what is critical thinking in schools

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Critical Thinking in the Classroom: A Guide for Teachers

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, teaching students the skill of critical thinking has become a priority. This powerful tool empowers students to evaluate information, make reasoned judgments, and approach problems from a fresh perspective. In this article, we’ll explore the significance of critical thinking and provide effective strategies to nurture this skill in your students.

Why is Fostering Critical Thinking Important?

Strategies to cultivate critical thinking, real-world example, concluding thoughts.

Critical thinking is a key skill that goes far beyond the four walls of a classroom. It equips students to better understand and interact with the world around them. Here are some reasons why fostering critical thinking is important:

Making Informed Decisions: Critical thinking enables students to evaluate the pros and cons of a situation, helping them make informed and rational decisions.
Developing Analytical Skills: Critical thinking involves analyzing information from different angles, which enhances analytical skills.
Promoting Independence: Critical thinking fosters independence by encouraging students to form their own opinions based on their analysis, rather than relying on others.

Creating an environment that encourages critical thinking can be accomplished in various ways. Here are some effective strategies:

Socratic Questioning: This method involves asking thought-provoking questions that encourage students to think deeply about a topic. For example, instead of asking, “What is the capital of France?” you might ask, “Why do you think Paris became the capital of France?”
Debates and Discussions: Debates and open-ended discussions allow students to explore different viewpoints and challenge their own beliefs. For example, a debate on a current event can engage students in critical analysis of the situation.
Teaching Metacognition: Teaching students to think about their own thinking can enhance their critical thinking skills. This can be achieved through activities such as reflective writing or journaling.
Problem-Solving Activities: As with developing problem-solving skills , activities that require students to find solutions to complex problems can also foster critical thinking.

As a school leader, I’ve seen the transformative power of critical thinking. During a school competition, I observed a team of students tasked with proposing a solution to reduce our school’s environmental impact. Instead of jumping to obvious solutions, they critically evaluated multiple options, considering the feasibility, cost, and potential impact of each. They ultimately proposed a comprehensive plan that involved water conservation, waste reduction, and energy efficiency measures. This demonstrated their ability to critically analyze a problem and develop an effective solution.

Critical thinking is an essential skill for students in the 21st century. It equips them to understand and navigate the world in a thoughtful and informed manner. As a teacher, incorporating strategies to foster critical thinking in your classroom can make a lasting impact on your students’ educational journey and life beyond school.

1. What is critical thinking? Critical thinking is the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment.

2. Why is critical thinking important for students? Critical thinking helps students make informed decisions, develop analytical skills, and promotes independence.

3. What are some strategies to cultivate critical thinking in students? Strategies can include Socratic questioning, debates and discussions, teaching metacognition, and problem-solving activities.

4. How can I assess my students’ critical thinking skills? You can assess critical thinking skills through essays, presentations, discussions, and problem-solving tasks that require thoughtful analysis.

5. Can critical thinking be taught? Yes, critical thinking can be taught and nurtured through specific teaching strategies and a supportive learning environment.

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Connecting Learning to Real-World Contexts: Strategies for Teachers

When students see the relevance of their classroom lessons to their everyday lives, they are more likely to be motivated, engaged, and retain information.

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Encouraging Active Involvement in Learning: Strategies for Teachers

Active learning benefits students by improving retention of information, enhancing critical thinking skills, and encouraging a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

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Collaborative and Cooperative Learning: A Guide for Teachers

These methods encourage students to work together, share ideas, and actively participate in their education.

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Experiential Teaching: Role-Play and Simulations in Teaching

These interactive techniques allow students to immerse themselves in practical, real-world scenarios, thereby deepening their understanding and retention of key concepts.

In a school classroom, a teacher engages with her students while delivering a lesson.

Project-Based Learning Activities: A Guide for Teachers

Project-Based Learning is a student-centered pedagogy that involves a dynamic approach to teaching, where students explore real-world problems or challenges.

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Critical Thinking
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critical thinking , in educational theory, mode of cognition using deliberative reasoning and impartial scrutiny of information to arrive at a possible solution to a problem. From the perspective of educators, critical thinking encompasses both a set of logical skills that can be taught and a disposition toward reflective open inquiry that can be cultivated . The term critical thinking was coined by American philosopher and educator John Dewey in the book How We Think (1910) and was adopted by the progressive education movement as a core instructional goal that offered a dynamic modern alternative to traditional educational methods such as rote memorization.

Critical thinking is characterized by a broad set of related skills usually including the abilities to

break down a problem into its constituent parts to reveal its underlying logic and assumptions
recognize and account for one’s own biases in judgment and experience
collect and assess relevant evidence from either personal observations and experimentation or by gathering external information
adjust and reevaluate one’s own thinking in response to what one has learned
form a reasoned assessment in order to propose a solution to a problem or a more accurate understanding of the topic at hand

Theorists have noted that such skills are only valuable insofar as a person is inclined to use them. Consequently, they emphasize that certain habits of mind are necessary components of critical thinking. This disposition may include curiosity, open-mindedness, self-awareness, empathy , and persistence.

Although there is a generally accepted set of qualities that are associated with critical thinking, scholarly writing about the term has highlighted disagreements over its exact definition and whether and how it differs from related concepts such as problem solving . In addition, some theorists have insisted that critical thinking be regarded and valued as a process and not as a goal-oriented skill set to be used to solve problems. Critical-thinking theory has also been accused of reflecting patriarchal assumptions about knowledge and ways of knowing that are inherently biased against women.

Dewey, who also used the term reflective thinking , connected critical thinking to a tradition of rational inquiry associated with modern science . From the turn of the 20th century, he and others working in the overlapping fields of psychology , philosophy , and educational theory sought to rigorously apply the scientific method to understand and define the process of thinking. They conceived critical thinking to be related to the scientific method but more open, flexible, and self-correcting; instead of a recipe or a series of steps, critical thinking would be a wider set of skills, patterns, and strategies that allow someone to reason through an intellectual topic, constantly reassessing assumptions and potential explanations in order to arrive at a sound judgment and understanding.

In the progressive education movement in the United States , critical thinking was seen as a crucial component of raising citizens in a democratic society. Instead of imparting a particular series of lessons or teaching only canonical subject matter, theorists thought that teachers should train students in how to think. As critical thinkers, such students would be equipped to be productive and engaged citizens who could cooperate and rationally overcome differences inherent in a pluralistic society.

Beginning in the 1970s and ’80s, critical thinking as a key outcome of school and university curriculum leapt to the forefront of U.S. education policy. In an atmosphere of renewed Cold War competition and amid reports of declining U.S. test scores, there were growing fears that the quality of education in the United States was falling and that students were unprepared. In response, a concerted effort was made to systematically define curriculum goals and implement standardized testing regimens , and critical-thinking skills were frequently included as a crucially important outcome of a successful education. A notable event in this movement was the release of the 1980 report of the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities that called for the U.S. Department of Education to include critical thinking on its list of “basic skills.” Three years later the California State University system implemented a policy that required every undergraduate student to complete a course in critical thinking.

Critical thinking continued to be put forward as a central goal of education in the early 21st century. Its ubiquity in the language of education policy and in such guidelines as the Common Core State Standards in the United States generated some criticism that the concept itself was both overused and ill-defined. In addition, an argument was made by teachers, theorists, and others that educators were not being adequately trained to teach critical thinking.

Our Mission

Helping Students Hone Their Critical Thinking Skills

Used consistently, these strategies can help middle and high school teachers guide students to improve much-needed skills.

Middle school students involved in a classroom discussion

Critical thinking skills are important in every discipline, at and beyond school. From managing money to choosing which candidates to vote for in elections to making difficult career choices, students need to be prepared to take in, synthesize, and act on new information in a world that is constantly changing.

While critical thinking might seem like an abstract idea that is tough to directly instruct, there are many engaging ways to help students strengthen these skills through active learning.

Make Time for Metacognitive Reflection

Create space for students to both reflect on their ideas and discuss the power of doing so. Show students how they can push back on their own thinking to analyze and question their assumptions. Students might ask themselves, “Why is this the best answer? What information supports my answer? What might someone with a counterargument say?”

Through this reflection, students and teachers (who can model reflecting on their own thinking) gain deeper understandings of their ideas and do a better job articulating their beliefs. In a world that is go-go-go, it is important to help students understand that it is OK to take a breath and think about their ideas before putting them out into the world. And taking time for reflection helps us more thoughtfully consider others’ ideas, too.

Teach Reasoning Skills

Reasoning skills are another key component of critical thinking, involving the abilities to think logically, evaluate evidence, identify assumptions, and analyze arguments. Students who learn how to use reasoning skills will be better equipped to make informed decisions, form and defend opinions, and solve problems.

One way to teach reasoning is to use problem-solving activities that require students to apply their skills to practical contexts. For example, give students a real problem to solve, and ask them to use reasoning skills to develop a solution. They can then present their solution and defend their reasoning to the class and engage in discussion about whether and how their thinking changed when listening to peers’ perspectives.

A great example I have seen involved students identifying an underutilized part of their school and creating a presentation about one way to redesign it. This project allowed students to feel a sense of connection to the problem and come up with creative solutions that could help others at school. For more examples, you might visit PBS’s Design Squad , a resource that brings to life real-world problem-solving.

Ask Open-Ended Questions

Moving beyond the repetition of facts, critical thinking requires students to take positions and explain their beliefs through research, evidence, and explanations of credibility.

When we pose open-ended questions, we create space for classroom discourse inclusive of diverse, perhaps opposing, ideas—grounds for rich exchanges that support deep thinking and analysis.

For example, “How would you approach the problem?” and “Where might you look to find resources to address this issue?” are two open-ended questions that position students to think less about the “right” answer and more about the variety of solutions that might already exist.

Journaling, whether digitally or physically in a notebook, is another great way to have students answer these open-ended prompts—giving them time to think and organize their thoughts before contributing to a conversation, which can ensure that more voices are heard.

Once students process in their journal, small group or whole class conversations help bring their ideas to life. Discovering similarities between answers helps reveal to students that they are not alone, which can encourage future participation in constructive civil discourse.

Teach Information Literacy

Education has moved far past the idea of “Be careful of what is on Wikipedia, because it might not be true.” With AI innovations making their way into classrooms, teachers know that informed readers must question everything.

Understanding what is and is not a reliable source and knowing how to vet information are important skills for students to build and utilize when making informed decisions. You might start by introducing the idea of bias: Articles, ads, memes, videos, and every other form of media can push an agenda that students may not see on the surface. Discuss credibility, subjectivity, and objectivity, and look at examples and nonexamples of trusted information to prepare students to be well-informed members of a democracy.

One of my favorite lessons is about the Pacific Northwest tree octopus . This project asks students to explore what appears to be a very real website that provides information on this supposedly endangered animal. It is a wonderful, albeit over-the-top, example of how something might look official even when untrue, revealing that we need critical thinking to break down “facts” and determine the validity of the information we consume.

A fun extension is to have students come up with their own website or newsletter about something going on in school that is untrue. Perhaps a change in dress code that requires everyone to wear their clothes inside out or a change to the lunch menu that will require students to eat brussels sprouts every day.

Giving students the ability to create their own falsified information can help them better identify it in other contexts. Understanding that information can be “too good to be true” can help them identify future falsehoods.

Provide Diverse Perspectives

Consider how to keep the classroom from becoming an echo chamber. If students come from the same community, they may have similar perspectives. And those who have differing perspectives may not feel comfortable sharing them in the face of an opposing majority.

To support varying viewpoints, bring diverse voices into the classroom as much as possible, especially when discussing current events. Use primary sources: videos from YouTube, essays and articles written by people who experienced current events firsthand, documentaries that dive deeply into topics that require some nuance, and any other resources that provide a varied look at topics.

I like to use the Smithsonian “OurStory” page , which shares a wide variety of stories from people in the United States. The page on Japanese American internment camps is very powerful because of its first-person perspectives.

Practice Makes Perfect

To make the above strategies and thinking routines a consistent part of your classroom, spread them out—and build upon them—over the course of the school year. You might challenge students with information and/or examples that require them to use their critical thinking skills; work these skills explicitly into lessons, projects, rubrics, and self-assessments; or have students practice identifying misinformation or unsupported arguments.

Critical thinking is not learned in isolation. It needs to be explored in English language arts, social studies, science, physical education, math. Every discipline requires students to take a careful look at something and find the best solution. Often, these skills are taken for granted, viewed as a by-product of a good education, but true critical thinking doesn’t just happen. It requires consistency and commitment.

