To Jan and others, thanks to you for contributing to this interesting issue.

In my lectures on 'sport philosophy' critical thinking was an essential part. Unfortunately sport philosophy seems to be on the decline (at least in Germany). Of course this is not to say that critical thinking is only the job of sport philosophers, but there it used to have a prominent part in lectures and seminars. Thus the use or misuse of technology is only one part of the story.

Cheers,
Arno 

-------------------------------

Dr. ARNO MÜLLER 
Post-Doctoral Fellow

Maastricht University
Dept. Health, Ethics & Society
Faculty of Health, Medicine 
and Life Sciences
P.O. Box 616
6200 MD Maastricht
- The Netherlands -

e-mail: [log in to unmask]
web: http://www.unimaas.nl/hes/

Tel:  +31 43 388 1120
Fax: +31 43 367 0932

-----Original Message-----
From: List on the social and cultural analysis of sport [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jan Ove Tangen
Sent: Freitag, 16. November 2007 14:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Critical thinking in study of sport

Thanks to both Anthony Haynes and Theresa Summerfiled for their mails. 
This is a topic I have used some energy on during the last years. My 
experience is that the technology we have taken into use - which should 
help both students and teachers to understand more and produce better 
research - seems to work contrary to critical thinking. The technology 
seems to render the students more passive and unreflected. When I 
deliver a rather critical lecture in sport sociology using my PC and 
Power Point, most of the students just lean comfortably back in their 
seats, and just watch "the show". The most important question for them 
seem to be "Will this lecture be downloaded to Fronter?". When they use 
Internet, they uncritically use the first sites that pop up, without 
evalutating the information and discussing the result, as both Anthony 
and Theresa point at.

So far I think the main reason for the students' lack of critical 
thinking skills is the change we can observe in the lecturing itself. 
May be should we abandon the technology for a while. May be should we 
force the students to hear, take notice and reflect upon what comes from 
the lecturer's mouth. It will in my opinion be premature to write 
critical textbooks before they are trained to critical. If not trained, 
they will more likely use the more easy texts on the Internet, than a 
critical and lengthy books in sport sociology, when preparing  for the 
exams. To sum up; three conditions are necessary: less use of the 
technology during lectures, good advise of using Internet (Theresa's 
site is a very good example) and good and critical textbooks (provided 
for by Anthony) are available when students are in the process of 
acquering critical thinking  skills.

Best wishes
Jan Ove Tangen
Professor - sport sociology
Telemark University School
NORWAY