2005, 640). According to Ashwin, tutors did not fare much

better: only five of 20 expressed a category four approach to teaching in the

tutorial (the same number as expressed a category one approach), and none of

2 For students, the categories are as follows: 1. Tutorials as the tutor explaining to the student what

the student does not understand; 2. Tutorials as the tutor showing the student how to see the

subject in the way the tutor does; 3. Tutorials as the tutor bringing things into relation to each other

to help the student develop a new perspective in the wider context of the discipline; 4. Tutorials as

the tutor and the student exchanging different points of view on the topic and both coming to a

new understanding.

For tutors: 1. tutorials as a place where tutors help students develop an understanding of concepts;

2. tutorials as a place where students see how to approach their discipline; 3. tutorials as a place

where evidence is critically discussed; 4. tutorials as a place where new positions on the topic are

developed and refined.

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these came from the sciences (despite the fact that 60% of interviewees were from

the sciences; Ashwin, 2006, 660). Applying Ashwin and Trigwell’s categories to

Moore, Beck, and the scholars contributing to The Oxford Tutorial, it may be

important to note that all seem to have deep conceptions of the tutorial (the

majority would probably be in Ashwin’s category four) and so they may be

unaware of the potential for a superficial tutorial caused by surface approaches to

instruction.

Further reason for questioning the mythical aura of the tutorial lies in

indirect studies and personal accounts. In a study of one Oxford college by Sell

and Robson (1998), only 58% of students found relationships with their tutors to

be helpful. In a portfolio account of his experiences in a tutor training program,

entitled “Asking too Much but Expecting too Little,” Graham Gee argues that the

timeframe in which students are required to write papers is extremely limited and

demanding (asking too much). According to Gee, this practice encourages a

superficial approach to learning and inadvertently results in students producing

essays which largely echo the thoughts of experts in the field. The tutor, in turn,

takes this predicament into account and judges work less harshly as a result

(expecting too little) (Gee, 2008). The potential for fostering shallow and sophistic

thinking here seems apparent, as students work to get by and give tutors what they

want.

Several personal accounts of the tutorial have been written by alumni, such

as those in My Oxford (1977) and Hall (1989), and these memoirs seem to tell a

different story from that told by Moore, Beck, and Palfreyman. Edward Gibbon,

for example, concluded that “the sum of my improvement at the University of

Oxford is confined to three to four Latin plays” (Gibbon in Moore, 1968, 4). F.G.

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Marcham and Edward Welles agreed that most of what they learned occurred

outside tutorials (Jenkins, 1989, 3, 28). What is more outstanding is how many

either do not mention the tutorial at all or do so only briefly. In Hall, out of 55

contributors, not one mentions the tutorial as playing a central and significant role

in their intellectual development, yet these essays have such lofty titles as

“Formative Years,” “Awakening World,” “and “The Making of a Diplomat.”

So what does this add up to? The defenders of the tutorial are mainly

experienced and articulate Oxford Dons who passionately argue for its necessity

and central role throughout the university. The attackers and the non-combatants

(though perhaps through silence this latter group speaks more loudly than the

former) are primarily former students who expose some of the weaknesses of the

tutorial. Both camps offer only anecdotal, though highly suggestive, evidence. In

the middle stand Ashwin and Trigwell who in the spirit of fair-minded critique

explore both the strengths and the weaknesses of the tutorial.

It is important to note that throughout the more than 800 year history of the

university, so little has been written exploring, explaining, or examining the

tutorial in any deep way – and that no studies or writings have focused on critical

thinking directly or explicitly. In terms of the extent to which the tutorial fosters

critical thinking, we have only hints and suggestions which provide stimulation

for the imagination, but fail to offer much in the way of objective evidence.

1.2 – Critical Thinking

1.2.1 – History: The Roots of Critical Thinking

Interestingly, the history of critical thinking has been given little attention;

yet, again like the tutorial, critical thinking theoreticians agree that the intellectual

18

roots for critical thinking also primarily began with Socrates’ form of questioning

(Lipman, 1995; Paul 1995; Thayer-Bacon 2000). They maintain that at the heart

of critical thinking is, among other qualities, a spirit of analyzing and evaluating

important ideas or beliefs in an effort to determine their quality and to improve

upon them, to discover unexamined assumptions and challenge them, to focus on

key concepts and deeply analyze them, etc., all of which are explicitly

demonstrated in Socrates’ dialogues.

Paul (1995) cites Glaser’s publication in 1941, An Experiment in the

Development of Critical Thinking, as the first full-fledged use of the term “critical

thinking.” However similar language was certainly used earlier than this. Sumner

talked of the “critical habit of thought” as far back as 1906 in Folkways (Sumner,

1940). Dewey’s (1916) concept of “reflexive thinking” and Newman’s vision of

the “philosophical habit” are also important in the intellectual tradition of critical

thinking. Each stresses abilities such as being able to weigh evidence and analyze

ideas, even if they run contrary to deeply held beliefs, as well as traits such as

being (in the face of attack) “patient, collected and majestically calm” (Newman,

1996, 100).

Critics of the notion of critical thinking, on the other hand, argue that it is

too ‘logical,’ and ‘male-centered,’ and negates ‘other ways of knowing’ (Brenner

& Parks, 2001; McLaren, 1994; Thayer-Bacon, 1993) and that it stifles creativity

and detaches humans from their human and non-human surroundings

(Doddington, 2007). However, Bailin and Siegel (2003) conclude that such

critiques fail to take into account recent developments in the field, and the

practical (and highly visible) literature focused on critical thinking. My own

survey of the literature supports the Bailin and Siegel conclusion, as does the work

19

of Esterle and Clurman (1993) Walters (1994) and others. For example, two works

by primary critical thinking theoreticians which tackle these issues are Elder and

Paul’s (2004) Miniature Guide to the Human Mind, which focuses on the

important interconnections between thinking, feeling and wanting and Paul and

Elder’s Thinker’s Guide to Critical and Creative Thinking (2005) which details

the implicit relationship between critical and creative thinking. These are just two

of the most obvious works overlooked by many critics.

1.2.2 – Theory: The Idea of Critical Thinking

Paul (1987) argues that there is a problem with the entire notion of attempting

to produce one-line definitions of complex concepts such as critical thinking.

Such “definitions” are, for Paul, inevitably incomplete and limiting. He points out

that “it is more desirable to retain a host of definitions, and this for two reasons:

(1) in order to maintain insight into the various dimensions of critical thinking that

alternative definitions highlight, and (2) to help oneself escape the limitations of

any given definition” (p 1-2). Here, then, are a few of the more widely known

definitions of critical thinking, in no particular order, each of which offers a

slightly different perspective:

• “Critical, when applied to persons who judge and to their judgments,

not only may, but in very precise use does, imply an effort to see a

thing clearly and truly so that not only the good in it may be

distinguished from the bad, but also that it as a whole may be fairly

judged or valued” (Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms, 1951)

• “(I) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the

problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences,

20

(2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3)

some skill in applying those methods.” (Glaser, 1941, 5-6)

• “Reasonable and reflective thinking about what to believe or do”

(Ennis, 1989)

• “The ability to participate in critical and open evaluation of rules and

principles in any area of life” (Scheffler, 1973, 62)

• “Thinking that devotes itself to the improvement of thinking” (Lipman,

1984, 51)

• “skillful, responsible thinking that is conducive to good judgment

because it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-

correcting.” (Lipman, 1995, 116)

• “Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-

monitored, and self-corrective thinking.” (Paul, 2008)

• “The disposition and skill to do X in such a way that E (the available

evidence from a field) is suspended (or temporarily rejected) as

sufficient to establish the truth or viability of P (some proposition or

action within X).” (McPeck, 1984, 13)

• “A critical thinker is…one who is appropriately moved by

reasons…critical thinking is impartial, consistent, and non-arbitrary,

and the critical thinker both acts and thinks in accordance with, and

values, consistency, fairness, and impartiality of judgment and action.”

(emphasis in original; Siegel, 1990, 23, 34)

Thus, it appears that there is no way to encompass critical thinking completely

and inexhaustibly in a brief description. There is no way to contain it in a one-

sentence “definition.” However, Paul and Elder (2009, 2-3) argue that, far from

21

being ambiguous, “at its core lies a foundational set of meanings which are

presupposed in all of its varied uses. This multiplicity is given by the fact that one

can pursue the improvement of thinking by somewhat different strategies of

somewhat different scope and trained on different foci.”

Internal debate in the field of critical thinking often centers on the

disagreements between theoreticians rather than on their agreement, obscuring the

core common ground which exists (Hale, 2008). Hale argues that each

theoretician may emphasize different aspects of critical thinking, but virtually all

agree that it entails analysis and evaluation with a view towards improvement, that

it includes the development of intellectual traits, and that it should be applied to

one’s own thinking, the thinking of others, and thinking within subject disciplines

(For examples, see Ennis, 1995; McPeck, 1981, Nosich 2009; Passmore, 1972;

Paul and Elder, 2002; Peters, 1974; Scheffler, 1993; Scriven, 1997; Siegel, 1990).

Thus, following this literature, we can divide critical thinking into broad

categories:

• Intellectual analysis, ability to divide important intellectual

constructs into constituent parts.

• Intellectual evaluation, ability to evaluate intellectual constructs.

• Intellectual improvement, the ability to correct weaknesses and

improve strengths identified through analysis and evaluation.

• The development of intellectual traits, or characteristics of mind

which are both necessary for the development of critical thinking

(e.g. intellectual perseverance) and need to be developed through

critical thinking (e.g. intellectual autonomy). These guard against

the development of sophistic or manipulative thinking.

22

• Knowledge of the problematics of thinking, or natural

tendencies, such as egocentrism and sociocentrism, which cause

deep and systemic problems in human life.

Furthermore, these dimensions can be applied in various contexts:

• To thinking generally (one’s own thinking, the thinking of a

professor, colleague, friend, politician, theoretician, parent,

lover…)

• To subject disciplines (each of which have their own forms of

analysis and evaluation)

• To personal life, both with regards to significant decisions (such as

how to decide on a career or purchase a car), as well as day to day

activities (such as health, diet, and exercise, parenting, voting and

politics, managing finances…)

These lists are not exhaustive, but illustrate some of the many ways in which

critical thinking can be applied, a number of which emerged in the study described

herein.

