critical thinking on lifelong learning

Third International Handbook of Lifelong Learning pp 1–20 Cite as

New Impulses for a Lifelong Learning University: Critical Thinking, Learning Time, and Space

• Françoise de Viron 5 &
• Pat Davies 6  
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• First Online: 03 December 2022

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Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

This chapter takes as a starting point argument and evidence that we developed around 2010. This includes a review of the Bologna process and university lifelong learning and our proposal to change from university lifelong learning (ULLL) to lifelong learning universities (LLLU). We had compared the European ULLL model to an ideal institutional model, i.e., the LLLU model, which should be an agile and flexible organization where learning is lifelong and lifewide, fully connected with individuals, communities, and societal aspirations and needs. This chapter examines how far ULLL developed in this direction subsequently, the new impulses following the Covid crisis and megatrends in contemporary society. In our view, three key aspirations emerge from debates and surveys: critical thinking, learning space, and learning time. The chapter revisits these concepts and explores them in a social and democratic perspective. More than ever, critical thinking appears as the priority to promote and develop in all university domains (learning, teaching, researching, and managing). Moreover, universities are invited to re-think learning time and space inside and outside the university and to develop oases supporting different kinds of learning – informal, non-formal, and formal – promoting learners’ emancipation and responsibility. Hybridization, diversification, and extension of learning spaces and diversity of learning rhythms, ownership, and slowness of learning time are all essential. The chapter highlights important elements to be considered specifically by European universities, but applicable more widely, in developing lines of action to implement an LLLU culture moving toward a learning organization. It finally suggests perspectives for further research.

• University lifelong learning
• Critical thinking

Pat Davies is an Independent Consultant, UK and France

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de Viron, F., Davies, P. (2023). New Impulses for a Lifelong Learning University: Critical Thinking, Learning Time, and Space. In: Evans, K., Lee, W.O., Markowitsch, J., Zukas, M. (eds) Third International Handbook of Lifelong Learning. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_37-2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_37-2

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Critical thinking for lifelong learning

“People use critical thinking skills every day whether they’re mapping out the best route to work, practicing self-reflection or helping their children put together a puzzle,” said Dr. Martha Groom, professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.

“Even something as ordinary as figuring out what time to set your alarm in the morning is an example of critical thinking.”

She and Dr. David Stokes, also a professor in the School of IAS, worked with colleagues across the country to conduct a three-year study on effective teaching practices to enhance critical thinking skills among conservation biology students. They worked with faculty from five different institutions and collected data from more than 220 students — 78 of whom were from UW Bothell.

While the study took place in 2012-13, it wasn’t until November 2021 that they published their findings in an article titled, Using Case Studies to Improve the Critical Thinking Skills of Undergraduate Conservation Biology Students . Groom explained the gap in time is a result of compounding factors including having to score the more than 400 tests that were administered to measure critical thinking, as well as compiling and analyzing thousands of data points, and, lastly, writing and publishing the article.

“We were all juggling other projects and had busy schedules before taking this on, but it was definitely worth it,” she said. “It was lovely to work with professors who also care so deeply about teaching. We always feel like we are making a difference in student learning, but this study allowed us to measure it. We now have tangible evidence of the impact we made — it was very powerful for both us and the students.”

Huskies had highest gains

Stokes and Groom conducted their portion of the research on the UW Bothell campus, teaching conservation biology to undergraduates. Students took the same test twice in one quarter; once on the first day and once on the last. Developed by Tennessee Tech University, it served as an assessment of critical thinking.

The test has been used in more than 250 different institutions, and in most cases, it revealed either little or no growth in students’ critical thinking. Neither Groom nor Stokes knew that at the time. “It made it all the more wonderful when our students’ test results showed that in fact, they had gained a lot,” Groom said.

Out of all the students who participated in the study, those from UW Bothell demonstrated the highest gains. They were also the only ones on a quarter system. “Everyone else in the study had a semester to teach their students — David and I had only 10 weeks,” she said. “It’s really quite remarkable the growth our students achieved.”

Students set up for success

Groom suspects one of the reasons their students were so successful was in part due to the sheer number of case studies their students completed. While most institutions taught two in a semester, they taught five to six in a quarter. “We went through a lot of learning cycles that way,” Groom said. “We would pause after we completed each one to reflect, notice what we learned, what we did well and what we could improve on.”

She said reviewing case studies is a great way for students to learn how to think critically, as it requires them to “pinpoint relevant evidence, make deductions and reach a logical conclusion around which they could center a strong argument — which essentially, are the building blocks of critical thinking.”

Alumna Heather Love, IAS ’12, was one of the students who participated in the study and echoed Groom’s sentiment. She remembers the value that came with learning from case studies — even a decade later.

“There was something special about that class, and it came from the studies that portrayed real-life experiences,” Love said. “It made me invested in the material. I was used to just taking notes and listening to lectures, so this was both an incredible and stark contrast. I loved it. Out of every class I took in college, that one was my favorite.”

Poised to excel

Groom believes that their students were poised to do well in the research because of the emphasis UW Bothell already places on critical thinking. “It’s one of the cross-campus learning goals and is especially valued in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences,” she said.

