The self-growth community kick-off session will be July 30 at 4:00 PM ET and again at 7:00 PM ET to accommodate different schedules as well as time zones. Each session will last 60 minutes. Interested parties should contact Steve Beyerlein for ZOOM information.

A Sneak Peek at the first 3 weeks of the “26-Week Plan for Your Self-Growth Journey”

The first three weeks are all about preparation and integrating what you learned at the Self-Growth Institute. Here’s a week-by-week breakdown for those weeks:

Week 1: Initiation & Orientation

Any journey begins with a strong plan and real preparation. During this week you’ll be introduced to your self-growth coach and become familiar with the scope, vision, and commitment expected throughout the 26 weeks of our journey together. Key goals include establishing psychological safety within the group, building rapport among participants, and introducing core concepts of self-growth. Exercises focus on intention-setting, outlining your personal reasons for joining, and co-creating shared community values. Critical reading includes the first 30 pages of the 168 Hour Solution (Preface – Chapter 3), as it provides insight into the value of intentional living through designing a 168-hour week as a cornerstone of your self-growth journey.

Week 2: Clarifying the Life Vision and the Vision of Horizon Self

This pivotal week invites deep introspection and structured envisioning of your desired future way of living and being. You’ll craft a one-page Life Vision narrative that captures your most inspired self by articulating what it means to live an inspired life as supported by five Growth Goals aligned with your self-growth journey. You will identify long-term Life Goals and compile a 3-page Strategic Life Plan to serve as a roadmap. Additionally, Measures of Success are defined to track transformation and impact over the six months. These outputs are intended to connect aspirations with actionable intentions. Many achieve this during the Self-Growth Institute since they are critical planned outcomes of the Institute.

Week 3: Establishing Weekly Practice

This week is dedicated to understanding the Growth Cycle using a structured engagement. You’ll explore and implement weekly transition practices through the use of GPT tools such as the Weekly Reflector (generate 5 key observations), the Truth Seeker (inner voice reflection on some of these observations), Insight Generator Pro (5 insights from revised observations), Weekly Growth Coach Pro (growth plans from insights for up to 5 growth opportunities), Weekly Scripter (crafting 168-hour living plan that identifies the week’s activities), and the Activity Designer (take 1 or 2 of these planned activities to create additional scripts for key activities of the week). This builds metacognitive awareness and establishes rituals for sustaining intentional growth aligned with your Life Vision and Horizon Self. This weekly 1-hour transition, used for the rest of the project, is the central focus of your self-growth journey.

The Self-Growth Institute | August 4–8, 2025

University of Indianapolis | RB Annis Hall, Room 116

8:30 AM – 10:00 PM Daily (Lunches and snacks provided)

Dinner Break: 5:00–7:00 PM

There's still time!

Cost & Commitment

• Tuition: $1,500
• Discounted Rate: $500 (for Phase III Self-Growth Project participants)
• University of Indianapolis Faculty/Staff: Fully funded by the university

Announcing Listening to Learn

A New Podcast from Pacific Crest

Each month, we will explore a different facet of Process Education, translating its powerful principles into practical strategies for your classroom, institution, and self! From fostering self-growth and metacognition to designing quality learning experiences, we will do our very best to provide you with fresh perspectives and insights you can put to work increasing student success.

Beginning in August, you'll have the opportunity to subscribe to Listening to Learn and find us on Spotify. We'll keep you posted! For now, we invite you to listen to our first episode for FREE (the change under your sofa cushions is safe!).

We are pleased to be able to offer our own 100% original content to you in this new format, generated by Google Notebo6ok LM. We check each episode multiple times for both accuracy and quality.

There is an intimate relationship between knowledge and thinking. Knowing that something is so is not simply a result of believing that it is so; knowledge is justified belief. There are standards for the assessment of thinking. Critical thinking supports the creation of new knowledge, or improved quality of knowledge, in any field or application (Paul, 2003). It has been observed that “Many highly intelligent people are bad thinkers. Intelligence is like the horsepower of a car. A powerful car has the potential to drive at any speed. But you can have a powerful car and drive it badly” (de Bono, 1995).

Critical Thinking and Questioning

Critical thinking also can be thought of as a process for actively exploring situations by asking relevant questions in order to decide what to believe or what to do. In this context, critical thinking means thinking analytically.



“In fact, the ability to ask appropriate and penetrating questions is one of the most powerful thinking tools you possess, although many people do not make full use of it. Active learners explore the learning situations they are involved in with questions that enable them to understand the material or task at hand, and then integrate this new understanding into their knowledge framework.

Learning is promoted by asking questions that challenge students’ understanding at the appropriate level (Brookfield, 1987). Well-crafted and strong questions can also stimulate students’ curiosity and allow the teacher to probe current understanding (Eggen & Kauchak, 1988).

Inquiry as a learning method requires active participation both by the students and teachers and a hierarchy of critical thinking questions correlate with the Levels of Learner Knowledge (Barton, 1997; Bobrowski, 2007).

This is useful information for classroom application, as there are questions most appropriate to ask students at each level of learning and student proficiency with those questions demonstrates understanding at that level of learner knowledge.

