What role does critical thinking play in student learning?
One of the goals of social studies education is to help students make significant connections and be able to apply knowledge learned to the real world. Douglas Selwyn and Jan Maher state, “if we study isolated facts and don’t make connections, those facts go in one neuron and out the other, never causing enough of a stir to be sent into long-term memory” (2003, p. 11). The way students learn is through a mix of direct instruction, demonstration, practice, rote-learning and problem-solving (Wallace 2002, p. 3). In Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Vygotsky identifies that students learn when they can recall what is already learned, and extend their existing schema to accommodate new information (Wallace 2002, p. 9). Selwyn and Maher reflect this concept when they state that, in order for students to learn new concepts, they have to let go of old notions and see the world with fresh eyes (2003, p. 42). Students have then created new paradigms. Another goal of social studies
