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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, what is critical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making what is critical thinking.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: What is Critical Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is critical thinking, what is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot. You've probably heard it used often throughout the years whether it was in school, at work, or in everyday conversation. But when you stop to think about it, what exactly is critical thinking and how do you do it ?

Watch the video below to learn more about critical thinking.

Simply put, critical thinking is the act of deliberately analyzing information so that you can make better judgements and decisions . It involves using things like logic, reasoning, and creativity, to draw conclusions and generally understand things better.

This may sound like a pretty broad definition, and that's because critical thinking is a broad skill that can be applied to so many different situations. You can use it to prepare for a job interview, manage your time better, make decisions about purchasing things, and so much more.

The process

As humans, we are constantly thinking . It's something we can't turn off. But not all of it is critical thinking. No one thinks critically 100% of the time... that would be pretty exhausting! Instead, it's an intentional process , something that we consciously use when we're presented with difficult problems or important decisions.

Improving your critical thinking

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones like What do I currently know? and How do I know this? These can help to give you a better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more complex issues.  

Real-world applications

Let's take a look at how we can use critical thinking to evaluate online information . Say a friend of yours posts a news article on social media and you're drawn to its headline. If you were to use your everyday automatic thinking, you might accept it as fact and move on. But if you were thinking critically, you would first analyze the available information and ask some questions :

• What's the source of this article?
• Is the headline potentially misleading?
• What are my friend's general beliefs?
• Do their beliefs inform why they might have shared this?

After analyzing all of this information, you can draw a conclusion about whether or not you think the article is trustworthy.

Critical thinking has a wide range of real-world applications . It can help you to make better decisions, become more hireable, and generally better understand the world around you.

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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• Vincent-Lancrin, Stéphan, Carlos González-Sancho, Mathias Bouckaert, Federico de Luca, Meritxell Fernández-Barrerra, Gwénaël Jacotin, Joaquin Urgel, and Quentin Vidal, 2019, Fostering Students’ Creativity and Critical Thinking: What It Means in School. Educational Research and Innovation , Paris: OECD Publishing.
• Warren, Karen J. 1988. “Critical Thinking and Feminism”, Informal Logic , 10(1): 31–44. [ Warren 1988 available online ]
• Watson, Goodwin, and Edward M. Glaser, 1980a, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, Form A , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
• –––, 1980b, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal: Forms A and B; Manual , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation,
• –––, 1994, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, Form B , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
• Weinstein, Mark, 1990, “Towards a Research Agenda for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking”, Informal Logic , 12(3): 121–143. [ Weinstein 1990 available online ]
• –––, 2013, Logic, Truth and Inquiry , London: College Publications.
• Willingham, Daniel T., 2019, “How to Teach Critical Thinking”, Education: Future Frontiers , 1: 1–17. [Available online at https://prod65.education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/education-for-a-changing-world/media/documents/How-to-teach-critical-thinking-Willingham.pdf.]
• Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus, 1996, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139174763

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking (AILACT)
• Critical Thinking Across the European Higher Education Curricula (CRITHINKEDU)
• Critical Thinking Definition, Instruction, and Assessment: A Rigorous Approach
• Critical Thinking Research (RAIL)
• Foundation for Critical Thinking
• Insight Assessment
• Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21)
• The Critical Thinking Consortium
• The Nature of Critical Thinking: An Outline of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities , by Robert H. Ennis

abilities | bias, implicit | children, philosophy for | civic education | decision-making capacity | Dewey, John | dispositions | education, philosophy of | epistemology: virtue | logic: informal

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An author’s purpose can influence the kind of information they choose to include.

Thinking about the reason an author produced a source can be helpful to you because that reason was what dictated the kind of information they chose to include. Depending on that purpose, the author may have chosen to include factual, analytical, and objective information. Or, instead, it may have suited their purpose to include information that was subjective and therefore less factual and analytical. The author’s reason for producing the source also determined whether they included more than one perspective or just their own.

Authors typically want to do at least one of the following:

• Inform and educate
• Sell services or products or

Combination of Purposes

Sometimes authors have a combination of purposes, as when a marketer decides they can sell more smartphones with an informative sales video that also entertains us. The same is true when a singer writes and performs a song that entertains us but that they intend to make available for sale. Other examples of authors having multiple purposes occur in most scholarly writing.

In those cases, authors certainly want to inform and educate their audiences. But they also want to persuade their audiences that what they are reporting and/or postulating is a true description of a situation, event, or phenomenon or a valid argument that their audience must take a particular action. In this blend of scholarly author’s purposes, the intent to educate and inform is considered to trump the intent to persuade.

Why Intent Matters

Authors’ intent usually matters in how useful their information can be to your research project, depending on which information need you are trying to meet. For instance, when you’re looking for resources that will help you actually decide how to answer your research question or evidence for your answer that you will share with your audience, you will want the author’s main purpose to have been to inform or educate their audience. That’s because, with that intent, they are likely to have used:

• Facts where possible.
• Multiple perspectives instead of just their own.
• Little subjective information.
• Seemingly unbiased, objective language that cites where they got the information.

The reason you want that kind of resource when trying to answer your research question or explaining that answer is that all of those characteristics will lend credibility to the argument you are making with your project. Both you and your audience will simply find it easier to believe—will have more confidence in the argument being you are making—based on your selected resources.

Resources whose authors intend only to persuade others won’t meet your information need for an answer to your research question or evidence with which to convince your audience. That’s because they don’t always confine themselves to facts. Instead, they tell us their opinions without backing them up with evidence. If you used those sources, your readers will notice and not believe your argument.

Fact vs. Opinion vs. Objective vs. Subjective

Need to brush up on the differences between fact, objective information, subjective information, and opinion?

Fact – Facts are useful to inform or make an argument.

• The United States was established in 1776.
• The pH levels in acids are lower than pH levels in alkalines.
• Beethoven had a reputation as a virtuoso pianist.

Opinion – Opinions are useful to persuade, but careful readers and listeners will notice and demand evidence to back them up.

• That was a good movie.
• Strawberries taste better than blueberries.
• George Clooney is the sexiest actor alive.
• The death penalty is wrong.
• Beethoven’s reputation as a virtuoso pianist is overrated.

Objective – Objective information reflects a research finding or multiple perspectives that are not biased.

• “Several studies show that an active lifestyle reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes.”
• “Studies from the Brown University Medical School show that twenty-somethings eat 25 percent more fast-food meals at this age than they did as teenagers.”

Subjective – Subjective information presents one person or organization’s perspective or interpretation. Subjective information can be meant to distort, or it can reflect educated and informed thinking. All opinions are subjective, but some are backed up with facts more than others.

• “The simple truth is this: As human beings, we were meant to move.”
• “In their thirties, women should stock up on calcium to ensure strong, dense bones and to ward off osteoporosis later in life.”*

*In this quote, it’s mostly the “should” that makes it subjective. The objective version of the last quote would read: “Studies have shown that women who begin taking calcium in their 30s show stronger bone density and fewer repercussions of osteoporosis than women who did not take calcium at all.” But perhaps there are other data showing complications from taking calcium. That’s why drawing the conclusion that requires a “should” makes the statement subjective.

Critical Thinking in Academic Research Copyright © 2022 by Cindy Gruwell and Robin Ewing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Critical Thinking

Developing the right mindset and skills.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

We make hundreds of decisions every day and, whether we realize it or not, we're all critical thinkers.

We use critical thinking each time we weigh up our options, prioritize our responsibilities, or think about the likely effects of our actions. It's a crucial skill that helps us to cut out misinformation and make wise decisions. The trouble is, we're not always very good at it!

In this article, we'll explore the key skills that you need to develop your critical thinking skills, and how to adopt a critical thinking mindset, so that you can make well-informed decisions.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the discipline of rigorously and skillfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions, and beliefs. You'll need to actively question every step of your thinking process to do it well.

Collecting, analyzing and evaluating information is an important skill in life, and a highly valued asset in the workplace. People who score highly in critical thinking assessments are also rated by their managers as having good problem-solving skills, creativity, strong decision-making skills, and good overall performance. [1]

Key Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinkers possess a set of key characteristics which help them to question information and their own thinking. Focus on the following areas to develop your critical thinking skills:

Being willing and able to explore alternative approaches and experimental ideas is crucial. Can you think through "what if" scenarios, create plausible options, and test out your theories? If not, you'll tend to write off ideas and options too soon, so you may miss the best answer to your situation.

To nurture your curiosity, stay up to date with facts and trends. You'll overlook important information if you allow yourself to become "blinkered," so always be open to new information.

But don't stop there! Look for opposing views or evidence to challenge your information, and seek clarification when things are unclear. This will help you to reassess your beliefs and make a well-informed decision later. Read our article, Opening Closed Minds , for more ways to stay receptive.

Logical Thinking

You must be skilled at reasoning and extending logic to come up with plausible options or outcomes.

It's also important to emphasize logic over emotion. Emotion can be motivating but it can also lead you to take hasty and unwise action, so control your emotions and be cautious in your judgments. Know when a conclusion is "fact" and when it is not. "Could-be-true" conclusions are based on assumptions and must be tested further. Read our article, Logical Fallacies , for help with this.

Use creative problem solving to balance cold logic. By thinking outside of the box you can identify new possible outcomes by using pieces of information that you already have.

Self-Awareness

Many of the decisions we make in life are subtly informed by our values and beliefs. These influences are called cognitive biases and it can be difficult to identify them in ourselves because they're often subconscious.

Practicing self-awareness will allow you to reflect on the beliefs you have and the choices you make. You'll then be better equipped to challenge your own thinking and make improved, unbiased decisions.

One particularly useful tool for critical thinking is the Ladder of Inference . It allows you to test and validate your thinking process, rather than jumping to poorly supported conclusions.

Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset

Combine the above skills with the right mindset so that you can make better decisions and adopt more effective courses of action. You can develop your critical thinking mindset by following this process:

Gather Information

First, collect data, opinions and facts on the issue that you need to solve. Draw on what you already know, and turn to new sources of information to help inform your understanding. Consider what gaps there are in your knowledge and seek to fill them. And look for information that challenges your assumptions and beliefs.

Be sure to verify the authority and authenticity of your sources. Not everything you read is true! Use this checklist to ensure that your information is valid:

• Are your information sources trustworthy ? (For example, well-respected authors, trusted colleagues or peers, recognized industry publications, websites, blogs, etc.)
• Is the information you have gathered up to date ?
• Has the information received any direct criticism ?
• Does the information have any errors or inaccuracies ?
• Is there any evidence to support or corroborate the information you have gathered?
• Is the information you have gathered subjective or biased in any way? (For example, is it based on opinion, rather than fact? Is any of the information you have gathered designed to promote a particular service or organization?)

If any information appears to be irrelevant or invalid, don't include it in your decision making. But don't omit information just because you disagree with it, or your final decision will be flawed and bias.

Now observe the information you have gathered, and interpret it. What are the key findings and main takeaways? What does the evidence point to? Start to build one or two possible arguments based on what you have found.

You'll need to look for the details within the mass of information, so use your powers of observation to identify any patterns or similarities. You can then analyze and extend these trends to make sensible predictions about the future.

To help you to sift through the multiple ideas and theories, it can be useful to group and order items according to their characteristics. From here, you can compare and contrast the different items. And once you've determined how similar or different things are from one another, Paired Comparison Analysis can help you to analyze them.

The final step involves challenging the information and rationalizing its arguments.

Apply the laws of reason (induction, deduction, analogy) to judge an argument and determine its merits. To do this, it's essential that you can determine the significance and validity of an argument to put it in the correct perspective. Take a look at our article, Rational Thinking , for more information about how to do this.

Once you have considered all of the arguments and options rationally, you can finally make an informed decision.

Afterward, take time to reflect on what you have learned and what you found challenging. Step back from the detail of your decision or problem, and look at the bigger picture. Record what you've learned from your observations and experience.

Critical thinking involves rigorously and skilfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions and beliefs. It's a useful skill in the workplace and in life.

You'll need to be curious and creative to explore alternative possibilities, but rational to apply logic, and self-aware to identify when your beliefs could affect your decisions or actions.

You can demonstrate a high level of critical thinking by validating your information, analyzing its meaning, and finally evaluating the argument.

Critical Thinking Infographic

See Critical Thinking represented in our infographic: An Elementary Guide to Critical Thinking .

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What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas.  Critical thinking has been the subject of much debate and thought since the time of early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates and has continued to be a subject of discussion into the modern age, for example the ability to recognise fake news .

Critical thinking might be described as the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.

In essence, critical thinking requires you to use your ability to reason. It is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information.

Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings represent the entire picture and are open to finding that they do not.

Critical thinkers will identify, analyse and solve problems systematically rather than by intuition or instinct.

Someone with critical thinking skills can:

Understand the links between ideas.

Determine the importance and relevance of arguments and ideas.

Recognise, build and appraise arguments.

Identify inconsistencies and errors in reasoning.

Approach problems in a consistent and systematic way.

Reflect on the justification of their own assumptions, beliefs and values.

Critical thinking is thinking about things in certain ways so as to arrive at the best possible solution in the circumstances that the thinker is aware of. In more everyday language, it is a way of thinking about whatever is presently occupying your mind so that you come to the best possible conclusion.

Critical Thinking is:

A way of thinking about particular things at a particular time; it is not the accumulation of facts and knowledge or something that you can learn once and then use in that form forever, such as the nine times table you learn and use in school.

The Skills We Need for Critical Thinking

The skills that we need in order to be able to think critically are varied and include observation, analysis, interpretation, reflection, evaluation, inference, explanation, problem solving, and decision making.

Specifically we need to be able to:

Think about a topic or issue in an objective and critical way.

Identify the different arguments there are in relation to a particular issue.

Evaluate a point of view to determine how strong or valid it is.

Recognise any weaknesses or negative points that there are in the evidence or argument.

Notice what implications there might be behind a statement or argument.

Provide structured reasoning and support for an argument that we wish to make.

The Critical Thinking Process

You should be aware that none of us think critically all the time.

Sometimes we think in almost any way but critically, for example when our self-control is affected by anger, grief or joy or when we are feeling just plain ‘bloody minded’.

On the other hand, the good news is that, since our critical thinking ability varies according to our current mindset, most of the time we can learn to improve our critical thinking ability by developing certain routine activities and applying them to all problems that present themselves.

Once you understand the theory of critical thinking, improving your critical thinking skills takes persistence and practice.

Try this simple exercise to help you to start thinking critically.

Think of something that someone has recently told you. Then ask yourself the following questions:

Who said it?

Someone you know? Someone in a position of authority or power? Does it matter who told you this?

What did they say?

Did they give facts or opinions? Did they provide all the facts? Did they leave anything out?

Where did they say it?

Was it in public or in private? Did other people have a chance to respond an provide an alternative account?

When did they say it?

Was it before, during or after an important event? Is timing important?

Why did they say it?

Did they explain the reasoning behind their opinion? Were they trying to make someone look good or bad?

How did they say it?

Were they happy or sad, angry or indifferent? Did they write it or say it? Could you understand what was said?

What are you Aiming to Achieve?

One of the most important aspects of critical thinking is to decide what you are aiming to achieve and then make a decision based on a range of possibilities.

Once you have clarified that aim for yourself you should use it as the starting point in all future situations requiring thought and, possibly, further decision making. Where needed, make your workmates, family or those around you aware of your intention to pursue this goal. You must then discipline yourself to keep on track until changing circumstances mean you have to revisit the start of the decision making process.

However, there are things that get in the way of simple decision making. We all carry with us a range of likes and dislikes, learnt behaviours and personal preferences developed throughout our lives; they are the hallmarks of being human. A major contribution to ensuring we think critically is to be aware of these personal characteristics, preferences and biases and make allowance for them when considering possible next steps, whether they are at the pre-action consideration stage or as part of a rethink caused by unexpected or unforeseen impediments to continued progress.

The more clearly we are aware of ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, the more likely our critical thinking will be productive.

The Benefit of Foresight

Perhaps the most important element of thinking critically is foresight.

Almost all decisions we make and implement don’t prove disastrous if we find reasons to abandon them. However, our decision making will be infinitely better and more likely to lead to success if, when we reach a tentative conclusion, we pause and consider the impact on the people and activities around us.

The elements needing consideration are generally numerous and varied. In many cases, consideration of one element from a different perspective will reveal potential dangers in pursuing our decision.

For instance, moving a business activity to a new location may improve potential output considerably but it may also lead to the loss of skilled workers if the distance moved is too great. Which of these is the more important consideration? Is there some way of lessening the conflict?

These are the sort of problems that may arise from incomplete critical thinking, a demonstration perhaps of the critical importance of good critical thinking.

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In Summary:

Critical thinking is aimed at achieving the best possible outcomes in any situation. In order to achieve this it must involve gathering and evaluating information from as many different sources possible.

Critical thinking requires a clear, often uncomfortable, assessment of your personal strengths, weaknesses and preferences and their possible impact on decisions you may make.

Critical thinking requires the development and use of foresight as far as this is possible. As Doris Day sang, “the future’s not ours to see”.

Implementing the decisions made arising from critical thinking must take into account an assessment of possible outcomes and ways of avoiding potentially negative outcomes, or at least lessening their impact.

• Critical thinking involves reviewing the results of the application of decisions made and implementing change where possible.

