Developing Critical Thinking Skills: A Scientific Study on the students of Higher Education .

Developing Critical Thinking Skills: AScientific Study on the students of Higher

Education in Odisha.

1. Introduction

Much of what we remember and believe is simply wrong. Our brains

seem to constantly generate false observations, memories, and

beliefs and yet we tend to take the truth of our experiences for

granted. The present study concentrates on the many ways in which

our human brains deceive us and lead us to conclusions that have

little to do with reality. One will also learn strategies that

can be used to combat the mind’s many deceptions. This study

explores what is called metacognition: thinking about thinking

itself and attempts to cover the way we perceive the world

around us. Everything we think we see, hear, and experience is

not a direct recording of the outside world; instead, it is a

construction. Information is altered, distorted, compared, and

confabulated ultimately to be woven into a narrative which is our

assumptions about the world. Our experiences and thoughts are

also altered through our egos and the many emotional needs,

humans constantly feed. Furthermore, everything we think and

experience becomes a memory, which is further constructed,

altered, and fused. We rely upon our memories as if they were

accurate recordings of the past, but the evidence shows that we

should be highly suspicious of even the most vivid and confident

memories. We don’t recall memories as much as we reconstruct and

update them, altering the information every time we access it.

Our brains also filled in gaps by making up information as

needed. Additionally, a host of logical flaws and cognitive

biases plague our thinking, unless we are specifically aware of

and avoid those fallacies. In this study the researcher explores

logical fallacies and cognitive biases in detail, learning how

they affect thinking in often subtle ways, which are mental

shortcuts we tend to take in thinking. These shortcuts maybe

efficient in most circumstances, but they can also lead us

astray. Our brains have other interesting strengths and

weaknesses that can further inform our thinking. We are generally

very good at pattern recognition—so good that we often see

patterns that are not actually there. However, many of us are

inherently poor at probability and statistics, and this

innumeracy opens us up to deception and errors in thinking.

Perhaps our greatest weakness is our susceptibility to delusion,

the ability to hold a false belief against all evidence. Secondly

how our brains distort reality to discuss how you can

specifically use critical thinking skills and tools to combat the

deceptions of your mind. The philosophy and practice of critical

thinking and science are the tools that humans have slowly and

carefully nurtured over many millennia to compensate for the many

flaws in our brains.

Critical thinking includes the component skills of analyzing

arguments, making inferences using inductive or deductive

reasoning, judging or evaluating, and making decisions or solving

problems. Background knowledge is a necessary but not a sufficient

condition for enabling critical thought within a given subject.

Critical thinking involves both cognitive skills and dispositions.

These dispositions, which can be seen as attitudes or habits of

mind, include open- and fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness,

flexibility, a propensity to seek reason, a desire to be well-

informed, and a respect for and willingness to entertain diverse

viewpoints. There are both general- and domain-specific aspects of

critical thinking. Empirical research suggests that people begin

developing critical thinking competencies at a very young age.

Although adults often exhibit deficient reasoning, in theory all

people can be taught to think critically. Instructors are urged to

provide explicit instruction in critical thinking, to teach how to

transfer to new contexts, and to use cooperative or collaborative

learning methods and constructivist approaches that place students

at the center of the learning process. In constructing assessments

of critical thinking, educators should use open-ended tasks, real-

world or “authentic” problem contexts, and ill-structured problems

that require students to go beyond recalling or restating

previously learned information. Such tasks should have more than

one defensible solution and embed adequate collateral materials to

support multiple perspectives. Finally, such assessment tasks

should make student reasoning visible by requiring students to

provide evidence or logical arguments in support of judgments,

choices, claims, or assertions.