“We incorporate critical thinking into our program by assigning things such as portfolios, which require students to reflect on their learning as well as recognize their patterns of thought, how they organize information and what learning methods work best for them. In that sense, our students already had a strong foundation to build upon and may be why they had the highest gains.”

Also a factor is that, while UW Bothell recognizes the importance of critical thinking, it also uses teaching practices that give students an opportunity to use these skills in class.

Groom explained that in education, the impact of experiential learning can often be overlooked.

“As professors, there are so many critical concepts we want to teach so that our students are well informed. We can get into the habit of believing that if we say it, the students learn it, but that isn’t always the case,” she said. “Lecturing may be the most efficient way to teach time-wise, but it isn’t the most efficient for learning.”

Skills and content

The study reaffirmed to both Stokes and Groom that more important than teaching content is teaching skills. “If we do that, students will be able to effectively teach themselves more content than we could ever cram into a quarter, even if we lectured the entire time,” she said.

“Plus, in the sciences, the statistics and knowledge are always changing and evolving. Giving students the tools to teach themselves leads to more sustainable learning.”

Stokes feels similarly, adding that it is impossible to know all the challenges that lie ahead in students’ lifetimes. “Therefore, we need to not only prepare students to address the known challenges of today but also equip them with the problem-solving skills to address the unforeseen issues that will surely arise in the future,” he said.

Alumna Jasleena Grewal, IAS ’13, affirmed that more important than what she learned was how she learned. “I don’t remember all of the facts, but I remember the approach,” she said. “In fact, I take that same systems approach to problem-solving every day in my job as a nurse practitioner. My career is essentially based on critical thinking, and I use the skills I acquired from this class in my everyday life. It was hugely beneficial.”

Importance of community

In addition to the value of critical thinking, for Groom, the study also underscored the importance of having a community of fellow educators to support one another.

“Just as it helps students to reflect on their learning, it helps professors to reflect on their teaching,” she said.

“I am so grateful to be at UW Bothell — a University that brings professors from different schools together and provides opportunities to work and be in community with one another. It is such a joy and privilege.”

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Seven essential elements of a lifelong-learning mind-set

Organizations around the world are experiencing rapid, sweeping changes in what they do, how they do it, and even why they do it. Increasing globalization and new technologies demand new modes of working and talent with new and diverse skills. To flourish in this environment, individuals must keep learning new skills. In fact, studies show that workers who maintain their ability to learn outpace other professionals. 1 Barbara Mistick and Karie Willyerd, Stretch: How to Future-Proof Yourself for Tomorrow‘s Workplace, first edition, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016. The people who will thrive in the 21st century will be those who embrace lifelong learning and continually increase their knowledge, skills, and competencies. 2 Hae-du Hwang and Daesung Seo, “Policy implication of lifelong learning program of EU for Korea,” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2012, Volume 46, pp. 4822–9, doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.342.

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Building a workforce of such lifelong learners is critical for organizations to respond to a changing business environment. To ensure they have the required skills and talent, companies must create a learning-for-all culture in which people are encouraged and inspired to continue learning new skills.

But the burden does not fall exclusively on businesses; it’s also up to the individual to seize the opportunity to get ahead. Seven distinctive practices can help employees become lifelong learners and remain relevant in today’s business environment (Exhibit 1).

1. Focus on growth

Learning starts and ends with the individual. But is there a limit to how much a person can learn? Is intelligence fixed at birth or can it be developed? In 2008, researchers asked the ten best chess players in the world—people who had spent 10,000 to 50,000 hours mastering the game—to take an IQ test. 3 Nicholas Mackintosh, IQ and Human Intelligence, first edition, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. They discovered that three out of ten had a below-average IQ. Since playing chess at the top level in the world is associated with extreme intelligence, they wondered how this result was possible.

Many studies have confirmed that it is not intelligence that creates expertise but effort and practice—that is, hard work. 4 Geoffrey Colvin, “What it takes to be great,” Fortune, October 19, 2006, fortune.com. The most successful people devote the most hours to deliberate practice, tackling tasks beyond their current level of competence and comfort, observing the results, and making adjustments. 5 Edward T. Cokely, K. Anders Ericsson, and Michael J. Prietula, “The making of an expert,” Harvard Business Review, July–August 2007, hbr.org. Such studies show that intelligence can be developed and that there are no limitations on what we can learn throughout our lives. Indeed, the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use, and learning prompts neurons in the brain to make new connections. 6 Jesper Mogensen, “Cognitive recovery and rehabilitation after brain injury: Mechanisms, challenges and support,” Brain Injury: Functional Aspects, Rehabilitation and Prevention, Copenhagen, Denmark: IntechOpen, March 2, 2012, pp. 121–50, doi.org/10.5772/28242.

Over the past 30 years, Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, has intensively studied learners. 7 Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, first edition, New York, NY: Random House, 2006. She has determined that people generally fall into one of two categories when it comes to how they view their ability to learn: a fixed mind-set or a growth mind-set. And she has concluded that mind-set has a significant impact on the effort put forward, perception of criticism, willingness to accept failure, and, ultimately, how much will be learned.

People with a fixed mind-set believe that their learning potential is predetermined by their genes, their socioeconomic background, or the opportunities available to them. They might have thoughts like, “I’m not good at public speaking, so I should avoid it.”

