Susan Wolcott’s model, Steps for Better Thinking, is available on her website, www.wolcottlynch.com. Wolcott originally collaborated with an associate, Cindy L. Lynch to combine one model created by Patricia King and Karen Kitchener and another by Kurt W. Fischer into their own model (“About Us”). Wolcott conducts faculty training workshops and has uploaded her 2006 College Faculty Handbook: Steps for Better Thinking for the workshops on her website (“Educator Resources”).
The diagram for Wolcott’s model depicts a staircase with four steps in ascending order: “step 1, identifying the problem, relevant information, and uncertainties; step 2, explore interpretations and connections; step 3, prioritize alternatives and implement conclusions; step 4, envision and direct strategic innovation” (Wolcott, College Faculty Chapter 1, 6; Exhibit 1.2).
Each step demands increasing levels of “cognitive complexity,” and the foundation of the staircase is discipline-specific knowledge and skills that must be acquired before the student can move up the steps (College Faculty Chapter 1, 6). Although Wolcott acknowledges critical thinking skills may not always develop in a linear manner, she proposes that a linear model is the most effective framework for understanding the development of these skills (College Faculty Chapter 1, 9-11).
Wolcott’s model is valuable for business disciplines. She is an accounting professor who proposes that the phrase critical thinking refers to the process of solving “open-ended problems” (College Faculty Chapter 1, 4); she uses the two phrases, critical thinking and open-ended problem-solving, interchangeably throughout her handbook. In addition, Wolcott labels her diagram a “developmental problem-solving process,” and the first open-ended problem about business fraud presented is from an accounting class (College Faculty Chapter 1, 5-7; Exhibit 1.2). Other business examples follow the first, and Wolcott provides classroom exercises faculty can modify to use their own classes.
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