Key Concepts for Teaching Critical Thinking

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Key Concepts forTeaching Critical Thinking

• Carol McGuinness
• School of Psychology
• QUB
• LTSN Workshop on Critical Thinking
• 18 October 2002 Belfast

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Critical thinking - a central aim for higher
education

• students should develop from the uncritical
  acceptance of orthodoxy to creative dissent
  (Ashby, 1973)
• sustain a culture which demands disciplined
  thinking, encourages curiosity, challenges ideas
  and creates new ones (Dearing, 1997)

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Concerns about student learning..

• Re-examination of what graduates should be able
  to think and do
• Core.key.transferable skills
• Research on deep/surface learning (Entwistle,
  Saljo and Marton)
• Graduate standards

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Benchmarking.

• Subject and generic skills
• Apply multiple perspectives
• Employ evidence-based reasoning
• Problem solve and reason scientifically
• Make critical judgements and evaluations
• Critical thinking - and what it means for
  psychology learning and teaching

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Critical thinking - different meanings

• Philosophy
• Socrates challenged loose thinking
• Logic - informal logic
• Discourse and argumentation
• Deciding what to think and do - truth seeking
• Psychology
• Cognitive perspective - examining thinking
  processes
• Empirically oriented
• Making sense and interpreting the world
• (not to be confused with critical psychology)

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Definitions - from philosophy
-

• Critical thinking is reasonable, reflective
  thinking that is focused on what to believe and
  do (Ennis, 1982)
• Critical thinking is skilled and active
  interpretation and evaluation of observations and
  communications, information and argumentation
  (Fisher Scriven, 1997)

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Definitions -from psychology

• Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive
  skills and strategies that increase the
  probability of a desirable outcomepurposeful,
  reasoned, and goal directed - the kind of
  thinking involved in solving problems,
  formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods,
  and making decisions (Halpern, 1996)

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Fisher - chapter headings

• Identify the elements of a reasoned case
• Identify and evaluate assumptions
• Clarify and interpret expressions and ideas
• Judge the acceptability and credibility of claims
• Evaluate arguments of different kinds
• Analyse, evaluate and produce explanations
• Analyse, evaluate and make decisions
• Draw inferences
• Produce arguments

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Halpern - chapter headings

• Reasoning - drawing deductively valid conclusions
• Analysing arguments
• Thinking as hypothesis testing
• Understanding probabilities
• Decision making
• Developing problem solving
• Creative thinking

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General critical thinking vs disciplinary
specific

• Theoretical dispute about nature of knowing -
  critical thinking
• as a general competence
• as deeply embedded in disciplinary knowledge
• A curriculum decision
• General courses on critical thinking (e.g., cross
  faculty) - transfer can be problematic
• Critical thinking in subject areas - knowledge
  tends to dominate
• Assessment

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How.? Explicit

• Make more explicit what we mean by critical
  thinking - to ourselves and to students
• Mapping an argument
• Steps in problem solving
• Evidence-based reasoning

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Prompting critical thinking

• Questions and questioning
• How do you know that it is true..?
• What is the main assumption..?
• What is the evidence in support of that?
• How credible is the source?
• Are there rival explanations.
• Are there similarities and differences between X
  and Y?

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Prompting.

• Peer interaction and dialogue
• Metacognition - thinking about the thinking
• Planning, monitoring, evaluating
• Critical thinking dispositions - a will as well
  as a skill

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Key Concepts

• Be explicit about what you mean by critical
  thinking - settle on a provisional list
• Examine tasks to ensure that they do require some
  higher order thinking (beyond memory or even good
  summarising)
• Give opportunities to students to talk and
  discuss the nature of the thinking required by
  tasks
• Ask them to evaluate their own thinking (logs,
  journals, reflective pieces)
• Start early.dont leave it to final year!!!