Those with a growth mind-set, however, believe that their true potential is unknown because it is impossible to foresee what might happen as a result of passion, effort, and practice. They appreciate challenges because they see them as opportunities for personal growth. Ultimately, they may achieve more of their potential than someone with a fixed mind-set.

Organizations can encourage employees to tackle new challenges and learn new skills by assigning them new and different tasks. But individuals need to believe that they have unlimited capacity to learn and grow. People can take the following actions to develop a growth mind-set 8 Jim Thompson, Mindset: Powerful Insights from Carol Dweck, Stanford University Athletic Department, Positive Coaching Alliance, 2010, positivecoach.org. :

• Determine if you have a fixed mind-set and, if you do, establish why.
• Recognize that you have a choice in how you approach and interpret new tasks, ideas, or situations.
• Learn to hear and observe the fixed mind-set voice without judgment while continuing to embrace challenges.
• Refocus with a growth mind-set.

2. Become a serial master

Traditionally, workers developed deep expertise in one discipline early in their career and supplemented this knowledge over the years with on-the-job development of integrative competencies. This kind of knowledge can be represented by a T-shape or profile  (Exhibit 2).

Longevity has made this approach obsolete. Since 1840, life expectancy has increased three months for every year, meaning that people are staying, and will continue to stay, in the workforce longer. 9 Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, first edition, London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2016. Because of this trend, they need depth in different areas of expertise, supplemented with targeted on-the-job development, to stay relevant. Today, knowledge should resemble an M-shape or profile (Exhibit 3).

Imagine someone has her master’s degree in journalism and begins her career working at a publication. During her 30s, she finds herself specializing in financial journalism, so she decides to pursue a master’s degree in business economics. As she proceeds into their 40s and 50s, she might continue to grow by taking in-depth master classes on related topics, such as digitization.

Relevant skills have become currency in the workplace. Using the M-profile as a guide and achieving mastery in a few topics will set professionals apart. Organizations, for their part, can support workers in their development by offering stipends for coursework and suggesting master classes and professional development sessions.

Many researchers have suggested that learning takes place only when people stretch outside their comfort zone. 10 Andy Molinsky, “If you’re not outside your comfort zone, you won’t learn anything,” Harvard Business Review, July 29, 2016, hbr.org. When people work on tasks that aren’t entirely comfortable, they are said to be in their learning zone, where they acquire new knowledge and develop and practice new skills. 11 Andy Molinsky, “If you’re not outside your comfort zone, you won’t learn anything,”  Harvard Business Review,  July 29, 2016, hbr.org.

The learning zone exposes people to risk and stress, which can either be helpful or detrimental to their efforts. According to the Yerkes–Dodson Law, a curvilinear relationship exists between an increase of stress (which they term “arousal”) and the enhancement of performance (Exhibit 4). 12 John D. Dodson and Robert M. Yerkes, “The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation,” Journal of Comparative Neurology, November 1908, Volume 18, Number 5, pp. 459–82, doi.org/10.1002/cne.920180503. When people first encounter a new task, they experience “good” stress, leading to a higher level of performance. However, too much stress can cause anxiety (“bad” stress) and have a negative impact on performance. So, while it’s important for people to stretch outside their comfort zone, it’s critical to choose the right tasks and the right pace.

The personal growth and stretching that individuals experience from continued exposure to the learning zone typically follows a standard progression represented as an S-curve. 13 Whitney Johnson, “Throw your life a curve,” Harvard Business Review, September 3, 2012, hbr.org. Developed in the 1960s, the S-curve shows how, why, and at what rate ideas and products spread throughout societies. 14 Whitney Johnson, “Throw your life a curve,”  Harvard Business Review,  September 3, 2012, hbr.org.

When people try something new, such as starting a new job, they are at the beginning of a new S-curve. They experience a steep learning curve in which their knowledge and skills increase rapidly. During this first stage of the S-curve, their progress and the business impact of their performance are limited. After a time, they reach an inflection point where their understanding, competence, and confidence suddenly accelerate very quickly, and they have an increasing impact on the business.

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Continuing in the role for a bit longer, they will reach the upper, flat part of the S-curve. At this stage, the excitement of the new role has worn off, personal learning and development have stalled, tasks and activities have become automatic, boredom has kicked in, and their impact on the business has slowed down significantly.

If people stay in their comfort zone—not seeking out new challenges or new roles—their performance may suffer, and they might even be replaced. Lifelong learners, however, can avoid this pitfall and find new ways to stretch by starting a new S-curve. And organizations can help keep employees on track by providing learning and stretching opportunities at timed intervals.

4. Build a personal brand

Everyone has a professional brand, whether it’s a carefully crafted expression of who they want to be or simply the impression they make on others. A brand communicates a person’s value and provides a focus for personal learning and development. A brand that defines a person’s best elements and differentiates him is essential in achieving career goals—and in demonstrating his accomplishments, both to potential employers and current colleagues. When colleagues understand who a person is and what unique capabilities they bring to the table, that person is more likely to receive interesting new assignments or be considered first for new positions.

Key elements of a personal brand include authenticity, a clear value proposition, a story, expertise, consistency, visibility, and connections. In Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value, Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood suggest individuals can build a brand by setting clear goals for the year ahead, acknowledging what they want to be known for, being clear about their identity, and writing and testing a personal brand statement.

