FULBRIGHT
I was named a Fulbright Specialist for 2016 – 2021.
A multi-faceted project I coordinated with the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) received full approval and began in the Summer of 2018.
During my visit, I hosted a series of seminars and workshops for faculty, administrators, students, and future trainers, initiated the development of a qualitative diagnostic tool to assess critical thinking, and collaborated with university leaders to develop a virtual / mobile Teaching and Learning Resource Centre.
The primary goal of the seminars and workshops was to enhance SIM’s capacity to advance critical thinking outcomes across their diverse curricula.
The project, ultimately, aimed to develop twenty-first century learning skills in students (“Twenty-first century learning skills” have been defined so as to include: critical thinking, problem-solving, and creative and analytic thinking) by enhancing local instructors’ abilities to deliver courses that are oriented toward the development of critical thinking, creative thinking, and questioning.
I have begun discussions with representatives of universities in Nigeria and Russia for comparable site visits and projects in the years 2020-2021.
EXPERTISE IN CRITICAL THINKING
I have taught approximately fifty courses, over a period of twelve years, on the subject of critical thinking and have, in this time, also developed expertise in instructor-training, enhancing curricula to facilitate critical thought, and designing and implementing assessments critical thinking and other core competencies.
Much of my pedagogical research — such as my forthcoming (2018) textbook, Critical Thinking in Political Context, as well as articles such as, “Rethinking Critical Thinking: A Relational and Practical Approach” (2016), “Defending the Ivory Tower: Toward Critical Community-Engagement” (2012), and “Teaching Students to Ask Questions Instead of Answering Them” (2010) — has focused on the enhancement of critical thinking as a “core capacity” in students and in the instructor-student relationship.
“Core capacities” require that faculty (and, sometimes, administrators) develop skills in facilitating certain types of learning encounters that require training and practice. By “core capacities,” what is meant is a type of student-centered learning designed to address that which is fundamental to the intellectual development of the student, typically revolving around critical thinking and communication and the generation of active and creative questioning in the classroom.
GLOBAL EXPERIENCE AND GLOBAL SCHOLARSHIP
I am committed to global scholarship and to the enhancement of teaching and learning at both local and international levels.
I have published collaborative research with scholars from universities in Nigeria, India, China, and Singapore.
I serve as Series Editor of Psychoanalytic Political Theory, a new book series published by Routledge (London and New York).
I am an International Advisory Board Member of the Journal of Psycho-Social Studies (UK), Associate Editor of the international Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Associate Editor of the international journal, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, Editorial Board Member of the journal Pedagogy and the Human Sciences, and an advisor and mentor to junior faculty and graduate students at premier global universities, including Cairo University, Korea University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Southern California, and the New School for Social Research.
I have taught on four separate occasions at the Singapore Institute of Management and have been fortunate enough to have studied at some of the world’s most diverse, prestigious, and global universities, such as Columbia University in New York and L’Institut D’Études Politiques de Paris.
I have also traveled widely and lived for extended periods of time in Paris, France and Benin, West Africa.
Matthew H. Bowker, Ph.D. 