Forum Spring 2000: Critical Thinking Project

Because critical thinking is on nearly every school's list of educational goals, appears in the title of a skyrocketing number of textbooks, and is the focus of seminars, workshops, conferences, newsletters, journal articles and presentations, it is pretty interesting that faculty generally cannot agree on a definition of it, a means of measuring it, or effective methods of teaching it. In fact, it is not uncommon to hear a colleague insist that critical thinking cannot be taught. Having the advantage of being trained in the humanities rather than the sciences, I am free to assume that there is such a thing as critical thinking and that certain behaviors are evidence that it is taking place.

Now, I can focus on trying to discover what kind of instruction can help students improve their ability to engage in it. I begin this exploration of critical thinking instruction with some basic assumptions:

critical thinking is natural to human beings.
critical thinking is a complex behavior which involves a hierarchy of skills that must be developed more or less in sequence.
learning to think critically requires opportunities for practice.
teaching critical thinking requires modeling critical thinking behavior.
enabling students to understand the concept of critical thinking and to recognize critical thinking behaviors can facilitate the development of critical thinking skills.
establishing behavioral criteria to assess critical thinking and enabling students to assess their own thinking can facilitate development of critical thinking skills.
in spite of grading requirements, the results of instruction may be delayed.
any improvement in the ability to think is good.

My project is planned in three stages: I (Summer and Fall 1999) - I researched what has been tried in various kinds of classes (including methods or designs that did not succeed or had unexpected results) and extrapolated principles, practices, assumptions, etc. II (Fall 1999 and Spring 2000) I began to experiment with two or three instructional designs that focus on the development of basic or intermediate critical thinking skills. III (Spring and Summer 2000) I intend to revise, retry, rethink, and elicit input from colleagues. I expect that Stages II and III will continue until I retire.