Once individuals craft their brand statement, they can use social media tools to help convey that brand and their skill set. For example, it’s possible to earn digital badges for a LinkedIn profile through online learning vendors such as Coursera, edX, Lynda.com, and Udemy. Such badges demonstrate not only a person’s skills but also their commitment to continued growth.

A personal brand is not static—it should evolve over the course of a career. Since most people develop new skills and play different professional roles, they will need to rebrand themselves multiple times. Lifelong learners use the process of building a brand to think through what skills they have and which ones they should develop to make themselves more marketable—both within the company and beyond. L&D professionals can counsel people in this process and provide a way for them to develop the necessary skills.

5. Own your development

Lifelong employment no longer exists, so people today expect to work for many organizations throughout their careers—and maybe even for themselves at times. To maintain forward motion in an environment that lacks continuity, people need to own their development and take charge of their learning through the following actions (Exhibit 5).

Create and execute learning goals. To become and stay successful, people need to ask themselves, “How can I ensure that I’m more valuable at the end of a year than I was at the beginning?” Individuals can create learning goals by assessing their current knowledge and expertise and identifying competency gaps. They should also plan to pursue the most important learning goals relentlessly, a trait that can become a competitive advantage.

Measure progress. People should periodically reflect and assess their progress. Learning journals or logs in which people can track what they learn have proved to be extremely valuable.

Work with mentors and seek feedback. Lifelong learners can forge a relationship with a mentor by letting different stakeholders know that they are open to feedback and by setting up formal check-ins to review their work and collect feedback. Feedback from supervisors, peers, direct reports, customers, and clients is a critical component of professional development.

Make personal investments. The level of learning required for individuals who want to retain a market-relevant skill set exceeds the amount of formal and informal learning hours that most organizations offer their employees. Therefore, people need to make more personal time and financial investments in their growth and development.

The following questions can help guide people as they endeavor to own their development 15 Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, Immunity to change: How to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organization, first edition, Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2009. :

• What is one thing you are working on that will require that you grow to accomplish it?
• How are you working on it?
• Who else knows and cares about it?
• Why does this matter to you?

6. Do what you love

Most people are in the workforce for 40 to 50 years, and they spend a lot of their waking hours at work. As such, work has a huge impact on a person’s health and well-being, so it’s imperative that people do what they love.

Elevating Learning & Development: Insights and Practical Guidance from the Field

A sense of purpose is essential for a well-lived life. In Japan, the term ikigai means “reason for being,” and it encompasses all elements of life—including career, hobbies, relationships, and spirituality. The discovery of one’s ikigai brings satisfaction and imbues life with meaning. 16 Gordon Mathews, What Makes Life Worth Living?: How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds, first edition, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1996. A study of more than 43,000 Japanese adults showed that the risk of mortality was significantly higher among subjects who did not find a sense of ikigai than among those who did. 17 Toshimasa Sone et al., “Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki study,” Psychosomatic Medicine, August 2008, Volume 70, Number 6, pp. 709–15, doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e31817e7e64.

To find ikigai, start by answering four questions (Exhibit 6) 18 Alyjuma, “Ikigai: The reason you get up in the morning,” blog entry by Aly Juma, alyjuma.com. :

• What do you love?
• What does the world need?
• What can you be paid for?
• What are you good at?

Ikigai lives at the intersection of these questions. Of course, everyone’s journey of discovery will be different. What’s more, the meaning of work depends on how we view our work—our motivation as well as the objective of the work. There are there common different ways to look at the meaning of work (Exhibit 7).

Although organizations have a great responsibility to provide a context for meaning, individuals can do much to create a calling for themselves.

Exploring career purpose, meaning, and passion is not easy. It takes intentional reflection and planning. Individuals can also seek guidance from a career counselor or explore life design. Life design is a concept emerging from career choice and development theories as a method to help people explore and develop their identity and deliberately design a life that will give them meaning. 19 Mark L. Savickas et al., “Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 2009, Volume 75, Number 3, pp. 239–50, doi. org.

Today, academic institutions are also helping set people up to craft a life they can love. For example, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans created a popular “Designing Your Life” program at Stanford University. Intended for juniors and seniors looking for career guidance, the course teaches learners to apply design principles to life and career planning. Participants learn about five mind-sets: be curious, try stuff, reframe the problem, know it’s a process, and ask for help. They learn about a range of different tools, from design thinking and a daily gratitude journal to decks of cards featuring problem-solving techniques and life-design interviews. Instead of taking a final exam, learners present three radically different five-year “odyssey” plans to their peers. Alumni of the program report that they repeatedly refer back to the tools and their odyssey plans as they evaluate and redesign their lives. Burnett and Evans have made their philosophy and tools available to everyone in their book, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. 20 Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, first edition, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

7. Stay vital

The ability to stay vital can contribute significantly to a person’s development. This goal demands that individuals make health and well-being a priority—paying attention to exercise, nutrition, sleep, and relaxation (for example, mindfulness and yoga) and developing good, sustainable habits. The impact of such personal care and self-nurturing can be far-reaching: sufficient sleep has a huge impact on our ability to acquire, retain, and retrieve knowledge. Sleep also affects attention and concentration, creativity, development of insight, pattern recognition, decision-making, emotional reactivity, socioemotional processing, development of trusted relationships, and more. 21 Nick van Dam and Els van der Helm, “ The organizational cost of insufficient sleep ,” McKinsey Quarterly, February 2016.