Levels of Learner Knowledge

• Level 1, Informational Knowledge: You can talk about a concept, process, tool, or context in words and can provide definitions or descriptions; you are best with questions about facts.
• Level 2, Comprehension & Understanding: You can construct appropriate meaning pertaining to a particular item of knowledge. You also can link items of knowledge to each other and can teach this knowledge to someone else.
• Level 3, Application to New Situations: You can apply and transfer knowledge to new situations and contexts. You can generalize knowledge to determine ways to apply it, testing boundaries and linkages to other information.
• Level 4, Problem Solving & Working Expertise: You can solve complex problems by applying and generalizing multiple concepts, processes, and tools to produce a quality problem solution. You are seen as an expert in your field.
• Level 5, Research: You have innovative expertise which can be used to develop new understanding and know how to validate and test your assumptions and hypotheses to build reliability. You can share your understanding as common knowledge.

Again, there are typical questions that we see and use for each of the Levels of Learner Knowledge.

We can also use questions from a higher level to challenge learners and help them increase the level of their knowledge.

Sequencing of Questions

Critical thinking questions should be placed in an order that is logical. This means that they should be sequenced from lower- to higher-level questions, according to the Levels of Learner Knowledge.

In a process-oriented classroom, student teams usually work at different rates, and there can be a large variance in the amount of time required to complete an activity. Thoughtful use of critical thinking questions can lessen these differences and make it easier for faculty to manage classroom learning. Placing directed questions first help prevent learners or teams from going off on tangents. And a divergent question at the end acts as an “equalizer” for faster learners/teams who reach this question well ahead of others and can therefore dig deeper and do more in answering this question.

Beyond the questions being sequenced logically, they should also be:

• Relevant: help students meet performance criteria for activity
• Growth-Oriented: promote growth for learners at multiple levels of development

How Many Questions?

A good rule of thumb for guided-inquiry activities is to require learners to answer between 6 and 10 critical thinking questions, broken down and ordered as follows (Hanson, 2006):

• 2-3 directed questions
• 3-6 convergent questions
• 1 divergent question

• Preparatory: measure readiness for the learning activity
• Exploratory: require the learner to use the resources needed for the activity (e.g., the model, reading, lectures, and real-life experiences).
• Accessible: motivate learners through initial success
• Foundational: deconstruct misconceptions and build infrastructure for future learning

With these questions learners identify, find, choose, define, list, label, show, spell, match name, tell, recall, select, organize, and outline

A good convergent question makes important connections, links concepts, increases understanding, and requires that learners reach conclusions.

Convergent questions should be:

• Challenging: answers are not directly available in the resources (e.g., in the model, readings, lectures, and real-life experiences)
• Integrative: make links between key information in the resources
• Rich: allow for more than one correct answer or approach

With these questions learners relate, compare, contrast, explain how, illustrate, translate, infer, demonstrate, summarize, interpret, show, explain, classify, select, rephrase, reason why, apply, construct, make use of, plan, build, develop, model, interview, experiment with, and identify

Divergent questions should be:

• Open-ended: encourage learners to travel down different paths of inquiry
• Difficult: require the learner to go beyond the performance criteria for the activity
• Validating: motivate learners to test and generalize boundary conditions
• Deep: are possible research questions

With these questions learners apply, construct, make use of, plan, build, develop, model, interview, experiment with, identify, analyze, dissect, inspect, model relationships, divide, simplify, solve, test for, connect functions, make and test assumptions, examine, apply a design, create themes, and improve

They may even theorize, design, formulate, discover, make up, hypothesize, prove, disprove, invent, or create an original work in responding to divergent questions!

A Look at Critical Thinking Questions in Context

Take a few minutes and enjoy the following story. Read carefully, especially if you think you already know the story!

ONCE UPON A TIME...

Little Red Riding Hood lived in the woods with her mother. One day her mother sent her to visit her grandmother with a loaf of bread. On her way, she stopped to pick mushrooms and met a wolf.

"Hello!" said the wolf. "Where are you going?"

"I’m going to see my grandmother. She lives in a house behind those trees", said Little Red Riding Hood.

The wolf ran off to Granny’s house and ate her. He put on Granny's nightgown and nightcap and got into Granny’s bed.

A bit later, Little Red Riding Hood reached the house. She looked at the figure lying in the bed.

"Gosh, Granny, what big eyes you have!" 

"All the better to see you with!" said the wolf.

"But Granny, what big ears you have now!" 

"All the better to hear you with!" said the wolf.

"Granny, what a big nose you have!" 

"All the better to smell you with!" said the wolf.

"Granny, what big teeth you have!" 

"All the better to eat you with!" shouted the wolf.

The wolf leapt out of the bed and Little Red Riding Hood screamed.

A woodcutter was nearby in the woods. He heard Little Red Riding Hood's scream and ran to the house. The woodcutter hit the wolf over the head. The wolf opened his mouth wide in a shout and out jumped Granny, unharmed but slighly damp. The wolf ran away and Little Red Riding Hood never saw the wolf again.

