Critical Thinking
Many different meanings come to mind when I hear the words critical thinking. “No single definition of critical thinking is widely accepted”, is what Jane S. Halonen wrote in a scholar article. When teachers are asked what their meaning of critical thinking is they have many diferent answers. “As teachers, we often presume that we know what is meant by critical thinking.” A quote by Jane S. Halonen in the article, Demystifying Critical Thinking. Also McPeck (1981) suggested that the phrase "critical thinking" is paradoxically both "overworked and under-analyzed". I agree somewhat with these quotes, but as a teacher myself in an autistic classroom or any other classroom; we do use much thinking that often can be critical. In our classroom of autistic students, I ‘am the aide among a teacher and two other aides that teach in the same room. With our autism kids there is much analyzing, thinking skills to do the many tasks of education for their minds. We use critical thinking with documentation we do, planning activities and schedules, and forming good, work-related relationships with our students and our co-workers.
As with any students in the classroom a teacher must make sure they keep documentation on the many details of what goes on, but with our autistic students it is mandatory that we write every detail down in books. We have certain students that we have to use this documentation to protect ourselves from being accused of things that we don’t do. We have had times that a parent has accused us of causing bruises on a child’s writs by using restraint, and we have said several times we don’t use restraint and those bruises were alread ...