Longevity in the workforce requires reinvention and growth. A reservoir of energy to support this hard work will help set individuals on the path to lifelong learning and provide the resilience needed to sustain these efforts.

While current circumstances demand that workers today be lifelong learners, many education systems and organizations are not set up to support this kind of learning. Individuals, then, must take responsibility for their continued development and growth. These seven elements can serve as a guide to those who wish to stay relevant and grow into new and different roles throughout their career.

For a free survey on lifelong learning, go to www.reachingyourpotential.org .

A version of this chapter was published in Nick van Dam, Learn or Lose , Breukelen, Netherlands: Nyenrode Publishing, November 2016. It is also included in Elevating Learning & Development: Insights and Practical Guidance from the Field , August 2018.

Jacqueline Brassey is director of Enduring Priorities Learning in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, where Nick van Dam is an alumnus and senior adviser to the firm as well as professor and chief of the IE University (Madrid) Center for Learning Innovation;  Katie Coates is a senior learning manager in the Philadelphia office.

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The essential components of a successful L&D strategy

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7 Teaching Critical Thinking to Promote Learning

Amanda H. R. Franco, Instituto de Educação, Universidade do Minho

Heather A. Butler, School of Social Science, Policy & Evaluation, Claremont Graduate University

Diane Halpern is currently Professor of Psychology and Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College.

• Published: 03 March 2014
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Critical thinking is an important aspect of human daily life whether in the domain of education, health, politics, consumer decisions, justice, or international relations. For most students, their college years represent the end of formal learning, a time when they are developing the skills needed for a successful transition to the marketplace (Elander, Harrington, Norton, Robinson, and Reddy, 2006). We need to prepare students for uncertainty and equip them with the skills to respond to novel problems (Sternberg, 2011). If we are not teaching for critical thinking, we are shortchanging our students and leaving them ill prepared for the next phase of their lives. This chapter discusses the benefits of critical thinking instruction and the best practices for teaching critical thinking to promote lifelong learning. The chapter is organized based on the four-step model proposed by Halpern (1998) to teach critical thinking: (a) explicitly teach critical-thinking skills; (b) encourage a disposition toward thinking critically; (c) use practical activities connected to real life to make transfer more likely to occur; (d) model overt metacognitive monitoring. Empirical evidence shows that thinking can be improved, especially when thinking skills are explicitly taught. Educators should incorporate critical thinking into their student learning outcomes, so that it is a primary teaching goal and aspiration of education.

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Critical Thinking And Lifelong Learning

Tan Tai Wei

Nanyang Technological University

We are living in a pragmatic age. Every valued thing has to be useful or relevant. For a long time already, education has been robbed of its primary meaning of bringing up persons, the Confucian zun zi or gentleman, who, in Matthew Arnold's words, is "imbued with sweetness and light", who lives what Socrates called "the examined life" without which life is "not worth living" because sub-human. Today, in pragmatic Singapore also, those of us who still think that education should first of all

be valued for its intrinsic worth - that those qualities of humanity just indicated are worth cultivating in themselves, whether or not they are useful for practical social purposes - have usually to prove an apology for being unrealistic and irrelevant. A moment's reflection should show how topsy-turvy this is. Surely, relevance and pragmatism is, in the end, meant to subserve human interests, and therefore the making of man must be primary. What's the point of being relevant if there aren't humans to be relevant for. Another way of putting it is that the educating to be human must constitute the humanly relevant thing par excellence, since it subserves humans in the most primary respect. Therefore, the onus of apologizing should on the contrary be on those who think that so fundamental a human interest as education should in any way be made less rounded and thereby sacrificed, in order to meet some pressing pragmatic needs.

But why am I addressing education when the topic given me to speak on is critical thinking and lifelong learning? Education, rightly conceived as the upbringing of persons, is co-extensive with what F.R. Leavis, arguing for the educational worth of literature, described as "criticism of life", which literary studies, he thinks, specially provide. It is bringing up people to live Socrates' "examined life", which is necessarily lifelong, since as long as we live, there is life to examine. And J.S. Mill is surely right in suggesting there can be no alternative human life to the examined life, unless a pig's life befits humans. So he declared in oft-quoted words, that he would "rather be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied". What those thinkers had intimated is that the human consciousness, as Kant and others reminded us, is inescapably interpretive, and therefore innately involves critical thinking. Human learning involves the making sense of the impressions that register on our awareness. Meanings don't come to us ready-made. Learning is coterminous with acquiring the concepts, principles and information which are co-extensive with our making sense of things. All this involves discriminating and justifying, in our distinguishing this from that, and seeing this as this and not that. People are often not aware of how much is involved in the things they recognize and claim in their daily encounters, and it is true that man), go through life in a sub-conscious state on many issues, and get by them only by being parasitic on the critical efforts of others. They can't help but discriminate; it's only that they do so badly, like those who still think the world is flat. Just take this mike I'm speaking into. A baby would grab it to suck, probably because his dominant experience of gratification by the nipple has equipped him to make just that much sense of it. Now, I can go some way beyond that, and see it in terms of the concepts of communication vis a vis an audience, voice projection, and so on. Those of you who are conscious of physics would be critically aware of calculations in terms of principles of sound waves and the like - all utter mysteries to me. Even those whose critical faculties are the most activated and alert will also have in many areas to depend largely on discriminating among experts in order to decide whom to trust, but even this is to be critically aware.