The research encounters many examples of pseudoscience in which

various attempts at new discoveries went wrong. The scientific

blunders also discuss great scientific mistakes in history and

the lessons that can be learned from them. The research attempts

to apply critical thinking, knowledge of science, and knowledge

of the mechanisms of self-deception to everyday practice. Then,

one will discover the role of science and critical thinking in

democracy, the need for high-quality science education, and how

to skeptically approach the media and will partly be a primer on

how not to get scammed or fooled. By the end of the study, one

will have a thorough understanding of what constitutes critical

thinking and why we all so desperately need it. Left to our own

devices—what psychologists call the default mode of human

thinking—we will be subject to the vagaries of perception and

memory and slaves to our emotional needs and biases. The skills

taught in this study will help one operate on the metacognitive

level so that one is able to think about the process of one’s

own thinking.

The human brain is the universal tool by which we understand our

selves and the universe in which we live. By understanding the

nature of human cognition and the methods of thinking clearly and

critically, we can avoid common errors and make the best use of

our minds. The research study focuses on metacognition, or

thinking about thinking itself, and it endeavors to give you the

skills of critical thinking. Developing critical thinking skills

is empowering and liberating and it is a defense mechanism

against the world that we live in.

1.1. Logic in Critical Thinking

Science and belief permeate our lives; they permeate our culture

and our civilization. We buy products every day that involve

claims—either explicit or implicit—and we need to be able to

evaluate those claims in order to make good purchasing decisions.

We use critical thinking in order to think about how we run our

civilization. We have to purchase health-care products and decide

what foods to eat and what lifestyle changes to make in order to

stay healthy. These claims are based upon evidence and logic, and

we need critical thinking to be able to evaluate them properly.

One of the premises of this study is that we are our brains. In

essence, the brain is an organ that can think and is self-aware.

It is not only the most complicated organ that we know about, but

it may in fact be the most complicated thing in the universe that

we know about. The brain can remember, feel, believe, calculate,

extrapolate, infer, and deduce. It does everything that we think

of as thinking. The brain is our universal tool and greatest

strength. Most people believe that our intelligence is our

greatest advantage over all the other creatures on this planet.

However, the brain is also strangely deceptive and is the root of

many of our flaws and weaknesses. This course will also explore

human nature. Humans possess logic, but we are not inherently

logical creatures. In addition to being logical, we are also

highly emotional creatures; we tend to follow our evolved

emotions and rationalizations. Our thoughts tend to follow a

pathway of least resistance, which is not always the optimal

pathway. Logic and critical thinking are, therefore, learned

skills. While we have some inherent sense of logic, we are

overwhelmingly emotional creatures. We have the capacity for

logic, but logic and critical thinking are skills. We’re not born

as master critical thinkers that need to be developed and

practiced.

1.2. Flaws in Human Thinking

Delusion:

It is a fixed, false belief that is vigorously held even in the

face of overwhelming contradictory evidence.

Heuristic:

A cognitive rule of thumb or mental shortcut that we

subconsciously make that may be true much of the time but is not

logically valid.

Logic:

It is a formal process or principle of reasoning.

Metacognition:

Thinking about thinking; examining the processes by which we

think about and arrive at our own beliefs.

Methodological naturalism:

These are the philosophical assumptions that underlie scientific

methodology; specifically, the assumption that all effects have

natural causes.

Pseudoscience:

It is a practice that superficially resembles the process of

science but distorts proper methodology to the point that it is

fatally flawed and does not qualify as true science.

Scientific skepticism:

It is a comprehensive approach to knowledge that emphasizes

critical thinking and science. Skepticism combines knowledge of

philosophy of science, scientific methods, mechanisms of self

deception, and related fields to approach all claims to truth in

a provisional and systematic way.

