I think this would be interesting and difficult to try in a social studies classroom. I see how it could work well for math classes, but I am trying to see how it might work for a U.S. history class. Maybe some units could be individual self-directed learning during the school year? I could see taking one unit and having all the material up on the computer and letting the students complete it on their own. I think it would be important to make sure there is group learning as well since I believe that is especially important for social studies classes but I don't know for sure how that could be implemented with this style of learning.

I think it would be helpful for teachers to have more time to go an observe other teachers and collaborate to give the teacher new ideas and teaching strategies. This will help teachers who are struggling to implement new things into their classroom.

This is a lot! Almost half of the teachers find state guidelines and school policies detrimental to student thinking. I believe there needs to be shift in the ways we think about education. Teachers shouldn't be pressured to cover the huge amount of content superficially because of standardized testing. Learning should allow students to think critically and analyze a topic for a while to truly understand it and develop an opinion about it.

I think it is so important for a teacher to show an example of how to think through a problem. I always felt more confident when the teacher reviewed a few problems before letting us work on our own.

I like this parentheses they added into #4. We don't want to discourage students by giving them a task that is too challenging. We want to help them develop their higher order thinking by giving them something they can do.

I think as teachers we can help develop these attitudes of disposition by helping them feel confident in their abilities and being supportive.

This reminds me of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Critical thinking can take place at any stage of learning but the problems will look different depending on the level the student is at.

I like this definition of higher order thinking, this type of thinking will really help students think critically about a situation. It will help push students to come up with a solution.