Developing Critical Thinking by Using Tables

As students learn, they process various types of information in various ways. For example, a text can be processed on the basis of (a) its physical characteristics (e.g., font size and color, page layout); (b) linguistic characteristics (e.g., the way words are put together to form sentences, the way sentences form paragraphs); and (c) semantic content (the meaning of the words and phrases) (Miclea, 1999). According to cognitive psychology studies, the deeper the processing of a stimulus, the better it is preserved in long-term memory. Craik and Lockhart (quoted in Miclea, 1999, p. 218) said that the processing of a stimulus gets "deeper" when it moves away from physical characteristics and toward conceptual and semantic characteristics. Several studies have concluded that the depth, or quality, of processing is in most cases more important than the amount, or quantity, of the processing. This finding explains why students who study less but more attentively usually fare better on their exams than those who go through the material several times, but only at a superficial level.

Organizing information from a text into table form, and analyzing the data contained in a table, represent deeper levels of information processing than the simple reading of a text. In order to represent information graphically in a table, students must analyze the ideas, extract essential facts, formulate concepts, and group the data according to various criteria (temporal, hierarchical, spatial, etc.), depending upon the logical demands of the theme/subject being studied.

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