It might be thought that we are overextending our demands on critical thinking in expecting that it can help to construct focused meaning rather than examining the information given and the knowledge we have acquired to see if we can, if necessary, construct a meaning that will be acceptable and useful.

After all, almost no information we have available to us, either externally or internally, carries any guarantee of its life or appropriateness.  Neat step-by-step instructions may provide some sort of trellis on which our basic understanding of critical thinking can blossom but it doesn’t and cannot provide any assurance of certainty, utility or longevity.

Continue to: Critical Thinking and Fake News Critical Reading

See also: Analytical Skills Understanding and Addressing Conspiracy Theories Introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

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How to build critical thinking skills for better decision-making

It’s simple in theory, but tougher in practice – here are five tips to get you started.

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Have you heard the riddle about two coins that equal thirty cents, but one of them is not a nickel? What about the one where a surgeon says they can’t operate on their own son?

Those brain teasers tap into your critical thinking skills. But your ability to think critically isn’t just helpful for solving those random puzzles – it plays a big role in your career. 

An impressive 81% of employers say critical thinking carries a lot of weight when they’re evaluating job candidates. It ranks as the top competency companies consider when hiring recent graduates (even ahead of communication ). Plus, once you’re hired, several studies show that critical thinking skills are highly correlated with better job performance.

So what exactly are critical thinking skills? And even more importantly, how do you build and improve them? 

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the ability to evaluate facts and information, remain objective, and make a sound decision about how to move forward.

Does that sound like how you approach every decision or problem? Not so fast. Critical thinking seems simple in theory but is much tougher in practice, which helps explain why 65% of employers say their organization has a need for more critical thinking. 

In reality, critical thinking doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. In order to do it well, you need to:

• Remain open-minded and inquisitive, rather than relying on assumptions or jumping to conclusions
• Ask questions and dig deep, rather than accepting information at face value
• Keep your own biases and perceptions in check to stay as objective as possible
• Rely on your emotional intelligence to fill in the blanks and gain a more well-rounded understanding of a situation

So, critical thinking isn’t just being intelligent or analytical. In many ways, it requires you to step outside of yourself, let go of your own preconceived notions, and approach a problem or situation with curiosity and fairness.

It’s a challenge, but it’s well worth it. Critical thinking skills will help you connect ideas, make reasonable decisions, and solve complex problems.

7 critical thinking skills to help you dig deeper

Critical thinking is often labeled as a skill itself (you’ll see it bulleted as a desired trait in a variety of job descriptions). But it’s better to think of critical thinking less as a distinct skill and more as a collection or category of skills. 

To think critically, you’ll need to tap into a bunch of your other soft skills. Here are seven of the most important. 

Open-mindedness

It’s important to kick off the critical thinking process with the idea that anything is possible. The more you’re able to set aside your own suspicions, beliefs, and agenda, the better prepared you are to approach the situation with the level of inquisitiveness you need. 

That means not closing yourself off to any possibilities and allowing yourself the space to pull on every thread – yes, even the ones that seem totally implausible.

As Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D. writes in a piece for Psychology Today , “Even if an idea appears foolish, sometimes its consideration can lead to an intelligent, critically considered conclusion.” He goes on to compare the critical thinking process to brainstorming . Sometimes the “bad” ideas are what lay the foundation for the good ones. 

Open-mindedness is challenging because it requires more effort and mental bandwidth than sticking with your own perceptions. Approaching problems or situations with true impartiality often means:

• Practicing self-regulation : Giving yourself a pause between when you feel something and when you actually react or take action.
• Challenging your own biases: Acknowledging your biases and seeking feedback are two powerful ways to get a broader understanding. 

Critical thinking example

In a team meeting, your boss mentioned that your company newsletter signups have been decreasing and she wants to figure out why.

At first, you feel offended and defensive – it feels like she’s blaming you for the dip in subscribers. You recognize and rationalize that emotion before thinking about potential causes. You have a hunch about what’s happening, but you will explore all possibilities and contributions from your team members.

Observation

Observation is, of course, your ability to notice and process the details all around you (even the subtle or seemingly inconsequential ones). Critical thinking demands that you’re flexible and willing to go beyond surface-level information, and solid observation skills help you do that.

Your observations help you pick up on clues from a variety of sources and experiences, all of which help you draw a final conclusion. After all, sometimes it’s the most minuscule realization that leads you to the strongest conclusion.

Over the next week or so, you keep a close eye on your company’s website and newsletter analytics to see if numbers are in fact declining or if your boss’s concerns were just a fluke. 

Critical thinking hinges on objectivity. And, to be objective, you need to base your judgments on the facts – which you collect through research. You’ll lean on your research skills to gather as much information as possible that’s relevant to your problem or situation. 

Keep in mind that this isn’t just about the quantity of information – quality matters too. You want to find data and details from a variety of trusted sources to drill past the surface and build a deeper understanding of what’s happening. 

You dig into your email and website analytics to identify trends in bounce rates, time on page, conversions, and more. You also review recent newsletters and email promotions to understand what customers have received, look through current customer feedback, and connect with your customer support team to learn what they’re hearing in their conversations with customers.

The critical thinking process is sort of like a treasure hunt – you’ll find some nuggets that are fundamental for your final conclusion and some that might be interesting but aren’t pertinent to the problem at hand.

That’s why you need analytical skills. They’re what help you separate the wheat from the chaff, prioritize information, identify trends or themes, and draw conclusions based on the most relevant and influential facts. 

It’s easy to confuse analytical thinking with critical thinking itself, and it’s true there is a lot of overlap between the two. But analytical thinking is just a piece of critical thinking. It focuses strictly on the facts and data, while critical thinking incorporates other factors like emotions, opinions, and experiences. 

As you analyze your research, you notice that one specific webpage has contributed to a significant decline in newsletter signups. While all of the other sources have stayed fairly steady with regard to conversions, that one has sharply decreased.

You decide to move on from your other hypotheses about newsletter quality and dig deeper into the analytics. 

One of the traps of critical thinking is that it’s easy to feel like you’re never done. There’s always more information you could collect and more rabbit holes you could fall down.

But at some point, you need to accept that you’ve done your due diligence and make a decision about how to move forward. That’s where inference comes in. It’s your ability to look at the evidence and facts available to you and draw an informed conclusion based on those. 

When you’re so focused on staying objective and pursuing all possibilities, inference can feel like the antithesis of critical thinking. But ultimately, it’s your inference skills that allow you to move out of the thinking process and onto the action steps. 

You dig deeper into the analytics for the page that hasn’t been converting and notice that the sharp drop-off happened around the same time you switched email providers.

After looking more into the backend, you realize that the signup form on that page isn’t correctly connected to your newsletter platform. It seems like anybody who has signed up on that page hasn’t been fed to your email list. 

Communication

3 ways to improve your communication skills at work

If and when you identify a solution or answer, you can’t keep it close to the vest. You’ll need to use your communication skills to share your findings with the relevant stakeholders – like your boss, team members, or anybody who needs to be involved in the next steps.

Your analysis skills will come in handy here too, as they’ll help you determine what information other people need to know so you can avoid bogging them down with unnecessary details. 

In your next team meeting, you pull up the analytics and show your team the sharp drop-off as well as the missing connection between that page and your email platform. You ask the web team to reinstall and double-check that connection and you also ask a member of the marketing team to draft an apology email to the subscribers who were missed. 

Problem-solving

Critical thinking and problem-solving are two more terms that are frequently confused. After all, when you think critically, you’re often doing so with the objective of solving a problem.

The best way to understand how problem-solving and critical thinking differ is to think of problem-solving as much more narrow. You’re focused on finding a solution.

In contrast, you can use critical thinking for a variety of use cases beyond solving a problem – like answering questions or identifying opportunities for improvement. Even so, within the critical thinking process, you’ll flex your problem-solving skills when it comes time to take action. 

Once the fix is implemented, you monitor the analytics to see if subscribers continue to increase. If not (or if they increase at a slower rate than you anticipated), you’ll roll out some other tests like changing the CTA language or the placement of the subscribe form on the page.

5 ways to improve your critical thinking skills

Beyond the buzzwords: Why interpersonal skills matter at work

Think critically about critical thinking and you’ll quickly realize that it’s not as instinctive as you’d like it to be. Fortunately, your critical thinking skills are learned competencies and not inherent gifts – and that means you can improve them. Here’s how:

• Practice active listening: Active listening helps you process and understand what other people share. That’s crucial as you aim to be open-minded and inquisitive.
• Ask open-ended questions: If your critical thinking process involves collecting feedback and opinions from others, ask open-ended questions (meaning, questions that can’t be answered with “yes” or “no”). Doing so will give you more valuable information and also prevent your own biases from influencing people’s input.
• Scrutinize your sources: Figuring out what to trust and prioritize is crucial for critical thinking. Boosting your media literacy and asking more questions will help you be more discerning about what to factor in. It’s hard to strike a balance between skepticism and open-mindedness, but approaching information with questions (rather than unquestioning trust) will help you draw better conclusions. 
• Play a game: Remember those riddles we mentioned at the beginning? As trivial as they might seem, games and exercises like those can help you boost your critical thinking skills. There are plenty of critical thinking exercises you can do individually or as a team . 
• Give yourself time: Research shows that rushed decisions are often regrettable ones. That’s likely because critical thinking takes time – you can’t do it under the wire. So, for big decisions or hairy problems, give yourself enough time and breathing room to work through the process. It’s hard enough to think critically without a countdown ticking in your brain. 

Critical thinking really is critical

The ability to think critically is important, but it doesn’t come naturally to most of us. It’s just easier to stick with biases, assumptions, and surface-level information. 

But that route often leads you to rash judgments, shaky conclusions, and disappointing decisions. So here’s a conclusion we can draw without any more noodling: Even if it is more demanding on your mental resources, critical thinking is well worth the effort.

Advice, stories, and expertise about work life today.

Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking

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A few years ago, in an EdTechTeacher workshop, a teacher made a comment that stuck with me: “I want my students to be able to sit with a problem .”

This middle school science teacher found herself frustrated with her students’ frantic rush to just get the answer - assuming that only one existed. Instead, she wanted her students to develop the skills that would allow them to deeply examine a problem, to form new questions, and then to seek out novel solutions. In other words, she wanted her students to engage in critical thinking .

The challenge with teaching critical thinking is that it is really hard to define. Some view it as a component of inquiry. Others associate it primarily with the scientific method. The Oxford Dictionary defines critical thinking as “thinking critically,” but does not describe exactly what that may entail.

Professor Michael Fullan , advisor to the Ministry of Education in Ontario and Deeper Learning advocate, also associates critical thinking with problem solving and asserts that students should learn to use a variety of digital technologies to design, manage, and solve problems as well as make effective decisions (Fullan, 2013). However, I have recently found myself pondering the original question from that middle school teacher. I wanted to gain a better understanding of what skills ultimately led to that ability to engage in problem solving and decision making. Ironically, I found myself critically thinking about critical thinking and decided to do some research.

William Graham Sumner, a professor of sociology from Yale University, was one of the first scholars to examine the construct of critical thinking. In 1906, he sparked controversy within the field of sociology as he examined the idea of critical thinking through the framework of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Sumner advocated that critical thinking requires cultivation within an environment that would nurture its development. As students evolve in their thinking, they develop the habits of constantly weighing evidence, resisting bias, and viewing the world as something “open to unlimited verification and revision” (Sumner, 1906, p. 632).

At the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, scholars Michael Scriven and Richard Paul (1987) expanded on this work and defined critical thinking as the “process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” Based on this statement, critical thinking transcends content and context to play a role in reasoning, decision making, and problem solving. As such, critical thinking requires more than just the acquisition of information or the demonstration of problem solving or decision making skills. When students engage in critical thinking, they mitigate bias and preconceptions by thinking rationally, reasonably, and empathetically. By doing so, they acknowledge complexity and endeavor to examine it through logical analysis and deep inquiry (Scriven & Paul, 1987).

In 2016, the World Economic Forum published The Future of Jobs report . It projected that by 2020, the top skills valued by employers would be complex problem solving and critical thinking. More recently, the Worldwide Educating for the Future Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit argued that the education systems of the future need to help students “master a suite of adaptable interpersonal, problem-solving and critical thinking skills” (Walton, 2017, p. 4). Beyond preparing students for the workforce, the Worldwide Educating for the Futures Index intimates that students need critical thinking skills to be informed members of an increasingly complex, diverse, and global society.

As Sumner stated in 1940,

"[Students] educated in [critical thinking] cannot be stampeded by stump orators and are never deceived by dithyrambic oratory. They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens (pp. 633-634).”

Through this historical exploration of the concept of critical thinking, I confirmed one tenet that I already knew: critical thinking has been an objective of education since long before the start of the 21st century. However, it also continues to be an increasingly important skill not only to prepare students for the future of work but also for the future of society.

Fullan, M. (2013). Great to excellent: Launching the next stage of Ontario’s education agenda . Retrieved from //www.michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/13_Fullan_Great-to-Excellent.pdf

Scriven, M., & Paul, R. (1987). A statement presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987 . Retrieved June 11, 2018 from //www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766 .

Sumner, W. G. (1906). Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores and Morals . [html version]. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24253/24253-h/24253-h.htm

Walton, N. (2017). Worldwide educating for the future index . (M. Gold, Ed.) Retrieved from The Economist Intelligence Unit: http://dkf1ato8y5dsg.cloudfront.net/uploads/5/80/eiu-yidan-prize-educating-for-the-future-wp-final.pdf

The opinions expressed in EdTech Researcher are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Opinion v. Critical Thinking

Often while teaching a class I have asked: “what do you think?” Such a question has the potential to invoke some very interesting discussions, but it also has the potential to backfire. In this post, I will describe the difference between opinion and critical thinking, so you can better understand what your professors are looking for. As I reflect on some of the feedback I receive from students, I began to realize that when I ask “what do you think,” students think I am asking for their opinion , when really I am seeking to understand what it is they know about the subject matter and how they arrived at those conclusions. In other words, I want to understand their critical thinking process and stimulate class discussion.

There is a big difference.

An opinion is a view or judgement about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. Therefore, just because you have an opinion doesn’t make it correct. As a student, you may want to carefully consider what your opinions are based upon before presenting them to the class as fact. Since universities are a place for learning, if you state your point of view and do not back it up with knowledge, expect to be corrected. It isn’t personal- it’s part of the learning process.

This doesn’t mean you have to know everything. Nobody does; not even your professors. But what it does mean is that you really need to take a “not-knowing” stance, if you really don’t know something. It would be much better for you to ask a question, rather than erroneously and emphatically state something as fact. Asking informed and relevant questions is an excellent contribution to class, and will be appreciated by your professors. Unless of course they hate their job.

I’m sorry to tell you, but out in the world, people aren’t going to care about your opinions. They will care what facts you know, and how well you can organize and reason through data. Your passions and feelings may be extremely important to you, but if you think they are equally important to others then you aren’t going to get very far. Why not use your class time as a way of learning to think critically?

So the next time your professor asks “what do you think?” he or she isn’t looking for your opinion. We want to know what you know and how you think. When we correct you, it’s for your benefit. Call it tough love- but those of us who really care about our students aren’t afraid to annoy them if it’s going to make them better counselors.

In my next post, I will discuss why critical thinking skills are important for counselors.

Yours in the Joy of Knowledge,

Barbara LoFrisco

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Cognitive Bias Is the Loose Screw in Critical Thinking

Recognizing your biases enhances understanding and communication..

Posted May 17, 2021 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

• People cannot think critically unless they are aware of their cognitive biases, which can alter their perception of reality.
• Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts people take in order to process the mass of information they receive daily.
• Cognitive biases include confirmation bias, anchoring bias, bandwagon effect, and negativity bias.

When I was a kid, I was enamored of cigarette-smoking movie stars. When I was a teenager , some of my friends began to smoke; I wanted to smoke too, but my parents forbid it. I was also intimidated by the ubiquitous anti-smoking commercials I saw on television warning me that smoking causes cancer. As much as I wanted to smoke, I was afraid of it.

When I started college as a pre-med major, I also started working in a hospital emergency room. I was shocked to see that more than 90% of the nurses working there were smokers, but that was not quite enough to convince me that smoking was OK. It was the doctors: 11 of the 12 emergency room physicians I worked with were smokers. That was all the convincing I needed. If actual medical doctors thought smoking was safe, then so did I. I started smoking without concern because I had fallen prey to an authority bias , which is a type of cognitive bias. Fortunately for my health, I wised up and quit smoking 10 years later.

It's Likely You're Unaware of These Habits

Have you ever thought someone was intelligent simply because they were attractive? Have you ever dismissed a news story because it ran in a media source you didn’t like? Have you ever thought or said, “I knew that was going to happen!” in reference to a team winning, a stock going up in value, or some other unpredictable event occurring? If you replied "yes” to any of these, then you may be guilty of relying on a cognitive bias.

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of critical thinking, and how in today’s information age, no one has an excuse for living in ignorance. Since then, I recalled a huge impediment to critical thinking: cognitive bias. We are all culpable of leaning on these mental crutches, even though we don’t do it intentionally.

What Are Cognitive Biases?

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines cognitive bias as the way a particular person understands events, facts, and other people, which is based on their own particular set of beliefs and experiences and may not be reasonable or accurate.

PhilosophyTerms.com calls it a bad mental habit that gets in the way of logical thinking.