1.2.3 – Practice: Critical Thinking in Use

One implication of this broad and inclusive description is that virtually all

humans think critically at least to some degree, at least some of the time. This

criticality may be as implicit and specialized as questioning whether disliking the

taste of broccoli is sufficient reason to avoid eating it, or as systematic and global

as questioning the foundational assumptions in a discipline and developing a new

23

understanding of the field (and perhaps a new weltanschauung ) as a result.

Another implication is that CT’s potential manifestations and applications are

limited only by the number of combinations between unique individuals and

conceivable circumstances, which is to say: virtually endless.

With respect to the interviews and observations conducted in the course of

my thesis, conceptualizing critical thinking in this manner allowed for a broad

range of responses to qualify as critical thinking. Even students who have never

thought deeply (or, indeed, even superficially) about the term “critical thinking”

may nevertheless have hosts of strategies they use to study and learn effectively

(such as so-called “coping mechanisms” used by disadvantaged or disabled

students). Similarly, even professors who have not examined explicit theories of

critical thinking or made systematic attempts to integrate it into their tutorials may

be implicitly, perhaps even systematically, fostering key skills (such as the

questioning of assumptions). Indeed, common sense and anecdotal evidence

indicates that this is not only possibly, but almost certainly, true. For examples of

such subject specific approaches, see Passmore (1961), Becker (1998), and Carr

(1962).

The conception of critical thinking used in this study did not privilege any

one theoretician in my study, but was based on a broad concept of critical thinking

as detailed above. This conception was also inclusive of ideas of critical thinking

specific to individual subject disciplines (each of which exhibit or emphasize

different forms of analysis, evaluation, strategies, and traits), and indeed any

conception of critical thinking which could be logically or empirically defended,

in keeping with the terms established use.

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1.3 – The Oxford Tutorial and Critical Thinking

As should be clear by now, both critical thinking and the Oxford Tutorial

are in a similar ontological position: their origins are somewhat mysterious, in that

they are not directly traceable to a single person or moment in time; their roots

and intellectual tradition stretch back to the very beginnings of scholarly pursuit;

though core concepts are agreed upon, their natures are not uncontested; there is a

wide variance in their forms and manifestations; and both have their supporters

and critics.

This overlap and interconnection between the tutorial and critical thinking

is not coincidental. Based on their visions of the aims and purposes of the tutorial,

it seems clear that highly articulate tutors would agree that to the extent that the

Oxford tutorial does not significantly foster critical thinking in some important

sense, it is largely unsuccessful. Conversely, it also seems clear that the kind of

critical thinking skills, traits, and habits of mind described by key theoreticians in

critical thinking can only be developed by engaging in the kind of rigorous study

and research required by the tutorial. Glaser (1941) argues this point by citing one

of the most influential groups in American education, the Educational Policies

Commission of the National Educational Association:

“Critical judgment is developed …by long and continuous

practice under the criticism of someone qualified to evaluate the

decisions. The child must learn the value of evidence. He must

learn to defer judgment, to consider motives, to appraise

evidence, to classify it, to array it on one side or the other of his

question, and to use it in drawing conclusions. This is not the

result of a special course of study, or of a particular part of the

educative procedure; it results from every phase of learning and

characterizes every step of thinking.” (p. 35).

The study I have conducted, then, is situated in a relatively rare and

privileged position: it is focused on a paradigm (the Oxford Tutorial) which is

highly important in and of itself, highly influential in the field of higher education

25

in general, and yet has been researched only superficially. It is centered on a topic

(critical thinking) which is internationally valued, which is increasingly embedded

in the language of the purposes, missions, and standards of education from

primary to postgraduate level, and yet which has never been researched directly in

terms of the tutorial.

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Chapter Two: Central Research Questions

The purpose of this study is to examine the Oxford Tutorial (OT) to

determine the extent to which it fosters critical thinking skills and traits in

students. In other words, the goal is to shed light on some of the various forms and

manifestations of critical thinking which are being fostered by professors and

learned by students, as well as to discover areas of critical thinking which may be

overlooked. To put this in the form of a question, “What critical thinking skills

and traits are presently fostered by tutors and internalized by students within the

Oxford Tutorial, and which forms are seemingly less valued or perhaps not as

deeply understood?”

I begin with these three assumptions: 1) that most students (and indeed

many teachers) have probably not thought explicitly and systematically about the

idea of critical thinking, and thus their conceptions of it are likely to be implicit

rather than explicit in their practice; 2) that nevertheless both tutors and students

will have developed a range of critical thinking skills and traits and; 3) that

perceptions of and emphases on critical thinking will vary widely.

My goal, then, is to draw out participating tutors’ and students’ explicit

and implicit (sub- or semi-conscious) ideas about critical thinking and to attempt

to discern the extent to which these ideas are successfully applied both within and

beyond the tutorial. In order to do this, at least three issues and their related sub-

questions must be explored.

First, both tutors’ and students’ conceptions of critical thinking must be

uncovered and given voice. Here the question is “How is critical thinking

perceived and understood by participating tutors and students?” The goal is not to

27

look for any “correct” answer, but rather to explore what some tutors and students

think critical thinking is and how they believe they use it.

Second, it is important to determine how these conceptions have

developed. For example, this research does not assume that any notions of critical

thinking expressed by students are mainly, or even largely, a result of their tutorial

experience. Two key questions here are: in the case of tutors, “Are conceptions of

critical thinking primarily based on the work of specific theoreticians, or have

they been developed in other, more implicit ways (e.g. by forming habits of

thought from their previous professors, or through departmental culture and

attitudes)?” In the case of students, “Are conceptions mainly a result of their

tutorial experience or are other factors responsible, such as their parents, informal

reading and discussion groups, previous schooling, or student societies?”

Finally, this study is not confined to analyzing perceptions and beliefs

only. It is also concerned with whether and to what extent critical thinking (in

some significant sense) is actually being practiced by tutors and students. In the

case of teachers, what specific strategies are being used within the tutorial to

foster student development of critical thinking? In the case of students, in what

manner and to what extent are their conceptions of critical thinking remaining at

the abstract level versus being applied in various domains of their life (both within

and beyond the tutorial)? How successful are they in deploying those concepts in

their intellectual (and even personal) life?

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The above forms a neat hierarchy which can be expressed in the following

manner:

1. Subject to the provisional and tentative nature of this study, what skills,

abilities, and traits of critical thinking are fostered by participating

tutors and internalized by students in the Oxford Tutorial, and which

are either not fostered or fostered only to a small degree?

a. What are participating tutors’ and students’ conceptions of critical

thinking?

b. How did tutors and students develop these conceptions?

c. What evidence is there that these conceptions are being

successfully practiced, both within and beyond the tutorial?

d. What critical thinking skills, abilities and traits are not being

fostered in the tutorial practice of the participating tutors?

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Chapter Three: Methodology

The methodological basis of this study is qualitative and

phenomenological. Interviews of thirty minutes to an hour were conducted with

three tutors and seven students. The questions list can be seen in appendix A.

Additionally, four tutorials were observed, two with tutor C and one each with

tutors A and B.

3.1 – Why these Methods?

This study documents in detail (transcripts totalling over 100 pages)

attempts on the part of three tutors to foster critical thinking within the Oxford

tutorial, to discover what seems to be successful and what unsuccessful in this

limited sample size, and to hypothesize as to the reasons behind those successes

and struggles. It is not to make judgements about the tutorial system as a whole, or

even about individual tutors. Rather, my hope was to identify and outline the

status of critical thinking in the mind and teaching of participant tutors and in the

mind and learning of their students, and to raise questions regarding what seemed

effective and what ineffective within the small data set which this study

assembles.

In designing this study, it seemed clear that the most fruitful methods were

qualitative. The first two main sub-questions, (a) and (b) above, seemed best

explored through the use of interviews. The purpose of the interviews was to

establish tutors’ and students’ perceptions of how they believe they are,

respectfully, teaching or learning critical thinking. I employed semi-structured

interviews so as to focus the interviews on necessary components in a stable and

predictable way (Rapley, 2004; Shank and Brown, 2007), while also allowing for

30

flexibility to explore topics spontaneously as they arose (Marton & Booth, 1997;

Pring, 2000; Rubin and Rubin, 1995). Finally, previous studies focusing on

similar themes, such as those on deep and surface learning (Marton, et. al, 1984)

and those conducted on the tutorial itself (Ashwin 2005, 2006), were also

primarily grounded in the use of semi-structured interviews.

To reduce interviewer bias in directing interviewees towards particular

answers, there was no limit put on responses and interviewees were allowed to

finish their thought fully before the next question was asked (Seale, 1999).

As the tutorial is an informal environment, I also thought that a

conversational and exploratory tone would be both familiar and comfortable for

the participants, and thus most would most likely encourage openness and critical

reflectiveness about experiences within the tutorial.

To answer sub-question (c) above, it seemed prudent to directly observe

tutorials. This was necessary to determine the extent to which conceptions

articulated in the interviews were actualized in the practice of the tutorial. Another

advantage was that observations sometimes illuminated potential reasons why

some attempts to foster critical thinking were lost on students. Finally,

observations enabled the identification of manifestations of critical thinking

which, for any number of reasons, were not expressed in the interviews by either

tutor or student, but were nevertheless present.

Rather than judging tutors’ actions within the tutorial against a previously

defined idea of critical thinking, conceptions tentatively identified during the

interviews provided the framework and focus for the observations. This approach

had multiple advantages, as it countered many of the common shortcomings of

observational studies. For example, Pring (2000, 35) warns that observations are

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often crippled in three significant areas: 1) objectives are often unclear (just

“taking a look to see what happens”); 2) what is “observed” is inherently biased as

it is “filtered…through the understandings, preferences and beliefs of the

observer” (2000, 35), and; 3) it is difficult to connect product (what is said or

done) with process (the thinking behind the action).

The design of this study specifically limits these pitfalls in the following

manner: 1) the objectives are defined in the participants own language; 2)

verification of these conceptions is the main goal (which limits “filtering” or bias)

and; 3) the product can be linked with the process, as the interviews highlighted

and made explicit the thinking which led to the actions. While the nature of

subjectivity raised in objections two and three can obviously never be fully

eliminated, the steps taken in this research serve to minimize their influence.