I have gone some way to dwell on critical thinking, learning, human consciousness and life, in order to make the point that, just as education should be valued primarily for its intrinsic human worth, so also should critical thinking and lifelong learning. For education must basically be the enlargement of human consciousness and experience, and this is coterminous with being critically aware in the way indicated. And as long as we live, we are continually having to experience, and thereby having to be interpretive and critical. So critical thinking is coterminous with life, and therefore is primarily and intrinsically worthwhile, just as the enhancement of life must be an ultimate goal towards which all instrumental values are aimed at in the final' analysis. But just as education is usually being valued merely extrinsically and instrumentally in this pragmatic age, so, and in Singapore too, critical thinking and lifelong learning is being advocated as a means towards subserving the "knowledge- based" industries of increasingly globalised Singapore. Because industry is envisaged to be more "knowledge-based" and competitive, in order to remain relevant and compete, we have to promote critical thinking, and this done "for life", since we need continuing learning to keep up with the retrainings our workers will have to undertake to adapt to the projected constant changes. And, of course, our pragmatic public affairs personnel have to do their "marketing", and before we realize it, we in education have to change to become the "new professionals of Singapore 21'. We have to revise our curriculum in order to feature "thinking" and "creativity", as if these are initiations. But how could schools, which have all along been helping students to make sense of the various aspects of human experience and life by teaching the various forms of knowledge and understanding, not have promoted critical thinking? The real truth is that, in the rush to get things done fast in the past when practical priorities were different, educationists' plea for more criticism and creativity didn't get the proper hearing. Now, when the economy calls, they suddenly see their value even for the practical needs of industry. They, and not we, have undergone a change of mindset, and they are now more prepared, for instance, to reduce the cramped curriculum that emphasized training and exams, in order to give room for the luxury of criticism and thought.

But it is important to be clear as to what they mean by "critical thinking and lifelong learning". Pragmatic people in positions of power often act as exemplars of the saying "might is right". We saw above how they seem to have turned around to claim that the teaching profession now have to change anew, when it is they who have at long last seen how the freedom to think, create and take risk would serve pragmatic needs after all. So, I read essay aRer essay, in my work as a teacher educator, students saying how they now need to become the "new professionals" giving students more scope and freedom to discover and think, and i find myself taking every opportunity to remind them that the progressive movement in education has been with us for some decades over a century already. Even in Singapore, my lecturers in the then Teachers Training College had said in 1968 that the place of the teacher is at the periphery with pupils at the centre, and my supervisor told me at the end of a lesson he watched that I wasn't being paid to do the talking. Elsewhere in the world, the movement had moved so far, and freedom given so much that people, they say, had graduated from universities without having been properly disciplined even to read and write. And so they have swung back to the centre, replacing soft course options with a core- curriculum. We have reasons to suspect, therefore, that in now taking from us the terms "creativity, thinking and lifelong learning" to mean what they think they mean, our practical policy-makers may again be dictated by their practicality, and slant their meanings away from the importance they hold for education and human life, to suit their somewhat narrower practical outlook. And since might is right, we may yet again find ourselves being on the defensive, and having to apologise for departing from their norm about what creativity, thinking and lifelong learning is. I shall go on to indicate grounds for my suspicion, and how grave the implications of the slant in meaning might pose for human development and education, and even for practical value.

I started with the concept of education and its intrinsic human value, and how education is coterminous with critical thinking and lifelong learning. Now, the official defence of the shift towards thinking and creativity, independence and autonomy in schools is made, as we have noted, in terms of the needs of the envisaged new economy. And so again, essay after essay I read in the course of my work accepts as gospel truth that we need to think and create only to remain competitive economically, as if had there been no economic needs, say had we been retained in the garden of Eden and did not have to thrive by the sweat of our brows, critical thinking and awareness (which we said is inseparable from human living) would be unnecessary. We notice firstly, that critical thinking cannot be lifelong if done only for staying relevant and being prepared to retrain for industry. For people don't work lifelong. Secondly, with the aim only to stay relevant to envisaged industrial ends, it is only thinking and being creative within restricted parameters that is valued. It is applied research of the useful things others have found out from time to time that our young should be creative and thoughtful about, and even here, there is the further restriction to thinking only in regard to those specific industries the planners assume we have the best chance to succeed at. Straightaway, we see that what they call thinking and creativity is more accurately the application of knowledge and thinking skills, say to producing saleable goods of certain sorts to meet envisaged market conditions from time to time. But they call it by our terms "lifelong thinking and creativity", and the unwary, including our "brightest and best" who get attached to university staff to do industrial R&D before their time, get indoctrinated subconsciously to think that human critical awareness and human life is only that and nothing more. And being smart, they accept the logical conclusion that humans are valuable only as instruments of industry, in other words, appraised in terms of "their market value", a term used in justifying how even our government officials, noted for their moral and sacrificial spirit, are being paid. How all this will undermine the moral tone and human quality of our society, which is the ultimate gauge as to whether our survival is worthy, is a question which might not bother them. Even morality they seem to value for their economic worth. Didn't they give the impression also, in the past from time to time, that we needed to be cohesive and moral only in order to thrive like the Japanese? - that is when their economy was doing better than now. Should we now be less Confucian and moral, now that most east Asian economies are not doing so well? Nobody now talks about the Confucian basis of those economiesT The general point I make now is that when humanly ultimate values - those that render human life and survival worthwhile, like education and moral worth, - are given only an instrumental, extrinsic valuation, not only do we restrict and distort their meanings, we also send the message that human life is only that, and the "quality of life", which on other occasions even our politicians have said we should care about, can only reach the value of lubricated cogs in the social machine.