PositivePsychology.com describes it this way: “We are often presented with situations in life when we need to make a decision with imperfect information, and we unknowingly rely on prejudices or biases.”

And, according to Alleydog.com, a cognitive bias is an involuntary pattern of thinking that produces distorted perceptions of people, surroundings, and situations around us.

In brief, a cognitive bias is a shortcut to thinking. And, it’s completely understandable; the onslaught of information that we are exposed to every day necessitates some kind of time-saving method. It is simply impossible to process everything, so we make quick decisions. Most people don’t have the time to thoroughly think through everything they are told. Nevertheless, as understandable as depending on biases may be, it is still a severe deterrent to critical thinking.

Here's What to Watch Out For

Wikipedia lists 197 different cognitive biases. I am going to share with you a few of the more common ones so that in the future, you will be aware of the ones you may be using.

Confirmation bias is when you prefer to attend media and information sources that are in alignment with your current beliefs. People do this because it helps maintain their confidence and self-esteem when the information they receive supports their knowledge set. Exposing oneself to opposing views and opinions can cause cognitive dissonance and mental stress . On the other hand, exposing yourself to new information and different viewpoints helps open up new neural pathways in your brain, which will enable you to think more creatively (see my post: Surprise: Creativity Is a Skill, Not a Gift! ).

Anchoring bias occurs when you become committed or attached to the first thing you learn about a particular subject. A first impression of something or someone is a good example (see my post: Sometimes You Have to Rip the Cover Off ). Similar to anchoring is the halo effect , which is when you assume that a person’s positive or negative traits in one area will be the same in some other aspect of their personality . For example, you might think that an attractive person will also be intelligent without seeing any proof to support it.

Hindsight bias is the inclination to see some events as more predictable than they are; also known as the “I knew it all along" reaction. Examples of this bias would be believing that you knew who was going to win an election, a football or baseball game, or even a coin toss after it occurred.

Misinformation effect is when your memories of an event can become affected or influenced by information you received after the event occurred. Researchers have proven that memory is inaccurate because it is vulnerable to revision when you receive new information.

Actor-observer bias is when you attribute your actions to external influences and other people's actions to internal ones. You might think you missed a business opportunity because your car broke down, but your colleague failed to get a promotion because of incompetence.

False consensus effect is when you assume more people agree with your opinions and share your values than actually do. This happens because you tend to spend most of your time with others, such as family and friends, who actually do share beliefs similar to yours.

Availability bias occurs when you believe the information you possess is more important than it actually is. This happens when you watch or listen to media news sources that tend to run dramatic stories without sharing any balancing statistics on how rare such events may be. For example, if you see several stories on fiery plane crashes, you might start to fear flying because you assume they occur with greater frequency than they actually do.

Bandwagon effect, also known as herd mentality or groupthink , is the propensity to accept beliefs or values because many other people also hold them as well. This is a conformity bias that occurs because most people desire acceptance, connection, and belonging with others, and fear rejection if they hold opposing beliefs. Most people will not think through an opinion and will assume it is correct because so many others agree with it.

Authority bias is when you accept the opinion of an authority figure because you believe they know more than you. You might assume that they have already thought through an issue and made the right conclusion. And, because they are an authority in their field, you grant more credibility to their viewpoint than you would for anyone else. This is especially true in medicine where experts are frequently seen as infallible. An example would be an advertiser showing a doctor, wearing a lab coat, touting their product.

Negativity bias is when you pay more attention to bad news than good. This is a natural bias that dates back to humanity’s prehistoric days when noticing threats, risks, and other lethal dangers could save your life. In today’s civilized world, this bias is not as necessary (see my post Fear: Lifesaver or Manipulator ).

Illusion of control is the belief that you have more control over a situation than you actually do. An example of this is when a gambler believes he or she can influence a game of chance.

Understand More and Communicate Better

Learning these biases, and being on the alert for them when you make a decision to accept a belief or opinion, will help you become more effective at critical thinking.

Robert Wilson is a writer and humorist based in Atlanta, Georgia.

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At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

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Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts

2023 Update Peter A. Facione, Ph.D.

The late George Carlin worked “critical thinking” into one of his comedic monologue rants on the perils of trusting our lives and fortunes to the decision-making of people who were gullible, uninformed, and unreflective. Had he lived to experience the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009, he would have surely added more to his caustic but accurate assessments regarding how failing to anticipate the consequences of one’s decisions often leads to disastrous results not only for the decision maker, but for many other people as well.

After years of viewing higher education as more of a private good which benefits only the student, we are again beginning to appreciate higher education as being also a public good which benefits society. Is it not a wiser social policy to invest in the education of the future workforce, rather than to suffer the financial costs and endure the fiscal and social burdens associated with economic weakness, public health problems, crime, and avoidable poverty? Perhaps that realization, along with its obvious advantages for high level strategic decision making, is what led the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to comment on critical thinking in his commencement address to a graduating class of military officers.

Teach people to make good decisions and you have equipped them to improve their own futures and become contributing members of society, rather than burdens on society. Becoming educated and practicing good judgment does not absolutely guarantee a life of happiness, virtue, or economic success, but it surely offers a better chance at those things. And it is clearly better than enduring the consequences of making bad decisions and better than burdening friends, family, and all the rest of us with the unwanted and avoidable consequences of those poor choices.

Defining “Critical Thinking”

Yes, surely, we have all heard business executives, policy makers, civic leaders, and educators talking about critical thinking. At times we found ourselves wondering exactly what critical thinking was and why it is considered so useful and important. This essay takes a deeper look at these questions.

But rather than beginning with an abstract definition – as if critical thinking were about memorization, which is not the case – give this thought experiment a try: Imagine you were invited to a movie by a friend. But it is not a movie you want to see. So, your friend asks you why. You give your honest reason. The movie offends your sense of decency. Your friend asks you to clarify your reason by explaining what bothers you about the film. You reply that it is not the language used or the sexuality portrayed, but you find the violence in the film offensive.

Sure, that should be a good enough answer. But suppose your friend, perhaps being a bit philosophically inclined or simply curious or argumentative, pursues the matter further by asking you to define what you mean by “offensive violence.”

Take a minute and give it a try. How would you define “offensive violence” as it applies to movies? Can you write a characterization which captures what this commonly used concept contains? Take care, though, we would not want to make the definition so broad that all movie violence would be automatically “offensive.” And check to be sure your way of defining “offensive violence” fits with how the rest of the people who know and use English would understand the term. Otherwise, they will not be able to understand what you mean when you use that expression.

Did you produce a definition that works? How do you know?

What you just did with the expression “offensive violence” is very much the same as what had to be done with the expression “critical thinking.” At one level we all know what “critical thinking” means — it means good thinking, almost the opposite of illogical, irrational, thinking. But when we test our understanding further, we run into questions. For example, is critical thinking the same as creative thinking, are they different, or is one part of the other? How do critical thinking and native intelligence or scholastic aptitude relate? Does critical thinking focus on the subject matter or content that you know or on the process you use when you reason about that content?

It might not hurt at all if you formed some tentative preliminary ideas about the questions we just raised. We humans learn better when we stop frequently to reflect, rather than just plowing from the top of the page to the bottom without coming up for air.

Back to critical thinking – let us ask ourselves to generate possible examples of strong critical thinking? How about the adroit and clever questioning of Socrates or a good attorney or interviewer? Or, what about the clever investigative approaches used by police detectives and crime scene analysts? Would we not want to also include people working together to solve a problem as they consider and discuss their options? How about someone who is good at listening to all sides of a dispute, considering all the facts, and then deciding what is relevant and what is not, and then rendering a thoughtful judgment? And maybe too, someone who can summarize complex ideas clearly with fairness to all sides, or a person who can come up with the most coherent and justifiable explanation of what a passage of written material means? Or the person who can readily devise sensible alternatives to explore, but who does not become defensive about abandoning them if they do not work? And the person who can explain exactly how a particular conclusion was reached, or why certain criteria apply?

Or, considering the concept of critical thinking from the opposite direction, we might ask what the consequences of failing to use our critical thinking might be. Imagine for a moment what could happen when a person or a group of people decides important matters without pausing first to think things through.

Expert Opinion

An international group of experts was asked to try to form a consensus about the meaning of critical thinking. One of the first things they did was to ask themselves the question: Who are the best critical thinkers we know and what is it about them that leads us to consider them the best? So, who are the best critical thinkers you know? Why do you think they are strong critical thinkers? Can you draw from those examples a description that is more abstract? For example, consider effective trial lawyers, apart from how they conduct their personal lives or whether their client is guilty or innocent, just look at how the lawyers develop their cases in court. They use reasons to try to convince the judge and jury of their client’s claim of guilt or innocence. They offer evidence and evaluate the significance of the evidence presented by the opposition lawyers. They interpret testimony. They analyze and evaluate the arguments advanced by the other side.

Now, consider the example of a team of people trying to solve a problem. The team members, unlike the courtroom’s adversarial situation, try to collaborate. The members of an effective team do not compete against each other. They work together, like colleagues, for the common goal. Unless they solve the problem, none of them has won. When they find the way to solve the problem, they all have won. So, from analyzing just two examples we can generalize something especially important: critical thinking is thinking that has a purpose (proving a point, interpreting what something means, solving a problem), but critical thinking can be a collaborative, noncompetitive endeavor. And, by the way, even lawyers collaborate. They can work together on a common defense or a joint prosecution, and they can also cooperate with each other to get to the truth so that justice is done.

We will come to a more precise definition of critical thinking soon enough. But first, there is something else we can learn from paradigm examples. When were you thinking about “offensive violence” did you come up with any examples that were tough to classify? Borderline cases, as it were — an example that one person might consider offensive, but another might reasonably regard as non-offensive. Yes, well, so did we. This is going to happen with all abstract concepts. It happens with the concept of critical thinking as well. There are people of whom we would say, on certain occasions, this person is a good thinker, clear, logical, thoughtful, attentive to the facts, open to alternatives, but, wow, at other times, look out! When you get this person on such-and-such a topic, well it is all over then. You have pushed some kind of button, and the person does not want to hear what anybody else has to say. The person’s mind is made up ahead of time. New facts are pushed aside. No other point of view is tolerated.

Do you know any people that might fit that general description?

Now, formulate a list of cases — people that are clearly strong critical thinkers and clearly weak critical thinkers and some who are on the borderline. Considering all those cases, what is it about them that led you to decide which were which? Suggestion: What can the strong critical thinkers do (what mental abilities do they have), that the weak critical thinkers have trouble doing? What skills or approaches do the strong critical thinkers habitually seem to exhibit which the weak critical thinkers seem not to possess?

Core Critical Thinking Skills

Above we suggested you look for a list of mental skills and habits of mind, the experts, when faced with the same problem you are working on, refer to their lists as including cognitive skills and dispositions .

Quoting from the consensus statement of the national panel of experts: interpretation is “to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules, procedures, or criteria.” [1] Interpretation includes the sub-skills of categorization, decoding significance, and clarifying meaning. Can you think of examples of interpretation? How about recognizing a problem and describing it without bias? How about reading a person’s intentions in the expression on her face; distinguishing a main idea from subordinate ideas in a text; constructing a tentative categorization or way of organizing something you are studying; paraphrasing someone’s ideas in your own words; or, clarifying what a sign, chart or graph means? What about identifying an author’s purpose, theme, or point of view? How about what you did above when you clarified what “offensive violence” meant?

Again, from the experts: analysis is “to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions.” The experts include examining ideas, detecting arguments, and analyzing arguments as sub-skills of analysis. Again, can you come up with some examples of analysis? What about identifying the similarities and differences between two approaches to the solution of a given problem? What about picking out the main claim made in a newspaper editorial and tracing back the reasons the editor offers in support of that claim? Or, what about identifying unstated assumptions; constructing a way to represent a main conclusion and the reasons given to support or criticize it; sketching the relationship of sentences or paragraphs to each other and to the main purpose of the passage? What about graphically organizing this essay, in your own way, knowing that its purpose is to give a preliminary idea about what critical thinking means?

The experts define evaluation as meaning “to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.” Your examples? How about judging an author’s or speaker’s credibility, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of alternative interpretations, determining the credibility of a source of information, judging if two statements contradict each other, or judging if the evidence at hand supports the conclusion being drawn? Among the examples the experts propose are these: “recognizing the factors which make a person a credible witness regarding a given event or a credible authority with regard to a given topic,” “judging if an argument’s conclusion follows either with certainty or with a high level of confidence from its premises,” “judging the logical strength of arguments based on hypothetical situations,” “judging if a given argument is relevant or applicable or has implications for the situation at hand.”

Do the people you regard as strong critical thinkers have the three cognitive skills described so far? Are they good at interpretation, analysis, and evaluation? What about the next three? And your examples of weak critical thinkers, are they lacking in these cognitive skills? All, or just some?

To the experts, inference means “to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to reason to the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation.” As sub-skills of inference the experts list querying evidence, conjecturing alternatives, and drawing conclusions. Can you think of some examples of inference? You might suggest things like seeing the implications of the position someone is advocating. Or drawing out or constructing meaning from the elements in a reading. You may suggest predicting what will happen next based on what is known about the forces at work in a given situation. Or formulating a synthesis of related ideas into a coherent perspective. How about this: after judging that it would be useful to you to resolve a given uncertainty, developing a workable plan to gather that information? Or, when faced with a problem, developing a set of options for addressing it. What about conducting a controlled experiment scientifically and applying the proper statistical methods to attempt to confirm or disconfirm an empirical hypothesis?

Beyond being able to interpret, analyze, evaluate, and infer, strong critical thinkers can do two more things. They can explain what they think and how they arrived at that judgment. And they can apply their powers of critical thinking to themselves and improve on their previous opinions. These two skills are called “explanation” and “self-regulation.”

The experts define explanation as being able to present in a cogent and coherent way the results of one’s reasoning. This means to be able to give someone a full look at the big picture: both “to state and to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one’s results were based; and to present one’s reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.” The sub-skills under explanation are describing methods and results, justifying procedures, proposing, and defending with good reasons one’s causal and conceptual explanations of events or points of view, and presenting full and well-reasoned, arguments in the context of seeking the best understandings possible. Your examples first, please… Here are some more: to construct a chart which organizes one’s findings, to write down for future reference your current thinking on some important and complex matter, to cite the standards and contextual factors used to judge the quality of an interpretation of a text, to state research results and describe the methods and criteria used to achieve those results, to appeal to established criteria as a way of showing the reasonableness of a given judgment, to design a graphic display which accurately represents the subordinate and super-ordinate relationship among concepts or ideas, to cite the evidence that led you to accept or reject an author’s position on an issue, to list the factors that were considered in assigning a final course grade.

Maybe the most remarkable cognitive skill of all, however, is this next one. This one is remarkable because it allows strong critical thinkers to improve their own thinking. In a sense this is critical thinking applied to itself. Because of that some people want to call this “meta-cognition,” meaning it raises thinking to another level. But “another level” really does not fully capture it, because at that next level up what self-regulation does is look back at all the dimensions of critical thinking and double check itself. Self-regulation is like a recursive function in mathematical terms, which means it can apply to everything, including itself. You can monitor and correct an interpretation you offered. You can examine and correct an inference you have drawn. You can review and reformulate one of your own explanations. You can even examine and correct your ability to examine and correct yourself! How? It is as simple as stepping back and saying to yourself, “How am I doing? Have I missed anything important? Let me double check before I go further.”

The experts define self-regulation to mean “self-consciously to monitor one’s cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis, and evaluation to one’s own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting either one’s reasoning or one’s results.” The two sub-skills here are self-examination and self-correction. Examples? Easy — to examine your views on a controversial issue with sensitivity to the possible influences of your personal biases or self-interest, to check yourself when listening to a speaker in order to be sure you are understanding what the person is really saying without introducing your own ideas, to monitor how well you seem to be understanding or comprehending what you are reading or experiencing, to remind yourself to separate your personal opinions and assumptions from those of the author of a passage or text, to double check yourself by recalculating the figures, to vary your reading speed and method mindful of the type of material and your purpose for reading, to reconsider your interpretation or judgment in view of further analysis of the facts of the case, to revise your answers in view of the errors you discovered in your work, to change your conclusion in view of the realization that you had misjudged the importance of certain factors when coming to your earlier decision. [2]

The Delphi Research Method

The panel of experts we keep referring to included forty-six men and women from throughout the United States and Canada. They represented many different scholarly disciplines in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and education. They participated in a research project that lasted two years and was conducted on behalf of the American Philosophical Association. Their work was published under the title Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction . The executive summary is available from www.insightassessment.com

You might be wondering how such a large group of people could collaborate on this project over that long a period and at those distances and still come to a consensus. Good question. Remember we are talking the days before e-mail.

Not only did the group have to rely on snail mail during their two-year collaboration; they used a method of interaction, known as the Delphi Method, which was developed precisely to enable experts to think effectively about something over large spans of distance and time. In the Delphi Method a central investigator organizes the group and feeds them an initial question. [In this case it had to do with how college level critical thinking should be defined so that people teaching at that level would know which skills and dispositions to cultivate in their students.] The central investigator receives all responses, summarizes them, and transmits them back to all the panelists for reactions, replies, and additional questions.