In a moment when information and misinformation abound, and students must parse reams of information, it is imperative that we support and model critical thinking in the classroom to support the development of well-informed citizens.

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Eight Instructional Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking

(This is the first post in a three-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom?

This three-part series will explore what critical thinking is, if it can be specifically taught and, if so, how can teachers do so in their classrooms.

Today’s guests are Dara Laws Savage, Patrick Brown, Meg Riordan, Ph.D., and Dr. PJ Caposey. Dara, Patrick, and Meg were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On Teaching & Learning Critical Thinking In The Classroom .

Current Events

Dara Laws Savage is an English teacher at the Early College High School at Delaware State University, where she serves as a teacher and instructional coach and lead mentor. Dara has been teaching for 25 years (career preparation, English, photography, yearbook, newspaper, and graphic design) and has presented nationally on project-based learning and technology integration:

There is so much going on right now and there is an overload of information for us to process. Did you ever stop to think how our students are processing current events? They see news feeds, hear news reports, and scan photos and posts, but are they truly thinking about what they are hearing and seeing?

I tell my students that my job is not to give them answers but to teach them how to think about what they read and hear. So what is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom? There are just as many definitions of critical thinking as there are people trying to define it. However, the Critical Think Consortium focuses on the tools to create a thinking-based classroom rather than a definition: “Shape the climate to support thinking, create opportunities for thinking, build capacity to think, provide guidance to inform thinking.” Using these four criteria and pairing them with current events, teachers easily create learning spaces that thrive on thinking and keep students engaged.

One successful technique I use is the FIRE Write. Students are given a quote, a paragraph, an excerpt, or a photo from the headlines. Students are asked to F ocus and respond to the selection for three minutes. Next, students are asked to I dentify a phrase or section of the photo and write for two minutes. Third, students are asked to R eframe their response around a specific word, phrase, or section within their previous selection. Finally, students E xchange their thoughts with a classmate. Within the exchange, students also talk about how the selection connects to what we are covering in class.

There was a controversial Pepsi ad in 2017 involving Kylie Jenner and a protest with a police presence. The imagery in the photo was strikingly similar to a photo that went viral with a young lady standing opposite a police line. Using that image from a current event engaged my students and gave them the opportunity to critically think about events of the time.

Here are the two photos and a student response:

F - Focus on both photos and respond for three minutes

In the first picture, you see a strong and courageous black female, bravely standing in front of two officers in protest. She is risking her life to do so. Iesha Evans is simply proving to the world she does NOT mean less because she is black … and yet officers are there to stop her. She did not step down. In the picture below, you see Kendall Jenner handing a police officer a Pepsi. Maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal, except this was Pepsi’s weak, pathetic, and outrageous excuse of a commercial that belittles the whole movement of people fighting for their lives.

I - Identify a word or phrase, underline it, then write about it for two minutes

A white, privileged female in place of a fighting black woman was asking for trouble. A struggle we are continuously fighting every day, and they make a mockery of it. “I know what will work! Here Mr. Police Officer! Drink some Pepsi!” As if. Pepsi made a fool of themselves, and now their already dwindling fan base continues to ever shrink smaller.

R - Reframe your thoughts by choosing a different word, then write about that for one minute

You don’t know privilege until it’s gone. You don’t know privilege while it’s there—but you can and will be made accountable and aware. Don’t use it for evil. You are not stupid. Use it to do something. Kendall could’ve NOT done the commercial. Kendall could’ve released another commercial standing behind a black woman. Anything!

Exchange - Remember to discuss how this connects to our school song project and our previous discussions?

This connects two ways - 1) We want to convey a strong message. Be powerful. Show who we are. And Pepsi definitely tried. … Which leads to the second connection. 2) Not mess up and offend anyone, as had the one alma mater had been linked to black minstrels. We want to be amazing, but we have to be smart and careful and make sure we include everyone who goes to our school and everyone who may go to our school.

As a final step, students read and annotate the full article and compare it to their initial response.

Using current events and critical-thinking strategies like FIRE writing helps create a learning space where thinking is the goal rather than a score on a multiple-choice assessment. Critical-thinking skills can cross over to any of students’ other courses and into life outside the classroom. After all, we as teachers want to help the whole student be successful, and critical thinking is an important part of navigating life after they leave our classrooms.

‘Before-Explore-Explain’

Patrick Brown is the executive director of STEM and CTE for the Fort Zumwalt school district in Missouri and an experienced educator and author :

Planning for critical thinking focuses on teaching the most crucial science concepts, practices, and logical-thinking skills as well as the best use of instructional time. One way to ensure that lessons maintain a focus on critical thinking is to focus on the instructional sequence used to teach.

Explore-before-explain teaching is all about promoting critical thinking for learners to better prepare students for the reality of their world. What having an explore-before-explain mindset means is that in our planning, we prioritize giving students firsthand experiences with data, allow students to construct evidence-based claims that focus on conceptual understanding, and challenge students to discuss and think about the why behind phenomena.

Just think of the critical thinking that has to occur for students to construct a scientific claim. 1) They need the opportunity to collect data, analyze it, and determine how to make sense of what the data may mean. 2) With data in hand, students can begin thinking about the validity and reliability of their experience and information collected. 3) They can consider what differences, if any, they might have if they completed the investigation again. 4) They can scrutinize outlying data points for they may be an artifact of a true difference that merits further exploration of a misstep in the procedure, measuring device, or measurement. All of these intellectual activities help them form more robust understanding and are evidence of their critical thinking.

In explore-before-explain teaching, all of these hard critical-thinking tasks come before teacher explanations of content. Whether we use discovery experiences, problem-based learning, and or inquiry-based activities, strategies that are geared toward helping students construct understanding promote critical thinking because students learn content by doing the practices valued in the field to generate knowledge.

An Issue of Equity

Meg Riordan, Ph.D., is the chief learning officer at The Possible Project, an out-of-school program that collaborates with youth to build entrepreneurial skills and mindsets and provides pathways to careers and long-term economic prosperity. She has been in the field of education for over 25 years as a middle and high school teacher, school coach, college professor, regional director of N.Y.C. Outward Bound Schools, and director of external research with EL Education:

Although critical thinking often defies straightforward definition, most in the education field agree it consists of several components: reasoning, problem-solving, and decisionmaking, plus analysis and evaluation of information, such that multiple sides of an issue can be explored. It also includes dispositions and “the willingness to apply critical-thinking principles, rather than fall back on existing unexamined beliefs, or simply believe what you’re told by authority figures.”

Despite variation in definitions, critical thinking is nonetheless promoted as an essential outcome of students’ learning—we want to see students and adults demonstrate it across all fields, professions, and in their personal lives. Yet there is simultaneously a rationing of opportunities in schools for students of color, students from under-resourced communities, and other historically marginalized groups to deeply learn and practice critical thinking.

For example, many of our most underserved students often spend class time filling out worksheets, promoting high compliance but low engagement, inquiry, critical thinking, or creation of new ideas. At a time in our world when college and careers are critical for participation in society and the global, knowledge-based economy, far too many students struggle within classrooms and schools that reinforce low-expectations and inequity.

If educators aim to prepare all students for an ever-evolving marketplace and develop skills that will be valued no matter what tomorrow’s jobs are, then we must move critical thinking to the forefront of classroom experiences. And educators must design learning to cultivate it.

So, what does that really look like?

Unpack and define critical thinking

To understand critical thinking, educators need to first unpack and define its components. What exactly are we looking for when we speak about reasoning or exploring multiple perspectives on an issue? How does problem-solving show up in English, math, science, art, or other disciplines—and how is it assessed? At Two Rivers, an EL Education school, the faculty identified five constructs of critical thinking, defined each, and created rubrics to generate a shared picture of quality for teachers and students. The rubrics were then adapted across grade levels to indicate students’ learning progressions.

At Avenues World School, critical thinking is one of the Avenues World Elements and is an enduring outcome embedded in students’ early experiences through 12th grade. For instance, a kindergarten student may be expected to “identify cause and effect in familiar contexts,” while an 8th grader should demonstrate the ability to “seek out sufficient evidence before accepting a claim as true,” “identify bias in claims and evidence,” and “reconsider strongly held points of view in light of new evidence.”

When faculty and students embrace a common vision of what critical thinking looks and sounds like and how it is assessed, educators can then explicitly design learning experiences that call for students to employ critical-thinking skills. This kind of work must occur across all schools and programs, especially those serving large numbers of students of color. As Linda Darling-Hammond asserts , “Schools that serve large numbers of students of color are least likely to offer the kind of curriculum needed to ... help students attain the [critical-thinking] skills needed in a knowledge work economy. ”

So, what can it look like to create those kinds of learning experiences?

Designing experiences for critical thinking

After defining a shared understanding of “what” critical thinking is and “how” it shows up across multiple disciplines and grade levels, it is essential to create learning experiences that impel students to cultivate, practice, and apply these skills. There are several levers that offer pathways for teachers to promote critical thinking in lessons:

1.Choose Compelling Topics: Keep it relevant

A key Common Core State Standard asks for students to “write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” That might not sound exciting or culturally relevant. But a learning experience designed for a 12th grade humanities class engaged learners in a compelling topic— policing in America —to analyze and evaluate multiple texts (including primary sources) and share the reasoning for their perspectives through discussion and writing. Students grappled with ideas and their beliefs and employed deep critical-thinking skills to develop arguments for their claims. Embedding critical-thinking skills in curriculum that students care about and connect with can ignite powerful learning experiences.

2. Make Local Connections: Keep it real

At The Possible Project , an out-of-school-time program designed to promote entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, students in a recent summer online program (modified from in-person due to COVID-19) explored the impact of COVID-19 on their communities and local BIPOC-owned businesses. They learned interviewing skills through a partnership with Everyday Boston , conducted virtual interviews with entrepreneurs, evaluated information from their interviews and local data, and examined their previously held beliefs. They created blog posts and videos to reflect on their learning and consider how their mindsets had changed as a result of the experience. In this way, we can design powerful community-based learning and invite students into productive struggle with multiple perspectives.

3. Create Authentic Projects: Keep it rigorous

At Big Picture Learning schools, students engage in internship-based learning experiences as a central part of their schooling. Their school-based adviser and internship-based mentor support them in developing real-world projects that promote deeper learning and critical-thinking skills. Such authentic experiences teach “young people to be thinkers, to be curious, to get from curiosity to creation … and it helps students design a learning experience that answers their questions, [providing an] opportunity to communicate it to a larger audience—a major indicator of postsecondary success.” Even in a remote environment, we can design projects that ask more of students than rote memorization and that spark critical thinking.

Our call to action is this: As educators, we need to make opportunities for critical thinking available not only to the affluent or those fortunate enough to be placed in advanced courses. The tools are available, let’s use them. Let’s interrogate our current curriculum and design learning experiences that engage all students in real, relevant, and rigorous experiences that require critical thinking and prepare them for promising postsecondary pathways.

Critical Thinking & Student Engagement

Dr. PJ Caposey is an award-winning educator, keynote speaker, consultant, and author of seven books who currently serves as the superintendent of schools for the award-winning Meridian CUSD 223 in northwest Illinois. You can find PJ on most social-media platforms as MCUSDSupe:

When I start my keynote on student engagement, I invite two people up on stage and give them each five paper balls to shoot at a garbage can also conveniently placed on stage. Contestant One shoots their shot, and the audience gives approval. Four out of 5 is a heckuva score. Then just before Contestant Two shoots, I blindfold them and start moving the garbage can back and forth. I usually try to ensure that they can at least make one of their shots. Nobody is successful in this unfair environment.

I thank them and send them back to their seats and then explain that this little activity was akin to student engagement. While we all know we want student engagement, we are shooting at different targets. More importantly, for teachers, it is near impossible for them to hit a target that is moving and that they cannot see.

Within the world of education and particularly as educational leaders, we have failed to simplify what student engagement looks like, and it is impossible to define or articulate what student engagement looks like if we cannot clearly articulate what critical thinking is and looks like in a classroom. Because, simply, without critical thought, there is no engagement.

The good news here is that critical thought has been defined and placed into taxonomies for decades already. This is not something new and not something that needs to be redefined. I am a Bloom’s person, but there is nothing wrong with DOK or some of the other taxonomies, either. To be precise, I am a huge fan of Daggett’s Rigor and Relevance Framework. I have used that as a core element of my practice for years, and it has shaped who I am as an instructional leader.