The inherent tendency of humans is to make many errors in

thinking. One example is flaws in logic, which are called logical

fallacies, in which we tend to make logical connections that are

not valid, or real. Our thinking is also plagued with many false

assumptions. Our heads are filled with knowledge that we think is

true but is, in fact, false. Either these bits of knowledge are

simply wrong, or that fall short of the truth. Our memories are

also massively flawed. We tend to naively assume that our

memories are an accurate, passive recorder of what has happened,

but our memories are actually plagued with numerous flaws that

make them highly unreliable. In psychology, heuristics are

patterns of thinking. They’re mental shortcuts that we tend to

take that may be right much of the time but are wrong often

enough that they quite frequently lead us astray. We compensate

for all of these flaws in our brain’s functioning by using

metacognition, or thinking about thinking itself. A process

called scientific skepticism involves systematic doubt—

questioning everything that you think, the process of your

thinking, and everything that you think you know.

1.3. The Necessity of Thinking about Thinking One component of critical thinking is basing your beliefs on

actual evidence as opposed to wishful thinking, for example. The

goal is to arrive at conclusions that are likely to be reliable

as opposed to conclusions that are unreliable, but we also want

to have a sense of how reliable our conclusions are. The

scientific method is scientific skepticism—not just doubt, but a

positive set of methods for examining reality. Essentially,

science is a systematic way of comparing our ideas to external,

objective data. In short, the goal of science is to lead us to

conclusions that are actually true as opposed to conclusions that

we simply wish are true. However, not all science is valid. Some

science is so flawed that we call it pseudo science. Science

follows scientific methodology. It is not a set of beliefs, but

it is a set of methods, and there are ways of defining that as

well as distinguishing good science from bad science. The

scientific method is based upon methodological naturalism, which

is the philosophical term for the notion that natural effects

have natural causes. In trying to model and understand the world,

you cannot refer to supernatural or miraculous causes that don’t

have any testable cause in the natural world. All conclusions in

science are provisional; there is no such thing as absolute

metaphysical certitude. Not only do we have to assess what is

likely to be true but also how confident we can be about that

belief, knowing that we’ll never quite reach absolute certainty.

All of our beliefs are open to revision. When new data comes in,

or may be just a better way of interpreting data, we have to be

open to revising what we thought we knew. Human beings are

subject to delusions. Sometimes our thinking goes so far a way

that we can invent our own reality or become swept up in the

beliefs of others. One common manifestation of this is a public

panic. It’s helpful to consider thinking as a process and to

focus on the process rather than on any particular conclusion.

Once we emotionally invest in a conclusion, humans are very good

at twisting and rationalizing facts and logic in order to fit

that desired conclusion. Instead, we should invest in the process

and be very flexible when it comes to any conclusions. In

addition, we are currently living not only in the age of

information with the Internet, but we are living in the age of

misinformation. There are many rumors that now spread faster than

wildfire; they spread with the speed of electrons through the

Internet. Whether they’re innocent or malicious, myths are spread

through the Internet in order for the people behind the myths to

try to steal other people’s money, lure them into a scam, or even

influence their voting. We live in a capitalistic society, which

means that every day we’re subject to marketing claims that are

highly motivated to misrepresent the facts or to give us a very

specific perspective. Such claims try to influence our thoughts

and behavior by engaging in persuasive speech and maybe even

deception. As consumers, every day we have to sort through

deliberately deceptive claims to figure out which ones are

reliable and which ones aren’t. Furthermore, many companies use

pseudo science or even antiscientific claims to back up their

marketing and products, and that can seem very persuasive to

someone who isn’t skilled in telling real science from

pseudoscience.

Thinking critically is a process, and the first component is to

examine all of the facts that we are assuming or that we think

are true. Many of them may not be reliable, or they may be

assumptions. We may not know whether they’re true, but reassume

they’re true. We also need to examine our logic. Is the logic we

are using legitimate, or is it flawed in some way? Perhaps it’s

systematically biased in a certain direction. In addition, we

should try to become aware of our motivations. People are

extremely good at rationalizing beliefs when they are motivated

by a desire to believe a certain conclusion. Understanding our

motivations will help us to deconstruct that process and will

give us the skills to discover conclusions that are more likely

to be true, as opposed to the ones that you just wish to be true.