Wait a minute! These are all well-known experts, so what do you do if people disagree? And what about the possible influence of a big-name person? Good points. First, the central investigator takes precautions to remove names so that the panelists are not told who said what. They know who is on the panel, of course. But that is as far as it goes. After that each experts’ argument must stand on its own merits. Second, an expert is only as good as the arguments she or he gives. So, the central investigator summarizes the arguments and lets the panelists decide if they accept them or not. When consensus appears to be at hand, the central investigator proposes this and asks if people agree. If not, then points of disagreement among the experts are registered. We want to share with you one important example of each of these. First, we will describe the expert consensus view of the dispositions which are vital to strong critical thinking. Then we will note a point of separation among the experts.

The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking

What kind of a person would be apt to use their critical thinking skills? The experts poetically describe such a person as having “a critical spirit.” Having a critical spirit does not mean that the person is always negative and hypercritical of everyone and everything.

The experts use the metaphorical phrase critical spirit in a positive sense. By it they mean “a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind, a zealous dedication to reason, and a hunger or eagerness for reliable information. ”

Almost sounds like Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor or Sherlock Holmes The kind of person being described here is the kind that always wants to ask “Why?” or “How?” or “What happens if?”. The one key difference, however, is that in fiction Sherlock always solves the mystery, while in the real world there is no guarantee. Critical thinking is about how you approach problems, questions, issues. It is the best way we know of to get to the truth. But! There still are no guarantees — no answers in the back of the book of real life. Does this characterization, that strong critical thinkers possess a “critical spirit, a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind…” fit with your examples of people you would call strong critical thinkers?

But you might say, I know people who have skills but do not use them. We cannot call someone a strong critical thinker just because she or he has these cognitive skills, however important they might be, because what if they just do not bother to apply them?

One response is to say that it is hard to imagine an accomplished dancer who never dances. After working to develop those skills it seems such a shame to let them grow weak with lack of practice. But dancers get tired. And they surrender to the stiffness of age or the fear of injury. In the case of critical thinking skills, we might argue that not using them once you have them is hard to imagine. It’s hard to imagine a person deciding not to think.

Considered as a form of thoughtful judgment or reflective decision-making, in a very real sense critical thinking is pervasive . There is hardly a time or a place where it would not seem to be of potential value. As long as people have purposes in mind and wish to judge how to accomplish them, as long as people wonder what is true and what is not, what to believe and what to reject, strong critical thinking is going to be necessary.

And yet weird things happen, so it is probably true that some people might let their thinking skills grow dull. It is easier to imagine times when people are just too tired, too lax, or too frightened. But imagine it you can, Young Skywalker, so there must be more to critical thinking than just the list of cognitive skills. Human beings are more than thinking machines. And this brings us back to those all-important attitudes which the experts called “dispositions.”

The experts were persuaded that critical thinking is a pervasive and purposeful human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker can be characterized not merely by her or his cognitive skills but also by how she or he approaches life and living in general. This is a bold claim. Critical thinking goes way beyond the classroom. In fact, many of the experts fear that some of the things people experience in school are harmful to the development and cultivation of strong critical thinking. Critical thinking came before schooling was ever invented; it lies at the very roots of civilization. It is a cornerstone in the journey humankind is taking from beastly savagery to global sensitivity. Consider what life would be like without the things on this list and we think you will understand.

The approaches to life and living which characterize critical thinking include:

* inquisitiveness regarding a wide range of issues,

* concern to become and remain well-informed,

* alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking,

* trust in the processes of reasoned inquiry,

* self-confidence in one’s own abilities to reason,

* open-mindedness regarding divergent world views,

* flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions

* understanding of the opinions of other people,

* fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning,

* honesty in facing one’s own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, or egocentric tendencies,

* prudence in suspending, making, or altering judgments,

* willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted.

What would someone be like who lacked those dispositions?

It might be someone who does not care about much of anything, is not interested in the facts, prefers not to think, mistrusts reasoning as a way of finding things out or solving problems, holds his or her own reasoning abilities in low esteem, is close-minded, inflexible, insensitive, cannot understand what others think, is unfair when it comes to judging the quality of arguments, denies his or her own biases, jumps to conclusions or delays too long in making judgments, and never is willing to reconsider an opinion. Not someone prudent people would want to ask to manage their investments!

The experts went beyond approaches to life and living in general to emphasize that strong critical thinkers can also be described in terms of how they approach specific issues, questions, or problems. The experts said you would find these sorts of characteristics:

* clarity in stating the question or concern,

* orderliness in working with complexity,

* diligence in seeking relevant information,

* reasonableness in selecting and applying criteria,

* care in focusing attention on the concern at hand,

* persistence though difficulties are encountered,

* precision to the degree permitted by the subject and the circumstances.

So, how would a weak critical thinker approach specific problems or issues? Obviously, by being muddle-headed about what he or she is doing, disorganized and overly simplistic, spotty about getting the facts, apt to apply unreasonable criteria, easily distracted, ready to give up at the least hint of difficulty, intent on a solution that is more detailed than is possible, or being satisfied with an overly generalized and uselessly vague response. Remind you of anyone you know?

Someone positively disposed toward using critical thinking would probably agree with statements like these:

“I hate talk shows where people shout their opinions but never give any reasons at all.”“Figuring out what people really mean by what they say is important to me.”

“I always do better in jobs where I’m expected to think things out for myself.”

“I hold off making decisions until I have thought through my options.”

“Rather than relying on someone else’s notes, I prefer to read the material myself.”

“I try to see the merit in another’s opinion, even if I reject it later.”

“Even if a problem is tougher than I expected, I will keep working on it.”

“Making intelligent decisions is more important than winning arguments.”

A person disposed to be averse or hostile toward using critical thinking would probably disagree with the statements above but be likely to agree with these:

“I prefer jobs where the supervisor says exactly what to do and exactly how to do it.”“No matter how complex the problem, you can bet there will be a simple solution.”

“I don’t waste time looking things up.”

“I hate when teachers discuss problems instead of just giving the answers.”

“If my belief is truly sincere, evidence to the contrary is irrelevant.”

“Selling an idea is like selling cars, you say whatever works.”

We used the expression “strong critical thinker” to contrast with the expression “weak critical thinker.” But you will find people who drop the adjective “strong” (or “good”) and just say that someone is a “critical thinker” or not. It is like saying that a soccer (European “football”) player is a “defender” or “not a defender”, instead of saying the player’s skills at playing defense are strong or weak. People use the word “defender” in place of the phrase “is good at playing defense.” Similarly, people use “critical thinker” in place of “is a strong critical thinker” or “has strong critical thinking skills.” This is not only a helpful conversational shortcut, it suggests that to many people “critical thinker” has a laudatory sense. The word can be used to praise someone at the same time that it identifies the person, as in “Look at that play. That’s what I call a defender!”

“If we were compelled to make a choice between these personal attributes and knowledge about the principles of logical reasoning together with some degree of technical skill in manipulating special logical processes, we should decide for the former.”

John Dewey, How We Think , 1909. Republished as How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educational Process . D. C. Heath Publishing. Lexington, MA. 1933.

We said the experts did not come to full agreement on something. That thing has to do with the concept of a “strong critical thinker.” This time the emphasis is on the word “good” because of the crucial ambiguity it contains. A person can be good at critical thinking, meaning that the person can have the appropriate dispositions and be adept at the cognitive processes, while still not being a good (in the moral sense) critical thinker. For example, a person can be adept at developing arguments and then, unethically, use this skill to mislead and exploit a gullible person, perpetrate a fraud, or deliberately confuse and confound, and frustrate a project.

The experts were faced with an interesting problem. Some, a minority, would prefer to think that critical thinking, by its very nature, is inconsistent with the kinds of unethical and deliberately counterproductive examples given. They find it hard to imagine a person who was good at critical thinking not also being good in the broader personal and social sense. In other words, if a person were “really” a “strong critical thinker” in the procedural sense and if the person had all the appropriate dispositions, then the person simply would not do those kinds of exploitive and aggravating things.

What We All Need Most Right Now

The large majority, however, hold the opposite judgment.

The majority are firm in the view that strong critical thinking has nothing to do with any given set of political or religious tenets, ethical values, cultural mores, orthodoxies, or ideologies of any kind. Rather, the commitment one makes as a strong critical thinker is to always seek the truth with objectivity, integrity, and fair-mindedness. Most experts maintain that critical thinking conceived of as we have described it above, is, regrettably, consistent with abusing one’s knowledge, skills, or power. There have been people with superior thinking skills and strong habits of mind who, unfortunately, have used their talents for ruthless, horrific, and immoral purposes. Would that it was not so! Would that experience, knowledge, mental horsepower, and ethical virtues were all the same. But from the time of Socrates, if not thousands of years before that, humans have known that many of us have one or more of these without having the full set.

Any tool, any approach to situations, can go either way, ethically speaking, depending on the character, integrity, and principles of the persons who possess them. So, in the final analysis most experts maintained that we cannot say a person is not thinking critically simply because we disapprove ethically of what the person is doing. The majority concluded that, “what ‘critical thinking’ means, why it is of value, and the ethics of its use are best regarded as three distinct concerns.”

Perhaps this realization forms part of the basis for why people these days are demanding a broader range of learning outcomes from our schools and colleges. “Knowledge and skills,” the staples of the educational philosophy of the mid-twentieth century, are not sufficient. We must look to a broader set of outcomes including habits of mind and dispositions, such as civic engagement, concern for the common good, and social responsibility.

“Thinking” in Popular Culture

We have said so many good things about critical thinking that you might have the impression that “critical thinking” and “good thinking” mean the same thing. But that is not what the experts said. They see critical thinking as making up part of what we mean by good thinking, but not as being the only kind of good thinking. For example, they would have included creative thinking as part of good thinking.

Creative or innovative thinking is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things. The products of creative thought include some obvious things like music, poetry, dance, dramatic literature, inventions, and technical innovations. But there are some not so obvious examples as well, such as ways of putting a question that expand the horizons of viable solutions, or ways of conceiving of relationships which challenge presuppositions and lead one to see the world in imaginative and different ways.

The experts working on the concept of critical thinking wisely left open the entire question of what the other forms good thinking might take. Creative thinking is only one example. There is a kind of purposive, kinetic thinking that instantly coordinates movement and intention as, for example, when an athlete dribbles a soccer ball down the field during a match. There is a kind of meditative thinking which may lead to a sense of inner peace or to profound insights about human existence. In contrast, there is a kind of hyper-alert, instinctive thinking needed by soldiers in battle. In the context of popular culture, one finds people proposing all kinds of thinking or this kind of intelligence or that kind of intelligence. Sometimes it is hard to sort out science from pseudo-science – the kernel of enduring truth from the latest cocktail party banter.

“Thinking” in Cognitive Science

Theories emerging from more scientific studies of human thinking and decision-making in recent years propose that thinking is more integrated and less dualistic than the notions in popular culture suggest. We should be cautious about proposals suggesting oversimplified ways of understanding how humans think. We should avoid harsh, rigid dichotomies such as “reason vs. emotion,” “intuitive vs. linear,” “creativity vs. criticality,” “right brained vs. left brained,” “as on Mars vs. as on Venus.”

There is often a kernel of wisdom in popular beliefs, and perhaps that gem this time is the realization that sometimes we decide things very quickly almost as spontaneous, intuitive, reactions to the situation at hand. Many accidents on the freeways of this nation are avoided precisely because drivers can see and react to dangerous situations so quickly. Many good decisions which feel intuitive are really the fruit of expertise. Decisions good drivers make in those moments of crisis, just like the decisions which practiced athletes make in the flow of a game or the decisions that a gifted teacher makes as she or he interacts with students, are borne of expertise, training, and practice.

Recent integrative models of human decision-making propose that the thinking processes of our species is not best described as a conflictive duality as in “intuitive vs. reflective” but rather an integrative functioning of two mutually supportive systems “intuitive and reflective.” These two systems of thinking are present in all of us and can act in parallel to process cognitively the matters over which we are deciding.

One system is more intuitive, reactive, quick and holistic. So as not to confuse things with the notions of thinking in popular culture, cognitive scientists often name this system, “System 1.” The other (yes, you can guess its name) is more deliberative, reflective, computational and rule governed. You are right, it is called “ System 2 .”

In System 1 thinking, one relies heavily on several heuristics (cognitive maneuvers), key situational characteristics, readily associated ideas, and vivid memories to arrive quickly and confidently at a judgment. System 1 thinking is particularly helpful in familiar situations when time is short and immediate action is required.

While System 1 is functioning, another powerful system is also at work, that is, unless we shut it down by abusing alcohol or drugs, or with fear or indifference. Called “ System 2 ,” this is our more reflective thinking system. It is useful for making judgments when you find yourself in unfamiliar situations and have more time to figure things out. It allows us to process abstract concepts, to deliberate, to plan, to consider options carefully, to review and revise our work in the light of relevant guidelines or standards or rules of procedure. While System 2 decisions are also influenced by the correct or incorrect application of heuristic maneuvers, this is the system which relies on well-articulated reasons and more fully developed evidence. It is reasoning based on what we have learned through careful analysis, evaluation, explanation, and self-correction. This is the system which values intellectual honesty, analytically anticipating what happens next, maturity of judgment, fair-mindedness, elimination of biases, and truth-seeking. This is the system which we rely on to carefully think trough complex, novel, high-stakes, and highly integrative problems. [3]

Educators urge us to improve our critical thinking skills and to reinforce our disposition to use those skills because that is perhaps the best way to develop and refine our System 2 reasoning.

Cognitive heuristics are thinking maneuvers which, at times, appear to be almost hardwired into our species. They influence both systems of thinking, the intuitive thinking of System 1 and the reflective reasoning of System 2. Five heuristics often seem to be operating more frequently in our System 1 reasoning are known as availability, affect, association, simulation, and similarity .

Availability , the coming to mind of a story or vivid memory of something that happened to you or to someone close to you, inclines a person to make inaccurate estimates of the likelihood of that thing’s happening again. People tell stories of things that happened to themselves or their friends all the time as a way of explaining their own decisions. The stories may not be scientifically representative, the events may be mistaken, misunderstood, or misinterpreted. But all that aside, the power of the story is to guide, often in a good way, the decision toward one choice rather than another.

The Affect heuristic operates when you have an immediate positive or a negative reaction to some idea, proposal, person, object, whatever. Sometimes called a “gut reaction” this affective response sets up an initial orientation in us, positive or negative, toward the object. It takes a lot of System 2 reasoning to overcome a powerful affective response to an idea, but it can be done. And at times it should be, because there is no guarantee that your gut reaction is always right.

The Association heuristic is operating when one word or idea reminds us of something else. For example, some people associate the word “cancer” with “death.” Some associate “sunshine” with “happiness.” These kinds of associational reasoning responses can be helpful at times, as for example if associating cancer with death leads you not to smoke and to go in for regular checkups. At other times the same association may influence a person to make an unwise decision, as for example if associating “cancer” with “death” were to lead you to be so fearful and pessimistic that you do not seek diagnosis and treatment of a worrisome cancer symptom until it was really too late to do anything.

The Simulation heuristic works when you are imagining how various scenarios will unfold. People often imagine how a conversation will go, or how they will be treated by someone else when they meet the person, or what their friends or boss or lover will say and do when they must address some difficult issue. These simulations, like movies in our heads, help us prepare and do a better job when the difficult moment arrives. But they can also lead us to have mistaken expectations. People may not respond as we imagined, things may go much differently. Our preparations may fail us because the ease of our simulation misled us into thinking that things would have to go as we had imagined them. And they did not.

The Similarity heuristic operates when we notice some way in which we are like someone else and infer that what happened to that person is therefore more likely to happen to us. The similarity heuristic functions much like an analogical argument or metaphorical model. The similarity we focus on might be fundamental and relevant, which would make the inference more warranted. For example, the boss fired your coworker for missing sales targets, and you draw the reasonable conclusion that if you miss your sales target, you will be fired too. Or the similarity that comes to mind might be superficial or not connected with the outcome, which would make the inference unwarranted. For example, you see a TV commercial showing trim-figured young people enjoying fattening fast foods and infer that because you are young too you can indulge your cravings for fast foods without gaining a lot of excess unsightly poundage.

Heuristics and biases often appearing to be somewhat more associated with System 2 thinking include: satisficing, risk/loss aversion, anchoring with adjustment, and the illusion of control.

CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS MAP ON TO LEADERSHIP DECISION MAKING

Successful professionals with leadership responsibilities, like those in business or the military, apply all their critical thinking skills to solve problems and to make sound decisions. At the risk of oversimplifying all the ways that our critical thinking intersects with problem solving and leadership decision making, here are some of the more obvious connecting points:

• Analyze the strategic environment, identify its elements and their relationships
• Interpret events and other elements in the strategic environment for signs of risk, opportunity, weakness, advantage
• Infer , given what is known with precision and accuracy within the strategic environment, the logical and most predictable consequences of various courses of action
• Infer , given the range of uncertainty and risk in the strategic environment, the full range of the possible and probable consequences of each possible course of action
• Evaluate anticipated results for positive and negative impacts
• Evaluate risks, opportunities, options, consequences
• Explain the rationale (evidence, methodology, criteria, theoretical assumptions, and context) for deciding on the integrated strategic objectives and for the planning and action parameters that compose the strategy
• Double Check Everything: At every step review one’s own thinking and make necessary corrections.