So, in order to explain critical thought, a teacher or a leader must familiarize themselves with these tried and true taxonomies. Easy, right? Yes, sort of. The issue is not understanding what critical thought is; it is the ability to integrate it into the classrooms. In order to do so, there are a four key steps every educator must take.

Integrating critical thought/rigor into a lesson does not happen by chance, it happens by design. Planning for critical thought and engagement is much different from planning for a traditional lesson. In order to plan for kids to think critically, you have to provide a base of knowledge and excellent prompts to allow them to explore their own thinking in order to analyze, evaluate, or synthesize information.
SIDE NOTE – Bloom’s verbs are a great way to start when writing objectives, but true planning will take you deeper than this.

QUESTIONING

If the questions and prompts given in a classroom have correct answers or if the teacher ends up answering their own questions, the lesson will lack critical thought and rigor.
Script five questions forcing higher-order thought prior to every lesson. Experienced teachers may not feel they need this, but it helps to create an effective habit.
If lessons are rigorous and assessments are not, students will do well on their assessments, and that may not be an accurate representation of the knowledge and skills they have mastered. If lessons are easy and assessments are rigorous, the exact opposite will happen. When deciding to increase critical thought, it must happen in all three phases of the game: planning, instruction, and assessment.

TALK TIME / CONTROL

To increase rigor, the teacher must DO LESS. This feels counterintuitive but is accurate. Rigorous lessons involving tons of critical thought must allow for students to work on their own, collaborate with peers, and connect their ideas. This cannot happen in a silent room except for the teacher talking. In order to increase rigor, decrease talk time and become comfortable with less control. Asking questions and giving prompts that lead to no true correct answer also means less control. This is a tough ask for some teachers. Explained differently, if you assign one assignment and get 30 very similar products, you have most likely assigned a low-rigor recipe. If you assign one assignment and get multiple varied products, then the students have had a chance to think deeply, and you have successfully integrated critical thought into your classroom.

Thanks to Dara, Patrick, Meg, and PJ for their contributions!

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Created by the Great Schools Partnership , the GLOSSARY OF EDUCATION REFORM is a comprehensive online resource that describes widely used school-improvement terms, concepts, and strategies for journalists, parents, and community members. | Learn more »

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a term used by educators to describe forms of learning, thought, and analysis that go beyond the memorization and recall of information and facts. In common usage, critical thinking is an umbrella term that may be applied to many different forms of learning acquisition or to a wide variety of thought processes. In its most basic expression, critical thinking occurs when students are analyzing, evaluating, interpreting, or synthesizing information and applying creative thought to form an argument, solve a problem, or reach a conclusion.

Critical thinking entails many kinds of intellectual skills, including the following representative examples:

Developing well-reasoned, persuasive arguments and evaluating and responding to counterarguments
Examining concepts or situations from multiple perspectives, including different cultural perspectives
Questioning evidence and assumptions to reach novel conclusions
Devising imaginative ways to solve problems, especially unfamiliar or complex problems
Formulating and articulating thoughtful, penetrating questions
Identifying themes or patterns and making abstract connections across subjects

Critical thinking is a central concept in educational reforms that call for schools to place a greater emphasis on skills that are used in all subject areas and that students can apply in all educational, career, and civic settings throughout their lives. It’s also a central concept in reforms that question how teachers have traditionally taught and what students should be learning—notably, the 21st century skills movement, which broadly calls on schools to create academic programs and learning experiences that equip students with the most essential and in-demand knowledge, skills, and dispositions they will need to be successful in higher-education programs and modern workplaces. As higher education and job requirements become competitive, complex, and technical, proponents argue, students will need skills such as critical thinking to successfully navigate the modern world, excel in challenging careers, and process increasingly complex information.

Critical thinking also intersects with debates about assessment and how schools should measure learning acquisition. For example, multiple-choice testing formats have been common in standardized testing for decades, yet the heavy use of such testing formats emphasizes—and may reinforce the importance of—factual retention and recall over other skills. If schools largely test and award grades for factual recall, teachers will therefore stress memorization and recall in their teaching, possibly at the expense of skills such as critical thinking that are vitally important for students to possess but far more challenging to measure accurately.

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Supplement to Critical Thinking

Educational methods.

Experiments have shown that educational interventions can improve critical thinking abilities and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. Glaser (1941) developed teaching materials suitable for senior primary school, high school and college students. To test their effectiveness, he developed with his sponsor Goodwin Watson the Watson-Glaser Tests of Critical Thinking, whose descendants are in widespread global use under the name “Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal” (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994). He found that senior secondary school students receiving 10 weeks of instruction using these materials improved their scores on these tests more than other such students receiving the standard English curriculum during the 10 weeks, to a degree that was statistically significant (i.e., probably not due to chance). More recently, Abrami et al. (2015) summarized in a meta-analysis the best available evidence on the effectiveness of various strategies for teaching students to think critically. The meta-analysis used as a measure of effectiveness a modified version of a statistical measure known as “Cohen’s d”: the ratio of a difference in mean score to the statistical deviation (SD) of the scores in a reference group. A difference of 0.2 SD is a small effect, a difference of 0.5 SD is a moderate effect, and a difference of 0.8 is a large effect (Cohen 1988: 25–27). Abrami et al. (2015) found a weighted mean effect size of 0.30 among 341 effect sizes, with effect sizes ranging from −1 to +2. This methodologically careful meta-analysis provides strong statistical evidence that explicit instruction for critical thinking can improve critical thinking abilities and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests.

Although contemporary meta-analysis provides a more justified verdict on claims of causal effectiveness than other methods of investigation, it does not give the reader an intuitive grasp of what difference a particular intervention makes to the lives of those who receive it. To get an appreciation of this difference, it helps to read the testimony of the teachers and students in the Laboratory School of Chicago where Dewey’s ideas obtained concreteness. The history of the school, written by two of its former teachers in collaboration with Dewey, makes the following claim for the effects of its approach:

As a result of this guarding and direction of their freedom, the children retained the power of initiative naturally present in young children through their inquisitive interests. This spirit of inquiry was given plenty of opportunity and developed with most of the children into the habit of trying a thing out for themselves. Thus, they gradually became familiar with, and to varying degrees skilled in, the use of the experimental method to solve problems in all areas of their experience. (Mayhew & Edwards 1936: 402–403)

A science teacher in the school wrote:

I think the children did get the scientific attitude of mind. They found out things for themselves. They worked out the simplest problems that may have involved a most commonplace and everyday fact in the manner that a really scientific investigator goes to work. (Mayhew & Edwards 1936: 403)

An alumna of the school summed up the character of its former students as follows:

It is difficult for me to be restrained about the character building results of the Dewey School. As the years have passed and as I have watched the lives of many Dewey School children, I have always been astonished at the ease which fits them into all sorts and conditions of emergencies. They do not vacillate and flounder under unstable emotions; they go ahead and work out the problem in hand, guided by their positively formed working habits. Discouragement to them is non-existent, almost ad absurdum. For that very fact, accomplishment in daily living is inevitable. Whoever has been given the working pattern of tackling problems has a courage born of self-confidence and achieves. (Mayhew & Edwards 1936: 406–407)

In the absence of control groups, of standardized tests, and of statistical methods of controlling for confounding variables, such testimonies are weak evidence of the effectiveness of educational interventions in developing the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker—in Dewey’s conception, a scientific attitude. But they give a vivid impression of what might be accomplished in an educational system that takes the development of critical thinking as a goal.

Dewey established the Laboratory School explicitly as an experiment to test his theory of knowledge, which

emphasized the part in the development of thought of problems which originated in active situations and also the necessity of testing thought by action if thought was to pass over into knowledge. (Dewey 1936: 464)

Hence the curriculum of the school started from situations familiar to children from their home life (such as preparing food and making clothing) and posed problems that the children were to solve by doing things and noting the consequences. This curriculum was adjusted in the light of its observed results in the classroom.

The school’s continued experimentation with the subject matter of the elementary curriculum proved that classroom results were best when activities were in accord with the child’s changing interests, his growing consciousness of the relation of means and ends, and his increasing willingness to perfect means and to postpone satisfactions in order to arrive at better ends…. The important question for those guiding this process of growth, and of promoting the alignment and cooperation of interest and effort, is this. What specific subject-matter or mode of skill has such a vital connection with the child’s interest, existing powers, and capabilities as will extend the one [the interest–DH] and stimulate, exercise, and carry forward the others [the powers and capabilities–DH] in a progressive course of action? (Mayhew & Edwards 1936: 420–421)

In an appendix to the history of the Laboratory School, Dewey (1936: 468–469) acknowledges that the school did not solve the problem of finding things in the child’s present experience out of which would grow more elaborate, technical and organized knowledge. Passmore (1980: 91) notes one difficulty of starting from children’s out-of-school experiences: they differ a lot from one child to another. More fundamentally, the everyday out-of-school experiences of a child provide few links to the systematic knowledge of nature and of human history that humanity has developed and that schools should pass on to the next generation. If children are to acquire such knowledge through investigation of problems, teachers must first provide information as a basis for formulating problems that interest them (Passmore 1980: 93–94).

More than a century has passed since Dewey’s experiment. In the interim, researchers have refined the methodology of experimenting with human subjects, in educational research and elsewhere. They have also developed the methodology of meta-analysis for combining the results of various experiments to form a comprehensive picture of what has been discovered. Abrami et al. (2015) report the results of such a meta-analysis of all the experimental and quasi-experimental studies published or archived before 2010 that used as outcome variables standardized measures of critical thinking abilities or dispositions of the sort enumerated in Facione 1990a and described in sections 8 and 9 of the main entry. By an experimental study, they mean one in which participants are divided randomly into two groups, one of which receives the educational intervention designed to improve critical thinking and the other of which serves as a control; they found few such experiments, because of the difficulty of achieving randomization in the classrooms where the studies were conducted. By a quasi-experiment, they mean a study with an intervention group that receives an educational intervention designed to improve critical thinking and a control group, but without random allocation to the two groups. Initially, they included also what they called “pre-experiments”, with single-group pretest-posttest designs, but decided at the analysis stage not to include these studies. By a standardized measure, they mean a test with norms derived from previous administration of the test, as set out in the test’s manual, such as the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985; 2005), the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) and the California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory (Facione & Facione 1992; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). They included all such studies in which the educational intervention lasted at least three hours and the participants were at least six years old.

In these studies they found 341 effect sizes. They rated each educational intervention according to the degree to which it involved dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. They found that each of these factors increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They explained the three factors as follows.

Dialogue : In critical dialogue, which historically goes back to Socrates, individuals discuss a problem together. The dialogue can be oral or written, and cooperative or adversarial. It can take the form of asking questions, discussion, or debate. Some curricula designed to promote critical thinking establish “communities of inquiry” among the students. Such communities were a prominent feature of Dewey’s Laboratory School, incorporated as a means of promoting the primary moral objective of fostering a spirit of social cooperation among the children.

An important aspect of this conditioning process by means of the school’s daily practices was to aid each child in forming a habit of thinking before doing in all of his various enterprises. The daily classroom procedure began with a face-to-face discussion of the work of the day and its relation to that of the previous period. The new problem was then faced, analyzed, and possible plans and resources for its solution suggested by members of the group. The children soon grew to like this method. It gave both individual and group a sense of power to be intelligent, to know what they wanted to do before they did it, and to realize the reasons why one plan was preferred to another. It also enlisted their best effort to prove the validity of their judgment by testing the plan in action. Each member of the group thus acquired a habit of observing, criticizing, and integrating values in thought, in order that they should guide the action that would integrate them in fact. The value of thus previsioning consequences of action before they became fixed as fact was emphasized in the school’s philosophy. The social implication is evident. The conscious direction of his actions toward considered social ends became an unfailing index of the child’s progress toward maturity. (Mayhew & Edwards 1936: 423–424)

Communities of inquiry are also a feature of the Montessori method described by Thayer-Bacon (2000) and of the Philosophy for Children program developed by Matthew Lipman (Splitter 1987). Lipman (2003) examines theoretically what is involved in creating communities of inquiry. Hitchcock (2021) argues that the most obvious way for schools to develop critical thinking is to foster development of communities of inquiry.

Anchored instruction : In anchored instruction, whose advocacy goes back to Rousseau (1762) and Dewey (1910), there is an effort to present students with problems that make sense to them, engage them, and stimulate them to inquire. Simulations, role-playing and presentation of ethical or medical dilemmas are methods of anchoring.