Finally, as a researcher with a background in oral history with an

awareness of the importance of preserving primary sources, all the data collected

through interviews and observations was fully transcribed, anonymized, and

deposited in a digital archive in the Bodleian library. The resulting documents

contain over 60,000 words, totalling over 100 pages, which will stand for future

researchers to re-visit and re-analyze. Certainly a sidenote to this particular project

in terms of its immediate outcome, in my mind it may be its most significant

contribution to future research; historians, perhaps many years from now, may

seek to understand the tutorial in the early 21st century and find these transcripts to

be some of the few extant records available. While this may seem unlikely, we

might also ask how valuable records of perceptions of the tutorial hundreds of

years ago might be to us now, and how they might be treated were they extant

today.

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3.2 – Why these People?

Due to the exploratory and tentative nature of the study, and without the

intention of generalizing from so small a sample (Robson, 2002), there was no

need for random sampling. I therefore followed an informal path to finding

participants. I attended a lecture in the International Relations department for my

own interests and engaged in a conversation with the presenter afterwords. I told

him of my research. He suggested that I speak to one of the politics tutors who

was also interested in the pedagogy of the tutorial. The suggested tutor readily

agreed to participate in the study and suggested four other politics tutors who

might be interested.

To explore both sides of the tutorial experience, and to compare those

perceptions against each other, it was necessary to interview not simply tutors and

students but tutors and their students. Thus, student participants were selected

from those being taught by the participating tutors. Second year students were

chosen as they have more tutorial experience (and potentially more maturity and

reflectiveness) yet do not have the burden of impending finals, which might have

introduced a level of stress and potential for negativity among student participants.

All participants were emailed invitations to join the study. The email

contained a brief summary of the project and an explanation of how the researcher

had obtained their email address (i.e. word of mouth). The appropriate information

sheet (see Appendices A and B) was attached, and participants were encouraged

to ask any questions they cared to. It was made clear, especially in the case of

students whose tutors had already agreed to be part of the project, that they were

under no obligation to participate.

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Five tutors were contacted, of which three participated. One declined due

to excessive time commitments during the term. The other did not respond to the

original email, nor to a follow-up sent two weeks later. Eight students were

contacted, of which seven participated. One simply did not respond to emails.

3.3 – Why these Questions?

The question list (see appendix A) was developed with a view to covering

the most significant aspects of critical thinking, while also minimizing the number

of questions asked in order to maximize depth and allow time for elaboration. The

questions were loosely based on the interview protocol used by Paul et. al. (1997),

in a study of conceptions of critical thinking among public and private university

professors, but was modified for the specific purposes of this study. Paul et. al.

were concerned with evaluating professors’ conceptions of critical thinking,

whereas my focus was much more investigative, exploratory, descriptive and

provisional. To more fully examine and evaluate the tutorial system and its

relationship to critical thinking, a much larger and longer project needs to be

developed. I leave this for future researchers.

3.4 – Trials and Triumphs

Few research projects develop flawlessly, and this investigation was no

exception. During the process I learned many lessons and made a few mistakes

which will change the way I approach research in the future. Below are just a few

highlights, in chronological order.

Though this project is in itself a kind of pilot, the first thing I would do

differently would be to talk more frequently to undergraduates informally about

34

their tutorial experience throughout the year. Though I did this quite often, it

usually lasted no more than a few minutes and could certainly have been done in a

more disciplined and systematic manner. Though these conversations certainly

informed and improved my questioning, I could have made more use of this

resource to, as it were, pre-pilot my pilot study.

Because I was concerned (having been warned) that obtaining access to

willing participants would be difficult, perhaps prohibitively so, I followed an

informal trail which led to the tutors who eventually agreed to be in the study.

Luckily, the three tutors happened to have different degrees of experience with

tutorial teaching. Unfortunately, however, all were male. A female perspective

might have proven valuable. Furthermore, all were former Oxford undergraduates,

and so had firsthand experience of the tutorial as a student. Much of their

conceptions of critical thinking and its role in tutorial instruction seemed to be

informed in large part by their own experiences with it as a pupil. It might have

been illuminating to have at least one tutor who had no personal or prior

knowledge of the system and who therefore developed an approach from an

outsider’s perspective.

I was lucky that the first student I interviewed was particularly insightful

and, of his own volition, spoke on many aspects of the tutorial experience of

which I had no knowledge and thus would not have thought to pursue. As a result

of our discussion I added two questions to my protocol: one probing student

confusion over the tutorial process as well as one probing for depth of

understanding of the material.

During the course of conducting interviews there were other successes and

failures. The biggest failure was in not asking for enough examples. When

35

transcribing later I was struck by how vague and amorphous many of the answers

were. I continually expected the next thing I would type to be: “INTERVIEWER:

Can you give me an example?” Yet I so often neglected to ask this simple

question. The result is that it is difficult to tell sometimes whether students’

responses actually represent true insights or mere intellectual fluff, as there is

nothing concrete with which to connect it. This is perhaps an argument for spacing

interviews out farther and transcribing simultaneously.

On the positive side, I was conscious that as the interviews progressed I

was using a more conversational and informal tone. When asking about specific

behaviors which students might be afraid or anxious to admit, I often attempted to

relate to them by saying things like “Some students have said that they often feel

they have to do x in order to complete y” or “I’ve often noticed a tendency in

myself to do z when a happens – is that something which you do as well?” This

seemed to relax the students and allow them to discuss touchy subjects (such as

engaging with the material superficially or, in their terms, “bullshitting a tutorial”)

as it was couched in terms of the pressures they faced which encouraged them

behave in these ways. This allowed for a more open interview which undoubtedly

resulted in some insights which would not have arisen otherwise.

I was also lucky that, due to a scheduling complication and communication

failure, I was able to interview one of the tutors both before and directly after the

tutorial. This enabled me to ask questions regarding specific behaviors within the

tutorial, and produced greater insight into his reasoning behind his attempts to

engage his students’ intellects. In order to capture more such insights, I might

have considered a short ten-minute debrief with each tutor after observing their

tutorials.

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3.5 – Data Analysis and Evaluation

All the data collected during this project was analyzed and evaluated

primarily according to the categories listed on page ten. That is, tutors’ and

students’ responses were critiqued based on the extent to which they could clearly

and elaborately articulate how they performed intellectual analysis and intellectual

evaluation, how they developed strategies for intellectual improvement, the

importance they placed on the development of intellectual traits, and whether and

to what extent they applied any of these skills and traits to thinking generally, to

subject disciplines, and to their personal lives. These concerns reflected themes

that run through virtually all conceptualizations of critical thinking.

In the data collection and analysis phase, attempts were made to document

those critical thinking skills which tutors and students value and exhibit. Here,

tutors and students were encouraged to explicate their conceptions of critical

thinking in their own words. In both interviews and observations, everything said

which could reasonably be understood as critical thinking was pursued and

credited. The purpose was to be as inclusive and open-minded as possible. The

key question was “what critical thinking skills, abilities and/or traits are clearly

explained and exemplified?” One underlying assumption was that those skills and

traits which and faculty use to analyze, critique, and re-construct beliefs, concepts,

and reasoning should be provisionally credited as critical thinking.

In the data evaluation phase, all of the above was subjected to scrutiny.

Areas which seem unclearly articulated or applied were noted and recorded. The

purpose was to juxtapose tutors’ and students’ conceptions of critical thinking

against broader and more detailed understandings as explicated by recognized

critical thinking theoreticians. The key question was “what critical thinking skills

37

and traits seem to be undervalued or neglected?” The underlying assumption was

that to the extent that students are not taught to value or employ recognized

dimensions of critical thinking in their academic and personal lives, to that extent

critical thinking constructs were unlikely to become effective tools for the analysis

and critique of thought.

It seems clear that tutors would recognize critical thinking concepts as

necessary presuppositions for the critique of thought: at least insofar as thought is

taken to include claims to knowledge, insight, or quality of reasoning. For

example, no tutor would say “I don’t want my students to develop the ability to

follow out the implications of a line of reasoning” or “I don’t think it is important

for students to be able to accurately articulate the reasoning of an author.”

Therefore, successful articulations and development of critical thinking were

stated and discussed, with implications for the importance of such developments

drawn out. Conversely, unclear articulation and seemingly unsuccessful

development of critical thinking was also analyzed. The purpose was not to praise

or negate tutors. It was rather to gain insight into that which is effective, as well as

that which is ineffective, in developing fairminded criticality in students within

the tutorial.

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Chapter Four: Tutors’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking

The bulk of the analysis in this section results directly from the tutor

interviews, though some few references are made to both the student interviews

and the observations. In light of space limitations, as well as the sheer mass of

data obtained in the interviews, only the most significance findings are

highlighted. Furthermore, the main purpose of this section is to bring participating

tutors’ conceptions of critical thinking into the open so that they may be noted and

discussed. It is therefore less focused on evaluation. Later sections address the

efficacy of these approaches in more depth.

It is important to remember that this project is based on a small sample

size, and therefore whose interpretation must be regarded as tentative and

provisional. In subsequent studies, larger data samples may allow for more

definitive conclusions regarding questions and issues raised but not settled in this

study. This study is therefore conditional in nature. It opens issues, defines

problems, and suggests plausible hypotheses.

The primary questions made explicit in this chapter are as follows:

1. How do participating tutors conceptualize critical thinking?

2. How do participating tutors view the tutorial in terms of its overall

effectiveness in fostering critical thinking?

3. What criteria are used to evaluate student work and thinking in the

tutorial?

4. What intellectual traits or dispositions do tutors foster in the tutorial?

5. To what extent is critical thinking fostered implicitly versus explicitly?

39

6. What specific intellectual skills do participating tutors believe are

important for students to learn in their tutorials?

4.1 – Critical Thinking as Generally Conceived by Tutors

One result of this phase of the research was a remarkable compatibility

between the three tutors’ general conceptions of critical thinking. Participating

tutors’ main concerns with regards to critical analysis were threefold: that central

questions are stated clearly and precisely, that core concepts are analyzed (with

key terms being properly explained), and that key assumptions are laid bare. It

seemed that, in the minds of these tutors, once this is accomplished the most

important critical thinking components have been satisfied. What remains for

them then is the mastery of the content on the basis of the ground-establishing

critical analysis. Critical thinking, on this view, sets the background logic in

which the central content (or argument) can be intellectually explicated and

pursued. Now a debate can take place that focuses on argumentation and counter

argumentation. The extent to which these discussions are critically based or

simply “bullshitting” (in the words of some of the students) is discussed in the

next two chapters.