© 2013 Measured Reasons LLC, Hermosa Beach, CA. From Jan 2013 briefing “Critical and Creative Thinking” for Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Enlisted Academy, MacDill AFB.

Satisficing occurs as we consider our alternatives. When we come to one which is good enough to fulfill our objectives, we often regard ourselves as having completed our deliberations. We satisficed. And why not? The choice is, after all, good enough. It may not be perfect, it may not be optimal, it may not even be the best among the options available. But it is good enough. Time to decide and move forward.

The running mate of satisficing is temporizing. Temporizing is deciding that the option which we have come to is “good enough for now.” We often move through life satisficing and temporizing. At times we look back on our situations and wonder why it is that we have settled for far less than we might have. If we had only studied harder, worked out a little more, taken better care of ourselves and our relationships, perhaps we would not be living as we are now. But, at the time each of the decisions along the way was “good enough for the time being.”

We are by nature a species that is averse to risk and loss . We often make decisions based on what we are too worried about losing, rather than based on what we might gain. This works out to be a rather serviceable approach in many circumstances. People do not want to lose control, they do not want to lose their freedom, they do not want to lose their lives, their families, their jobs, their possessions. High stakes gambling is best left to those who can afford to lose the money. Las Vegas did not build all those multi-million-dollar casino hotels because vacationers are winning all the time! And so, in real life, we take precautions. We avoid unnecessary risks. The odds may not be stacked against us, but the consequences of losing at times are so great that we would prefer to forego the possibilities of gain in order not to lose what we have. And yet, on occasion this can be a most unfortunate decision too. History has shown time and time again that businesses which avoid risks often are unable to compete successfully with those willing to move more boldly into new markets or into new product lines.

Any heuristic is only a maneuver, perhaps a shortcut or impulse to think or act in one way rather than another, but certainly not a failsafe rule. It may work out well much of the time to rely on the heuristic, but it will not work out for the best all the time.

For example, people with something to lose tend toward conservative choices politically as well as economically. Nothing wrong with that necessarily. Just an observation about the influence of Loss Aversion heuristic on actual decision making. We are more apt to endure the status quo, even as it slowly deteriorates, than we are to call for “radical” change. Regrettably, however, when the call for change comes, it often requires a far greater upheaval to make the necessary transformations, or, on occasion, the situation has deteriorated beyond the point of no return. In those situations, we find ourselves wondering why we waited so long before doing something.

The heuristic known as Anchoring with Adjustment is operative when we find ourselves making evaluative judgments. The natural thing for us to do is to locate or anchor our evaluation at some point along whatever scale we are using. For example, a professor says that the student’s paper is a C+. Then, as other information comes our way, we may adjust that judgment. The professor, for example, may decide that the paper is as good as some others that were given a B-, and so adjust the grade upward. The interesting thing about this heuristic is that we do not normally start over with a fresh evaluation. We have dropped anchor, and we may drag it upward or downward a bit, but we do not pull it off the bottom of the sea to relocate our evaluation. First impressions, as the saying goes, cannot be undone. The good thing about this heuristic is that it permits us to move on. We have done the evaluation; there are other papers to grade, other projects to do, other things in life that need attention. We could not endure long if we had to constantly reevaluate everything anew. The unfortunate thing about this heuristic is that we sometimes drop anchor in the wrong place; we have a tough time giving people a second chance at making a good first impression.

The heuristic known as Illusion of Control is evident in many situations. Many of us overestimate our abilities to control what will happen. We make plans for how we are going to do this or that, say this or that, manipulate the situation this way or that way, share or not share this information or that possibility, all the time thinking that somehow our petty plans will enable us to control what happens. We function as if others are dancing on the ends of the strings that we are pulling, when the influences our words or actions have on future events may be quite negligible. At times we do have some measure of control. For example, we may exercise, not smoke, and watch our diet to be more fit and healthy. We are careful not to drink if we are planning to drive so that we reduce the risks of being involved in a traffic accident. But at times we simply are mistaken about our ability to exercise full control over a situation. Sadly, we might become ill even if we do work hard to take care of ourselves. Or we may be involved in an accident even if we are sober. Our business may fail even if we work hard to make it a success. We may not do as well on an exam as we might hope even if we study hard.

Related to the Illusion of Control heuristic is the tendency to misconstrue our personal influence or responsibility for past events. This is called Hindsight Bias. We may overestimate the influence our actions have had on events when things go right, or we may underestimate our responsibility or culpability when things go wrong. We have all heard people bragging about how they did this and how they did that and, as a result, such and such wonderful things happened. We made these great plans and look at how well our business did financially. Which may be true when the economy is strong but not when the economy is failing. It is not clear how much of that success came from the planning and how much came from the general business environment. Or, we have all been in the room when it was time to own up for something that went wrong and thought to ourselves, hey, I may have had some part in this, but it was not entirely my fault. “It was not my fault the children were late for school! Hey, I was dressed and ready to go at the regular time.” As if seeing that the family was running late, I had no responsibility to take some initiative and help.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome.”

Albert Einstein

Research on our shared heuristic patterns of decision-making does not aim to evaluate these patterns as necessarily good or bad patterns of thinking. I fear that my wording of them may not have been as entirely neutral and descriptive as perhaps it should have been. In truth, reliance on heuristics can be an efficient way of deciding things, given how complicated our lives are. We cannot devote maximal cognitive resources to every single decision we make.

Those of us who study these heuristic thinking phenomena are simply trying to document how we humans do think. There are many useful purposes for doing this. For example, if we find that people repeatedly make a given kind of mistake when thinking about a commonly experienced problem, then we might find ways to intervene and to help ourselves not repeat that error repeatedly.

This research on the actual patterns of thinking used by individuals and by groups might prove particularly valuable to those who seek interventions which could improve how we make our own heath care decisions, how we make business decisions, how we lead teams of people to work more effectively in collaborative settings, and the like.

Popular culture offers one other myth about decision-making which is worth questioning. And that is the belief that when we make reflective decisions, we carefully weigh each of our options, giving due consideration to all of them in turn, before deciding which we will adopt. Although perhaps it should be, research on human decision-making shows that this simply is not what happens. [4] When seeking to explain how people decide on an option with such conviction that they stick to their decision over time and with such confidence that they act on that decision, the concept that what we do is build a Dominance Structure has been put forth.

In a nutshell this theory suggests that when we settle on a particular option which is good enough, we tend to elevate its merits and diminish its flaws relative to the other options. We raise it up in our minds until it becomes for us the dominant option. In this way, as our decision takes shape, we gain confidence in our choice and we feel justified in dismissing the other options, even though the objective distance between any of them and our dominant option may not be very great at all. But we become invested in our dominant option to the extent that we can put the other possibilities aside and act based on our choice. In fact, it comes to dominate the other options in our minds so much that we can sustain our decision to act over time, rather than going back to re-evaluate or reconsider constantly. Understanding the natural phenomenon of dominance structuring can help us appreciate why it can be so difficult for us to get others to change their minds, or why it seems that our reasons for our decisions are so much better than any of the objections which others might make to our decisions. This is not to say that we are right or wrong. Rather, this is only to observe that human beings are capable of unconsciously building up defenses around their choices which can result in the warranted or unwarranted confidence to act based on those choices.

Realizing the power of dominance structuring, one can only be more committed to the importance of education and critical thinking. We should do all that we can to inform ourselves fully and to reflect carefully on our choices before we make them, because we are, after all, human and we are as likely as the next person to believe that we are right and they are wrong once the dominance structure begins to be erected. Breaking through that to fix bad decisions, which is possible, can be much harder than getting things right in the first place.

There are more heuristics than only those mentioned above. There is more to learn about dominance structuring as it occurs in groups as well as in individuals, and how to mitigate the problems which may arise by prematurely settling on a “good enough” option, or about how to craft educational programs or interventions which help people be more effective in their System 1 and System 2 thinking. There is much to learn about human thinking and how to optimize it in individuals of different ages; how to optimize the thinking of groups of peers and groups where organizational hierarchies influence interpersonal dynamics. And, happily, there is a lot we know today about human thinking and decision-making that we did not know a few years ago.

Why critical thinking?

Let us start with you first. Why would critical thinking be of value to you to have the cognitive skills of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation?

Apart from, or maybe in light of, what we said at the beginning of this essay about the utility of positive critical thinking and about the problems that failures of critical thinking contribute to, why would it be of value to you to learn to approach life and to approach specific concerns with the critical thinking dispositions listed above? Would you have greater success in your work? Would you get better grades?

The answer to the grades question, scientifically speaking, is very possibly Yes! A study of over 1100 college students shows that scores on a college level critical thinking skills test significantly correlated with college GPA. [5] It has also been shown that critical thinking skills can be learned, which suggests that as one learns them one’s GPA might well improve. In further support of this hypothesis is the significant correlation between critical thinking and reading comprehension. Improvements in one are paralleled by improvements in the other. Now if you can read better and think better, you probably will do better in your classes, learn more, and get higher grades. It is, to say the least, very plausible.

Learning, Critical Thinking, and Our Nation’s Future

“The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning… nations that want high incomes and full employment must develop policies that emphasize the acquisition of knowledge and skills by everyone, not just a select few.”

Ray Marshall & Marc Tucker, Thinking For A Living: Education And The Wealth of Nations , Basic Books. New York. 1992.

But what a limited benefit — better grades. Who really cares in the long run? Two years after college, five years out, what does GPA really mean? These days a college level technical and professional program has a half-life of about four years, which means that the technical content is expanding so fast and changing so much that in about four years after graduation your professional training will be in serious need of renewal. So, if the only thing a college is good for is to get the entry level training and the credential needed for a particular job, then college would be a time-limited value.

The APA Delphi Report, Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction 1990 ERIC Doc. NO.: ED 315423

Is that the whole story? A job is a good thing, but is that what a college education is all about? Just getting started in a job? Maybe some cannot see its further value, but many do. A main purpose, if not the main purpose, of the collegiate experience, at either the two-year or the four-year level, is to achieve what people have called a “liberal education.” Not liberal in the sense of a smattering of this and that for no particular purpose except to fulfill the unit requirement. But liberal in the sense of “liberating.” And who is being liberated? You! Liberated from a kind of slavery. But from whom?

From professors. From dependence on professors so that they no longer stand as infallible authorities delivering opinions beyond our capacity to challenge, question, and dissent. In fact, this is exactly what the professors want. They want their students to excel on their own, to go beyond what is currently known, to make their own contributions to knowledge and to society. [Being a professor is a curious job — the more effective you are as a teacher, less your students require your aid in learning.]

Liberal education is about learning to learn, which means learning to think for yourself on your own and in collaboration with others.

Liberal education leads us away from naive acceptance of authority, above self-defeating relativism, and beyond ambiguous contextualism. It culminates in principled reflective judgment. Learning critical thinking, cultivating the critical spirit, is not just a means to this end, it is part of the goal itself. People who are weak critical thinkers, who lack the dispositions and skills described, cannot be said to be liberally educated, regardless of the academic degrees they may hold.

Yes, there is much more to a liberal education than critical thinking. There is an understanding of the methods, principles, theories, and ways of achieving knowledge which are proper to the different intellectual realms. There is an encounter with the cultural, artistic, and spiritual dimensions of life. There is the evolution of one’s decision making to the level of principled integrity and concern for the common good and social justice. There is the realization of the ways all our lives are shaped by global as well as local political, social, psychological, economic, environmental, and physical forces. There is the growth that comes from the interaction with cultures, languages, ethnic groups, religions, nationalities, and social classes other than one’s own. There is the refinement of one’s humane sensibilities through reflection on the recurring questions of human existence, meaning, love, life, and death. There is the sensitivity, appreciation, and critical appraisal of all that is good and all that is bad in the human condition. As the mind awakens and matures, and the proper nurturing and educational nourishment is provided, these others central parts of a liberal education develop as well. Critical thinking plays an essential role in achieving these purposes.

Anything else? What about going beyond the individual to the community?

The experts say critical thinking is fundamental to, if not essential for, “a rational and democratic society.” What might the experts mean by this?

Well, how wise would democracy be if people abandoned critical thinking? Imagine an electorate that did not care for the facts. An electorate that did not wish to consider the pros and cons of the issues. Or, worse, had neither the education nor the brain power to do so. Imagine your life and the lives of your friends and family placed in the hands of juries and judges who let their political allegiance, biases and stereotypes govern their decisions, who do not attend to the evidence, who are not interested in reasoned inquiry, who do not know how to draw an inference or evaluate one. Without critical thinking, people could easily be exploited not only politically but economically.

The impact of abandoning critical thinking would not be confined to the micro-economics of the household checking account. Suppose the people involved in international commerce were lacking in critical thinking skills, they would be unable to analyze and interpret the market trends, evaluate the implications of interest fluctuations, or explain the potential impact of those factors which influence large scale production and distribution of goods and materials. Suppose these people were unable to draw the proper inferences from the economic facts, or unable to evaluate the claims made by the unscrupulous and misinformed. In such a situation, serious economic mistakes would be made. Whole sectors of the economy would become unpredictable and large-scale economic disaster would become extremely likely. So, given a society that does not value and cultivate critical thinking, we might reasonably expect that in time the judicial system and the economic system would collapse. And, in such a society, one that does not liberate its citizens by teaching them to think critically for themselves, it would be madness to advocate democratic forms of government.

Is it any wonder that business and civic leaders are maybe even more interested in critical thinking than educators? Critical thinking employed by an informed citizenry is a necessary condition for the success of democratic institutions and for competitive free-market economic enterprise. These values are so important that it is in the national interest that we should try to educate all citizens so that they can learn to think critically. Not just for their personal good, but for the good of the rest of us too.

Look at what has happened around the world in places devastated by economic embargoes, one-sided warfare, or the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Or, consider the problem of global climate change, and how important it is for all of us to cooperate with efforts to curtail our use of fossil fuels to reduce emissions of harmful greenhouse gases.

Consider the “cultural revolutions” undertaken by totalitarian rulers. Notice how in virtually every case absolutist and dictatorial despots seek ever more severe limitations on free expression. They label “liberal” intellectuals “dangers to society” and expel “radical” professors from teaching posts because they might “corrupt the youth.” Some use the power of their governmental or religious authority to crush not only their opposition but the moderates as well — all in the name of maintaining the purity of their movement. They intimidate journalists and those media outlets which dare to comment “negatively” on their political and cultural goals or their heavy-handed methods.

The historical evidence is there for us to see what happens when schools are closed or converted from places of education to places for indoctrination. We know what happens when children are no longer being taught truth-seeking, the skills of good reasoning, or the lessons of human history and basic science: Cultures disintegrate; communities collapse; the machinery of civilization fails; massive numbers of people die; and sooner or later social and political chaos ensues.

Or, imagine a media, a religious or political hegemony which cultivated, instead of critical thinking, all the opposite dispositions? Or consider if that hegemony reinforced uncritical, impulsive decision making and the “ready-shoot-aim” approach to executive action. Imagine governmental structures, administrators, and community leaders who, instead of encouraging critical thinking, were content to make knowingly irrational, illogical, prejudicial, unreflective, short-sighted, and unreasonable decisions.

How long might it take for the people in this society which does not value critical thinking to be at serious risk of foolishly harming themselves and each other?

The news too often reports about hate groups, wanton shooting, terrorists, and violently extreme political, ideological, or religious zealots. Education which includes a good measure of critical thinking skills and dispositions like truth-seeking and open-mindedness, is a problem for terrorists and extremists of every stripe because terrorists and extremists want to control of what people think. They are ideologists of the worst kind. Their methods include indoctrination, intimidation, and the strictest authoritarian orthodoxy. In the “black-and-white” world of “us vs. them” a good education would mean that the people might begin to think for themselves. And that is something these extremists do not want.

History shows that assaults on learning, whether by book burning, exile of intellectuals, or regulations aimed at suppressing research and frustrating the fair-minded, evidence-based, and unfettered pursuit of knowledge, can happen wherever and whenever people are not vigilant defenders of open, objective, and independent inquiry.

Does this mean that society should place an extremely high value on critical thinking?

Absolutely!

Does this mean society has the right to force someone to learn to think critically?

Maybe. But, really, should we have to?

EXPERT CONSENSUS STATEMENT REGARDING CRITICAL THINKING AND THE IDEAL CRITICAL THINKER

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Tactics for Training, Triggering, and Teaching Critical Thinking

. Images in this white paper are copyrighted from keynote presentations and professional development workshops.

Contact the author at Measured Reasons LLC for more information.

“Critical Thinking for Life: Valuing, Measuring, and Training Critical Thinking in All its Forms,” describes the work of Drs. Peter A. and Noreen C. Facione. The essay can be found in the Spring 2013 issue of Inquiry (Vol. XXVIII, No.1).

They and their co-investigators have been engaged in research and teaching about reasoning, decision-making, and effective individual and group thinking processes since 1967. Over the years they developed instruments to measure the core skills and habits of mind of effective thinking, these instruments are now in use in many different languages throughout the world. Since 1992 they have presented hundreds of workshops about effective teaching for thinking and about leadership, decision-making, leadership development, planning and budgeting, and learning outcomes assessment at national and international professional association meetings, business organizations, military bases, healthcare agencies, and on college and university throughout the nation.

READINGS and REFERENCES

American Philosophical Association, Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. “The Delphi Report,” Committee on Pre-College Philosophy. (ERIC Doc. No. ED 315 423). 1990

Brookfield, Stephen D. : Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting . Josey-Bass Publishers. San-Francisco, CA. 1987.