Critical thinking also means thinking through the implications of

a belief—that different beliefs about the world should all be

compatible with each other. We have a tendency to

compartmentalize, to have one belief walled off from all of our

other beliefs, and therefore we insulate it from refutation. If

we think about what else has to be true if a certain belief is

true and whether both make sense that is a good way to tell how

plausible or how likely to be true a belief is. Additionally, we

should check with others:

It’s also important to be humble, which means knowing your

limits. We tend to get into trouble when we assume we have

expertise or knowledge that we don’t have or when we don’t

question the limits of our knowledge. Critical thinking is, in

fact, a defense mechanism against all the machinations that are

trying to deceive us whether for ideological, political, or

marketing reasons. Critical thinking also liberates us being

weighed down by the many false beliefs, and perhaps mutually

incompatible beliefs that we tend to hold because of our

emotional makeup.

2. Rationale of the study

The study intends explore the ways in which critical thinking has

been defined by researchers and to investigate the development of

critical thinking skills. It also attempts to study how teachers

can encourage the development of critical thinking skills in their

students so as to review best practices in assessing critical

thinking skills.

3. Review of literature

Educators have long been aware of the importance of critical

thinking skills . More recently, the Partnership for 21st Century

Skills has identified critical thinking as one of several learning

and innovation skills necessary to prepare for education and the

workforce. In addition, the newly created Common Core State

Standards reflect critical thinking as a cross-disciplinary skill

vital for college and employment social life and politics. Despite

widespread recognition of its importance, there is a notable lack

of consensus regarding the definition of critical thinking.

The literature on critical thinking has roots in two primary

academic disciplines: philosophy and psychology (Lewis & Smith,

1993). Sternberg (1986) has also noted a third critical thinking

strand within the field of education. These separate academic

strands have developed different approaches to defining critical

thinking that reflect their respective concerns. Enumerating the

qualities and characteristics of this person rather than the

behaviors or actions the critical thinker can perform (Lewis &

Smith, 1993; Thayer-Bacon, 2000). Sternberg (1986) has noted that

this school of thought approaches the critical thinker as an ideal

type, focusing on what people are capable of doing under the best

of circumstances. Accordingly, Richard Paul (1992) discusses

critical thinking in the context of “perfections of thought”. This

preoccupation with the ideal critical thinker is evident in the

American Philosophical Association’s consensus portrait of the

ideal critical thinker as someone who is inquisitive in nature,

open-minded, flexible, fair-minded, has a desire to be well-

informed, understands diverse viewpoints, and is willing to both

suspend judgment and to consider other perspectives (Facione,

1990). Those working within the philosophical tradition also

emphasize qualities or standards of thought. For example, Bailin

(2002) defines critical thinking as thinking of a particular

quality—essentially good thinking that meets specified criteria or

standards of adequacy and accuracy. Further, the philosophical

approach has traditionally focused on the application of formal

rules of logic (Lewis & Smith, 1993; Sternberg, 1986). One

limitation of this approach to defining critical thinking is that

it does not always correspond to reality (Sternberg, 1986). By

emphasizing the ideal critical thinker and what people have the

capacity to do, this approach may have less to contribute to

discussions about how people actually think.

The cognitive psychological approach contrasts with the

philosophical perspective in two ways. First, cognitive

psychologists, particularly those immersed in the behaviorist

tradition and the experimental research paradigm, tend to focus on

how people actually think versus how they could or should think

under ideal conditions (Sternberg, 1986). Second, rather than

defining critical thinking by pointing to characteristics of the

ideal critical thinker or enumerating criteria or standards of

“good” thought, those working in cognitive psychology tend to

define critical thinking by the types of actions or behaviors

critical thinkers can do. Typically, this approach to defining

critical thinking includes a list of skills or procedures performed

by critical thinkers (Lewis & Smith, 1993).