When specifically asked for their conception of critical thinking, the

degree of explicitness and detail varied among tutors, as might be expected. Tutor

A stressed all of the following: the importance of focusing on core questions,

assessing the extent to which answers seem logical, considering the empirical

basis of the assumptions, and seeking the correct answer. He said:

“I suppose what I would expect [critical thinking] to cover is a thought process which does a variety of things, in no particular

ordering. But, in considering a problem, or an issue, [it] tries to

isolate the absolutely core question or questions that are involved,

40

attempts to look rigorously at both the logic of suggestive answers

and at the empirical basis of any empirical assumptions that have

been made. And following that, it is an item of methodology by

which those empirical assumptions would arrive.” (Tutor A)

Tutor C, in contrast, resisted articulating critical thinking in general terms

and thought it should vary with the content:

“I mean critical thinking isn’t something in abstract. It’s not

something that can be taken on its own…And I wouldn’t actually

want to say therefore this kind of thinking or even this kind of

criticism because that ought to be determined by the material itself.” (Tutor C)

Tutor B gave the most detailed explanation of critical thinking, articulating

a series of critical thinking skills and traits:

“Umm…(long pause)…I suppose the capacity to reflect critically,

although that’s not really helpful. To reflect critically on what you read, what you learn, what people tell you. To develop your own way

of thinking about the material that isn’t reliant on what anybody else

has produced. To actually second guess the authors, to think “ok, is

what they’re saying supported by the evidence? Does this argument

hold? Is it logical? What’s the ideology that’s being supported by this

particular line of argument? Is the interpretation colored by that

ideology?” And to come to your own conclusions, to be willing to think for yourself. …And to criticize – to be able to criticize

established, you know, orthodox voices. The big names - not to be

afraid of having irreverence for these people...That’s not really a

coherent answer but I suppose just not to accept anything on face

value and to constantly be asking questions of the material in a

critical vein.” (Tutor B)

Tutor B, like tutors A and C, did not appear to the interviewer, at least at

first, to have an explicitly developed conception of critical thinking at the

forefront of his mind. It seems he may have been working out his idea of critical

thinking while articulating it (which raises the question of a possible lack of deep

prior reflection on the idea).

However it is interesting to note the highly specific explanation of this

response. For example, there are at least three intellectual traits implicit in this

articulation: intellectual autonomy (“developing your own way of thinking about

the material, coming to your own conclusions”), intellectual courage (“be able to

41

criticize established, orthodox voices”), and fairmindedness (“Is the interpretation

colored by that ideology?”), all of which are frequently cited as important

characteristics of a critical thinker (Glaser, 1941; Ennis, 1962; Passmore, 1972;

Johnson and Blair, 1977; Siegel, 1980, Paul and Elder, 2008). In addition, the

following critical thinking abilities were highlighted by this tutor: identifying the

evidence, questioning whether the argument is logical, asking essential questions.

Still, within the broad umbrella which the above descriptions represent,

each tutor highlighted and emphasized specific aspects of critical thinking. These

specifics stood out during the interviews as they were repeated often during the

interview without prompting from the researcher. None of these specifics were

inconsistent with general articulations, nor did they contradict other tutors

individual emphases; rather, they formed an overlapping and interwoven web of

understanding.

4.2 – Targeting Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities

It is clear from the articulations above that all three tutors are attempting to

foster various intellectual skills and discipline, though they don’t always cite the

same ones. The primary intellectual skills revealed in the interviews were:

1. defining the meaning of terms, noticing how thinkers modify

meanings, judging whether these changes are justified in context.

2. constructing arguments - noticing assumptions and conclusions,

making sure the information supports the argument (so the argument

logically follows).

3. staying focused on the question at issue.

4. showing you can effectively deal with objections to your argument.

5. considering issues from alternative perspectives.

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6. clarifying your thinking.

Though cited less, students were also encouraged to:

7. read with empathy and for understanding

8. notice contradictions and inconsistencies

9. critically examine sources

Once again, all of these proposed critical thinking principles are consistent

with each other, and with articulations by primary critical thinking theoreticians

(Glaser, 1941; Ennis, 1962; Siegel, 1980; Paul and Elder, 2008, etc.). All three

tutors emphasized the importance of carefully analyzing the question at issue, as

well as the key concepts (usually referred to as “terms”) within the question. All

emphasized the importance of explicating assumptions inherent in student

arguments and in specific texts. One tutor summed up this core idea in the

following way:

“In considering a problem, or an issue, [a critical thinker] tries to

isolate the absolutely core question or questions that are involved,

attempts to look rigorously at both the logic of suggestive answers

and at the empirical basis of any empirical assumptions that have been made. And following that, it is an item of methodology...”

(Tutor A)

Interestingly, though conceptual analysis was taken by all to be crucial for

critical thinking, none of the faculty proposed a theory or conception of

conceptual analysis (such as is found in John Wilson’s Thinking with Concepts

1987). Instead, they seemed to view such analysis as implicit in a critical reading

of the assigned text. However, in a similar way, none of the tutors proposed a

theory for how students should approach critical reading either (such is as found

in Paul and Elder’s How to Read a Paragraph, appropriately subtitled: “The Art

43

of Close Reading”, 2006). For example, it was hard to know what to make of

Tutor A’s idea of critical reading since, in explicating it, he went on to say: “you

aren’t really thinking when you’re reading.”

Tutor B had the most developed approach to conceptual analysis. He

attempted to help students think deeply about concepts and the problematic ways

they are sometimes used by students. Still, the explanation for how he

accomplished this task is somewhat puzzling. Consider the following extended

passage. It seems as if there is an underlying core idea here, however this core

may or may not be clear to his students:

“So for example there’s a week where democratic peace theory is

the topic. And democratic peace theory is the idea that no

democracies have ever gone to war with each other. And there’s lots

of different questions you can ask about that topic. But the one that I

ask is, I give a quotation from Clinton’s national security advisor

saying that, you know, “spreading democracy is good because it

opens up markets and makes for peace.” And the essay is “well does

democratic peace theory mean that democratic states should promote

democracy?” So, what does that do? Well, it flags that the academic literature

can be used to support particular policy outcomes, so there’s a

literature that goes back to Kant…

So what does that imply, to the policy world? That shows that,

you know, policy can draw on academia in better or worse ways, for

a start. It shows that theory is not ivory tower but has real world

implications. It gets them to think that, maybe something they took for granted as being good, democracy promotion, maybe has

imperialistic connotations…But it also invites you to reflect on the

validity of the literature itself, because of course if the literature is

wrong then you’re basing policy on a wrong set of assertions and

assumptions.

It also gets them to think about the nature of democracy, because

the only way which that assertion holds, that democracies don’t go to

war with each other, is by defining democracy in a particular way,

and defining war in a particular way. So they get to think about the

assumptions that underlie theories, why the assumptions are framed

in that particular way, why we say “x is democratic, y is not”, and the

fairly arbitrary way they’re classified and the politicized nature of

that classification…

So a lot of this is about the questions that are asked, and they

might get some, probably not all of those things that I’ve mentioned.

But those are the things that that question allows you to do in a way

that a question like, you know, “does democratic peace theory hold

among emerging democracies?” doesn’t. Because that’s just saying

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“well, democratic peace theory says this, but some people have said

that.” You know, that doesn’t get them to think very critically except

in a sense that some people in the literature have criticized it. But that

I think doesn’t go far enough.” (Tutor B)

While this last passage suggests a variety of ways to stimulate students’ to

think on multiple levels, the extent to which these strategies are successful is

unclear. Though tutor B’s question, “does democratic peace theory mean that

democratic states should promote democracy?”, seems to allow more room for

critical thinking than “does democratic peace theory hold among emerging

democracies?” However, without further analysis, it does not go beyond asking

the question. It therefore can be answered deeply or superficially, critically or

uncritically. To the extent that students are unaware of the multiple levels in

which they are expected to engage the material, as well as the method through

which they should approach these levels, confusion and misunderstanding is a

possible, if not plausible, result. This point is illustrated by one of tutor B’s

students in the next chapter who expresses what appears to be an uncritical

evaluation of democratic peace theory.

4.3 – Criteria Tutors Use to Evaluate Student Work and Thinking

With regard to important intellectual criteria used for evaluation, the tutors

appeared to have well developed, if highly personal, systems which include the

following components: logic, consistency, reasonability, accuracy, coherence,

breadth, precision, clarity, and relevance. It appeared, however, that these criteria

and suggestions for their use were rarely communicated explicitly to students. In

fact, much of participating tutors’ strategies seemed to be implicit. This lack of

explicitness is important. As Pedder (2006) points out, one important quality for

effective teaching is to clearly define learning tasks for students. Without this

45

explicitness, students can become confused or uncertain as to how those tasks

should be accomplished. This should not be counter-intuitive. One does not teach

correct form for a jump-shot by telling the players to “throw the ball at the hoop”.

Rather, it is done with careful attention to the minute details of body mechanics,

wrist flick, proper rotation, concentration, etc. etc. The effect of this implicitness

on students’ development of critical thinking will be explored in the chapter on

students which follows.

When asked what criteria they used to evaluate student work (intellectual

evaluation, both internal and external, being an essential component of critical

thinking), participating tutors’ comments were mixed. On the one hand, initially,

all three tutors seemed to have difficulty stating the criteria they use. This can be

seen in the following passage:

“[Evaluation] involves something which I’m not going to be able to

define for you, which is a concept I have of intellectual judgement.

Very roughly I mean “there are three different things you could say

about this. One of them is important, which is the important

one?”…and that’s a much more amorphous concept. And it’s not

something you can teach, it’s something you hope the student will

acquire in the process of the whole set of tutorials in which they seek

to answer questions.” (Tutor A)

On the other hand, when pressed, all three tutors were able to detail

standards they encourage and expect. Thus the unclear response above can be

contrasted with a much stronger articulation (highlighted in bold), as follows:

“… there’s the argument itself, you know, “does it flow logically

from point to point?” “is it supported by evidence” “is the argument

logical?” “is it coherent, rather than contradictory?” “is it

persuasive?” “does it make sense [clarity]?” … If a particular policy

is suggested, “what’s the basis for it [questioning assumptions]?