But am I not being blind to current realities? Workers are being laid off daily in a recession that will get worse. Shouldn't we fend for survival first, without which no humanity and the quality of life befitting it could be achieved? However, even on a pragmatic outlook, we should notice that there are things in life that are useful only when their character is not distorted, and tempering them unwarrantedly would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Take the case of morality. I recall an interview with Dr Goh Keng Swee, who as minister of education felt he had to see me first before letting me join a moral education textbook writing team some years ago. He tried to impress on me his pragmatic purpose of fostering morality. I stopped him after some twenty minutes to suggest that morality would lose its authority and imperatival force should people be told that it is only an instrument that can be discarded once they reckon it is no longer useful. He sat back and pondered awhile. Morality has a hold on people's behaviour only when its categorical and imperatival character, and the reverence people have for it on this score, is not undermined. The pragmatic promotion of critical thinking and lifelong learning is similarly a case in point. This is so on two counts.

First, there is the question of effective motivation. Now, we have been told by Lawrence Kohlberg, a follower Piaget, that people, especially young children, at immature levels of moral development, can only appreciate extrinsic or instrumental reasons for rule-following So, while helping them towards moral maturity at a level where they will appreciate the true nature of moral demands and therefore be intrinsically motivated in the moral life, we have in the meantime to habituate them to moral behaviour and rule-following, and also learn the bindingness of rules, via the only means that is effective, ie., extrinsic incentives and disincentives. Psychologists distinguish between mental and physical age, so adults can be still young children in mind, and need ice-cream in order to behave. I hope that isn't why even geniuses in our time are being awarded the nobel prize! It may therefore be thought that the extrinsic motivation of being useful to industry may be the effective thing to get people going about critical thinking and creativity. This argument assumes that Singapore adult are still children and can appreciate nothing better than ice-cream, and this may well be so for some. Even so, it will be a somewhat restricted thinking and creativity, in accordance with conceived needs of work and industry, that such sub-developed persons get motivated to do, and it will last only as long as working life. But I want to be optimistic about Singaporeans and assume that many have reached stages of development where they are capable of appreciating worthy things for what they are worth in themselves, and not aim for ice-cream in everything done. On this assumption, I think the instrumental motivation for thinking and creativity can, on the contrary, be demotivating. I recall my going to give blood in answer to an appeal for blood of my group many years ago, when I was very many years younger, at an age not expected to be very mature. I did not know there was available the incentive of a lucky draw ticket for each donor. The doctor saw my youth and, while I braced myself to receive the jab, joked about what he must have thought was my naive expectancy of winning. I remember being somewhat demoralised, feeling my heroism scandalised. It could be that trying to be a hero was also an extrinsic motive, but even so, it would be a higher extrinsic motive. I therefore suspect that motivating people extrinsically to do the high things in life, those that make life worthwhile, not only corrupts their true nature but also has the effect of dampening their inspiration. I have wondered whether university staff get similarly demoralized when publication becomes a means of financial reward and promotion. You may suspect whether the real things get done and published! True adults would resist being treated as children all over again, and are inclined to reject programmes associated with childishness. When we become men, we "put away childish things". By the way, I think that many children in school may be more adult than we assume. I find myself advising student teachers to inspire their wards to wonder at the truths they learn, rather than to always relate everything taught to mundane utility. We all have noticed how innately curious children are. They must always know why, and it could be that we have dampened this innately human quest of theirs by inducing them to be childish and ask only the useful and therefore more easily answerable whys. Didn't Wordsworth say that the child is father of man? Bound up with this issue is the prevention of boredom. Relating every human endeavour to industry leads to staleness, and boredom wars against creativity. So the question of inspiration becomes crucial, and this is better generated if the quest for truth is venerated for itself as meaningful way of life.

The second reason why we should not undermine the intrinsic valuation of thinking and creativity even on a pragmatic perspective is this. We can't predict what the future holds, even in the short term. We say this every time we sound the refrain, and somewhat exaggerate, that the-only constant is change. So, to benefit fully from lifelong thinking and creativity, we must encourage the boundless pursuit of discovery and truth that an intrinsic valuation of it would inspire. For who knows what and when things might change, and then what has been previously regarded as irrelevant becomes the new fad? ! am thinking of MOE's previous disregard for biology. Unless your children were streamed even in secondary school to do medicine, they were not given biology, despite its importance for their knowing their own bodies. It wasn't industrially useful - seemingly the only use we thought important. Today, MOE laments the lack of biology teachers, as massive retraining and conversion of "mindsets" are underway to promote the life sciences, in order for our economy to diversify into the envisaged life-science industries of Singapore 21. And I hear that in NUS, students with insufficient knowledge of primary biology can suddenly opt for electives in the life sciences.