Philosophers have often criticized this latter aspect of the

cognitive psychological approach as being reductionist—reducing a

complex orchestration of knowledge and skills into a collection of

disconnected steps or procedures (Sternberg, 1986). Bailin (2002)

argues that it is a fundamental misconception to view critical

thinking as a series of discrete steps or skills, and that this

misconception stems from the behaviorist’s need to define

constructs in ways that are directly observable. According to this

argument, because the actual process of thought is unobservable,

cognitive psychologists have tended to focus on the products of

such thought—behaviors or overt skills (e.g., analysis,

interpretation, formulating good questions). Other philosophers

have also cautioned against confusing the activity of critical

thinking with its component skills (Facione, 1990), arguing that

critical thinking is more than simply the sum of its parts (Van

Gelder, 2005). Indeed, a few proponents of the philosophical

tradition have pointed out that it is possible to simply “go

through the motions,” or proceed through the “steps” of critical

thinking without actually engaging in critical thought (Bailin,

2002). Those working in the field of education have also

participated in discussions about critical thinking. Benjamin Bloom

and his associates are included in this category. Their taxonomy

for information processing skills (1956) is one of the most widely

cited sources for educational practitioners when it comes to

teaching and assessing higher-order thinking skills. Bloom’s

taxonomy is hierarchical, with “comprehension” at the bottom and

“evaluation” at the top. The three highest levels (analysis,

synthesis, and evaluation) are frequently said to represent

critical thinking (Kennedy et al., 1991). The benefit of the

educational approach is that it is based on years of classroom

experience and observations of student learning, unlike both the

philosophical and the psychological traditions (Sternberg, 1986).

4. Objectives

1. To explore the ways in which critical thinking has been defined

by researchers,

2. To investigate how critical thinking develops

3. To study how teachers can encourage the development of critical

thinking skills in their students,

4. To review best practices in assessing critical thinking skills.

5. Methodology

This research uses a qualitative approach to investigation.

Survey research method is followed for conducting the study.

Secondary data is collected from the colleges and universities of

odisha. The study uses a large, nationally representative data

set, which enables the researcher to explore potential

heterogeneity in returns to critical thinking skills along

various dimensions by sex, age, education, social group and

geographic variables, using inductive or deductive reasoning,

judgment or evaluation.

6. Universe of the study

The study included randomly selected faculty from colleges and

universities across Odisha,. Faculty answered both closed and

open-ended questions in a 40-50 minute interview. By direct

statement or by implication, most faculties claimed that they

permeated their instruction with an emphasis on critical thinking

and that the students internalized the concepts in their courses

as a result. Yet only the rare interviewee mentioned the

importance of students thinking clearly, accurately, precisely,

relevantly, or logically, etc. Very few mentioned any of the

basic skills of thought such as the ability to clarify questions;

gather relevant data; reason to logical or valid conclusions;

identify key assumptions; trace significant implications, or

enter without distortion into alternative points of view.

Intellectual traits of mind, such as intellectual humility,

intellectual perseverance, intellectual responsibility, etc, were

rarely mentioned by the interviewees. Consider the following key

results from the study:

7. Analysis

The question at research in this paper is the current state of

critical thinking in higher education. Sadly, studies of higher

education demonstrate three disturbing facts: Most college

faculty at all levels lack a substantive concept of critical

thinking. Most college faculties don’t realize that they lack a

substantive concept of critical thinking, believe that they

sufficiently understand it, and assume they are already teaching

students it.  Lecture, rote memorization, and (largely

ineffective) short-term study habits are still the norm in

college instruction and learning today.

 These three facts, taken together, represent serious obstacles

to essential, long-term institutional change, for only when

administrative and faculty leaders grasp the nature,

implications, and power of a robust concept of critical thinking 

as well as gain insight into the negative implications of its

absence  are they able to orchestrate effective professional

development. When faculty have a vague notion of critical

thinking, or reduce it to a single-discipline model (as in

teaching critical thinking through a “logic” or a “study skills”

paradigm), it impedes their ability to identify ineffective, or

develop more effective, teaching practices. It prevents them from

making the essential connections (both within subjects and across

them), connections that give order and substance to teaching and

learning.