Would it have the supposed outcome [testing implications]? How

can we tell?” (Tutor B)

46

Even the tutor who initially responded with the view that critical thinking

cannot be articulated in the abstract outlined standards he uses in judging papers

(again noting the intellectual standards in bold):

“How widely have they read in order to see what other approaches

people have, or what the weaknesses of that claim might be? And to

what extent have they engaged with the material and looked beyond

it [tracing out implications]? Or simply got stuck with

it?...sometimes they need more examples, sometimes they need better

examples [accuracy]…or they need to give a bit more detail

[precision]... Hopefully clarity, to synthesize a huge body of

information and to strike through it, to look at its strengths and

weaknesses, to re-present it systematically [logic].” (Tutor C)

In short, taken together, and with some analysis, these passages show that

these tutors share and emphasize intellectual standards for evaluating reasoning,

namely: logic, consistency, reasonability, accuracy, coherence, breadth, precision,

clarity, precision, and relevance, all of which are significantly highlighted in the

literature on critical thinking. It seems clear, then, that some tutors have a rather

well developed system for critique, though they may have never discussed it

explicitly with students.

4.4 – Critical Thinking Often Implicit Rather than Explicit in Tutorials

It seems that the intellectual moves tutors make (in questioning and

challenging students) are often implicit rather than explicit. The clearest example

of this, of course, is Tutor C’s belief that critical thinking doesn’t exist in the

abstract. But he was not alone in this belief. Tutor A objected to the label “critical

thinking” and equated critical thinking with thinking itself:

“There’s no difference between “critical thinking” – if it must be

identified and given a label – in an undergraduate essay, and the

process of external and self criticism that goes through in publishing

an academic article. There is only one – I mean I suppose that the reason I object to it being given a label is that when you talk about

“critical thinking” and it implies that there are other forms of

thinking, and no there aren’t... There are other ways of emoting about

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things. There are ways of expressing oneself – which is not thinking

– but thinking is critical thinking, that’s what it’s all about. Otherwise

it is just letting ideas meamble through your mind” (Tutor A)

This answer seems to suggest a problematic notion of critical thinking and

its relationship with thinking. If thinking and critical thinking are the same, then

thinking is always of the same high quality as critical thinking.

Due to their implicit rather than explicit conception of critical thinking,

tutors were not always clear as to their intellectual expectations of students. In

other words, they sometimes asked questions which to them seemed perfectly

clear, but could have been interpreted in any number of ways by students. For

example, tutor C’s most often cited method for teaching critical thinking was to

“push the thinking,” which seemed, to this interviewer, somewhat ambiguous. He

put it this way:

“[I’m] trying to get the students to ask a question which will allow

them to step back slightly from what they just said or from what

they’ve done and frame it slightly differently, and then push into detail again, and then step back again and then push forward again… the

tutorial is then a possibility to re-cap and nuance some of what they’ve

done. You know, in the first place. But then to push them to frame

their thinking so that they can sit back from the immediacy of the

tutorial and push their understanding forward.” (Tutor C)

Perhaps his students understand perfectly, but it is unclear to this

researcher what was meant by such things as “stepping back” and “pushing

forward.” Does “pushing forward” mean following out the implications of a line

of reasoning? Does it mean comparing it with another author’s reasoning? Does it

mean applying an idea to a new context? Throughout his interview Tutor C often

spoke in metaphors, giving little explanation and few concrete details as to what

the student was expected to do in terms of thinking and reasoning.

48

Here is another passage in which Tutor C explains how he thinks of

himself as raising the level of student thinking in the subject:

“…they talk more in the beginning and I’ll start to try and bring

things together as we move towards the end. So there’s a sense in

which I want them to throw stuff out because they’ve been doing a

lot of work that week… And then you get to the point where there are

natural pauses in their thinking…and that’s where I come in to bring

it in a different direction. And then we’re moving toward the end of the tutorial and I’m trying to gather up those thoughts, not always

entirely explicitly and saying “ok that’s good so the answer is this

this and this.” But more trying to bring themes together so that when

they go out of the tutorial they’ve hopefully got something where

they go and sit down and make some notes and think about it, and

probably that will have raised more questions for them than

answered. But it will have raised questions on a slightly higher level and have given them a slightly different way of doing things.” (Tutor

C)

For Tutor C, the key question is: “do we manage to take the students

somewhere in [the tutorial] that re-orients or transforms their thinking about the

subject?” His hope is that by stimulating their thinking in different directions,

students will critically reflect on their own beliefs and be in a better position to

raise them to a higher level as a result. It is unclear whether and to what extent

this, in Tutor C’s own words, “rather shambolic approach” results in students

developing deeper insights into the material and critical insights into how one

thinks about alternative perspectives or whether it passes through students’ minds

largely undigested.

It seems as if keeping things at the implicit level is not unusual. When

asked if there was any departmental ethos with regards to conducting tutorials,

Tutor B replied “You can devise it any way you want. So there is no ethos. The

ethos is, if anything, pluralism.” Tutor A largely agreed, and recounted a story of a

colleague who had a difficult time learning how to conduct tutorials. He says:

“I have a colleague in the next door office…and he came to Oxford never having given or had a tutorial…and he said he found it very

difficult because no one would tell him. He’d ask “how should I do

it?” and out of that deference that we all have to each other’s

49

freedom, nobody would answer. They’d all say things like “oh

whatever you want”. And at the end…he had to ask his students.

Which, all credit to him that he had the modesty to do that. It’s a trial

and error process. Some approaches work, some don’t. There is

increasingly a tendency to try to formalize it, to give people rules. On occasion I have to preside over training sessions for graduate students

in this. I try not to make it too obvious that I think this is an utterly

pointless activity because if they’re any good they will throw the

rules away or write them for themselves. But it is very difficult. And

there are tips you can give. And one of them is to remind them that

tutorials are conversations.” (Tutor A)

To some extent Tutor A sees the problem in this, yet he believes that

anyone qualified to be a tutor should be able to do so without guidance or

instruction. Tutor B, on the other hand, seemed of all tutors to be the most

committed to the idea that critical thinking should be made explicit, rather than

remain implicit. He said:

“I think if you leave it implicit, the belief I suppose is that they’ll get

it by osmosis over time or something. But I don’t think that’s true. I think people, a lot of people, they just don’t know what’s going on.

They don’t really get it and so they’re confused and quite distressed I

would imagine. … So I think it’s very important to be explicit, and

that’s the only way they start to get it. And when I did start to do that,

I found it was useful and I saw some students make very rapid

progress.” (Tutor B)

Tutor B’s insight into how a lack of explicitness can lead to student

confusion is supported by the results of the student interviews, which is explored

in the next chapter.

4.5 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character (Traits, Dispositions, and

Habits of Thought)

The importance of developing intellectual traits or dispositions tended to

be more implicit than the targeting of intellectual skills or abilities. The

intellectual trait advocated the most by tutors seemed to be intellectual

independence (thinking for oneself). To a lesser extent intellectual perseverance

(working through complexities in arguments and issues) intellectual humility

50

(readily conceding when you really don’t know something to be true), and

intellectual empathy (entering deeply into points of view you do not hold in order

to understand and give them credit, even when they conflict with your own) were

also mentioned upon further probing

When asked about the concept of intellectual traits or dispositions, all of

the tutors seemed almost taken aback. It appeared that part of this was due to a

problem of communication (one interpreted my question to be asking about

forming someone’s “character” in the 19th

century sense of conventional

morality). Even after clarification tutors seemed uninterested in the idea and did

not articulate clearly the intellectual traits they valued. This would appear to be

evidence that the issue is not at the forefront of their minds. This becomes more

apparent if we examine the manner in which the three tutors explained their

orientation to intellectual traits. Here are the three tutors’ responses juxtaposed:

Tutor A: “[One would be] reading with sympathy. I have very

considerable impatience with 18 year olds who think that actually

Emmanuel Kant was so dumb that they can simply

reject…(chuckling)…But to read it to make it useful. You know, if

there are different ways you can take a sentence or paragraph, and

one would lead to some productive thought, read it that way rather

than reading it the way which allows you to score points off him. I

have problems with our philosophers here, because the way

philosophy is taught at Oxford, is almost entirely destructive. You are trained to go for the jugular and to take that reading which will best

enable you to show that Kant was incoherent. I have no patience with

that. Now that’s a sort of character trait. But it’s very much within

the notion of intellectual life. Humility, modesty, I mean yes. But as

awareness of one’s inevitable intellectual limitations...Never being

unnerved? Well you have an obligation, up to a point, to treat the

most shocking things that you can read or hear with equal, as it were, intellectual balance, as others.”

Tutor B: “I don’t mark people down for not showing them that, you

know, or for not going the whole way down the possible critical

route. Most don’t. Most students are rather conformist…So, yeah I

mean traits of mind are, yeah I do think, irreverence I think is an

important one. I don’t mean that in a sort of rude way. But not to

look at me as somebody that has the answers or is “the teacher”…But

not as an authority in that they should be skeptical…I suppose I’m

more explicit in the written form, there’s where I do encourage

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people to have the irreverence for authority and not to just, you

know, accept what they’re given. And then that comes out in various

degrees, implicit or explicit. And it shows up in the marks and the

comments that I give them on their essays and the feedback they get

in the tutorials. I don’t explicitly say, you know, to give them a test in the beginning and say “don’t trust literature” (chuckles) or anything

like that.”

Tutor C: “We can instrumentalize and kind of make banal what

they’re doing but there are skills - how does one read? How does one

sit down and read a piece of philosophy?...I don’t know. All I can say

is that when they say “it’s really hard” and I say “yeah, and when you

get to that point where the words are flapping around in front of you

– don’t have a cup of tea, don’t have a cigarette, keep reading.”

That’s the advice I give them.”