Mentoring : Mentoring is a one-on-one relationship in which someone with more relevant expertise (the mentor) interacts with someone with less (the mentee). The mentor acts as a model and as a critic correcting errors by the mentee. Examples of mentoring are an advisor talking to a student, a physician modeling a procedure for a medical student, and an employee correcting an intern. Abrami et al. (2015) identified three kinds of mentoring in the studies that they analyzed: one-on-one teacher-student interaction, peer-led dyads, and internships.

Abrami et al. (2015) also compared educational interventions with respect to whether they were part of subject-matter instruction. For this purpose, they used a distinction among four types of intervention articulated by Ennis (1989). A general approach tries to teach critical thinking separately from subject-matter instruction. An infusion approach combines deep subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically with explicit reference to critical thinking principles. An immersion approach provides deep subject-matter instruction with encouragement to think critically, but without explicit reference to critical thinking principles. A mixed approach combines the general approach with either the infusion or the immersion approach; students combine a separate thread or course aimed at teaching general critical thinking principles with deep subject-matter instruction in which they are encouraged to think critically about the subject-matter. Although the average effect size in the studies using a mixed intervention (+0.38) was greater than the average effect sizes in the studies using general (+0.26), infusion (+0.29) and immersion (+0.23) interventions, the difference was not statistically significant; in other words, it might have been due to chance.

Cleghorn (2021), Makaiau (2021), and Hiner (2021) make specific suggestions for fostering critical thinking respectively in elementary, secondary and post-secondary education. Vincent-Lancrin et al. (2019) report the results of a project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to develop with teachers and schools in 11 countries resources for fostering creativity and critical thinking in elementary and secondary schools.

Ennis (2013, 2018) has made a detailed proposal for a mixed approach to teaching critical thinking across the curriculum of undergraduate education. Attempts at implementing such an approach have faced difficulties. Weinstein (2013: 209–213) describes the attempt at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, from 1987 through the 1990s. He reports that the university’s requirement to include critical thinking in all general education courses led to the use of the concept in identifying topics and tasks in course syllabi, but without a unifying theoretical basis. The committee that approved courses as satisfying a general education requirement ignored the relation of curricular outcomes to critical thinking, and focused instead on work requirements with a prima facie relation to reflective thought: term papers, projects, group work, and dialogue. Sheffield (2018) reports similar difficulties encountered in his position from 2012 to 2015 as the inaugural Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York. A cross-disciplinary faculty advisory group was not ready to accept RIT’s approved definition of critical thinking, but never reached a consensus on an alternative. Payette and Ross (2016), on the other hand, report widespread acceptance of the Paul-Elder framework, which involves elements of thought, intellectual standards, and intellectual virtues (Paul & Elder 2006). Sheffield (2018) reports that many colleges and universities in the United States have received funding for so-called “Quality Enhancement Plans” (QEPs) devoted to critical thinking, many of them written by Paul and Elder or developed in consultation with them. He faults the plans for having a typical time frame of five years, which he argues is probably too short for meaningful results, since lasting institutional change is often extremely slow.

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Critical thinking too often falls by the wayside in schools because there is a lack of consensus ... [+] about how to teach it, and even what critical thinking is.

One of the age-old goals of education is teaching students “how to think.” But what exactly does that mean? Doesn’t everyone already think on their own? Is thinking — in the abstract — even something you can teach or get better at?

These questions have new resonances in these fraught and sometimes frightening times. New communication technology and media sources seemingly overwhelm our powers of thinking, concentration, and self-control. There is a great deal of speculation that they’ve poisoned our political discourse, polarized democratic electorates, and been leveraged by would-be despots to misinform and gain political power.

Can learning how to think help us overcome these challenges? We at the Reboot Foundation, which I founded to advance critical thinking research and education, think very strongly that the answer is yes. And to that end, we’ve recently released a Teachers’ Guide to Critical Thinking . We worked with some top teachers in different subject areas and grade levels around the country to produce the guide.

We ask a lot of our teachers in the US. They must meet an array of state requirements; they face (often unreasonable) pressure to deliver test scores; they are overworked and underpaid. In many schools, as our survey found , they have little or no time to concentrate on deeper learning goals — like critical thinking skills — that are difficult to measure, but that, in the long run, may impact students’ lives much more than testable knowledge.

In addition to these time constraints and testing pressures, critical thinking too often falls by the wayside because it is not typically taught as a standalone academic subject. There is a lack of consensus about how to teach it and even what critical thinking is. And there aren’t a lot of high-quality materials available to give ideas for how to integrate critical thinking into teaching or advance professional development about it.

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That said, there is actually good reason for not teaching critical thinking as its own subject, and at Reboot we don’t advocate stand-alone critical thinking courses. Research shows that, while critical thinking can be taught, it can’t be taught on its own — at least not effectively. Daniel Willingham, cognitive scientist, writes that attempts to teach general thinking abilities through logical and spatial puzzles, for example, as parts of courses added on to the curriculum are generally unsuccessful. These skills don’t “transfer” to thinking in other domains, but generally remain tied to the logic games where they’re learned.

This might seem discouraging, but it also presents schools and teachers with a big opportunity. What’s needed is not necessarily new courses, but a critical thinking focus throughout the curriculum. Some of these changes can happen quickly with tweaks to existing curricula and the incorporation of deeper and more creative thinking exercises.

For example, in our article on teaching critical thinking in science , we advocate for science labs that afford students the opportunity to design their own experiments and test their own hypothesis about how to gain knowledge — rather than simply following recipes to duplicate results already known. Our sample lesson asks students to come up with their own model for describing the motion of coffee filters falling to the ground. Scientific education that fosters this kind of creativity can help the scientific method come alive for students. Instead of seeing it as a set of steps they must carry out or memorize, it becomes a way of thinking that they discover through doing. This also helps strengthen students' intrinsic motivation.

Similarly, in our article on teaching civics , we advise teachers to facilitate in-class debates where students are made responsible for researching topics like the death penalty, developing a knowledge base, and using it to argue for particular positions. Throughout the process, teachers should also give students the opportunity to reflect on their progress in articulating and refining their viewpoints, through explicit journaling projects or in-class discussions. The goal is to develop students’ abilities to reflect on their own learning and begin to develop interests self-consciously and intentionally that will stay with them when they leave the classroom.

Students come to school with natural curiosity and a love of learning, but too often, amid testing priorities and rote curricula, these attributes fall away. In order to best foster the development of natural curiosity into a genuine and abiding interest in learning and knowledge, schools need to give students room to pursue their own interests, develop their own views, and struggle with open-ended questions. They need, in other words, to prioritize critical thinking for teens .

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Critical Thinking: Where to Begin

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If you are new to critical thinking or wish to deepen your conception of it, we recommend you review the content below and bookmark this page for future reference.

Our Conception of Critical Thinking...

"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined 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. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness..."

"Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fairminded way. People who think critically attempt, with consistent and conscious effort, to live rationally, reasonably, and empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest.

They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society. At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so. They strive never to think simplistically about complicated issues and always to consider the rights and needs of relevant others. They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement. They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living , because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world."

Why Critical Thinking?

The Problem:

Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our lives and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.

A Brief Definition:

Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. The Result:

A well-cultivated critical thinker:

raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively;
comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.

Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It requires rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities, and a commitment to overcoming our native egocentrism and sociocentrism. Read more about our concept of critical thinking .

The Essential Dimensions of Critical Thinking

Our conception of critical thinking is based on the substantive approach developed by Dr. Richard Paul and his colleagues at the Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking over multiple decades. It is relevant to every subject, discipline, and profession, and to reasoning through the problems of everyday life. It entails five essential dimensions of critical thinking:

At the left is an overview of the first three dimensions. In sum, the elements or structures of thought enable us to "take our thinking apart" and analyze it. The intellectual standards are used to assess and evaluate the elements. The intellectual traits are dispositions of mind embodied by the fairminded critical thinker. To cultivate the mind, we need command of these essential dimensions, and we need to consistently apply them as we think through the many problems and issues in our lives.

The Elements of Reasoning and Intellectual Standards

To learn more about the elements of thought and how to apply the intellectual standards, check out our interactive model. Simply click on the link below, scroll to the bottom of the page, and explore the model with your mouse.

Why the Analysis of Thinking Is Important If you want to think well, you must understand at least the rudiments of thought, the most basic structures out of which all thinking is made. You must learn how to take thinking apart. Analyzing the Logic of a Subject When we understand the elements of reasoning, we realize that all subjects, all disciplines, have a fundamental logic defined by the structures of thought embedded within them. Therefore, to lay bare a subject’s most fundamental logic, we should begin with these questions:

Going Deeper...

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The State of Critical Thinking 2020

November 2020, introduction.

In 2018, the Reboot Foundation released a first-of-its-kind survey looking at the public’s attitudes toward critical thinking and critical thinking education. The report found that critical thinking skills are highly valued, but not taught or practiced as much as might be hoped for in schools or in public life.

The survey suggested that, despite recognizing the importance of critical thinking, when it came to critical thinking practices—like seeking out multiple sources of information and engaging others with opposing views—many people’s habits were lacking. Significant numbers of respondents reported relying on inadequate sources of information, making decisions without doing enough research, and avoiding those with conflicting viewpoints.

In late 2019, the Foundation conducted a follow up survey in order to see how the landscape may have shifted. Without question, the stakes surrounding better reasoning have increased. The COVID-19 pandemic requires deeper interpretive and analytical skills. For instance, when it comes to news about a possible vaccine, people need to assess how it was developed in order to judge whether it will actually work.

Misinformation, from both foreign and domestic sources, continues to proliferate online and, perhaps most disturbingly, surrounding the COVID-19 health crisis. Meanwhile, political polarization has deepened and become more personal . At the same time, there’s both a growing awareness and divide over issues of racism and inequality. If that wasn’t enough, changes to the journalism industry have weakened local civic life and incentivized clickbait, and sensationalized and siloed content.

Part of the problem is that much of our public discourse takes place online, where cognitive biases can become amplified, and where groupthink and filter bubbles proliferate. Meanwhile, face-to-face conversations—which can dissolve misunderstandings and help us recognize the shared humanity of those we disagree with—go missing.

Critical thinking is, of course, not a cure-all, but a lack of critical thinking skills across the population exacerbates all these problems. More than ever, we need skills and practice in managing our emotions, stepping back from quick-trigger evaluations and decisions, and over-relying on biased or false sources of information.

To keep apprised of the public’s view of critical thinking, the Reboot Foundation conducted its second annual survey in late 2019. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a delay in the release of the results. Nevertheless, this most recent survey dug deeper than our 2018 poll, and looked especially into how the public understands the state of critical thinking education. For the first time, our team also surveyed teachers on their views on teaching critical thinking.

General Findings

Support for critical thinking skills remains high, but there is also clearly skepticism that individuals are getting the help they need to acquire improved reasoning skills. A very high majority of people surveyed (94 percent) believe that critical thinking is “extremely” or “very important.” But they generally (86 percent) find those skills lacking in the public at large. Indeed, 60 percent of the respondents reported not having studied critical thinking in school. And only about 55 percent reported that their critical thinking skills had improved since high school, with almost a quarter reporting that those skills had deteriorated.

There is also broad support among the public and teachers for critical thinking education, both at the K-12 and collegiate levels. For example, 90 percent think courses covering critical thinking should be required in K-12.

Many respondents (43 percent) also encouragingly identified early childhood as the best age to develop critical thinking skills. This was a big increase from our previous survey (just 20 percent) and is consistent with the general consensus among social scientists and psychologists.

There are worrisome trends—and promising signs—in critical thinking habits and daily practices. In particular, individuals still don’t do enough to engage people with whom they disagree.

Given the deficits in critical thinking acquisition during school, we would hope that respondents’ critical thinking skills continued to improve after they’ve left school. But only about 55 percent reported that their critical thinking skills had improved since high school, with almost a quarter reporting that their skills had actually deteriorated since then.

Questions about respondents’ critical thinking habits brought out some encouraging information. People reported using more than one source of information when making a decision at a high rate (around 77 percent said they did this “always” or “often”) and giving reasons for their opinions (85 percent). These numbers were, in general, higher than in our previous survey (see “Comparing Survey Results” below).