The intrinsic valuation of education, thinking and lifelong learning therefore is reconcilable with even the pragmatic regard for them. For a proper understanding and appreciation of them befitting an educated man, their status as constituting the examined life of the Confucian zun zi should not be tempered with pragmatism. The first lines in the Lun Yu (the Analects of Confucius) celebrate learning as a joyous encounter, like "friends come from afar". We had better not contaminate this by thinking even of friendship as only "net-working"! For those who find it hard to change their pragmatic mindset (and these include those most vocal at admonishing the rest of us to change our mindsets in order to stay useful), the consolation is that to be useful, if not short-term than long-term, the nature of thinking and creativity should not be undermined, as it would be in an instrumental regard for it. Undermining it would prove counter-productive even for the pragmatist. I recall in the early days of SDU a "single" female colleague getting quite emotional about her marital status and the reverence due her on such an issue of personal autonomy being contaminated by the attempt to manufacture productive partnerships. The attempt seemed counter-productive, on her at any rate. She is still single today, and past productivity. Who knows what the outcome might have been had she been left to preserve in heart and mind the marriage of her dream. Lifelong learning and critical thinking is, like marriage, a golden goose. Preserve and nurture it, and we get the eggs also. Chan, Choon Hian Kwantlen University College

Chan Choon Hian is Professor of Business Administration at the School of Business, Kwantlen University College, British Columbia (Canada). He was formerly Senior Lecturer at School of Accountancy and Business, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He had previously served as Board member of then National Productivity Board (NPB) and Vocational Industrial Training Board (VITB). Chan Choon Hian's academic qualifications include: BBA (1974) from the University of Singapore; Diploma in Marketing (1979) from the British Institute of Marketing (UK); Master of Business Studies (First Class Honors in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management) from Massey University (New Zealand) in 1981; and Ph D (1994) in Adult Education from the University of British Columbia, Canada.

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Strategies for Improving Learner Metacognition in Health Professional Education

Affiliations.

• 1 University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
• 2 University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Pharmacy, Little Rock, Arkansas.
• 3 Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
• PMID: 28630519
• PMCID: PMC5468716
• DOI: 10.5688/ajpe81478

Metacognition is an essential skill in critical thinking and self-regulated, lifelong learning. It is important for learners to have skills in metacognition because they are used to monitor and regulate reasoning, comprehension, and problem-solving, which are fundamental components/outcomes of pharmacy curricula. Instructors can help learners develop metacognitive skills within the classroom and experiential setting by carefully designing learning activities within courses and the curriculum. These skills are developed through intentional questioning, modeling techniques, and reflection. This article discusses key background literature on metacognition and identifies specific methods and strategies to develop learners' metacognitive skills in both the classroom and experiential settings.

Keywords: active learning; assessment; critical thinking; metacognition; self-awareness.

Publication types

• Education, Pharmacy
• Health Occupations / education*
• Medical Errors / psychology
• Metacognition*
• Problem Solving*

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Traditional College Degree Still Opens Career Doors

• Mark Koulianos
• February 28, 2023
• Director's Corner
• Text-based Story

Most US adults end up working 40-plus years. That’s a long time, which means it’s critical to navigate a course for a fulfilling career. At USF, we like to talk about our Lifetime Learning Affinity Model and its benefits—academic, professional, and personal—for the duration of an individual’s life. Here, I’d like to specifically speak to its potential application for those with a traditional college degree or those who wish to pursue one. In future blog entries, I’ll address two other routes for careers, programs for “new collar” work, as well as manual trades.

As a passage to a career, a college education still carries significant value and, therefore, is seen as a worthy investment. And it is highly sought one. For instance, there were over 60,000 applications submitted to USF last fall. Only 10% were accepted. The average SAT score for incoming students was a robust 1309! As an aside, this is another reason why test prep is an important component of USF Corporate Training and Professional Education programming. Getting into the college of one’s choice is important.

As a youth, I was told that a college degree was a “golden ticket” of sorts — a virtual lock for obtaining a well-paying job, even if the degree’s focus had little to no connection to said position. There was validity to that advice. Entering the workforce with a college degree back then allowed you 10 or more years before any type of continuing education was called for. Today, a college degree still helps one acquire a coveted job, but it will almost certainly take periodic upskilling to update its requirements and reskilling when pivoting to another role is necessary.

The speed of business continues to rev up as it corresponds to the enlarging capacity of the Fourth Industrial Revolution . Artificial intelligence and other automated technologies will eliminate certain tasks, but nimble professionals will land on their feet if they are willing to continue learning and adapt to new job demands. Unskilled and low-skill workers risk being left behind. Recognizing today’s business needs, our office aims to empower individuals and companies to create a flexible, resilient workforce.

The traditional college degree remains a desirable asset. Your resume is invariably augmented by its inclusion. But it’ll take regular intervals of new learning to thrive in the modern workplace. Training will benefit all workers—not just those seeking salary bumps or leadership roles. Remember, 40 years is a long time! To have a career that’s purposeful, challenging, and financially rewarding, it’ll be necessary to build on that well-earned degree by staying current with the complexity of the workforce.

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