Each tutor seemed to believe that intellectual traits as such more or less

take care of themselves. Tutor A’s idea that traits are “very much within the

notion of intellectual life” sums it up: participating tutors seemed, when prompted,

to express support for the development of intellectual traits, but they also seemed

to assume that the important traits would naturally develop in the course of an

undergraduate’s tutorial experience. Because intellectual traits were so little

mentioned, it is reasonable to question whether and to what extent, sophistic

thinking is being inadvertently fostered. The students appear to have some sense

of this danger. Some expressed concern that the tutorial might reward

“bullshitting” and clever, if sometimes dishonest, argumentation over careful and

fairminded deliberation. More on this in the next chapter.

4.6 – Conclusions:

Taking the interviews together, it would seem that all three tutors

encourage some important critical thinking on the part of students. It seems, for

example, that each of them encourages students to think for themselves in a

variety of way: by developing their own position or argument on issues, avoiding

oversimplification, giving reasons, evaluating evidence, exploring beliefs and

52

theories, clarifying the meanings of important terms, uncovering assumptions,

staying focused on the question at issue, and looking at things from differing

viewpoints.

But it is not as clear the extent to which these intellectual skills are being

effectively internalized by their students as a result. Much of what is done by

these tutors seems to be highly implicit. Tutors, even those who articulate a belief

in making as much explicit as possible (as Tutors A and B did), still leave much

unspoken or unanalyzed (as has been highlighted above). For example, instead of

asking direct questions such as “What assumptions are underlying this particular

viewpoint?” They sometimes asked more vague questions like “What’s the basis

for that (which could be a probe for assumptions, information, or even

conclusions)?” It seems pertinent here to revisit tutor B’s insight that leaving

things at the implicit level results in students who “don’t get it.” The extent to

which students successfully internalize that which their tutors seek to foster is

explored in the next chapter.

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Chapter Five: Students’ Conceptions of Critical Thinking

Remembering again that all of this study’s conclusions are tentative and

provisional, nevertheless there is an interesting and possibly important similarity

between the dominant faculty and student view of critical thinking. Like the three

faculty, the student picture of the tutorial is focused on some important critical

thinking moves: clarifying key questions, concepts, and assumptions in the

reading of assigned texts. In other areas, such as the internalization of new ideas,

intellectual evaluation, and the development of intellectual traits, student

responses were not clear.

As one would expect, the faculty are more intellectually and

methodologically sophisticated about how one goes about reasoning through

contentious issues in a content domain. On the whole the seven students were less

clear about how these crucial goals are accomplished. Perhaps contributing to this

confusion, some of the faculty “moves” are implicit and tacit, buried, perhaps, in

what participating tutors have subconsciously learned through their academic

career. This becomes a point of frustration for some students.

Especially true at the beginning of their tutorial experience, some students

voiced frustration in being asked to follow a process that had not been adequately

spelled out or modeled. Thus they sometimes felt unsure about how one comes to

terms with the question at issue, how one identifies or analyzes key concepts, how

one lays bare unspoken assumptions. It is important to remember Resnick’s

(1989) twenty year old insight into learning: that successful learners are

intentional agents cognizant and articulate about the strategies they use to process

and internalize new ideas. By not being more explicit, it seems possible that

54

participating tutors may be contributing to student confusion, frustration, and

inefficiency.

Student’s fears that they might look foolish played a role here. This

suggests the possibility that to the extent that the “process” students are expected

to follow is opaque and undefined, student anxiety and confusion is a plausible

result. What is more, anxiety and confusion would seem to discourage rather than

foster student intellectual autonomy and productive engagement with the content.

Here are some student thoughts demonstrating confusion, and even fear, with

respect to the tutorial process:

C: Well I think that’s the thing with the tutorial system is that

your tutors are very rarely actually explaining things to you...So I

remember the first time I came up here and I got an email saying

“read these chapters in a book, read this book as well, and write

this essay”. And I hadn’t received any tuition, hadn’t been to

lectures, this is completely new!...So I had three days to read 200

pages and write an essay on a subject I’d never done before. So

you can’t be, in a tutorial, like with this essay that you think is

utter shit and you don’t really understand what you’ve written…

and I’d be so nervous about that in the tutorial that it was really

difficult to actually learn anything, because I was so nervous

about the whole thing.

G: Last term I was shit scared. I couldn’t talk in tutorials I was so

scared. I literally couldn’t talk in tutorials.

As was discussed in the last chapter and as the above highlights, much of

what is sought after within the tutorial is kept at the implicit level. It can therefore

only be glimpsed fleetingly through experience, trial and error. This leaves much

to chance in terms of what students will internalize in a deep and transformative

way.

5.1 – Critical Thinking Skills and Abilities

Yet as students progress through their studies, they seem to begin to

develop much deeper and more powerful understandings of the nature and

55

significance of critical thinking within the tutorial. One thing is certain: the

students in this study began to pick up on those skills which are explicitly and

systematically required of them. This is clear from the fact that all seven students

interviewed mentioned that the first task when writing an essay was to precisely

articulate the meaning behind key concepts in the question being asked, as well as

to identify the assumptions underlying their use:

C: So I’ve actually been taught how to do that. Teachers and

tutors have recommended that I do that. And the idea of starting

an essay by testing assumptions and explaining terms and that

sort of thing, that’s only something I’ve done recently… So I

remember essays from even last term. I hadn’t really explained

the question. I hadn’t really teased out any assumptions in the

question, I hadn’t done any of that. And my tutors had hit me up

on that. So it’s since then that I’ve taken that into account.

E: well first of all, in an essay, I look at the title of the essay,

whereas before I would have looked at it and just gone straight

into it and answered it, now I like to define the terms, which

almost takes half an essay sometimes, to find out what everyone

means by the terms they used and what they’re asking really as

opposed to the surface meaning of the question, which I’ve never done before. And that’s kind of a big change.

Tutors’ emphasis on these three intellectual skills (defining key concepts,

clarifying central questions, and bringing to light important assumptions) within

the realm of writing an essay has apparently translated into meaningful and

significant learning on the part of participating students. Unfortunately, the lack of

explicit direction regarding other intellectual tasks left the students unsure and

often confused as to how to perform them.

5.2 – Critical Thinking Often Seen Implicitly Rather than Explicitly in

Tutorials

There were at least two important intellectual activities which students

seemed confused as to how to engage in critically: 1) learning new ideas (the

56

process of which was often seen as divorced from critical thinking) and; 2)

intellectual evaluation (which participating students said they most commonly

based on intuition). It is perhaps not coincidental that these two areas were the

weakest and most implicit in the faculty responses.

Before looking at these two weaknesses in student responses, it may be

useful to explore one potential problem with fostering critical thinking in an

implicit or limited way. As was highlighted in the previous section, students seem

to have developed critical thinking skills focusing on concepts, assumptions, and

questions. However, students seem to use these skills in a highly restricted way:

INTERVIEWER: and do you find that you’re generally doing

that not only in politics but in philosophy as well? Do you find

yourself writing sentences and thinking “wait a second, I’ve

assumed something here that maybe I shouldn’t”? or does it

maybe stay confined to politics?

I: I think it stays confined.

INTERVIEWER: and do you find that this spills over into other

things beyond your specific work? Do you find you’re doing that

in the way that you decide to do all kinds of things?

D: I think it still stays very much within the realm of the written

word.

F: I don’t think I go into a politics essay and then go into my

economics essay saying “Right - what I did in my politics essay,

when I looked at my assumptions, and it went really well”…you

just treat it as almost a completely different thing, whereas I guess if you think about it you really shouldn’t because it is the

same process I guess.

INTERVIEWER: do you think it would be helpful to use one to

help the other?

F: yeah definitely.

The last response by student F seems to imply that had he been encouraged

to think about the connections between politics and economics he would have

developed his writing and thinking skills much more effectively, as insights from

57

one discipline would have enriched and deepened insights from the other. In this

case, making these connections more explicit may have significantly helped this

student.

Now let us look at the manner in which students approach the

internalization of new ideas. Two factors: 1) the abovementioned lack of transfer

and, 2) tutors’ own ideas regarding a separation between “clarifying” or “filling in

gaps of knowledge” and true “critical thinking”, seemed to contribute to many

students seeing a disconnect between understanding, on the one hand, and critical

thinking, on the other. Most students in the study seemed to reflect their tutors’

belief that one must have command of a mass of facts before one could begin to

think critically about them:

INTERVIEWER: so you said in philosophy you need to think a lot before you can analyze – what does thinking entail that’s not

analysis?

I: I think it’s understanding. That’s what I mean by it…I think for

me critical thinking is less a role because I’m trying to get the

basics down and I’ll think through the issues once I look at them

again. Whereas I need the issues at the moment.

D: I think in certain areas where people have been, as long as you

have enough depth of knowledge that they can critically think

about things. Because if they’ve only been doing stuff for a

couple of days or a couple of lessons then they’re not really

going to have the resources to think critically about it they’re just

going to be picking away an argument based on not very much.

C: I just want to say that there is a difference between critical

thinking and learning…stuff. Like reading an article and loads of

books. I think the tutorial system probably is good at stimulating

a critical way of thinking and being able to encourage you to

make an argument and analyze things and figure out how to

construct your thoughts into a coherent structure. It does that

quite successfully but that’s at the detriment of actually learning

the stuff that you’re meant to read.

Note that these answers preclude a deep approach to making sense of new

ideas. Most participating student articulations explaining how they internalized

new ideas were vague or technical, rather than clear and critical. For example,

58

student D remarked that his strategy was “once I’ve done all my reading I’ll make

notes on each of the papers, each of the papers that are vaguely useful, and just

sort of take out useful quotations and try to synthesize all that into a plan.” We

might juxtapose this remark against a deeper, hypothetical, response such as:

“When I am attempting to understand the reasoning of a particular philosopher,

the first thing I look for is the key concept that seems to tie together the entire

theory. Then I look at the assumptions on which that theory is based and the key

question which the philosopher seems to be focused on. I then move to follow out

the implications of the theory, asking ‘if this is true, how does it change the way I

should live, the way society should be structured, etc?’” Such intellectual moves

are essential to deep understanding, and they seem to be missing from the

approach participating students used in analyzing the passages they were

interpreting.

To the extent that students are not being explicitly taught how to perform

intellectual analysis as the vehicle to understanding a text, they are missing a

significant domain for critical thought (the domain, for example, of close reading).