In other areas of critical thinking, responses were more mixed. Almost half of respondents, for example, reported only “sometimes,” “rarely,” or “never” seeking out people with different opinions to engage in discussion. Many also reported only “sometimes,” “rarely,” or “never” planning where (35 percent) or how (36 percent) to get information on a given topic.

These factors are tied closely together. Critical thinking skills have been challenged and devalued at many different levels of society. There is, therefore, no simple fix. Simply cleansing the internet of misinformation, for example, would not suddenly make us better thinkers. Improving critical thinking across society will take a many-pronged effort.

Comparing Survey Results

Several interesting details emerged in the comparison of results from this survey to our 2018 poll. First, a word of caution: there were some demographic differences in the respondents between the two surveys. This survey skewed a bit older: the average age was 47, as opposed to 36.5. In addition, more females responded this time: 57 percent versus 46 percent.

That said, there was a great deal of consistency between the surveys on participants’ general views of critical thinking. Belief in the importance of critical thinking remains high (94 percent versus 96 percent), as does belief that these skills are generally lacking in society at large. Blame, moreover, was spread to many of the same culprits. Slightly more participants blamed technology this time (29 versus 27 percent), while slightly fewer blamed the education system (22 versus 26 percent).

Respondents were also generally agreed on the importance of teaching critical thinking at all levels. Ninety-five percent thought critical thinking courses should be required at the K-12 level (slightly up from 92 percent); and 91 percent thought they should be required in college (slightly up from 90 percent). (These questions were framed slightly differently from year to year, which could have contributed to the small increases.)

One significant change came over the question of when it is appropriate to start developing critical thinking skills. In our first survey, less than 20 percent of respondents said that early childhood was the ideal time to develop critical thinking skills. This time, 43 percent of respondents did so. As discussed below, this is an encouraging development since research indicates that children become capable of learning how to think critically at a young age.

In one potentially discouraging difference between the two surveys, our most recent survey saw more respondents indicate that they did less critical thinking since high school (18 percent versus just 4 percent). But similar numbers of respondents indicated their critical thinking skills had deteriorated since high school (23 percent versus 21 percent).

Finally, encouraging points of comparison emerged in responses to questions about particular critical thinking activities. Our most recent survey saw a slight uptick in the number of respondents reporting engagement in activities like collaborating with others, planning on where to get information, seeking out the opinions of those they disagree with, keeping an open mind, and verifying information. (See Appendix 1: Data Tables.)

These results could reflect genuine differences from 2018, in either actual activity or respondents’ sense of the importance of these activities. But demographic differences in age and gender could also be responsible.

There is reason to believe, however, that demographic differences are not the main factor, since there is no evident correlation between gender and responses in either survey. Meanwhile, in our most recent survey older respondents reported doing these activities less frequently . Since this survey skewed older, it might have been anticipated that respondents would report doing these activities less. But the opposite is the case.

Findings From Teacher Survey

Teachers generally agree with general survey respondents about the importance of critical thinking. Ninety-four percent regard critical thinking as “extremely” or “very important.”

Teachers, like general survey participants, also share concerns that young people aren’t acquiring the critical thinking skills they need. They worry, in particular, about the impact of technology on their students’ critical thinking skills. In response to a question about how their school’s administration can help them teach critical thinking education more effectively, some teachers said updated technology (along with new textbooks and other materials) would help, but others thought laptops, tablets, and smartphones were inhibiting students’ critical thinking development.

This is an important point to clarify if we are to better integrate critical thinking into K-12 education. Research strongly suggests that critical thinking skills are best acquired in combination with basic facts in a particular subject area. The idea that critical thinking is a skill that can be effectively taught in isolation from basic facts is mistaken.

Another common misconception reflected in the teacher survey involves critical thinking and achievement. Although a majority of teachers (52 percent) thought all students benefited from critical thinking instruction, a significant percentage (35) said it primarily benefited high-ability students.

At Reboot, we believe that all students are capable of critical thinking and will benefit from critical thinking instruction. Critical thinking is, after all, just a refinement of everyday thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving. These are skills all students must have. The key is instilling in our young people both the habits and subject-area knowledge needed to facilitate the improvement and refinement of these skills.

Teachers need more support when it comes to critical thinking instruction. In the survey, educators repeatedly mentioned a lack of resources and updated professional development. In response to a question about how administrators could help teachers teach critical thinking more effectively, one teacher asked for “better tools and materials for teaching us how to teach these things.”

Others wanted more training, asking directly for additional support in terms of resources and professional training. One educator put it bluntly: “Provide extra professional development to give resources and training on how to do this in multiple disciplines.”

Media literacy is still not being taught as widely as it should be. Forty-four percent of teachers reported that media literacy courses are not offered at their schools, with just 31 percent reporting required media literacy courses.

This is despite the fact that teachers, in their open responses, recognized the importance of media literacy, with some suggesting it should be a graduation requirement. Many organizations and some governments, notably Finland’s , have recognized the media literacy deficit and taken action to address it, but the U.S. education system has been slow to act.

Thinking skills have been valuable in all places and at all times. But with the recent upheavals in communication, information, and media, particularly around the COVID-19 crisis, such skills are perhaps more important than ever.

Part of the issue is that the production of information has been democratized—no longer vetted by gatekeepers but generated by anyone who has an internet connection and something to say. This has undoubtedly had positive effects, as events and voices come to light that might have previously not emerged. The recording of George Floyd’s killing is one such example. But, at the same time, finding and verifying good information has become much more difficult.

Technological changes have also put financial pressures on so-called “legacy media” like newspapers and television stations, leading to sometimes precipitous drops in quality, less rigorous fact-checking (in the original sense of the term), and the blending of news reports and opinion pieces. The success of internet articles and videos is too often measured by clicks instead of quality. A stable business model for high-quality public interest journalism remains lacking. And, as biased information and propaganda fills gaps left by shrinking newsrooms, polarization worsens. (1)

Traditional and social media both play into our biases and needs for in-group approval. Online platforms have proven ideal venues for misinformation and manipulation. And distractions abound, damaging attention spans and the quality of debate.

Many hold this digital upheaval at least partially responsible for recent political upheavals around the world. Our media consumption habits increasingly reinforce biases and previously held beliefs, and expose us to only the worst and most inflammatory views from the other side. Demagogues and the simple, emotion-driven ideas they advance thrive in this environment of confusion, isolation, and sensationalism.

It’s not only our public discourse that suffers. Some studies have suggested that digital media may be partially responsible for rising rates of depression and other mood disorders among the young. (2)

Coping with this fast-paced, distraction-filled world in a healthy and productive manner requires better thinking and better habits of mind, but the online world itself tends to encourage the opposite. This is not to suggest our collective thinking skills were pristine before the internet came along, only that the internet presents challenges to our thinking that we have not seen before and have not yet proven able to meet.

There are some positive signs, with more attention and resources being devoted to neglected areas of education like civics and media literacy ; organizations trying to address internet-fueled polarization and extremism; and online tools being developed to counter fake news and flawed information.

But we also need to support the development of more general reasoning skills and habits: in other words, “critical thinking.”

Critical thinking has long been a staple of K-12 and college education, theoretically, at least, if not always in practice. But the concept can easily appear vague and merely rhetorical without definite ideas and practices attached to it.

When, for example, is the best age to teach critical thinking? What activities are appropriate? Should basic knowledge be acquired at the same time as critical thinking skills, or separately? Some of these questions remain difficult to answer, but research and practice have gone far in addressing others.

Part of the goal of our survey was to compare general attitudes about critical thinking education—both in the teaching profession and the general public—to what the best and most recent research suggests. If there is to be progress in the development of critical thinking skills across society, it requires not just learning how best to teach critical thinking but diffusing that knowledge widely, especially to parents and educators.

The surveys were distributed through Amazon’s MTurk Prime service.

For the general survey, respondents answered a series of questions about critical thinking, followed by a section that asked respondents to estimate how often they do certain things, such as consult more than one source when searching for information. The questions in the “personal habit” section appeared in a randomized order to reduce question ordering effects. Demographic questions appeared at the end of the survey.

For the teacher survey, respondents were all part of a teacher panel created by MTurk Prime. They also answered a series of questions on critical thinking, especially focused on the role of critical thinking in their classrooms. After that, respondents answered a series of questions about how they teach—these questions were also randomized to reduce question ordering effects. Finally, we asked questions related to the role of media literacy in their classrooms.

To maintain consistency with the prior survey and to explore relationships across time, many of the questions remained the same from 2018. In some cases, following best practices in questionnaire design , we revamped questions to improve clarity and increase the validity and reliability of the responses.

For all surveys, only completed responses coming from IP addresses located in the U.S. were analyzed. 1152 respondents completed the general survey; 499 teachers completed the teacher survey.

The complete set of questions for each survey is available upon request

Detailed Findings and Discussion

As summarized above, the survey produced a number of noteworthy findings. One central theme that emerged was a general pessimism about the state of critical thinking and uncertainty about how to improve it. That is, despite the near-universal acknowledgment of the importance of critical thinking, respondents generally think society at large is doing a bad job of cultivating critical thinking skills. Respondents were, moreover, divided about what needs to be done.

Almost all the people surveyed (94 percent) believe that critical thinking is “extremely” or “very important.” But they generally (86 percent) find those skills lacking in the public at large. These numbers don’t come as a huge surprise—and they echo the 2018 results—but they do suggest broad public support for initiatives that advance critical thinking skills, both inside and outside of schools.

Respondents also reported deficits in their own critical thinking training and practices. They tended not to think critical thinking had been a point of emphasis in their own education, with a substantial majority of over 63 percent reporting that they had not studied critical thinking in school. Around 20 percent said their schools had provided no background in critical thinking at all, and another 20 percent said the background in critical thinking they gained from school was only slight.

There were significant differences among age groups in these self-reports. Around half of respondents in both the 0-19 and 20-39 age groups reported having studied critical thinking in school. Those numbers dwindled among older groups, bottoming out at 11 percent among 80 to 100-year-olds.

This result is likely in part due to the increased popularity of the phrase “critical thinking”: prior generations may have spent a substantial amount of time on reasoning skills without it coming under the same vocabulary. The young are also closer to school-age, of course, so may simply have sharper memories of critical thinking activities. But the differences in responses might also reflect genuine differences in education.

In any case it’s clear that, even recently, many—if not most—students come out of school feeling as if they have not learned how to think critically, despite the fact that there is broad consensus on the importance of these skills. Only around 25 percent of respondents reported receiving an “extremely” or “very” strong background in critical thinking from their schools.

There are a number of potential causes—technology, social norms, misguided educational priorities—but perhaps the most salient is that, as cognitive scientist Tim van Gelder puts it, “critical thinking is hard.” As van Gelder emphasizes, we don’t naturally think reasonably and rationally; instead we tend to rely on narrative, emotion, and intuition—what feels right. (3) Teaching students to think critically requires much more guidance and practice, throughout the curriculum, than is currently being provided.

There is broad support among the public and among teachers for critical thinking education, both at the K-12 and collegiate levels.

Around 90 percent of respondents in the general public said that courses covering critical thinking should be required at the K-12 level, while 94 percent of teachers said critical thinking is important.

And schools usually echo this sentiment as well, citing the phrase “critical thinking” frequently in curricula and other materials. But it remains unclear if, in practice, critical thinking is really the priority it’s made out to be rhetorically.

One problem is a tendency to think critical thinking and reasoning are too complex for younger students to tackle. But research has shown that children start reasoning logically at a very young age. (4) Critical thinking through activities like open-ended dialogue, weighing opposing perspectives, and backing up opinions with reasoning can have a positive effect even at the K-5 level. For example, philosophy for kids courses have shown some positive effects on students’ reading and math skills (gains were even more substantial for disadvantaged students). (5)

Our survey respondents generally agreed that critical thinking skills should be taught from an early age. Forty-three percent favored beginning critical thinking instruction during early childhood (another 27 percent favored beginning at ages 6-12). This was more than a twofold increase over the results from 2018’s survey, in which just 20 percent thought it was best to begin instruction in critical thinking before the age of 6. This increase is encouraging since it’s consistent with recent research that understands critical thinking as part of general cognitive development that starts even before children enter school. (6)

Many teachers likewise support critical thinking instruction beginning at a young age. In the open response, for example, one wrote, “Critical thinking should be explicitly taught in earlier grades than late middle school and high school.”

Another wrote: “By the time students get to high school they should have this skill [critical thinking] well tuned. The pressure to meet standards earlier and earlier makes it harder to teach basic skills like critical thinking.”