THE END

And now, some Critical Thinking Questions...

(Remember, their purpose isn't to gauge learning but to guide and increase it!)

Directed Questions

• Who was Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) going to visit?
• Where did Little Red Riding Hood live?   
• What was she picking when she met the Wolf?

Answers

• Who was Little Red Riding Hood going to visit? 

her grandmother

• Where did Little Red Riding Hood live? 

in the woods with her mother

• What was she picking when she met the Wolf? 

mushrooms

Notice that there are right and wrong answers for these first three questions because they are directed. These questions could easily be turned into True/False, fill-in-the-blanks, or multiple choice questions without any problem. A simple answer key will cover the right answers to these questions.

Convergent Questions

• How was the grandmother saved?
• What happened after LRRH told the wolf where she was going?

Answers

• How was the grandmother saved?

The woodsman made the wolf open its mouth, allowing the grandmother, who was eaten whole, to jump out of the wolf.

There are also correct and incorrect answers for the convergent questions, but learners can phrase or explain their answers in a variety of ways. They can provide more or less information and be more or less specific in their answers. To decide what makes a "correct" answer to one of these questions, you first need to come up with criteria for a strong answer.

For the first question, some criteria might be that the response should...

• identify the role of the woodsman
• confront or address the fact that the story says that granny was eaten (people who are eaten by wolves don't usually do anything more than get digested)

This is because, technically speaking,"through intervention by another character" is a correct answer to this question. This is part of the challenge of writing good CTQs; the question needs to be specific enough that this kind of "technically correct" answer is not possible. A better phrasing of the question might be, "What was the sequence of events that saved granny?"

Another answer

• What happened after Little Red Riding Hood told the wolf where she was going? 

The wolf used the information Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) gave him to get to granny's house first. This led to one meal in the form of granny and a planned second in the form of LRRH.

Think about it: Is there a better way to phrase this question that might avoid the "technically correct" answer "the wolf immediately ran away"? Try to think of one!

Divergent Questions

• If you knew this story was written several hundred years ago, what does it tell you about the world view at the time of writing?
• The wolf is able to speak in this story. What are some of the implications of the wolf as a metaphor rather than an actual wolf?

Answers

It is generally agreed that the story of LRRH illustrates the contrast between the safe world of a village and the dangers of the forest. The forest is also often seen as a place of magic; in fairy tales, the forest is where animals can talk and things like unicorns and dragons exist. The story also warns about the dangers of not obeying one's mother. LRRH makes the mistake of speaking to a stranger (the wolf) and gives him information that puts granny and herself in danger. Predators can seem friendly and even familiar; consider that LRRH doesn't immediate realize that it is the wolf in granny's bed. The story also makes or demonstrates assumptions about the world being a dangerous place for females (old or young) and that they are unable to protect themselves and must be saved by a strong and armed man.

These are interesting questions that give learners the opportunity to explore more advanced and research-oriented ideas. There really are no correct answers to these kinds of questions; simply more and less complete or on-target answers. There is no answer key for these kinds of questions other than a description of the criteria that a strong answer should meet. The information provided here by way of response is just an outline; entire books have been written about the wolf as metaphor and the world view that such fairy tales demonstrate!

A Final Word about CTQs

No matter how inspired you might be when you compose critical thinking questions, no matter how pleased with the results, you will always benefit from taking time to review, refine, and re-sequence your questions and have them reviewed by a student and a colleague.

You should also be aware of the message that the "white/blank space" following each question communicates about your expectations for a response. Providing less space for an answer encourages learners to work quickly toward more simple and short answers. More space encourages justification, discussion, and debate.

References

• Barton, L. G. (1997). Quick flip questions for critical thinking. San Clemente, CA: Edupress.
• Bobrowski, P. E. (2007). Bloom's Taxonomy—Expanding its Meaning. In S. W. Beyerlein, C. Holmes, & D. K. Apple (Eds.), Faculty guidebook: A comprehensive tool for improving faculty performance (4th ed.). Pacific Crest.
• Brookfield, S. (1987). Developing critical thinkers: Challenging adults to explore alternative ways of thinking and acting. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Chaffee, J. (2004). Thinking critically. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
• de Bono, E. (1995). Mind power. New York: Dorling Kindersley.
• Eggen, P., & Kauchak, D. (1988). Strategies for teachers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Hanson, D. (2007). Writing Critical Thinking Questions. In S. W. Beyerlein, C. Holmes, & D. K. Apple (Eds.), Faculty guidebook: A comprehensive tool for improving faculty performance (4th ed.). Lisle, IL: Pacific Crest.
• Paul, R. (2003). Draft statement of principles. National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking. Retrieved May 28, 2004.

FREE Webinar Series: The Latest on Trump and Higher Ed

(from The Chronicle of Higher Education)

They're extending their free webinar series exploring the Trump administration’s impact on higher education: Join them for three more sessions this summer as Chronicle experts break down the latest developments from the Trump White House.

• August 20: 1 p.m. ET | 10 a.m. PT

https://connect.chronicle.com/trump-webinar-series-2.html