Such approaches have been developed and articulated in the work of every major

critical thinking theoretician (Ennis, 1991; Nosich, 2009; Paul and Elder, 2008;

Siegel 1990; Scriven and Fisher 1997; etc. etc.).

Another important area in which participating students seemed to lack a

coherent theory was in the realm of evaluation. Only one student gave a clear and

elaborate response to the question “how do you judge the quality of an author’s

reasoning or written work?” This student had been taught formal logic (a system

for judging arguments based on a few important but highly specific formal criteria

which do not lend themselves to the evaluation of intellectual constructs other

59

than arguments). As it is the first module in the PPE course, and therefore

presumably has been taken by all students in the study save one who was not in

PPE, it is surprising that the other students did not articulate the same ideas.

Rather, the other students seemed to be guided by intuition. Here were some

explanations of how students describe themselves engaging in intellectual

evaluation:

I: a big part of it is my own intuitive instinct, my own

preconceptions of that argument. And so in which case if I start

to follow an argument and it corresponds with something I find

quite - if I find something that’s quite intuitive then that’s quite

helpful in judging articles.

G: I find it really hard to read someone’s essay and critique it. I

don’t know why, it’s like impossible – it’s like gibberish I don’t

know why!... But in the end I just kind of… [go] through the plan

of his essay and then just underneath in a different color pen, like

on the computer still, Just say like whether I think this is a good

or bad idea, but I think that’s a bit sort of childish.

INTERVIEWER: so when you’re trying to decide what’s right

and what’s not, what kinds of things are you looking for?

D: I think you always have to try and find where the source is

and if you disagree with them and try to work out where the root

of the disagreement is.

F: yeah well you often just get a - it sounds really like stupid but

it’s almost just sort of what you…what you think sounds right.

It’s almost like an impulse. It’s almost an impulse decision. Its

just what seems more convincing, what fits the evidence from

real life? What actually happens? Like we were doing something

on democracy this week, like peace between democracies. And

even though you think it through and you’ve got the evidence

before you and there’s loads of people slating the idea that

democracies are more peaceful, but you still like – in my head

you just have this view that “no I live in the world and when I

think of democracies, say, I just think they are more peaceful

countries”. It’s a silly thing but it’s something you need to have

or you’d be sort of out of touch.

INTERVIEWER: so more intuitive then?

F: yeah that’s the word yeah…

Thus, student critique is largely based on “whether or not they agree” with

the point. Paul and Elder (2008) identify this as an “egocentric standard,” which

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they term “it’s true because I believe it.” Under this paradigm, students use their

own beliefs, rather than independent criteria such as those articulated by the tutors

(clarity, logic, depth, etc.), as the primary determiners of what is and is not so. In

other words, arguments are true and largely unproblematic if their conclusions

coincide with the beliefs of the student, and false and problematic to the extent

that they conflict with those beliefs. This manner of evaluation is inconsistent with

the spirit of critical inquiry and can lead to sophistry, as highlighted in the next

section.

5.3 – The Tutorial and Intellectual Character (Traits, Dispositions, and

Habits of Thought)

As was highlighted in the chapter on tutors, there was a striking lack of

emphasis on the development of intellectual traits. One result of their absence is

the potential for fostering intellectual sophistry or what Richard Paul calls “weak-

sense critical thinking” (Paul, 1992). This can briefly be described as skilled but

selfish thinking formulated at the expense of the rights and needs of others. If the

goal is simply to “win” the argument, students may ignore insights in arguments

to which they are not sympathetic and instead “attack” or “destroy” them

(terminology that was used frequently in the student interviews). Recall that Tutor

A spoke of this problem quite directly and forcefully when he attacked the way

philosophy is taught at Oxford.

Yet though this was recognized as a problem, and tutor A did articulate a

vision of intellectual empathy and humility in reading to “lead to some productive

thought…rather than reading it the way which allows you to score points,” this

seemed to be a peripheral, rather than central, concern and not an essential

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component of the way in which he conducted tutorials. The result of this approach

on the students is suggested in the following:

C: I think some people have a knack for bullshit. To be honest a

lot of people on my course do. I mean it just comes with the

territory right? This is a politicians degree, of course they’re

going to be good at bullshit (laughing). So for some people it just

comes like that. Like in my ethics tutorials last term, the guy I

had tutorials with, he would do no reading but he was still able to just talk, like for lengths. He could have kept going if the tutor

hadn’t stopped him (laughing) even though he hadn’t really done

anything. (Student J, p9)

E (a non-PPE student): I think it’s a PPE trait. Like it actually is!

(laughing) and I really dislike it in people. That problem – they

use so many words just to kind of talk talk talk talk talk to try and prove their point. You don’t know if they believe the point…

INTERVIEWER: and do you find that that method of doing

things is rewarded by their tutor and the system in general or is

the tutor saying “well be a bit more nuanced and maybe you

shouldn’t argue so vociferously” etc. etc.

E: I do think it is rewarded because they do tend to become better

at thinking on their feet so they tend to learn to blag it almost,

which they do quite a lot.

INTERVIEWER: and the tutors don’t seem to sort of crack down

on that?

E: no I don’t think so. I think I spend, well I’ve spent most of my

X tutes in silence just kind of – from PPEist to PPEist, and unless

there’s an issue that particularly grasps me I don’t tend to speak

because I just watch. It’s like a ping-pong game. And if you try

and speak you’ve got to speak across someone, there’s not an

opportunity.

The dangers of instruction which encourages “scoring points” and

“proving your point” over an openminded and empathetic exchange of ideas,

especially considering that some of these students will likely become future

political and financial world leaders, should be particularly poignant in the wake

of the current global economic collapse (which seems at least in part to be due to

questionable thinking on the part of many in the financial community who

gambled the savings of others in order to gain profit for themselves).

62

5.4 – Conclusions

To be sure, the seven students within this study seem to be internalizing

some valuable skills of critical analysis as a result of the tutorial. Defining key

terms, bringing important assumptions to the surface, and clarifying core

questions, as well as looking for clarity and consistency of an argument - are all

valuable critical intellectual abilities. At least two students were also able to give

an example of how they used these abilities not only in their studies but in their

lives as well. All this is certainly a sign of important intellectual development.

However, to this interviewer, there were some things that were missing

from tutorial instruction (or so implicit that students were unable to pick up on it),

which has been highlighted in this chapter. The most significant areas which

appear to be neglected are the understanding of new ideas, intellectual evaluation,

and the development of intellectual traits. With regards to these vitally important

skills, the participant students seemed to be largely left to their own devices,

leading this researcher to a few significant questions. If we do not teach students

how to analyze and deeply understand new ideas, are we not contributing to

student confusion and mislearning? If we do not teach an effective and defensible

set of intellectual criteria to be used for intellectual judgement, are we not

encouraging uncritical relativism and/or intellectual sophistry? If we do not

highlight the importance of intellectual traits, do we not open the doors for the

development of highly skilled but largely egocentric and manipulative thinkers?

While this study cannot make definitive claims with regards to any of the above,

their potential significance would seem to suggest hypotheses that have

implications for the design of tutorial pedagogy. I leave their further investigation

for future researchers.

63

Chapter Six: Observations

The observations essentially confirmed, and at least partially explained,

the findings in chapters four and five. It is not possible, due to space limitations, to

analyze and evaluate the tutorial sessions to the same degree of detail as the

interviews, nor would it be particularly fruitful. Due to the “rather shambolic”

(Tutor C) nature of much of what was observed within the tutorial, the data

gathered during the tutorials produced few insights into the development of

critical thinking in students. Most of the focus seemed to be on the content of the

course, with critical thinking playing an implicit and background role.

Tutorials conducted by tutors A and C were primarily focused on the

content of the course and there was little evidence of a systematic approach to

critical thinking. Throughout, the intellectual agenda of these tutors was

sometimes unclear to this researcher, and it is uncertain if their students were

aware of the intellectual moves being made and asked of them. Tutor B was much

more systematic in his approach. Below is a brief summary of the character of

each tutor as they conducted tutorials.

Tutor C, again, described his own approach as “rather shambolic.” He also

described his approach as one where “[the students] talk more in the beginning” as

he gets them to “throw things out there” and in the end he ties up the pieces and

gives them things to think about. This is exactly what happened. Once the

discussion started the students were certainly “throwing things out there,” even if

that meant that what was “thrown out” was confused or poorly supported. While

Tutor C did ask questions of clarification, the bulk of the discussion was tied up in

debate over the content, with critical moves being used occasionally and then only

implicitly.

64

Interestingly, in the tutorial on Political Sociology (in which he had less

expertise), Tutor C asked more probing and critical questions then he did in the

Political Theory tutorial. Perhaps because he knew less content within it he felt

more compelled to question rather than clarify through statements. In both

tutorials he spoke more toward the end, as he attempted to “sum things up.” His

students took few notes. It was thus unclear whether or not his summary was

digested by the students, nor was it obvious that the questions he raised in the

process were seen by the students as important and worthy of investigation or if

they simply passed them by.

Tutor A used the full hour to read and comment on the student’s essay.

While this had the effect of focusing the tutorial on specific points, and thus

potentially helping the student to improve his writing, to this researcher it seemed

that most of the intellectual work was being done by the tutor. In other words,

when the student used a concept, such as “culture,” without clearly identifying

what was meant by it, Tutor A would discuss numerous possible meanings of the

term and how they might be used in the context of the paper. It was thus unclear

the extent to which the student was able to follow and digest the tutor’s point. The

student took no notes.

Tutor B, again, was the most systematic. This is possibly due to the fact

that he was the only tutor to have read and marked his students’ essays in advance.

Despite his students having significant difficulty with the material, he did not

lecture to them but rather persisted in asking questions, bringing in brief examples

from their work or the literature to stimulate their thinking. He brought in practical

examples that were relevant and which moved the discussion forward. He asked

for clarification and elaboration numerous times. He redirected questions to the

65

students to let them struggle with them. More than once he asked the students to

consider alternative points of view. He pushed his students to think through the

implications of the theory. Unfortunately, most of this was done implicitly and in

vague language. For example, instead of saying “When writing an essay, think

about the most relevant and significant facts for your argument and focus on

those,” he told his students “when writing an essay, focus on one thing at a time

and be more explicit.” It was unclear whether his students understood and

appreciated the moves he was making. The students took more notes than their

counterparts in the other tutorials, but still few.