Many teachers (55 percent) also thought the emphasis on standardized testing has made it more difficult to incorporate critical thinking instruction in the classroom. For example, one wrote, “Standardized testing has created an environment of quantitative results that don’t always represent qualitative gains.”

Moreover, a plurality of teachers (25 percent) believe that state standardized tests do not assess critical thinking skills well at all, while just 13 percent believe they assess critical thinking skills extremely well. Teachers generally (52 percent) believe that their own tests do a better job of measuring critical thinking skills.

The survey also found some worrisome trends—as well as some promising signs—in how people evaluated their own critical thinking skills and daily practices. In particular, individuals don’t do enough to engage people with whom they disagree.

Given the deficits in critical thinking acquisition during school, it might be hoped that respondents’ critical thinking skills continued to improve after they’ve left school. But only about 55 percent reported that their critical thinking skills had improved since high school, with almost a quarter reporting that their skills had actually deteriorated since then.

This is especially alarming because thinking critically, unlike say learning about calculus or the Russian Revolution, is generally thought to be a lifelong endeavour. We are supposed to become better with age and experience. Research into adult education suggests that it’s never too late to make gains in critical thinking. (7)

Questions about respondents’ critical thinking habits brought out more detailed information. Some of these responses were encouraging. People reported using more than one source of information when making a decision at a high rate (around 77 percent said they did this “always” or “often”), giving reason for their opinions (85 percent), supporting their decisions with information (84 percent), and listening to the ideas of those they disagree with (81 percent). Participants generally reported engaging in more critical thinking activities this time than in our initial survey. (See “Comparing Survey Results” above.)

It’s difficult to totally identify the drivers of these figures. After all, all humans are prone to overestimating the amount and quality of reasoning we do when we come to decisions, solve problems, or research information. But, at the very least, these numbers indicate that people acknowledge that these various critical thinking habits are admirable goals to shoot for.

At the same time and unsurprisingly, these results suggest a reluctance to engage in the more demanding aspects of critical thinking: difficult or unpleasant tasks like seriously considering the possibility that our opponents might be right or thinking carefully about how to approach information-gathering before we engage in it.

Weaknesses in these areas of critical thinking can be especially easily exploited by emotionalized, oversimplified, and sensationalistic news and rhetoric. If people jump in to information-gathering without even a rough plan or method in mind they’re more likely to get swept up by clickbait or worse.

The current media environment requires a mindful and deliberate approach if it is to be navigated successfully. And one’s own opinions will remain under-nuanced, reactive, and prone to groupthink if they’re influenced by the extreme opinions and caricatures that are often found online and on television instead of by engagement with well-reasoned and well-intentioned perspectives.

Poor media consumption habits can have a distorting effect on our political perceptions, especially. Recent research, for example, has identified wildly inaccurate stereotypes among the general public about the composition of political parties. One study found that “people think that 32% of Democrats are LGBT (versus 6% in reality) and 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year (vs. 2% in reality).” (8) The study also suggested, alarmingly, that “those who pay the most attention to political media may […] also [be] the likeliest to possess the most misinformation about party composition.” (9)

The public is worried about the impact of technology on the acquisition of critical thinking skills. They also blamed deficits in critical thinking on changing societal norms and the education system.

Modern technology was the most cited reason for a lack of critical thinking skills among the general public, with “changing societal norms” coming in a close second. Over 200 respondents also cited the educational system (see chart below).

Graph: why people lack critical thinking skills

A number of the teachers also mentioned potential drawbacks of technology in the classroom environment. For example, in the open response portion of the survey, which allowed teachers to voice general concerns, one teacher wrote: “Get rid of the laptops and tablets and bring back pencil and paper because the students aren’t learning anything using technology.” Another said: “Personal Electronic devices need to be banned in schools.”

In our own work at the Reboot Foundation, the research team found evidence of negative correlations between technology use at schools and achievement. For example, an analysis of data from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) showed that fourth graders using tablets “in all or almost all” classes performed significantly worse (the equivalent of a full grade level) than their peers who didn’t use them.

Another recent study the foundation supported also suggested students benefited from using pencil and paper as opposed to technology to do math homework. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found similar results a few years ago in their international study of 15-year-olds and computer usage. (10)

There is a great deal the field still doesn’t know about the effects of different kinds of technology on different kinds of learning. But a growing stock of research suggests that schools should be cautious about introducing technology into classrooms and the lives of students in general, especially young students. (11)

It would also be a mistake to slip into simple Luddism though. Technology, obviously, provides benefits as well—making education more accessible, reducing costs, helping teachers to fine-tune instruction to student needs, to name a few. During the coronavirus crisis, moreover, educators have had no choice but to rely and hopefully help improve these tools.

Still, too often in the past schools have turn ed to technology without properly weighing the costs against the benefits, and without determining whether technology is truly needed or effective. A recent RAND Corporation paper, for example, discussed programs “seeking to implement personalized learning” but without “clearly defined evidence-based models to adopt.” (12)

The Reboot survey suggests that members of the public as well as teachers generally share these concerns, both about educational technology specifically and about the general impact of technology on student learning.

While teachers support critical thinking instruction, they are divided about how to teach it, and some educators have beliefs about critical thinking instruction that conflict with established research.

One central question in the research about how to best instill critical thinking skills in students is whether critical thinking should be taught in conjunction with basic facts and knowledge or separated from it.

Teachers were split on this question, with 41 percent thinking students should engage in critical thinking practice while learning basic facts, while 42 percent thought students should learn basic facts first then engage in critical thinking practice. A further 16 percent believe that basic facts and critical thinking should be taught separately. (However, only about 13 percent of teachers surveyed say that content knowledge either doesn’t matter at all or only matters slightly for critical thinking skills.)

The view that knowledge and critical thinking skills can and should be taught separately is mistaken. There is a common view that since information is so widely accessible today, learning basic facts is no longer important. According to this view, it’s only cognitive skills that matter. But the two cannot be so neatly divorced as is often assumed. (13)

Research in cognitive science strongly suggests that critical thinking is not the type of skill that can be divorced from content and applied generically to all kinds of different contexts. As cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham argues, “The ability to think critically […] depends on domain knowledge and practice.” (14)

This means students need to practice critical thinking in many different kinds of contexts throughout the curriculum as they acquire the background knowledge needed to reason in a given context. There are of course general skills and habits that can be extrapolated from these various kinds of practice, but it is very unlikely that critical thinking can be taught as a skill divorced from content. “It […] makes no sense,” Willingham writes, “to try to teach critical thinking devoid of factual content.”

This doesn’t necessarily mean standalone critical thinking courses should be rejected. Students can still gain a lot from learning about formal logic, for example, and from learning about metacognition and the best research practices. But these standalone courses or programs should include acquisition of basic factual knowledge as well, and the skills and habits learned in them must be applied and reinforced in other courses and contexts.

Students, moreover, should be reminded that being “critical” is an empty slogan unless they have the requisite factual knowledge to make a cogent argument in a given domain. They need background knowledge to be able to seek out evidence from relevant sources, to develop reliable and nuanced interpretations of information, and to back the arguments they want to make with evidence.

Reboot also asked teachers about which students they thought benefited from critical thinking instruction. A majority (52 percent) thought it benefits all students, but 35 percent said (with the remaining 13 percent thinking it primarily benefits lower-ability students).

The view that critical thinking instruction is only effective for higher achieving students is another common misconception. Everyone is capable of critical thinking, and even, to a certain extent, engages in critical thinking on their own. The key is for students to develop metacognitive habits and subject-area knowledge so that they can apply critical thought in the right contexts and in the right way. Educators should not assume that lower-achieving students will not benefit from critical thinking instruction.

Teachers need more support when it comes to critical thinking instruction, though at least some teacher training and professional development programs do seem to help.

In the survey, educators repeatedly mentioned a lack of resources and updated professional development. In response to a question about how administrators could help teachers teach critical thinking more effectively, one teacher asked for “better tools and materials for teaching us how to teach these things.”

Another said, “Provide opportunities for teachers to collaborate and cross train across subject areas, as well as providing professional development that is not dry or outdated.” Another characteristic comment: “Provide extra professional development to give resources and training on how to do this in multiple disciplines.”

Overall teachers were relatively satisfied that teacher training and professional development programs were helping them teach critical thinking. Forty-six percent said that their teacher training helped them a lot or a great deal, while 50 percent said professional development programs help them a lot or a great deal.

But other teachers reported burdensome administrative tasks and guidelines were getting in the way of teacher autonomy and critical thinking instruction. For example, one teacher wrote, “Earlier in my career I had much more freedom to incorporate instruction of critical thinking into my lessons.”

Media literacy is still not being taught as widely as it should be.

In our survey, teachers rightly recognized that media literacy is closely bound up with critical thinking. One said, “I believe that media literacy goes hand in hand with critical thinking skills and should be a requirement […] especially due to the increase in use of technology among our youth.” Another offered that “media literacy should be a graduation requirement like economics or government.”

But schools, at least judging by teachers’ responses in the survey, have been slow in prioritizing media literacy. More than 44 percent reported that media literacy courses are not offered at their schools, and just around 30 percent reported that media literacy courses are required. That said, the majority of teachers did report teaching typical media literacy skills occasionally in their classes.

For example, over 60 percent said that, in at least one class, they “teach students how to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate sources,” and over two-thirds said they “teach students how to find reliable sources.” (15)

Despite the assumption sometimes made that young people (“digital natives”) must be adept navigators of the internet, recent studies have found that students have trouble evaluating the information they consume online. They have problems recognizing bias and misinformation, distinguishing between advertising and legitimate journalism, and verifying information using credible sources.

Our age is one in which unreliable information proliferates; nefarious interests use the internet to influence public opinion; and social media encourages groupthink, emotional thinking, and pile-on. New skills and training are required to navigate this environment. Our schools must adapt.

This means generating and implementing specific interventions that help students learn to identify markers of misinformation and develop healthy information-gathering habits. The Reboot Foundation’s own research suggests that even quick and immediate interventions can have a positive impact. But it also means instilling students with life-long critical thinking habits and skills which they’ll be able to apply to an ever-changing media landscape.

Despite its importance, which is widely acknowledged by the general public, critical thinking remains a somewhat vague and poorly understood concept. Most people realize that it is of vital importance to individual success and educational attainment, as well as to civic life in a liberal democracy. And most seem to realize that 21st-century challenges and changes make acquiring critical thinking skills of even more urgent importance. But when it comes to instilling them in children and developing them in adults, we are, in many ways, still at square one.

Over the course of the last few decades, K-12 educators have been urged to teach critical thinking, but they have been given conflicting and inconsistent advice on how to do it. There remains a lack of proven resources for them to rely on, a lack of administrative support—and sometimes even a lack of a clear sense of what exactly critical thinking is. Perhaps most importantly, teachers lack the time and freedom within the curriculum to teach these skills.

But there have been a number of insights from cognitive science and other disciplines that suggest a way forward. Perhaps the most important is that critical thinking cannot be understood as a skill on par with learning a musical instrument or a foreign language. It is more complicated than those kinds of skills, involving cognitive development in a number of different areas and integrated with general knowledge learned in other subject areas. Critical thinking courses and interventions that ignore this basic fact may produce some gains, but they will not give students the tools to develop their thinking more broadly and apply critical thought to the world outside of school.

College and continuing education deserve attention too. It should be considered a red flag that only 55 percent of respondents didn’t think they’d made any strides in critical thinking skills since high school. Colleges have long been moving away from a traditional liberal arts curriculum . The critical thinking skills acquired across those disciplines have likely suffered as a result.

In recent years, we’ve seen smart people who should know better time and again exhibit poor judgment online. It is important to remind each other of the importance of stepping back, managing emotions, engaging with others charitably, and seriously considering the possibility that we are wrong. This is especially important when we are searching for information online, an environment that can easily discourage these intellectual virtues. Ramping up media literacy—for both adults and young people—will be a vital part of the solution.

But, ultimately, critical thinking, which touches on so many different aspects of personal and civic life, must be fostered in a multitude of different ways and different domains. A secure, prosperous, and civil future may, quite literally, depend on it.

Appendix 1: Data Tables

When I have a task to do, I collaborate with other people to get ideas.

I plan where to get information on a topic.

[table id=72 /]

I listen to the ideas of others even if I disagree with them.

[table id=73 /]

I keep an open mind to different ideas when making a decision.

[table id=74/]

I make sure the information I use is correct.