Browne, M. Neil, and Keeley, Stuart M.: Asking the Right Questions . Prentice-Hall Publishers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 2003.

Costa, Arthur L., & Lowery, l Lawrence F.: Techniques for Teaching Thinking. Critical Thinking Press and Software. Pacific Grove, CA. 1989.

Facione, Noreen C, and Facione Peter A..: Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment in the Health Sciences – An International Teaching Anthology . The California Academic Press, Millbrae CA. 2008.

Facione, Noreen C. and Facione, Peter A.: Critical Thinking Assessment and Nursing Education Programs: An Aggregate Data Analysis . The California Academic Press. Millbrae, CA 1997.

Facione, Noreen. C., and Facione, Peter A., Analyzing Explanations for Seemingly Irrational Choices, International Journal of Applied Philosophy , Vol. 15 No. 2 (2001) 267-86.

Facione, Peter A and Noreen C.: Thinking and Reasoning in Human Decision Making. The California Academic Press. Millbrae CA, 2007

Facione, Peter A and Giddens C. A.: Think Critically , Pearson Education: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2016.

Facione, P.A., Facione, N.C., Talking Critical Thinking, Change: The Magazine of Higher Education , March-April. 2007.

Facione, P.A., Facione N. C., and Giancarlo, C: The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking: Its Character, Measurement, and Relationship to Critical Thinking Skills, Journal of Informal Logic, Vol. 20 No. 1 (2000) 61-84.

Gilovich, Thomas; Griffin, Dale; and Kahneman, Daniel: Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment . Cambridge University Press. 2002.

Goldstein, William, and Hogarth, Robin M. (Eds.): Research on Judgment and Decision Making . Cambridge University Press. 1997.

Esterle, John, and Clurman, Dan: Conversations with Critical Thinkers . The Whitman Institute. San Francisco, CA. 1993.

Janis, I.L. and Mann, L: Decision-Making . The Free Press, New York. 1977.

Kahneman, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; and Tversky, Amos: Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases . Cambridge University Press. 1982.

Kahneman Daniel: Knetsch, J.L.; and Thaler, R.H.: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives . 1991, 5;193-206.

King, Patricia M. & Kitchener, Karen Strohm: Developing Reflective Judgment. Josey-Bass Publishers. San Francisco, CA. 1994

Kurfiss, Joanne G., Critical Thinking: Theory, Research, Practice and Possibilities, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report # 2, Washington DC, 1988.

Marshall, Ray, and Tucker, Marc, Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations , Basic Books. New York, NY. 1992.

Resnick, L. W., Education and Learning to Think, National Academy Press, 1987.

Rubenfeld, M. Gaie, & Scheffer, Barbara K., Critical Thinking in Nursing: An Interactive Approach . J. B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia PA, 1995.

Siegel, Harvey: Educating Reason: Rationality, CT and Education. Routledge Publishing. New York. 1989.

Sternberg, Robert J.: Critical Thinking: Its Nature, Measurement, and Improvement. National Institute of Education, Washington DC, 1986.

Toulmin, Stephen: The Uses of Argument . Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Wade, Carole, and Tavris, Carol: Critical & Creative Thinking: The Case of Love and War . Harper Collins College Publisher. New York. NY 1993.

GOVERNMENT REPORTS

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) Documents National Assessment of College Student Learning: Getting Started, A Summary of Beginning Activities. NCES 93-116.

National Assessment of College Student Learning: Identification of the Skills to Be Taught, Learned, and Assessed, A Report on the Proceedings of the Second Design Workshop, November 1992. NCES 94-286.

National Assessment of College Student Learning: Identifying College Graduates’ Essential Skills in Writing, Speech and Listening, and Critical Thinking. NCES 95-001.

• The findings of expert consensus cited or reported in this essay are published in Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. Peter A. Facione, principal investigator, The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA, 1990. (ERIC ED 315 423). In 1993/94 the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University studied 200 policymakers, employers, and faculty members from two-year and four-year colleges to determine what this group took to be the core critical thinking skills and habits of mind. The Pennsylvania State University Study, under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Jones, was funded by the US Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Instruction. The Penn State study findings, published in 1994, confirmed the expert consensus described in this paper. ↑
• The California Critical Thinking Skills Test , the Test of Everyday Reasoning , the Health Science Reasoning Test , the Military and Defense Reasoning Profile , The Business Critical Thinking Skills Test , and Educate Insight Series for K-12, and the INSIGHT Series for employers and business, health, legal, first responder, educator, science and engineering, and defense professionals and executives. along with other testing instruments authored by Dr. Facione and his research team for people in K-12, college, and graduate / professional work target the core critical thinking skills identified here. These instruments are published in English and several authorized translations exclusively by Insight Assessment. ↑
• Chapters 10 and 11 of Think Critically , Pearson Education, locate critical thinking within this integrative model of thinking. The cognitive heuristics, which will be described next, and the human capacity to derive sustained confidence decisions (right or wrong), — known as “dominance structuring,” – are presented there too. There are lots of useful exercises and examples in that book. You may also wish to consult the references listed at the end of this essay. The material presented in this section is derived from these books and related publications by many of these same authors and others working to scientifically explain how humans make decisions. ↑
• Henry Montgomery, “From cognition to action: The search for dominance in decision making.” In Process and Structure in Human Decision-Making , Montgomery H, Svenson O (Eds). John Wiley & Sons: Chichester, UK, 1989. For a more accessible description along with reflective exercises on how to avoid becoming “locked in” to a poor decision prematurely, see chapter 11 of Think Critically . ↑
• (Findings regarding the effectiveness of critical thinking instruction, and correlations with GPA and reading ability are reported in “Technical Report #1, Experimental Validation and Content Validity” (ERIC ED 327 549), “Technical Report #2, Factors Predictive of CT Skills” (ERIC ED 327 550), and “Gender, Ethnicity, Major, CT Self-Esteem, and the California Critical Thinking Skills Test” (ERIC ED 326 584). These findings remain consistent in research using the tools in the California Critical Thinking Skills Test family of instruments published by Insight Assessment.) ↑

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Critical Thinking: Creating Job-Proof Skills for the Future of Work

Daniela dumitru.

1 Teacher Training Department, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010374 Bucharest, Romania

2 Doctoral School of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest, 050663 Bucharest, Romania

Diane F. Halpern

3 Department of Psychology, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA 91711, USA; moc.liamg@nreplahfenaid

In this study, we explore the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the job market and argue for the growing importance of critical thinking skills in the face of job automation and changing work dynamics. Advancements in AI have the potential to disrupt various professions, including, for example, programming, legal work, and radiology. However, solely relying on AI systems can lead to errors and misjudgments, emphasizing the need for human oversight. The concept of “job-proof skills” is introduced, highlighting the importance of critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, ethics, and other human attributes that machines cannot replicate with the same standards and agility. We maintain that critical thinking can be taught and learned through appropriate classroom instruction and transfer-focused approaches. The need for critical thinking skills is further reinforced by the influx of information and the spread of misinformation in the age of social media. Moreover, employers increasingly value critical thinking skills in their workforce, yet there exists a gap between the demand for these skills and the preparedness of college graduates. Critical thinking is not only essential for the future of work, but also for informed citizenship in an increasingly complex world. The potential impact of AI on job disruption, wages, and employment polarization is discussed, highlighting the correlation between jobs requiring critical thinking skills and their resistance to automation. We conclude by discussing collaborative efforts between universities and labor market organizations to adapt curricula and promote the development of critical thinking skills, drawing on examples from European initiatives. The need to prioritize critical thinking skills in education and address the evolving demands of the labor market is emphasized as a crucial step for navigating the future of work and opportunities for workers.

1. Introduction: Critical Thinking: Creating Job-Proof Skills for the Future of Work

The rapid evolution of online technologies has ushered in a paradigm shift in employment, redefining the nature of work and the skills required to succeed in the digital age. This transformative landscape, characterized by the ubiquitous presence of the Internet, social media platforms, and advanced artificial intelligence systems, has created a plethora of new opportunities and challenges in the labor market. As we navigate this digital frontier, it is becoming increasingly clear that traditional employment paradigms are undergoing a profound transformation. The convergence of online technologies with the demands of a networked world has not only created new job opportunities, but it has also disrupted established industries, rendering some job roles obsolete while creating demand for previously unforeseen skills. In this era of unprecedented connectivity and innovation, examining the intricate interplay between online technologies and jobs is paramount as it holds the key to understanding the dynamics of our rapidly evolving workforce.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is disrupting many jobs and promises “to change the way the world works” ( adminGPT 2023, para. 13 ). The number and range of AI programs are increasing at a rapid pace, and they are likely to continually improve to meet user demands. Consider, for example, ChatGPT, which can respond to questions and requests in a way that seems to come from a human rather than a computer program. GPT stands for “generative pretrained transformer”. It is generative in that it can provide responses that it never “learned”; it is pretrained with a large language model ( Bushwick et al. 2023 ). Newer versions can describe visual images, although thus far, they cannot create visual images. Its uses are seemingly endless. It is easy to imagine how such programs can change the lives of blind individuals. In fact, it can and will change the lives of all of us.

In this paper, we argue that these advances in online technologies will make critical thinking (CT) more important than ever before. Many who are preparing to enter the job market, and many who are already employed, will need to adapt to new forms of job automation and different ways of working.

Consider, for example, that an early achievement of ChatGPT was its generation of Python code (a computer language) to compute various tasks, such as data analysis. Apparently, getting ChatGPT to generate code is so easy that several YouTube videos have popped up claiming that they can teach novice users to use ChatGPT to generate code in 90 s. ( Data Professor 2023 ). The benefits are obvious, but so are the potential job losses for people who work in Python. Python coders will need to upgrade their skills, perhaps first becoming experts in the use of ChatGPT and similar programs, but this also has a positive side--they can spend more time working on larger questions such as which analyses are needed, and, of course, carefully reviewing the work produced by AI to ensure that it is accurate and understandable. Early versions of ChatGPT responses often contained errors. A New York lawyer learned the hard way: Steven A. Schwartz, a lawyer for 30 years, used ChatGPT to create a legal document ( Weiser and Schweber 2023 ). It was filled with fake citations and bogus judicial opinions. Sadly, Mr. Schwartz never checked the accuracy of the document he filed in court. The judge was not amused. This highly public and embarrassing event should be a lesson for all of us. Current AI programs cannot be trusted to take over our work, though they may be able to aid or supplement it. However, other AI programs can “read” radiographs more accurately than human radiologists, which provides a benefit to both radiologists and patients. There is an immediate positive effect for this advancement: Radiologists will have more time to directly work with patients, and yes, they must also check the accuracy of the outputs from their programs when presenting diagnoses.

For the rest of us, whether we are students or early or late in our careers, we need to focus on the development of “job-proof skills” in the face of AI advances. A report from the United Nations defines job-proof skills as “conceptual and strategic thinking, problem-solving, empathy, optimism, ethics, emotional intelligence, and judgments are the future-proof skills and attributes that machines will not be able to replicate with the same standards and agility as qualified human beings” ( Elkeiy 2022, para. 5 ). In other words, critical thinking skills will always be needed.

2. What Is Critical Thinking?

Although some scholars in the field of critical thinking have emphasized differences among various definitions, we believe that the commonalities are evident (c.f., Dwyer 2017 ; Nisbett 2015 ; Lipman 1991 ; Fisher 2001 ). There are some differences in the use of terms and several skills might be more important, but all of the definitions (more or less) conform to our preferred definition: “Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive skills and abilities that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. It is purposeful, reasoned, and goal directed. It is the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions. Critical thinkers use these skills appropriately, without prompting, and usually with conscious intent, in a variety of settings. That is, they are predisposed to think critically. When we think critically, we are evaluating the outcomes of our thought processes--how good a decision is or how well a problem is solved. Critical thinking also involves evaluating the thinking process--the reasoning that went into the conclusion we’ve arrived at, or the kinds of factors considered in making a decision” ( Halpern and Dunn 2023, pp. 6–7 ). The reason we need a common definition of critical thinking is that, without it, instructors can and have passed almost anything off as instruction in critical thinking. However, common ground is to be found concerning CT definitions. In a European project, which we shall refer to in Section 4.3 , the critical thinking definition is based on the works of Halpern and Dunn ( 2023 ), Facione ( 1990 ), Paul and Elder ( 2008 ), and Kuhn ( 1999 ). During two debate sessions, 33 international participants from higher education and the labor market defined critical thinking as a deliberate cognitive process guided by conscious, dynamic, self-directed, self-monitored, and self-correcting thought ( Rebelo et al. 2023 ). It relies on both disciplinary and procedural knowledge, along with metacognitive aspects (including metacognitive, meta-strategic, and epistemological dimensions). Critical thinking can be cultivated and enhanced through the development of competencies, and it is facilitated by various attitudes, such as systematic thinking, open-mindedness, empathy, flexibility, and cognitive maturity. Additionally, it encompasses intellectual skills such as reflection, self-regulation, analysis, inference, explanation, synthesis, and systematic thought. Critical thinking not only stimulates problem-solving capabilities but also facilitates effective communication, fosters independent and holistic thinking, and bolsters decision-making and active citizenship ( Pnevmatikos et al. 2021 ).

2.1. Can Critical Thinking Be Learned?

We teach writing, oral communication, and mathematics with the (often implicit) belief that these skills will be learned and transferred to multiple settings both inside and outside of the classroom. There is a large and growing research literature showing that, with appropriate classroom instruction in critical thinking, including specific instruction designed for transfer, the skills will spontaneously transfer and in uncued (i.e., there are no reminders to use the critical thinking skill that was learned in class) situations ( Dumitru 2012 ; Heijltjes et al. 2014 ; Tiruneh 2019 ). Several such studies were presented by Dwyer ( 2017 ) and Halpern and Dunn ( 2023 ). For the sake of brevity, we review just one recent study. The study was designed to counteract the effects of conspiracy theories. When people believe conspiracy theories, they often act in harmful ways–such as refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which resulted in the death of large numbers of people around the world, or attacking the United State Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 in the belief that there was a conspiracy afoot designed to steal the United States 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. In a review of the research literature on the efficacy of interventions, the researchers found “there was one intervention which was characteristically different to the rest” ( O’Mahony et al. 2023, para. 23 ). It was a semester-long university course in critical thinking that was designed to teach students the difference between good scientific practices and pseudoscience. These courses require effort and commitment, but they are effective. The same conclusion applies to all interventions designed to enhance critical thinking. There are no fast and easy “once and done” strategies that work. This is why we recommend continuous and pervasive coursework to make sure that the learning of CT skills “sticks.”

2.2. The Need for Critical Thinking Skills

Online technologies-related (including AI) job loss and redesign are not the only reasons why we need to concentrate on teaching and learning the skills of critical thinking. COVID-19 left 140 million people out of work, and many of their jobs will never return ( Roslansky 2021 ). We are drowning in a tsunami of information, confronted with advertisements online, in news reports, social media, podcasts, and more. The need to be able to distinguish good information from bad is critical. In addition, employers want to hire people with critical thinking skills. In a recent report by Hart Research Associated ( 2018 ), they found that in an employer survey of 501 business executives, 78% said that critical thinking/analytic reasoning is the most important skill they want in their employees, but they also added that only 34% of college graduates arrive well prepared in critical thinking. This gap between what employers want and their perception of the preparedness of the workforce was larger for critical thinking than for any other area. In fact, every report on the future of work made this same point. Consider this quote from The World Economic Forum ( 2020 ) on the future of jobs: “Skills gaps continue to be high as in-demand skills across jobs change in the next five years. The top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025 include groups such as critical thinking and analysis as well as problem-solving.” (p. 5). In a report from the Office of the European Union: Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, the commissioner wrote “Critical thinking, media literacy, and communication skills are some of the requirements to navigate our increasingly complex world” ( Navracsics 2019, p. 3 ). Of course, critical thinking is not just needed in the world of work. A true democracy requires an educated citizenry with citizens who can think critically about world social issues, such as the use/threat of AI, war, poverty, climate change, and so much more. Irrational voters are a threat to all of us—and to themselves.

The need to think critically is not new, but it has taken on a new urgency as social media and other forms of communication have made the deliberate spread of misinformation move at the speed of light. There is nothing new about the use of lies, half-truths, and innuendos to get people to believe something that is not true. Anyone can post anything on popular media sites, and this “fake news” is often copied and shared thousands of times. Sometimes the information is spread with a deliberate attempt to mislead; other times, it is copied and spread by people who believe it is true. These messages are often used to discredit political adversaries, create social unrest, and incite fear. It can be a difficult task to determine what to believe and what to discard. Vosoughi et al. ( 2018 ) analyzed data from 126,000 tweets that were spread by approximately 3 million people. How did the researchers discriminate true data from false data? The same way we all should. They used several different fact-checking sites and found 95% to 98% agreement regarding the truth or falsehood of information. They found that false data spread more quickly and more widely than true data because the false data tended to be novel and sensational, rendering it salient and seductive.