This paper highlights the depth of the problem and its solution a

comprehensive, substantive concept of critical thinking fostered

across the curriculum. As long as we rest content with a fuzzy

concept of critical thinking or an overly narrow one, we will not

be able to effectively teach for it. Consequently, students will

continue to leave our colleges without the intellectual skills

necessary for reasoning through complex issues.

The study demonstrates that most college faculties lack a

substantive concept of critical thinking. Consequently they do

not (and cannot) use it as a central organizer in the design of

instruction. It does not inform their conception of the student’s

role as learner. It does not affect how they conceptualize their

own role as instructors. They do not link it to the essential

thinking that defines the content they teach. They, therefore,

usually teach content separate from the thinking students need to

engage in if they are to take ownership of that content. They

teach history but not historical thinking. They teach biology,

but not biological thinking. They teach math, but not

mathematical thinking. They expect students to do analysis, but

have no clear idea of how to teach students the elements of that

analysis. They want students to use intellectual standards in

their thinking, but have no clear conception of what intellectual

standards they want their students to use or how to articulate

them. They are unable to describe the intellectual traits

(dispositions) presupposed for intellectual discipline. They have

no clear idea of the relation between critical thinking and

creativity, problem-solving, decision-making, or communication.

They do not understand the role that thinking plays in

understanding content. They are often unaware that didactic

teaching is ineffective. They don’t see why students fail to make

the basic concepts of the discipline their own. They lack

classroom teaching strategies that would enable students to

master content and become skilled learners.

Most faculties have these problems, yet with little awareness

that they do. The majority of college faculty considers their

teaching strategies just fine, no matter what the data reveal.

Whatever problems exist in their instruction they see as the

fault of students or beyond their control.

Research demonstrates that, contrary to popular faculty belief,

critical thinking is not fostered in the typical college

classroom. In a meta-analysis of the literature on teaching

effectiveness in higher education, Lion Gardiner, in conjunction

with ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education (1995) documented the

following disturbing patterns: “Faculty aspire to develop

students’ thinking skills, but research consistently shows that

in practice we tend to aim at facts and concepts in the

disciplines, at the lowest cognitive levels, rather than

development of intellect or values."

Numerous studies of college classrooms reveal that, rather than

actively involving our students in learning, we lecture, even

though lectures are not nearly as effective as other means for

developing cognitive skills. In addition, students may be

attending to lectures only about one-half of their time in class,

and retention from lectures is low. Studies suggest our methods

often fail to dislodge students’ misconceptions and ensure

learning of complex, abstract concepts. Capacity for problem

solving is limited by our use of inappropriately simple practice

exercises. Classroom tests often set the standard for students’

learning. As with instruction, however, we tend to emphasize

recall of memorized factual information rather than intellectual

challenge. Taken together with our preference for lecturing, our

tests may be reinforcing our students’ commonly fact-oriented

memory learning, of limited value to either them or society.

Faculties agree almost universally that the development of

students’ higher-order intellectual or cognitive abilities is the

most important educational task of colleges and universities.

These abilities underpin our students’ perceptions of the world

and the consequent decisions they make. Specifically, critical

thinking – the capacity to evaluate skillfully and fairly the

quality of evidence and detect error, hypocrisy, manipulation,

dissembling, and bias – is central to both personal success and

national needs. Process-oriented instructional orientations “have

long been more successful than conventional instruction in

fostering effective movement from concrete to formal reasoning.

Such programs emphasize students’ active involvement in learning

and cooperative work with other students and de-emphasize

lectures .

Gardiner’s summary of the research coincides with the results of

a large study (Paul, 1997) of 38 public colleges and

universities and 28 private ones focused on the question: To what

extent are faculty teaching for critical thinking?