[table id=75 /]

I seek out people who tend to have different opinions than me to engage in discussion or debate

[table id=76 /]

To download the PDF of this survey,

(please click here)

(1)* W Gandour, R. (2016) A new information environment: How digital fragmentation is shaping the way we produce and consume news. Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/books/NewInfoEnvironmentEnglishLink.pdf (2)* Twenge, J. M., Cooper, A. B., Joiner, T. E., Duffy, M. E., & Binau, S. G. (2019). Age, period, and cohort trends in mood disorder indicators and suicide-related outcomes in a nationally representative dataset, 2005–2017. Journal of Abnormal Psychology .

(3)* Gelder, T. V. (2005). Teaching critical thinking: Some lessons from cognitive science. College Teaching , 53 (1), 41-48.

(4)* Gelman, S. A., & Markman, E. M. (1986). Categories and induction in young children. Cognition, 23 , 183-209.

(5)* Gorard, S., Siddiqui, N., & See, B. H. (2015). Philosophy for Children: Evaluation report and executive summary. Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/ Projects/Evaluation_Reports/EEF_Project_Report_PhilosophyForChildren.pdf

(6)* Kuhn, D. (1999). A developmental model of critical thinking. Educational researcher , 28 (2), 16-46.

(7)* Dwyer, C. P., & Walsh, A. (2019). An exploratory quantitative case study of critical thinking development through adult distance learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 1-19.

(8)* Ahler, D. J., & Sood, G. (2018). The parties in our heads: Misperceptions about party composition and their consequences. The Journal of Politics, 80 (3), 964-981. 964.

(9)* Ibid., 965.

(10)* Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2015). Students, computers and learning: Making the connection . https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264239555-en

(11)* Madigan, S., Browne, D., Racine, N., Mori, C., & Tough, S. (2019). Association between screen time and children’s performance on a developmental screening test. JAMA pediatrics, 173(3), 244-250.

(12)* Pane, J. F. (2018). Strategies for implementing personalized learning while evidence and resources are underdeveloped. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE314.html

(13)* Wexler, N. (2019). The knowledge gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system–and how to fix it. Avery.

(14)* Willingham, D. T. (2007). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? American Federation of Teachers (Summer 2007) 8-19.

(15)* Wineburg, S., McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., & Ortega, T. (2016). Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository, 8, 2018.

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What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

Published on May 30, 2022 by Eoghan Ryan . Revised on May 31, 2023.

Critical thinking is the ability to effectively analyze information and form a judgment .

To think critically, you must be aware of your own biases and assumptions when encountering information, and apply consistent standards when evaluating sources .

Critical thinking skills help you to:

Identify credible sources
Evaluate and respond to arguments
Assess alternative viewpoints
Test hypotheses against relevant criteria

Why is critical thinking important, critical thinking examples, how to think critically, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about critical thinking.

Critical thinking is important for making judgments about sources of information and forming your own arguments. It emphasizes a rational, objective, and self-aware approach that can help you to identify credible sources and strengthen your conclusions.

Critical thinking is important in all disciplines and throughout all stages of the research process . The types of evidence used in the sciences and in the humanities may differ, but critical thinking skills are relevant to both.

In academic writing , critical thinking can help you to determine whether a source:

Is free from research bias
Provides evidence to support its research findings
Considers alternative viewpoints

Outside of academia, critical thinking goes hand in hand with information literacy to help you form opinions rationally and engage independently and critically with popular media.

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Critical thinking can help you to identify reliable sources of information that you can cite in your research paper . It can also guide your own research methods and inform your own arguments.

Outside of academia, critical thinking can help you to be aware of both your own and others’ biases and assumptions.

Academic examples

However, when you compare the findings of the study with other current research, you determine that the results seem improbable. You analyze the paper again, consulting the sources it cites.

You notice that the research was funded by the pharmaceutical company that created the treatment. Because of this, you view its results skeptically and determine that more independent research is necessary to confirm or refute them. Example: Poor critical thinking in an academic context You’re researching a paper on the impact wireless technology has had on developing countries that previously did not have large-scale communications infrastructure. You read an article that seems to confirm your hypothesis: the impact is mainly positive. Rather than evaluating the research methodology, you accept the findings uncritically.

Nonacademic examples

However, you decide to compare this review article with consumer reviews on a different site. You find that these reviews are not as positive. Some customers have had problems installing the alarm, and some have noted that it activates for no apparent reason.

You revisit the original review article. You notice that the words “sponsored content” appear in small print under the article title. Based on this, you conclude that the review is advertising and is therefore not an unbiased source. Example: Poor critical thinking in a nonacademic context You support a candidate in an upcoming election. You visit an online news site affiliated with their political party and read an article that criticizes their opponent. The article claims that the opponent is inexperienced in politics. You accept this without evidence, because it fits your preconceptions about the opponent.

There is no single way to think critically. How you engage with information will depend on the type of source you’re using and the information you need.

However, you can engage with sources in a systematic and critical way by asking certain questions when you encounter information. Like the CRAAP test , these questions focus on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

When encountering information, ask:

Who is the author? Are they an expert in their field?
What do they say? Is their argument clear? Can you summarize it?
When did they say this? Is the source current?
Where is the information published? Is it an academic article? Is it peer-reviewed ?
Why did the author publish it? What is their motivation?
How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence? Does it rely on opinion, speculation, or appeals to emotion ? Do they address alternative arguments?

Critical thinking also involves being aware of your own biases, not only those of others. When you make an argument or draw your own conclusions, you can ask similar questions about your own writing:

Am I only considering evidence that supports my preconceptions?
Is my argument expressed clearly and backed up with credible sources?
Would I be convinced by this argument coming from someone else?

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

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ChatGPT citations
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Using ChatGPT for your studies
What is ChatGPT?
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Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

Critical thinking skills include the ability to:

You can assess information and arguments critically by asking certain questions about the source. You can use the CRAAP test , focusing on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

Ask questions such as:

Who is the author? Are they an expert?
How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence?

A credible source should pass the CRAAP test and follow these guidelines:

The information should be up to date and current.
The author and publication should be a trusted authority on the subject you are researching.
The sources the author cited should be easy to find, clear, and unbiased.
For a web source, the URL and layout should signify that it is trustworthy.

Information literacy refers to a broad range of skills, including the ability to find, evaluate, and use sources of information effectively.

Being information literate means that you:

Know how to find credible sources
Use relevant sources to inform your research
Understand what constitutes plagiarism
Know how to cite your sources correctly

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search, interpret, and recall information in a way that aligns with our pre-existing values, opinions, or beliefs. It refers to the ability to recollect information best when it amplifies what we already believe. Relatedly, we tend to forget information that contradicts our opinions.

Although selective recall is a component of confirmation bias, it should not be confused with recall bias.

On the other hand, recall bias refers to the differences in the ability between study participants to recall past events when self-reporting is used. This difference in accuracy or completeness of recollection is not related to beliefs or opinions. Rather, recall bias relates to other factors, such as the length of the recall period, age, and the characteristics of the disease under investigation.

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41+ Critical Thinking Examples (Definition + Practices)

Critical thinking is an essential skill in our information-overloaded world, where figuring out what is fact and fiction has become increasingly challenging.

But why is critical thinking essential? Put, critical thinking empowers us to make better decisions, challenge and validate our beliefs and assumptions, and understand and interact with the world more effectively and meaningfully.

Critical thinking is like using your brain's "superpowers" to make smart choices. Whether it's picking the right insurance, deciding what to do in a job, or discussing topics in school, thinking deeply helps a lot. In the next parts, we'll share real-life examples of when this superpower comes in handy and give you some fun exercises to practice it.

Critical Thinking Process Outline

Critical thinking means thinking clearly and fairly without letting personal feelings get in the way. It's like being a detective, trying to solve a mystery by using clues and thinking hard about them.

It isn't always easy to think critically, as it can take a pretty smart person to see some of the questions that aren't being answered in a certain situation. But, we can train our brains to think more like puzzle solvers, which can help develop our critical thinking skills.

Here's what it looks like step by step:

Spotting the Problem: It's like discovering a puzzle to solve. You see that there's something you need to figure out or decide.

Collecting Clues: Now, you need to gather information. Maybe you read about it, watch a video, talk to people, or do some research. It's like getting all the pieces to solve your puzzle.

Breaking It Down: This is where you look at all your clues and try to see how they fit together. You're asking questions like: Why did this happen? What could happen next?

Checking Your Clues: You want to make sure your information is good. This means seeing if what you found out is true and if you can trust where it came from.

Making a Guess: After looking at all your clues, you think about what they mean and come up with an answer. This answer is like your best guess based on what you know.

Explaining Your Thoughts: Now, you tell others how you solved the puzzle. You explain how you thought about it and how you answered.

Checking Your Work: This is like looking back and seeing if you missed anything. Did you make any mistakes? Did you let any personal feelings get in the way? This step helps make sure your thinking is clear and fair.

And remember, you might sometimes need to go back and redo some steps if you discover something new. If you realize you missed an important clue, you might have to go back and collect more information.

Critical Thinking Methods

Just like doing push-ups or running helps our bodies get stronger, there are special exercises that help our brains think better. These brain workouts push us to think harder, look at things closely, and ask many questions.

It's not always about finding the "right" answer. Instead, it's about the journey of thinking and asking "why" or "how." Doing these exercises often helps us become better thinkers and makes us curious to know more about the world.

Now, let's look at some brain workouts to help us think better:

1. "What If" Scenarios

Imagine crazy things happening, like, "What if there was no internet for a month? What would we do?" These games help us think of new and different ideas.

Pick a hot topic. Argue one side of it and then try arguing the opposite. This makes us see different viewpoints and think deeply about a topic.

3. Analyze Visual Data

Check out charts or pictures with lots of numbers and info but no explanations. What story are they telling? This helps us get better at understanding information just by looking at it.

4. Mind Mapping

Write an idea in the center and then draw lines to related ideas. It's like making a map of your thoughts. This helps us see how everything is connected.

There's lots of mind-mapping software , but it's also nice to do this by hand.

5. Weekly Diary

Every week, write about what happened, the choices you made, and what you learned. Writing helps us think about our actions and how we can do better.

6. Evaluating Information Sources

Collect stories or articles about one topic from newspapers or blogs. Which ones are trustworthy? Which ones might be a little biased? This teaches us to be smart about where we get our info.

There are many resources to help you determine if information sources are factual or not.

7. Socratic Questioning

This way of thinking is called the Socrates Method, named after an old-time thinker from Greece. It's about asking lots of questions to understand a topic. You can do this by yourself or chat with a friend.

Start with a Big Question:

"What does 'success' mean?"

Dive Deeper with More Questions:

"Why do you think of success that way?" "Do TV shows, friends, or family make you think that?" "Does everyone think about success the same way?"

"Can someone be a winner even if they aren't rich or famous?" "Can someone feel like they didn't succeed, even if everyone else thinks they did?"

Look for Real-life Examples:

"Who is someone you think is successful? Why?" "Was there a time you felt like a winner? What happened?"

Think About Other People's Views:

"How might a person from another country think about success?" "Does the idea of success change as we grow up or as our life changes?"

Think About What It Means:

"How does your idea of success shape what you want in life?" "Are there problems with only wanting to be rich or famous?"

Look Back and Think:

"After talking about this, did your idea of success change? How?" "Did you learn something new about what success means?"

8. Six Thinking Hats

Edward de Bono came up with a cool way to solve problems by thinking in six different ways, like wearing different colored hats. You can do this independently, but it might be more effective in a group so everyone can have a different hat color. Each color has its way of thinking:

White Hat (Facts): Just the facts! Ask, "What do we know? What do we need to find out?"

Red Hat (Feelings): Talk about feelings. Ask, "How do I feel about this?"

Black Hat (Careful Thinking): Be cautious. Ask, "What could go wrong?"

Yellow Hat (Positive Thinking): Look on the bright side. Ask, "What's good about this?"

Green Hat (Creative Thinking): Think of new ideas. Ask, "What's another way to look at this?"

Blue Hat (Planning): Organize the talk. Ask, "What should we do next?"

When using this method with a group:

Explain all the hats.
Decide which hat to wear first.
Make sure everyone switches hats at the same time.
Finish with the Blue Hat to plan the next steps.

9. SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis is like a game plan for businesses to know where they stand and where they should go. "SWOT" stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

There are a lot of SWOT templates out there for how to do this visually, but you can also think it through. It doesn't just apply to businesses but can be a good way to decide if a project you're working on is working.