In today’s landscape, the imperative to foster critical thinking skills is becoming increasingly apparent as we grapple with the rapid rise of social media and artificial intelligence technologies and their profound impact on the future of work. The confluence of these transformative forces has ushered in a new era characterized by the potential for significant job disruption. As online technologies advance and automation becomes more widespread, certain traditional job roles may become obsolete, requiring the development of innovative skills and adaptability in the workforce. In this context, critical thinking emerges as a central element in preparing individuals to navigate the evolving job market. It equips individuals with the ability to analyze complex information, discern credible sources from the proliferation of social media information, and make informed decisions in an era of blurring boundaries between human and machine contributions to the workforce. Cultivating critical thinking skills will be essential to ensuring that individuals can take advantage of the opportunities presented by new technologies while mitigating the challenges of job disruption in this AI-driven future.

3. Critical Thinking Skills and Job Disruption and Replacement

Eloundou et al. in 2023 estimated that about 15% of all U.S. workers’ jobs could be accomplished much faster and at the same level of quality with currently available AI. There are large differences in the extent to which various occupations and industries will be affected by advancements in AI. For example, tasks that require a high degree of human interaction, highly specialized domain knowledge, or creating innovative technologies will be minimally affected; whereas, other occupations such as providing captions for images or answering questions about a text or document are more likely to be affected. Routine-based jobs in general are more likely to be dislodged by advanced technologies ( Acemoglu 2002 ). Using the basic definitions of skills that are standard in O*Net, Eloundou et al. ( 2023 ) found a clear negative correlation between jobs requiring knowledge of science and critical thinking skills and the likelihood that AI will “take over” the job. These findings reinforce our main point—the best way to gain job-proof skills is with critical thinking.

The effect of online technologies on wages is complicated because of the large number of factors that come together to determine earnings. Acemoglu and Autor ( 2011 ) advocated for a model that simultaneously considers the level of the tasks required for any job (low, medium, and high), where a high level of skill is defined as one that allows employees to perform a variety of tasks, the demand for the tasks, and technological changes that can complement a task or replace it. They assert that employment has become increasingly polarized with the growth in both high education, high wage occupations and low education, and low wage occupations in the United States and the European Union. To understand and predict which occupations will be most disrupted by AI (and other developing technologies), an investigator will need to simultaneously consider all of these variables. Technological advancements can generate shifts in demand, favoring either high- or low-skilled workers. According to Acemoglu and Autor ( 2011 ), we can expect some of the largest disruptive effects at the middle level of skills, where some of the tasks performed at this level can be more easily replaced by new technologies, with widespread employment growth in high- and low-skilled occupations.

4. Business-University Collaborations

The pursuit of promoting high standards of critical thinking in university students across various academic disciplines is a challenging endeavor that should be leveraged through collaboration with stakeholders. In such collaborations, stakeholders can contribute to refining the skills required by learners and bring their own perspectives to academic instruction. This close partnership between universities and stakeholders helps minimize gaps and mismatches in the transition to the labor market, facilitates research collaboration, and increases student motivation.

Collaborations between businesses and universities have gained increasing importance in today’s rapidly evolving educational and economic landscape. These partnerships are instrumental in bridging the gap between academic learning and the real-world skills demanded by the job market. One key aspect of business-university collaboration (BUC) is the alignment of curricula with the dynamic needs of industries. This entails the joint effort of higher education institutions (HEIs) and industry experts to design, develop, and deliver educational programs that equip students with practical, job-ready skills. The curriculum design phase involves tailoring study programs, courses, and modules to address skills gaps and align with the specific requirements of employers.

Moreover, BUC extends beyond the classroom. Collaborations often involve business engagement in educational activities, including guest lectures, internships, co-op programs, and research projects. These interactions provide students with invaluable exposure to real-world scenarios, allowing them to apply theoretical knowledge in practical settings.

In essence, BUC is a multifaceted partnership that benefits both students and businesses. It ensures that educational programs remain relevant, fostering a seamless transition from academia to the workforce. This collaborative approach not only enhances students’ employability but also contributes to the overall growth and innovation of industries.

Operationalizing the collaboration implicates a particular focus on curriculum design, development, and delivery. These involve the collaboration between higher education institutions and labor market partners to create or enhance undergraduate or postgraduate study programs, courses, or modules. This collaborative effort aims to address skills gaps, align curricula with employers’ needs, integrate training initiatives, and improve graduates’ employability. Additionally, curriculum delivery includes various forms of business involvement, such as guest lectures, placements, supervision, mentoring, and work-based learning activities.

While the existing literature often discusses the barriers and motivations for university-business collaboration ( Healy et al. 2014 ; Orazbayeva et al. 2020 ), there is a need for more empirical insights into the roles and responsibilities of each party engaged in joint curriculum design, development, and delivery, as well as lessons learned from these collaborations ( Rebelo et al. 2023 ).

4.1. Why Do We Need Higher Education’s Help?

In the preceding sections of this paper, we delved into the disruptive forces of artificial intelligence (AI) on the job market and the critical need for individuals to adapt to these changes by developing “job-proof skills”. The rise of online technologies such as ChatGPT presents both opportunities and challenges, particularly in fields where middle-level skills are required. To effectively tackle these challenges, we must turn our attention to the pivotal role of education and the cultivation of essential skills such as critical thinking.

We highlighted how AI is rapidly transforming various industries and the need for individuals to adapt to these changes. Moreover, we explored the question of whether critical thinking can be learned, showcasing research evidence that supports the teachability of this skill. Now, we shall explore practical strategies for fostering critical thinking skills through collaborations between universities and businesses. The idea here is to create an educational framework that equips students with the capabilities needed to thrive in the evolving workforce.

Building upon the success of two European projects, “Critical thinking across higher education curricula—CRITHINKEDU” and “Critical thinking for successful jobs—THINK4JOBS”, we argue that incorporating practical experience and CT development through apprenticeships is a possible action for better higher education classes. This collaborative approach between HEI and LMO designed to address the differing perspectives and terminologies used by these two entities regarding critical thinking could be an important curriculum design for the better adaptation of job market technology disruptions.

Research conducted by Eloundou et al. ( 2023 ), which shows that critical thinking skills and science skills are less likely to be taken by AI, compels us to sustain the THINK4JOBS apprenticeship curricula as a possible teaching protocol for critical thinking enhancement to face challenges posed by AI at work.

The results from these projects demonstrate significant progress in students’ critical thinking skills and dispositions. These improvements, as highlighted below in Section 4.3 , underscore the effectiveness of embedding critical thinking in the curriculum. The guidelines formulated for implementing Critical Thinking Blended Apprenticeship Curricula provide a roadmap for educators to follow when effectively integrating critical thinking into their courses.

As we ponder the possibility of a world where critical thinking is widespread, we can envision a future where individuals are equipped to confront the ideological fanaticism that threatens global stability. Critical thinking, as both a cognitive skill and a disposition, has the potential to shape a workforce capable of adapting to the ever-changing landscape of work, making informed decisions, and contributing to a more rational and democratic world. The THINK4JOBS project emphasizes the practical steps taken to prepare students for the future job market and sets the stage for further exploration of the role of critical thinking in addressing global challenges, including AI presence in the job market.

4.2. CRITHINKEDU Proctocol for Critical Thinking Education across Curricula

Given that the best education for the future of work is the acquisition of critical thinking skills, how can we facilitate this sort of education? One way to obtain a job-proof education is to create classes with the help of labor market organizations. Two projects funded by the European Union were designed to bring to life the idea that better communication and collaboration between universities and employers result in a better adaptation of the curriculum, especially a curriculum involving critical thinking skill development.

Between 2016 and 2019, the project “Critical thinking across the European higher education curriculum—CRITHINKEDU” focused on how CT is taught in various academic domains. The CRITHINKEDU project, involving universities across Europe, exemplifies how academia and industry can join forces to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world job demands. This initiative aimed to enhance the curriculum by explicitly emphasizing critical thinking skill development. It revealed that employers across various fields value critical thinking, and they perceive it as essential for recent graduates entering the workforce.

The participants were eleven universities from nine European countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Lithuania, and Ireland; Dominguez 2018). Qualitative research was conducted with 32 focus groups comprised of professionals from various European countries and fields. The findings align with previous studies: “CT is a set of interconnected skills (interpretation, inference, analysis, explanation, evaluation, self-regulation”, see Payan-Carreira et al. ( 2023, p. 16 ), and dispositions (open-mindedness, refection, attentiveness, organization, perseverance, intrinsic goal motivation ( Payan-Carreira et al. 2023 ), essential for recent graduates in response to labor market demands. However, an important consideration is that the practical application of CT varies across professional fields. The participants in this study defined the ideal critical thinker as someone with a cultivated mindset, motivated to learn and improve, and equipped with cognitive and behavioral tools to anticipate, regulate, and monitor their thinking. CT is associated with problem-solving and decision-making and is intertwined with other skills such as proactivity, adaptability, creativity, emotional intelligence, communication, and teamwork. The report from this project also introduced “a European collection of the Critical Thinking skills and dispositions needed in different professional fields for the 21st century” ( Dominguez 2018 ), which categorizes CT skills and dispositions based on professional fields and offers a basis for defining learning objectives and adapting university curricula. This study provides valuable insights from 189 European employers into CT needs in the labor market for new graduates. The interviewed professionals had an obvious preference for CT skills in STEM fields and an obvious preference for dispositions in the Humanities. Social Sciences and bio-medical sciences professionals were equally interested in CT skills and dispositions, with a slight preference for dispositions ( Dominguez 2018, p. 28 ).

4.3. Next Steps: THINK4JOBS Blended Appreticeship Curricula

After the termination of the CRITHINKEDU project, partners from Romania, Greece, Lithuania, and Portugal, with the addition of a new partner from Germany, proposed a new research application: “Critical Thinking for Successful Jobs—THINK4JOBS” ( www.think4jobs.uowm.gr ). The idea was to utilize the results from the previous project and, together with labor market organizations, create new courses that are more adapted to the reality of the future of work. The core element of the classes was explicit teaching of critical thinking, using real-life cases and methods. In an apprenticeship model, critical thinking skills are embedded in a relevant context. The value of realistic contexts is that students can see the need for the skills being taught in a workplace scenario. Relevant contexts enhance student engagement and motivation to learn. Dumitru et al. ( 2021 ) focused on improving students’ critical thinking skills and dispositions through collaboration between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Labor Market Organizations (LMOs). The aim was to bridge the gap between HEI curricula and the expectations of the labor market by incorporating apprenticeships that provide practical experience and CT development.

The process of mapping responses from those in the labor market organizations onto college curricula involved the use of research methods such as observation, focus groups, and documentary analysis, with stakeholders from HEIs and LMOs participating. The findings indicated that while there were no definitive “gaps” between HEIs and LMOs, there were contextual differences in the approach to CT. HEIs focus on long-term career preparation, while LMOs emphasize short-term learning strategies. The terminology and expression of CT also differed between the two contexts. Based on the findings, ten work-based scenarios were created, with one from each discipline involved in the project. Overall, the report ( Dumitru et al. 2021 ) highlighted the different goals and perspectives of HEIs and LMOs regarding CT, emphasizing the need for collaboration and a common understanding of which skills should be included in the college curriculum.

There is a different context in the approach to CT, since HEIs usually use different learning activities, focusing more on career preparation with long-term goals, while LMOs follow compact and short-term learning and teaching strategies. Furthermore, the findings suggest that CT is a new workplace requirement and that HEIs and LMOs do not choose the same terminology when referring to the concept, with HEIs usually choosing scientific terms. Another element that emerged is that CT is generally expressed in a declarative way in higher education institutions, while in LMOs the application to specific cases follows a more procedural approach. Put another way, LMOs are focused on making a profit, while HEI is focused on being socially responsible.

In the second phase of the project, partners ( Pnevmatikos et al. 2021 ) focused on the development of a collaborative training curriculum for Higher Education Instructors and LMO tutors. The purpose of the training was to enhance comprehension and knowledge of critical thinking for both sides of this collaboration, since previous research indicated a potential lack of conceptual and procedural understanding between these two entities. Additionally, the training aimed to facilitate the promotion, support, and evaluation of students’ CT skills within apprenticeship curricula, as well as the creation of blended curricula utilizing an open-source learning platform. The training course encompassed workshops that delved into various aspects of CT, including analyzing and reassembling ideas about CT, formulating a working definition of CT, instructional methodologies, blended learning techniques, usage of a learning platform, CT assessment, and the development of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between higher education institutions and LMOs. The participants’ knowledge about these topics was assessed through pre- and post-training online questionnaires. Although data analysis showed various predicted trends, only perceived self-confidence in the topics covered during the training obtained statistical significance ( Pnevmatikos et al. 2021 ).

In the final report from this project, Payan-Carreira et al. ( 2023 ) presented the results of the implementation of the critical thinking Blended Apprenticeships Curricula (CTBAC) and discussed the improvements in critical thinking skills and dispositions observed in students. The study involved cross-disciplinary analysis and assessed changes before and after the piloting activities. A total of 609 students participated, and their critical thinking skills and dispositions were evaluated.

The consortium chose the Critical Thinking Self-Assessment Scale (CTSAS) developed by Nair ( 2011 ) as an instrument to assess CT skills based on an earlier conceptualization ( Facione 1990 ). The questionnaire has been tested in various geographic and cultural contexts, demonstrating good reliability, internal consistency, and confirmatory factor analysis results. However, the original CTSAS was considered too long to complete, consisting of 115 items, so a shorter version was specifically developed for this project. The short form of the questionnaire (CTSAS-SF) was created through a two-step process. Items with loading weights below .500 were eliminated, resulting in 84 remaining items. Redundant and non-cognitive-focused items were marked for elimination, leaving 60 items. The short form maintained the original scale’s framework and utilized a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (Never) to 6 (Always) for students to respond to items assessing various dimensions and subdimensions of CT skills.

The CTSAS-SF validation process, with confirmatory factor analysis, resulted in two models with equivalent satisfactory goodness-of-fit indices. Model 4, the second-order factor model (RMSEA = .051; TLI = .924; CFI = .927), had a chi-square/df ratio of 2.33. The Cronbach alpha of the overall instrument was excellent (α = .969). Sample items are shown in Table 1 .

Sample items forming Critical Thinking Self-Assessment Scale (CTSAS), Nair ( 2011 ).

Compared to instruments for assessing CT skills, the availability of instruments for measuring critical thinking (CT) dispositions is limited. However, one of the instruments adopted by the consortium to assess CT dispositions is the Student-Educator Negotiated Critical Thinking Dispositions Scale (SENCTDS), which was developed by Quinn et al. ( 2020 ). The scale was validated with a mixed population of Irish and American undergraduate students. The scale considers a variety of CT dispositions that the authors consider important for the labor market and real-world decision-making. Some of the items in the scale combine Facione ’s ( 1990 ) original CT dispositions into new dimensions that are relevant to academic and labor market success, such as organization, perseverance, and intrinsic goal motivation. The scale consists of six dimensions (Reflection, Attentiveness, Open-mindedness, Organization, Perseverance, and Intrinsic Goal Motivation) and presents statements for students to respond to using a 7-point Likert scale. The Likert scale ranges from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The original version of the SENCTDS contains 21 items. The validation process, with confirmatory factor analysis, identified only one model presenting a satisfactory goodness-of-fit index—model 3, comprised of six correlated factors (RMSEA = .054; TLI = .974; CFI = .969) with a chi-square/df ratio of 2.57. The instrument presented a high Cronbach alpha (α = .842), suggesting a strong internal consistency of the instrument. Sample items are presented in Table 2 .

Sample items from Student-Educator Negotiated Critical Thinking Dispositions Scale (SENCTDS), developed by Quinn et al. ( 2020 ).

The analysis showed gains in critical thinking skills and indicated that changes were more prominent in skills than dispositions. All skills (interpretation, analysis, inference, explanation, self-regulation, and evaluation) obtained significant differences between the pretest and posttest, with p ≤ .0001 to all skills, plus the integrated critical thinking skills score was t = 9.705 and p ≤ .0001, which demonstrates strong significant difference between pre- and the posttest. Dispositions displayed no significant differences regarding the integrated score, but showed significant differences in reflection (t = 1.766, p = .079), open-mindedness (t = 2.636, p = .009), organization (t = 2.568, p = .011), and intrinsic goal motivation (t = 1.712, p = .088).

Based on the findings from the implementation of the blended apprenticeship curricula, the following guidelines were formulated for implementing Critical Thinking Blended Apprenticeship Curricula ( Payan-Carreira et al. 2023 ):

• Provide an explanation of the importance of critical thinking—Clearly communicate to students why critical thinking is a vital skill in today’s workforce and how it is valued in specific professions. Explicitly incorporate the development of critical thinking as an outcome of the course.
• Emphasize continuous and pervasive CT training—To achieve success, there should be a concerted effort across disciplinary curricula to foster students’ critical thinking skills and dispositions. Skills require training, and dispositions necessitate the internalization of desired attitudes. Therefore, sufficient time and a collaborative approach at the disciplinary level are necessary for consistent and significant progress.
• Allocate dedicated time—Building on the previous point, it is essential to allocate specific time within the course to work on the proposed critical thinking goals. Students and educators need to schedule activities and create opportunities for preparation, development, and feedback exchange. This ensures that the intervention leads to meaningful, lasting learning.
• Establish connections with real-world scenarios—Foster student engagement and improve their perception of learning experiences by incorporating case studies that reflect situations professionals encounter in their daily work. By grounding the learning content in reality, students are more likely to be motivated and actively participate in the educational process.