8. Findings

Though the overwhelming majority of faculty claimed critical

thinking to be a primary objective of their instruction (89%),

only a small minority could give a clear explanation of what

critical thinking is (19%). Furthermore, according to their

answers, only 9% of the respondents were clearly teaching for

critical thinking on a typical day in class. Though the

overwhelming majority (78%) claimed that their students lacked

appropriate intellectual standards (to use in assessing their

thinking), and 73% considered that students learning to assess

their own work was of primary importance, only a very small

minority (8%) could enumerate any intellectual criteria or

standards they required of students or could give an intelligible

explanation of those criteria and standards. While 50% of those

interviewed said that they explicitly distinguish critical

thinking skills from traits, only 8% were able to provide a clear

conception of the critical thinking skills they thought were most

important for their students to develop. Furthermore, the

overwhelming majority (75%) provided either minimal or vague

allusion (33%) or no illusion at all (42%) to intellectual traits

of mind. Although the majority (67%) said that their concept of

critical thinking is largely explicit in their thinking, only 19%

could elaborate on their concept of thinking. Although the vast

majority (89%) stated that critical thinking was of primary

importance to their instruction, 77% of the respondents had

little, limited or no conception of how to reconcile content

coverage with the fostering of critical thinking. Although the

overwhelming majority (81%) felt that their department’s

graduates develop a good or high level of critical thinking

ability while in their program, only 20% said that their

departments had a shared approach to critical thinking, and only

9% were able to clearly articulate how they would assess the

extent to which a faculty member was or was not fostering

critical thinking. The remaining respondents had a limited

conception or no conception at all of how to do this.

9. Recommendations

If we understand critical thinking substantively, we not only

explain the idea explicitly to our students, but we use it to

give order and meaning to virtually everything we do as teachers

and learners. We use it to organize the design of instruction. It

informs how we conceptualize our students as learners. It

determines how we conceptualize our role as instructors. It

enables us to understand and explain the thinking that defines

the content we teach.When we understand critical thinking at a

deep level, we realize that we must teach content through

thinking, not content, and then thinking. We model the thinking

that students need to formulate if they are to take ownership of

the content. We teach history as historical thinking. We teach

biology as biological thinking. We teach math as mathematical

thinking. We expect students to analyze the thinking that is the

content, and then to assess the thinking using intellectual

standards. We foster the intellectual traits (dispositions)

essential to critical thinking. We teach students to use critical

thinking concepts as tools in entering into any system of

thought, into any subject or discipline. We teach students to

construct in their own minds the concepts that define the

discipline. We acquire an array of classroom strategies that

enable students to master content using their thinking and to

become skilled learners. The concept of critical thinking,

rightly understood, ties together much of what we need to

understand as teachers and learners. Properly understood, it

leads to a framework for institutional change If we truly

understand critical thinking, we should be able to explain its

implications:

for analyzing and assessing reasoning

for identifying strengths and weaknesses in thinking

for identifying obstacles to rational thought

for dealing with egocentrism and sociocentrism

for developing strategies that enable one to apply critical

thinking to everyday life

for understanding the stages of one’s development as a thinker

for understanding the foundations of ethical reasoning

for detecting bias and propaganda in the national and

international news

for conceptualizing the human mind as an instrument of

intellectual work

for active and cooperative learning

for the art of asking essential questions

for scientific thinking

for close reading and substantive writing

for grasping the logic of a discipline.

10. Summary and conclusion

Critical thinking is believed to include the component skills of

analyzing arguments, making inferences by using inductive or

deductive reasoning, judging or evaluating, and making decisions

or solving problems. Background knowledge is believed to be a

necessary, though not sufficient, condition for enabling

critical thought within a given subject. Critical thinking

entails cognitive skills, or abilities, and dispositions. These

dispositions, which can be seen as attitudes, or habits of mind,

include open- and fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, flexibility,

a propensity to seek reason, a desire to be well-informed, and a

respect for and willingness to entertain diverse viewpoints.

