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Abstract
Today’s complex societal problems require both critical thinking and an engaged citizenry. Current practices in higher education, such as service learning, suggest that experiential learning can serve as a vehicle to encourage students to become engaged citizens. However, critical thinking is not necessarily a part of every experiential learning process. This project explored several learning experiences that used mindful instructional design of experiential learning to promote critical thinking outcomes. This project looked at four different learning settings that varied in sustainability topics and extent of experiential learning that suggests applicability to a wide educational audience. Our work identified four effective features of instructional design that supported critical thinking: planning, instruction method, content, and explicit critical thinking outcomes. We found that strong critical thinking outcomes result from experiential learning with appropriately scaffolded critical thinking exercises and processes.
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Author Biographies
William F. Heinrich studies and implements assessment designs, methods, and mindsets that complement experiential learning with equally robust data and analysis in higher education. Bill is a doctoral candidate program in the Higher, Adult & Lifelong Education program at Michigan State University, exploring enacted mental models of learning outcomes assessment. From a career standpoint, Bill works to bridge curricular and co-curricular environments through significant, experiential, and holistic learning and assessment.
Geoffrey B. Habron joined Warren Wilson College as founding Director of Electronic Portfolios in July 2014. Geoffrey served 15 years at Michigan State University as Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and the Department of Sociology, as well as a campus specialist with Michigan State University Extension. Geoffrey co-founded and served as the Director of the undergraduate Sustainability Specialization 2010-2014.
Heather L. Johnson, JD, MSc, is a dual degree doctoral student in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Learning and Educational Policy at Michigan State University (MSU). She currently serves as the Research Director of the MSU College Ambition Program.
Lissy Goralnik is a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, where her research focuses on field philosophy, which uses the tools of social science and the humanities and the wisdom of place-based ecology to explore connections to place and environmental citizenship. Her place-based, experiential environmental inquiry facilitates interdisciplinary understanding of the natural world, the cultivation of knowledge and critical awareness to participate thoughtfully in environmental problem-solving, and the development of empathetic relationships with human communities and the natural world. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Experiential Education, the Journal of Environmental Education, the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, Dialectical Anthropology, the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, the Trumpeter, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.
