Practical philosophy of teaching argumentation and critical thinking

Abstract

The article considers the teaching experience of course «Critical Argumentation and Design-Thinking» at St. Petersburg National Research University of Information Technology, Mechanic and Optic (ITMO) in 2018–2020, and the ways to solve theoretical, methodical, and methodological problems during its development and realization. The course mission is the practical implementation of a new trend in philosophy – the philosophy of critical thinking, which the authors develop related to texts and speeches. The central issue of the article is the description of the teaching approaches and content of practical classes aimed to master the critical and creative argumentation skills in three aspects: identification, analysis and evaluation. The authors show how to solve educational, methodological, didactic and administrative tasks, which are to combine reactive and analytical competencies of critical thinking with projective and creative competences, or design-thinking, in a course; to choose one textbook suitable both English and Russian tracks of the course, and to compile a corpus of tasks and exercises to control the lecture content of the course; to subordinate the content of lectures and practical exercises to the tasks of mastering the competencies established by federal standards according to curricula academic tasks prescribed by the university administration. The article presents the course structure; practical class plans accompanied by a detailed description of their performance; details of using specialized software, and plans to prepare educational debates, and to create a bank of examination tests. It gives recommendations on organizing the students» work in small groups during lectures and practical classes implementing the principles of active peer-to-peer learning, and on organizing educational debates and exams.