There appear to be both general and domain-specific aspects of

critical thinking, which suggests two main conclusions. First,

instruction should represent a fusion of preparation in general

critical thinking principles, as well as practice in applying

critical thinking skills within the context of specific domains.

Second, transfer of critical thinking skills to new contexts is

unlikely to occur unless students are specifically taught to

transfer by sensitizing them to deep problem structures and are

given adequate opportunities to rehearse critical thinking

skills in a variety of domains. Critical thinking skills relate

to several other important student learning outcomes, such as

metacognition, motivation, collaboration, and creativity.

Metacognition (or thinking about thinking) supports critical

thinking in that students who can monitor and evaluate their own

thought processes are more likely to demonstrate high-quality

thinking. In addition, the ability to critically evaluate one’s

own arguments and reasoning is necessary for self-regulated

learning. Motivation supports critical thinking in that students

who are motivated to learn are more likely to persist at tasks

that call for critical thinking. In turn, learning activities

and assessment tasks that call for critical thinking may spark

student motivation because they are more challenging, novel, or

interesting. Students possessing critical thinking dispositions,

such as willingness to consider diverse perspectives, may make

better collaborators, and opportunities for collaboration may

promote higher-order thinking. Finally, creativity requires the

ability to critically evaluate intellectual products, and

critical thinking requires the open-mindedness and flexibility

that is characteristic of creative thinking.

Although learning progressions of critical thinking skills and

dispositions do not yet (and may never) exist, at least one

researcher has tied the progression of critical thinking skills

to cognitive development in general and metacognition in

particular. Empirical research in the area of metacognition

suggests that people begin developing critical thinking

competencies at a very young age and continue to improve them (or

not) over the course of a lifetime. Many adults exhibit deficient

reasoning and fail to think critically. However, in theory, all

people—from all intellectual ability levels and from the very

young to the very old—can be taught to think critically.

Empirical evidence suggests that children are, in fact, much more

capable of critical thought than once predicted.

If teachers are to be successful in encouraging the development

of critical thinking skills, explicit instruction in critical

thinking needs to be included in the curriculum, whether that

instruction occurs as a stand-alone course, is infused into

subject-matter content, or both. Cooperative or collaborative

learning methods hold promise as a way of stimulating cognitive

development, along with constructivist approaches that place

students at the center of the learning process. Teachers should

model critical thinking in their instruction and provide concrete

examples for illustrating abstract concepts that students will

find salient.

Assessing critical thinking skills poses challenges that are

similar to those in other measurement contexts. Standardized

instruments that use multiple-choice items to measure limited

aspects of critical thinking may meet reliability standards, but

these standardized instruments are vulnerable to criticisms of

construct underrepresentation. Performance-based assessments

(PBAs), which are seen as more valid representations of the

construct, are susceptible to low reliability and a lack of

generalizability across tasks when task development and

administration cannot be standardized. When such standardization

cannot be assured, PBAs should not be used to compare students

to one another or to track student progress or growth over time.

On the other hand, when PBAs are used for low-stakes, classroom

assessment purposes, the need for strict standardization can be

relaxed.

Educators are urged to use open-ended problem types and to

consider learning activities and assessment tasks that make use

of authentic, real-world problem contexts. In addition, critical

thinking assessments should use ill-structured problems that

require students to go beyond recalling or restating learned

information and also require students to manipulate the

information in new or novel contexts. Such ill-structured

problems should also have more than one defensible solution and

should provide adequate collateral materials to support multiple

perspectives. Stimulus materials should attempt to embed

contradictions or inconsistencies that are likely to activate

critical thinking. Finally, such assessment tasks should make

student reasoning visible by requiring students to provide

evidence or logical arguments in support of judgments, choices,

claims, or assertions.

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