6.1 – Conclusions

The overall picture brought to light by the observations was one in which

participating tutors played a key role in guiding and shaping the thinking of their

students, albeit much of which was at an implicit level. It would seem, given the

insights from the student interviews, that there is much potential for the

development of critical thinking that is missed as a result of this implicitness.

66

Chapter Seven: Summary, Conclusions, and Questions

This section contains a summary of the key conclusions resulting from the

faculty and student interviews. This summary is followed by my hypotheses,

based on the findings in the study, along with questions which I believe warrant

further exploration.

It is important to remember the small sample size of this study (three tutors

and seven students). All conclusions refer only to the Oxford tutors and students

in the study.

7.1 – Results from Teacher Interviews:

Tutors in the study:

1. articulated very similar conceptions of critical thinking. For the most part,

they

a. were encouraging some significant critical analysis on the part of

students, to a large extent implicitly.

b. were using a range of intellectual standards in evaluation of student

work, though to a large extent implicitly.

c. had very little to say with regard to intellectual traits.

2. viewed comprehension as separate from critical thinking, and so implied

that it is not important to use critical thinking to achieve comprehension.

In doing so, they often equated critical thinking with the secondary step of

“criticizing” or “critiquing.”

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7.2 – Results from Student Interviews

For the most part, students in the study:

3. like their tutors, articulated conceptions of critical thinking which were, on

the whole, convergent. That which was clearly articulated by students was

highly correlative with that which tutors explicitly emphasized and

required.

a. All students demonstrated some evidence of critical analytical skills,

primarily applied to clarifying key concepts, questions, and

assumptions before writing an essay.

b. Students seemed to base most of their evaluation on intuition and

“what they agreed or disagreed with.”

c. Students had very little to say with regards to intellectual traits but

cited numerous examples of students lacking such traits (which

inappropriate behavior they believed was in some cases inadvertently

encouraged by tutors).

4. expressed a high degree of confusion and some fear over the tutorial

process in the beginning of their undergraduate experience.

5. did not appear to transfer skills learned in one discipline to another

(despite the transdisciplinary nature of their course), or even from writing

within one discipline to conversing within that discipline.

6. All viewed comprehension as separate from critical thinking and,

therefore, also negated its role in comprehension and equated it with

“criticizing” or “critiquing.”

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7.3 – Hypotheses and Questions

(Note that in this section, all numbers refer to the numbers in the previous

summary section.)

That participating tutors’ conceptions of critical thinking had a high degree

of convergence (1) was somewhat surprising, especially given the prevailing

perception that the tutorial is a highly divergent practice which results from a

unique intellectual interplay between tutor and student(s). The results of this study

indicate that, to the degree that participating tutors are effectively fostering critical

thinking, their approaches, though perhaps different in appearance, are highly

similar in substance and aim (e.g. the development of students’ ability to clarify

key questions, concepts, and assumptions). To the degree that this is true across

the university (which requires further investigation to determine), one hypothesis

for improving tutorial supervision would be to make more explicit the key abilities

Oxford tutors would like to see fostered in student thought. That tutors seemed to

have implicitly developed systems of analysis with a high degree of overlap (1a)

indicates that much of these abilities are already agreed upon and are ready to be

systematized. What is needed is to bring these commonly held ideas to the explicit

level. This articulation need not be static but can be, and likely would be,

dynamic, matching the evolving sensitivities of the faculty. Questions for future

research:

1. How do tutors’ conceptions of critical thinking vary within departments,

as well as across departments?

2. Does any department promote distinctive approaches to conducting

tutorials or do all departments leave it to the individual tutor, as was the

case in the department involved in this study?

69

3. What are the implications of the answer to the above question for student

learning?

4. With regard to those tutors who are more effective at fostering critical

thinking, what pedagogical strategies were used by these tutors, and how

might these strategies be shared with other, less effective, tutors?

The fact that participating students’ conceptions of critical thinking,

especially with regard to critical analysis, were highly convergent with each other

(3a) and with their tutors (3) implies that understanding and internalization may

improve when agreed-upon are discussed explicitly and adopted by multiple

tutors. That students seem, on the whole, to be much less clear about how to

perform intellectual evaluation (3b), as well as how they should go about learning

new ideas (6) seems to be correlated with their tutors’ much more implicit

understanding of intellectual standards (1b) and their own separation of

comprehension from critical thinking (2). The hypothesis here is that what is

communicated explicitly and systematically discussed and required is more likely

to result in deep and significant student learning than that which is covered

implicitly and episodically. Questions for future research:

5. How do tutors perform intellectual evaluation?

6. How, and to what extent, is this intellectual process communicated to

students?

7. How do students perform intellectual evaluation? How do they learn or

develop such systems?

8. How do students understand and internalize new ideas? How do they

learn or develop such systems?

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Some students expressed confusion and fear as to the purpose of the

tutorial system (4). To the degree that student learning is impaired by a

misunderstanding of how to engage in the tutorial effectively and substantively, it

would seem useful to attempt to clarify its purpose as well as the intellectual

processes that will be used in the tutorial. Perhaps a brief discussion in the first

term as to its nature and intent may be helpful. This might be an occasion to

indicate those key abilities which the tutor values and how the student might go

about approaching tutorial preparation in order to develop these abilities.

Questions for future research:

9. To what extent are introductions such as the one described above already

a part of induction programs?

10. Absent, or in addition to, such programs, how do students develop their

understanding of the tutorial?

11. How does this understanding evolve over the course of their

undergraduate experience?

12. Is there a correlation between depth of understanding of critical thinking

and successful engagement in the tutorial, on exams, and in their

careers?

That both tutors and students seemed to place little value on the

development of intellectual traits (1c and 3c) is potentially problematic. That a

significant number of both tutors and students in the study expressed concerns

over a perceived disregard for important intellectual dispositions such as

intellectual empathy and fairmindedness indicates that this may be widespread.

One tutor categorized it as a problem in the way the subject of philosophy is

71

taught (indicating that all philosophy students are potentially being encouraged to

follow an intellectually questionable paradigm), and many students characterized

it as a widespread problem, two even calling it a “PPE trait” (indicating that the

paradigm extends beyond philosophy to include at least politics and economics).

Oxford tutors, presumably, are not attempting to foster the development of

sophistic minds, yet it seems that some tutors are unaware or unconcerned that

some of their students may be developing skills of intellectual manipulation.

Questions for future research:

13. In all subjects, what are tutors conceptions of the formation of

intellectual character traits and to what extent are these traits valued?

14. What practices are inadvertently in place that either reward or discourage

the development of intellectual traits across the disciplines?

The Oxford tutorial is a powerful and influential model for fostering

intellectual development, and as such it deserves to be understood at a much

deeper level than is currently known. To the degree that this study has raised

significant questions and laid the groundwork for their investigation, it has been

successful. Had this researcher more time and resources with which to explore the

above, the data set would have been much larger. As it stands, my hope is that

critical re-examination serves to suggest some few insights into the nature of the

tutorial, its practice, its relationship to critical thinking, what seems to be effective

and what seems to need improvement. The questions which this study has raised I

leave to future scientists and researchers.

72

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Appendix A: List of Questions Asked in the Interviews

For Tutors:

• What is your conception of critical thinking?

o Is your conception explicit or is it more intuitive?

o Are there parts of critical thinking?

� Analysis, evaluation, synthesis?

o How is it similar to or different from other forms of thinking, such as

creative thinking or ethical reasoning?

o Do you see critical thinking in politics as being different in any way from

critical thinking in other disciplines or domains of life?

• How important is critical thinking in your tutorials?

o Are tutorials conducive to teaching for critical thinking?

o Do you feel confident that your students leave your tutorials better

equipped to think critically as a result?

• How do you go about teaching critical thinking in your tutorials?

o What are some practical strategies that you use to get your students to

think critically regarding the subject material?

• How did you develop your conception of critical thinking?

o Is it primarily your own, from the work of a specific theoretician, learned

from previous professors?

• What sorts of criteria do you use for giving feedback to your students?

o Do you discuss these criteria with your students explicitly?

• Do you look to develop intellectual traits?

o What are they?

For students:

• What is your conception of critical thinking? o What kinds of actions does it entail?

o How might you describe the opposite of critical thinking?

o Are there aspects of it that are specific to politics?

• How important is critical thinking in your life or studies?

o How often to you use it?

• How did you develop this conception?

o Previous education, tutorials, parents?

• Within the tutorial:

o What role does critical thinking play?

o Have any of your tutors ever discussed critical thinking explicitly with you?

o What do you think your current tutor’s idea of critical thinking is?

o Can you think of any strategies that your tutor uses to get you to think

critically?

• Regarding marking of papers:

o What sorts of criteria are your papers judged on?

o What kinds of comments do you receive regarding your work?

• Do you feel that you are developing your critical thinking skills as a result of your tutorial experience?

78

Appendix B: Interview/Observation Schedule

and Transcript Information

Tutors: A –May 12

th, 2009 – 36:58 – 5,595 words, 9.3 pages

B –May 13th

, 2009 – 54:06 – 6,881 words, 11 pages

C –May 24th

/25th

2009 – 1:01:35 – 9,883 words, 16.5 pages

Students: D – May 19

th, 2009 – 32:39 – 5,464 words, 10 pages

E – May 20th

, 2009 – 30:19 – 5,192 words, 9.5 pages

F – May 21st, 2009 – 39:08 – 5,774 words, 11 pages

G – May 22nd

, 2009 – 33:46 – 5,833 words, 11 pages.

H – May 22nd

, 2009 – 31:32 – 4,571 words, 7.5 pages

I – May 25th

, 2009 – 36:44 – 3,908 words – 7 pages

J – May 18th

, 2009 – 59:48 – 9,812 words, 15.3 pages

Observations of Tutorials: Tutor A – May 29

th, 2009 – 53:34 – not fully transcribed

Tutor B – May 28th

, 2009 – 46:37 – not fully transcribed

Tutor C, first group – May 26th

, 2009 – 1:01:54 – not fully transcribed

Tutor C, second group – May 26th

, 2009 – 57:14 – not fully transcribed

Word count of transcriptions, without the observations = 62,913 words (108

pages)