Foster reflection on CT skills and dispositions—Offer students the chance to reflect on their reasoning processes and the attitudes they have developed throughout their learning experiences. Encouraging reflective thinking enhances the effectiveness of learning interventions and helps cultivate a deeper understanding of one’s experiences.

These steps aim to guide educators in effectively implementing the critical thinking blended apprenticeship curricula while also maximizing the impact of critical thinking development in students.

The two European projects made a great start in integrating the skills that employers want employees to learn from university curricula, but the results are nonetheless provisional. There is not a clear agreement among participating universities regarding how best to teach critical thinking, nor any regarding its importance for future jobs. We urge that more work should be done to nurture critical thinking within university curricula in order to provide our current students—who represent the future of the workforce—the much-wanted job-proof skills they need.

5. European Recommendations and Good Practices

Critical thinking stands as a pivotal goal for European Higher Education Institutions. To facilitate the attainment of this objective, we present an educational protocol that draws from comprehensive research and practical experiences, including insights from the CRITHINKEDU project. This protocol amalgamates insights from both theoretical and empirical studies on critical thinking with practical strategies for its cultivation.

Recommendations go toward signing memorandums of understanding between universities and labor market organizations to cultivate strong partnerships ( Rebelo et al. 2023 ). Effective collaboration between universities and businesses is crucial in fostering critical thinking. This partnership thrives on the synergy that results when academic institutions and businesses combine their expertise, resources, and perspectives. Strategies such as aligning goals, fostering long-term commitment, and promoting a culture of collaboration can strengthen these partnerships and ensure that academic research is harmoniously aligned with real-world needs.

Another recommendation relates to the formulation of compelling goals . Accurate and transparent goals are fundamental to the successful implementation of university-industry collaborations to promote critical thinking. These goals must be clearly defined and easily understood at multiple levels, from the institutional to the program and course levels. Recognition of critical thinking as an overarching goal implies its integration into assessment and evaluation processes.

Another recommendation is to develop flexible curricula . To effectively foster critical thinking, curricula must demonstrate adaptability and responsiveness to emerging trends and market demands. The use of agile curriculum design methodologies and the involvement of business partners in curriculum development is of great value. Approaches such as problem-based and case-based learning facilitate rapid adaptation to evolving market needs, such as the use of AI-powered software to solve work tasks better and faster. Regular feedback mechanisms and ongoing collaboration with business partners ensure that curricula remain relevant and flexible.

Incorporating real-world challenges and case studies into curricula bridges the gap between academia and the business world, creating an environment that encourages experiential learning. The active involvement of business stakeholders in providing relevant challenges plays a key role. Students’ problem-solving skills are enhanced by shifting from traditional teaching methods to project-based, problem-based, or case-based learning. Engaging students through apprenticeships, internships, guest lectures, and seminars immerses them in authentic work environments and fosters their professional development.

Ongoing, multi-faceted evaluation is a cornerstone of the collaboration between higher education and the business community to cultivate critical thinking. Assessment includes measuring learners’ progress in critical thinking, the effectiveness of curricula, and the impact of partnerships through the use of key performance indicators.

Regarding how to implement a critical thinking curriculum, pedagogical research ( Elen et al. 2019 ) suggests that in the development of critical thinking, whether it is regarded as a skill, disposition, or a combination of both, three categories of supportive measures can be identified: modeling, induction, and declaration.

Modeling: Support the development of critical thinking skills by demonstrating what it means to think critically at the institutional, programmatic, and course levels, considering multiple perspectives and alternative viewpoints.

Induction: Support critical thinking development by provoking critical thinking through the presentation of open-ended questions, unstructured tasks, complex problems, and real-world issues. The exact nature of “induction” and how it is implemented may vary across fields and disciplines. Induction can be carried out in a variety of ways; for example, presenting unstructured problems, providing authentic tasks, encouraging constructive controversy, asking “why” questions, or encouraging student autonomy.

Explanation: Promote the development of critical thinking by articulating or explicitly stating what is at stake, what strategies can be used, and what criteria must be met. This explanation can take the form of oral or written communication and should always be explicit and specific. Declaring and making things explicit can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including using critical thinking rubrics, developing elaborate concept maps, providing feedback on critical thinking, and engaging in discussion and reflection on critical issues.

This integrated approach, encompassing university-business collaboration and an educational protocol, underscores the significance of critical thinking in higher education. It provides a structured framework for nurturing this essential skill by aligning objectives, fostering partnerships, adapting curricula, and implementing ongoing evaluation practices. In doing so, educational institutions are better poised to equip students with the critical thinking skills needed to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

6. Concluding Remarks or Can Critical THINKING Save the World?

In summary, the dynamic interaction between universities, businesses, and the evolving technology landscape, including the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and online technologies, underscore the critical need to nurture and develop students’ critical thinking skills. As we navigate the challenges posed by AI and the ever-expanding digital realm, collaborative efforts between academia and industry have proven to be instrumental in preparing students for the future job market.

Incorporating real-world experiences, such as apprenticeships, into the curriculum is an important step toward improving students’ critical thinking skills in real-world contexts. Projects such as “Critical thinking across higher education curricula—CRITHINKEDU” and “Critical thinking for successful jobs—THINK4JOBS” have demonstrated the potential of these collaborations to bridge the gap between classroom learning and industry needs. In addition, the development of flexible curricula that can adapt to the evolving needs of the job market, especially considering online technologies, is essential. By integrating real-world challenges and case studies into the curriculum, students gain valuable problem-solving skills and are better prepared to navigate the complexities of the digital age.

Ongoing assessment and evaluation are critical components of this collaborative effort, ensuring that critical thinking remains a central focus and that students are making meaningful progress in acquiring this essential skill.

With the disruption of AI and the ubiquity of online technologies, the integration of critical thinking into higher education curricula is more important than ever. It enables students not only to thrive in a technology-driven world, but also to contribute to a rational, democratic, and globally interconnected society. The partnerships forged between universities and businesses, along with a well-defined educational protocol, provide a roadmap for cultivating these essential skills and preparing students for the challenges and opportunities of the future job market. The imperative to foster critical thinking in university curricula remains a fundamental step in equipping tomorrow’s workforce to navigate the complexities of an AI-influenced job market and a rapidly changing world.

Lilienfeld ( 2007, para. 3 ) said it well: “The greatest threat to the world is ideological fanaticism, by ideological fanaticism I mean the unshakeable conviction that one’s belief system and that of other in-group members is always right and righteous and that others’ belief systems are always wrong and wrong-headed”. Imagine a world where (most or even many) people use the skills of critical thinking. Just maybe, CT could save the world.

The job market will require a psychologically adaptable toolkit, and we propose that critical thinking is an essential component therein. The disruptions imposed by new technological advances such as AI will require students to learn new employable skills because we will need not just an engineer, but a critical thinking engineer; not just a programmer, but a critical thinking programmer; and not just a journalist, but a critical thinking journalist. The dignity of workers—their humanity and our collective survival—may well depend on CT, a very human creation.

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank Dana Dunn, Moravian University, for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Funding Statement

Daniela Dumitru received funding from European Commission/EACEA, through the ERASMUS+ Programme, “Critical Thinking for Successful Jobs—Think4Jobs” Project, with the reference number 2020-1-EL01-KA203-078797.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, D.F.H. and D.D.; investigation, D.F.H. and D.D.; resources, D.F.H. and D.D.; writing—original draft preparation, D.F.H. and D.D.; writing—review and editing, D.F.H. and D.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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The role of Media in shaping public opinion on conflicts

Power of Media

Framing conflicts, conflict resolution vs. escalation, humanizing vs. dehumanizing narratives, media bias and objectivity, political and ideological bias, corporate interests and sensationalism, the role of social media and digital platforms, amplification of misinformation, echo chambers and polarization, disinformation campaigns, citizen journalism and activism, media literacy and critical thinking, promoting media literacy, encouraging critical thinking, fact-checking and verification, diversifying media consumption.

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Nurturing futures: China's holistic approach to children's development

Chinese education system focuses on instilling academic excellence, critical thinking skills, and a strong work ethic.

•The infamous Gaokao, China's national college entrance examination, looms large as the ultimate academic hurdle for high school students.

•This emphasis on academic achievement reflects China's aspirations for its children to excel in a competitive global landscape.

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently emphasized the importance of a child's holistic development in a letter of reply to elementary school pupils in the southwest province of Sichuan. In the letter, Xi also sent joyous congratulations to children throughout the country in the run up to the International Children's Day on June 1st.

"Children are the future of our country," Xi said, urging them to "become the talent capable of shouldering the mission of building a strong country and realising national rejuvenation."

In the vast landscape of global childhood development initiatives, China stands out for its steadfast commitment to fostering the all-round growth of its children. With a blend of traditional values and modern strategies, China has crafted a multifaceted approach that prioritises education, healthcare, social development and cultural enrichment. This comprehensive framework underscores the nation's recognition of children as the architects of its future and the cornerstone of its continued progress.

Education lies at the heart of China's developmental agenda for children. From early childhood through adolescence, the Chinese education system focuses on instilling academic excellence, critical thinking skills, and a strong work ethic. Children often embark on their formal education journey at the tender age of three, entering preschools that provide a nurturing environment for cognitive, social and emotional development.

As children progress through the education system, they encounter a rigorous curriculum that prioritises subjects such as mathematics, science and language arts. The infamous Gaokao, China's national college entrance examination, looms large as the ultimate academic hurdle for high school students. This emphasis on academic achievement reflects China's aspirations for its children to excel in a competitive global landscape.

China's commitment to children's well-being extends beyond the classroom to encompass their physical health. Over the years, the country has made significant strides in improving child healthcare, with notable achievements in reducing infant mortality rates and expanding access to essential medical services.

Efforts to safeguard children's health include comprehensive vaccination programmes, nutritional support initiatives, and campaigns to address environmental hazards such as air pollution. Moreover, China's healthcare system provides pediatric care, preventive services, and early intervention programmes to ensure that children receive the medical attention they need to thrive.

Recognising the importance of social development in shaping well-rounded individuals, China invests in a myriad of extracurricular activities, community engagement opportunities, and character-building initiatives. Youth clubs, volunteer programmes, and leadership workshops offer children avenues to develop interpersonal skills, cultivate empathy, and foster a sense of civic responsibility.

Furthermore, China's emphasis on social harmony and collective values permeates its approach to child rearing. Concepts such as filial piety, respect for elders, and social etiquette are integral components of children's upbringing, instilling in them a strong sense of cultural identity and social cohesion.

In a rapidly modernizing society, China remains steadfast in its commitment to preserving its rich cultural heritage and nurturing artistic expression among its children. Traditional Chinese arts, literature, music, and philosophy are woven into the fabric of children's education, providing them with a profound connection to their cultural roots.

Moreover, China embraces innovation and creativity as essential components of its cultural landscape. Children are encouraged to explore their talents, pursue their passions, and contribute to the vibrant tapestry of Chinese culture through avenues such as art competitions, music festivals, and cultural exchanges.

Central to China's developmental paradigm is the protection of children's rights and dignity. The government has enacted legislation and policies aimed at safeguarding children from exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Measures to combat child labor, trafficking, and juvenile delinquency underscore China's commitment to upholding the rights and well-being of its youngest citizens.

Additionally, China provides social welfare services, including childcare subsidies, parental leave policies, and family support programs, to assist families in raising healthy and resilient children. By addressing the social determinants of child well-being, China endeavors to create an environment where every child has the opportunity to thrive and fulfill their potential.

In nurturing the all-round development of its children, China lays the groundwork for a brighter, more prosperous future. Through a holistic approach that integrates education, healthcare, social development, and cultural enrichment, China empowers its children to become capable, compassionate, and culturally literate citizens.

As China continues its journey of economic growth and social transformation, its investment in children's development serves as a testament to its unwavering commitment to building a society that values equity, opportunity, and collective well-being. By prioritizing the needs and aspirations of its youngest generation, China paves the way for a tomorrow where every child can flourish and contribute to the tapestry of human achievement.

Stephen Ndegwa is the Executive Director of South-South Dialogues, a Nairobi-based communications development think tank, and a PhD student at the  United States International University-Africa

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A close look at the ivory tower turns up some loose masonry

The liberal arts academy lags at teaching critical thinking

Drew Gilpin Faust’s credentials, plus her well-ordered and clearly stated apologia of academic freedom, make her an adroit choice for spokesperson on behalf of the academy ( “US higher education is endangered,” Opinion, May 25). However, it is the institution itself that is in question, not the messenger.

Academic freedom is a virtue but a close look at the ivory tower turns up some loose masonry. Leaving aside considerations such as tuition costs, questionable tax-free status, legacy admissions, and other restrictions, there have also been some problems with the academy upholding its own standards of scholarship. It’s not a perfect world. This is why critics can sometimes criticize too much for the wrong reasons. But not always.

Perhaps the most substantive fault in the academy lies in the pedagogy of the country’s colleges of arts and sciences, homes of the liberal arts, and their questionable success in teaching critical — perhaps more correctly labeled objective — thinking. Bringing into balance the human tendency to parse events emotionally with an objective approach is a tough job, and so far, given the national landscape, one that remains unfinished.

Channing Wagg

Higher ed is a battleground between authoritarianism and democracy

Drew Gilpin Faust clearly and insightfully summarizes many key challenges facing higher education.

From a broader perspective, US higher education is a battleground between authoritarianism and democracy. Authoritarians realize that education is a bulwark against their advances, and the forces fomenting it rely on tested and insidious strategies, many of which impinge on higher education, to capture and retain power.

Authoritarians hope to destabilize a range of institutions in order to build popular support — not just universities but also government at all levels, the judiciary, law enforcement, corporations, health care, and the media. This dovetails with the global attack on freedom of speech.

These attacks overlap with another battleground: the social media ecosystem, which is being used to exacerbate a perception of chaos and disorientation.

The result, as we’ve seen through history, is a longing for stability through a strong leader with emergency powers and powerful but vague promises to return us to traditional values and more stable times. Of course, the lessons of history tell us the result is repression, the decline of democracy, and often war.

Simply maintaining independence and distancing from the partisan scrum is not enough. Universities, education in general, and American voters should be aware of the threat to our country and be much more proactive in maintaining and strengthening our democracy.

John Decker

We’re losing the ability to debate issues freely

As a professor, I enjoyed reading Drew Gilpin Faust’s op-ed, and I agree that US higher education is endangered. The motto of the California Institute of Technology is ”The truth shall make you free.” The problem with our human condition is that we don’t often know the truth and may never know it absolutely, but we try. To find the truth, we need an environment that has minimal subjective interference (e.g., politics) and allows free and full inquiry by scholars to examine all possible explanations or interpretations of a question or issue and work out and debate them. This will get us closer to the truth, objectively.

Today, sadly, we are losing the ability to debate and investigate issues without bias and interference through monetary control and cancel culture. This curtails our ability to try new ideas and truly debate issues, thus destroying the essence of intellectualism.

The university should act as a safe haven and bulwark against incivility and shaming to protect true intellectualism from falling prey to external human forces that taint the quest for truth. If the university, the pinnacle of human civilization and thought, cannot protect intellectual freedom (i.e., the rule of truth) and prevent persecution of those who dare to think differently, humanity is doomed.

Michael Pravica

Henderson, Nev.

The writer is a professor of physics at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

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Colleges should place its graduates into jobs

DEAR EDITOR:

What is the quality of a college education today? Are our young adults really learning critical thinking skills or just following the crowd or mob mentality? The chant to free Palestine and the visceral hate for Jews, going to the extreme with anti-Semitic chants calling for Jewish genocide is certainly not critical thinking that I can discern. First off, didn’t the Palestinian people hold a free election whereby they elected their leaders, putting Hamas, a terrorist organization, in charge? Second, wasn’t it the Palestinians who killed and captured innocent Jewish civilians that started this war? Isn’t it a fact that Hamas has abhorrence for the West and believes in the demise of the Jewish state? Isn’t it a fact that the Palestinian people by electing Hamas have some responsibility for the current war?

So once again we have ideology mixed with mob mentality on our college campuses supporting a cause that they know little to nothing about, fighting hatred and racism with more hatred and racism. So far, if one chooses to fight hatred with more hatred no matter what you think the just or unjust cause is, you will certainly lose. How’s that hatred working out for the Palestinian people? How’s that hatred working out for the KKK or BLM? The stupidity among these protesters is astonishing and it’s obvious that several colleges have failed in their attempt to educate our youth. Just as in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the need to belong for these college students is so driven that they will stand with the cowards chanting idiotic phrases calling for genocide of Jews rather than speaking up for the truth.

Now taking all of this in, Joe Biden still wants student loan forgiveness. So, is it fair for the taxpayers to foot the bill for the mass production of unintelligent people with useless degrees or should colleges foot the bill? Critical thinking skills are not in the wheelhouse of most colleges as we noted above. So, isn’t it reasonable for us to expect that colleges that promote degrees of study have job-ready placement for all of their students, not just some? If they fail to place students in a job with their degree, shouldn’t the cost of the education be free for the student with the college, not the taxpayer absorbing the cost? Instead of student loan forgiveness, colleges need to be held responsible for job placement for every student after graduation. This would ensure that college programs are geared toward the needs and demands of our society. The financial burden and accountability should be placed squarely on higher education institutions — not the taxpayer.

Tim Santell

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