Strengths: What's working well? Ask, "What are we good at?"

Weaknesses: Where can we do better? Ask, "Where can we improve?"

Opportunities: What good things might come our way? Ask, "What chances can we grab?"

Threats: What challenges might we face? Ask, "What might make things tough for us?"

Steps to do a SWOT Analysis:

Goal: Decide what you want to find out.
Research: Learn about your business and the world around it.
Brainstorm: Get a group and think together. Talk about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Pick the Most Important Points: Some things might be more urgent or important than others.
Make a Plan: Decide what to do based on your SWOT list.
Check Again Later: Things change, so look at your SWOT again after a while to update it.

Now that you have a few tools for thinking critically, let’s get into some specific examples.

Everyday Examples

Life is a series of decisions. From the moment we wake up, we're faced with choices – some trivial, like choosing a breakfast cereal, and some more significant, like buying a home or confronting an ethical dilemma at work. While it might seem that these decisions are disparate, they all benefit from the application of critical thinking.

10. Deciding to buy something

Imagine you want a new phone. Don't just buy it because the ad looks cool. Think about what you need in a phone. Look up different phones and see what people say about them. Choose the one that's the best deal for what you want.

11. Deciding what is true

There's a lot of news everywhere. Don't believe everything right away. Think about why someone might be telling you this. Check if what you're reading or watching is true. Make up your mind after you've looked into it.

12. Deciding when you’re wrong

Sometimes, friends can have disagreements. Don't just get mad right away. Try to see where they're coming from. Talk about what's going on. Find a way to fix the problem that's fair for everyone.

13. Deciding what to eat

There's always a new diet or exercise that's popular. Don't just follow it because it's trendy. Find out if it's good for you. Ask someone who knows, like a doctor. Make choices that make you feel good and stay healthy.

14. Deciding what to do today

Everyone is busy with school, chores, and hobbies. Make a list of things you need to do. Decide which ones are most important. Plan your day so you can get things done and still have fun.

15. Making Tough Choices

Sometimes, it's hard to know what's right. Think about how each choice will affect you and others. Talk to people you trust about it. Choose what feels right in your heart and is fair to others.

16. Planning for the Future

Big decisions, like where to go to school, can be tricky. Think about what you want in the future. Look at the good and bad of each choice. Talk to people who know about it. Pick what feels best for your dreams and goals.

Job Examples

17. solving problems.

Workers brainstorm ways to fix a machine quickly without making things worse when a machine breaks at a factory.

18. Decision Making

A store manager decides which products to order more of based on what's selling best.

19. Setting Goals

A team leader helps their team decide what tasks are most important to finish this month and which can wait.

20. Evaluating Ideas

At a team meeting, everyone shares ideas for a new project. The group discusses each idea's pros and cons before picking one.

21. Handling Conflict

Two workers disagree on how to do a job. Instead of arguing, they talk calmly, listen to each other, and find a solution they both like.

22. Improving Processes

A cashier thinks of a faster way to ring up items so customers don't have to wait as long.

23. Asking Questions

Before starting a big task, an employee asks for clear instructions and checks if they have the necessary tools.

24. Checking Facts

Before presenting a report, someone double-checks all their information to make sure there are no mistakes.

25. Planning for the Future

A business owner thinks about what might happen in the next few years, like new competitors or changes in what customers want, and makes plans based on those thoughts.

26. Understanding Perspectives

A team is designing a new toy. They think about what kids and parents would both like instead of just what they think is fun.

School Examples

27. researching a topic.

For a history project, a student looks up different sources to understand an event from multiple viewpoints.

28. Debating an Issue

In a class discussion, students pick sides on a topic, like school uniforms, and share reasons to support their views.

29. Evaluating Sources

While writing an essay, a student checks if the information from a website is trustworthy or might be biased.

30. Problem Solving in Math

When stuck on a tricky math problem, a student tries different methods to find the answer instead of giving up.

31. Analyzing Literature

In English class, students discuss why a character in a book made certain choices and what those decisions reveal about them.

32. Testing a Hypothesis

For a science experiment, students guess what will happen and then conduct tests to see if they're right or wrong.

33. Giving Peer Feedback

After reading a classmate's essay, a student offers suggestions for improving it.

34. Questioning Assumptions

In a geography lesson, students consider why certain countries are called "developed" and what that label means.

35. Designing a Study

For a psychology project, students plan an experiment to understand how people's memories work and think of ways to ensure accurate results.

36. Interpreting Data

In a science class, students look at charts and graphs from a study, then discuss what the information tells them and if there are any patterns.

Critical Thinking Puzzles

Not all scenarios will have a single correct answer that can be figured out by thinking critically. Sometimes we have to think critically about ethical choices or moral behaviors.

Here are some mind games and scenarios you can solve using critical thinking. You can see the solution(s) at the end of the post.

37. The Farmer, Fox, Chicken, and Grain Problem

A farmer is at a riverbank with a fox, a chicken, and a grain bag. He needs to get all three items across the river. However, his boat can only carry himself and one of the three items at a time.

Here's the challenge:

If the fox is left alone with the chicken, the fox will eat the chicken.
If the chicken is left alone with the grain, the chicken will eat the grain.

How can the farmer get all three items across the river without any item being eaten?

38. The Rope, Jar, and Pebbles Problem

You are in a room with two long ropes hanging from the ceiling. Each rope is just out of arm's reach from the other, so you can't hold onto one rope and reach the other simultaneously.

Your task is to tie the two rope ends together, but you can't move the position where they hang from the ceiling.

You are given a jar full of pebbles. How do you complete the task?

39. The Two Guards Problem

Imagine there are two doors. One door leads to certain doom, and the other leads to freedom. You don't know which is which.

In front of each door stands a guard. One guard always tells the truth. The other guard always lies. You don't know which guard is which.

You can ask only one question to one of the guards. What question should you ask to find the door that leads to freedom?

40. The Hourglass Problem

You have two hourglasses. One measures 7 minutes when turned over, and the other measures 4 minutes. Using just these hourglasses, how can you time exactly 9 minutes?

41. The Lifeboat Dilemma

Imagine you're on a ship that's sinking. You get on a lifeboat, but it's already too full and might flip over.

Nearby in the water, five people are struggling: a scientist close to finding a cure for a sickness, an old couple who've been together for a long time, a mom with three kids waiting at home, and a tired teenager who helped save others but is now in danger.

You can only save one person without making the boat flip. Who would you choose?

42. The Tech Dilemma

You work at a tech company and help make a computer program to help small businesses. You're almost ready to share it with everyone, but you find out there might be a small chance it has a problem that could show users' private info.

If you decide to fix it, you must wait two more months before sharing it. But your bosses want you to share it now. What would you do?

43. The History Mystery

Dr. Amelia is a history expert. She's studying where a group of people traveled long ago. She reads old letters and documents to learn about it. But she finds some letters that tell a different story than what most people believe.

If she says this new story is true, it could change what people learn in school and what they think about history. What should she do?

The Role of Bias in Critical Thinking

Have you ever decided you don’t like someone before you even know them? Or maybe someone shared an idea with you that you immediately loved without even knowing all the details.

This experience is called bias, which occurs when you like or dislike something or someone without a good reason or knowing why. It can also take shape in certain reactions to situations, like a habit or instinct.

Bias comes from our own experiences, what friends or family tell us, or even things we are born believing. Sometimes, bias can help us stay safe, but other times it stops us from seeing the truth.

Not all bias is bad. Bias can be a mechanism for assessing our potential safety in a new situation. If we are biased to think that anything long, thin, and curled up is a snake, we might assume the rope is something to be afraid of before we know it is just a rope.

While bias might serve us in some situations (like jumping out of the way of an actual snake before we have time to process that we need to be jumping out of the way), it often harms our ability to think critically.

How Bias Gets in the Way of Good Thinking

Selective Perception: We only notice things that match our ideas and ignore the rest.

It's like only picking red candies from a mixed bowl because you think they taste the best, but they taste the same as every other candy in the bowl. It could also be when we see all the signs that our partner is cheating on us but choose to ignore them because we are happy the way we are (or at least, we think we are).

Agreeing with Yourself: This is called “ confirmation bias ” when we only listen to ideas that match our own and seek, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms what we already think we know or believe.

An example is when someone wants to know if it is safe to vaccinate their children but already believes that vaccines are not safe, so they only look for information supporting the idea that vaccines are bad.

Thinking We Know It All: Similar to confirmation bias, this is called “overconfidence bias.” Sometimes we think our ideas are the best and don't listen to others. This can stop us from learning.

Have you ever met someone who you consider a “know it”? Probably, they have a lot of overconfidence bias because while they may know many things accurately, they can’t know everything. Still, if they act like they do, they show overconfidence bias.

There's a weird kind of bias similar to this called the Dunning Kruger Effect, and that is when someone is bad at what they do, but they believe and act like they are the best .

Following the Crowd: This is formally called “groupthink”. It's hard to speak up with a different idea if everyone agrees. But this can lead to mistakes.

An example of this we’ve all likely seen is the cool clique in primary school. There is usually one person that is the head of the group, the “coolest kid in school”, and everyone listens to them and does what they want, even if they don’t think it’s a good idea.

How to Overcome Biases

Here are a few ways to learn to think better, free from our biases (or at least aware of them!).

Know Your Biases: Realize that everyone has biases. If we know about them, we can think better.

Listen to Different People: Talking to different kinds of people can give us new ideas.

Ask Why: Always ask yourself why you believe something. Is it true, or is it just a bias?

Understand Others: Try to think about how others feel. It helps you see things in new ways.

Keep Learning: Always be curious and open to new information.

In today's world, everything changes fast, and there's so much information everywhere. This makes critical thinking super important. It helps us distinguish between what's real and what's made up. It also helps us make good choices. But thinking this way can be tough sometimes because of biases. These are like sneaky thoughts that can trick us. The good news is we can learn to see them and think better.

There are cool tools and ways we've talked about, like the "Socratic Questioning" method and the "Six Thinking Hats." These tools help us get better at thinking. These thinking skills can also help us in school, work, and everyday life.

We’ve also looked at specific scenarios where critical thinking would be helpful, such as deciding what diet to follow and checking facts.

Thinking isn't just a skill—it's a special talent we improve over time. Working on it lets us see things more clearly and understand the world better. So, keep practicing and asking questions! It'll make you a smarter thinker and help you see the world differently.

Critical Thinking Puzzles (Solutions)

The farmer, fox, chicken, and grain problem.

The farmer first takes the chicken across the river and leaves it on the other side.
He returns to the original side and takes the fox across the river.
After leaving the fox on the other side, he returns the chicken to the starting side.
He leaves the chicken on the starting side and takes the grain bag across the river.
He leaves the grain with the fox on the other side and returns to get the chicken.
The farmer takes the chicken across, and now all three items -- the fox, the chicken, and the grain -- are safely on the other side of the river.

The Rope, Jar, and Pebbles Problem

Take one rope and tie the jar of pebbles to its end.
Swing the rope with the jar in a pendulum motion.
While the rope is swinging, grab the other rope and wait.
As the swinging rope comes back within reach due to its pendulum motion, grab it.
With both ropes within reach, untie the jar and tie the rope ends together.

The Two Guards Problem

The question is, "What would the other guard say is the door to doom?" Then choose the opposite door.

The Hourglass Problem

Start both hourglasses.
When the 4-minute hourglass runs out, turn it over.
When the 7-minute hourglass runs out, the 4-minute hourglass will have been running for 3 minutes. Turn the 7-minute hourglass over.
When the 4-minute hourglass runs out for the second time (a total of 8 minutes have passed), the 7-minute hourglass will run for 1 minute. Turn the 7-minute hourglass again for 1 minute to empty the hourglass (a total of 9 minutes passed).

The Boat and Weights Problem

Take the cat over first and leave it on the other side. Then, return and take the fish across next. When you get there, take the cat back with you. Leave the cat on the starting side and take the cat food across. Lastly, return to get the cat and bring it to the other side.

The Lifeboat Dilemma

There isn’t one correct answer to this problem. Here are some elements to consider:

Moral Principles: What values guide your decision? Is it the potential greater good for humanity (the scientist)? What is the value of long-standing love and commitment (the elderly couple)? What is the future of young children who depend on their mothers? Or the selfless bravery of the teenager?
Future Implications: Consider the future consequences of each choice. Saving the scientist might benefit millions in the future, but what moral message does it send about the value of individual lives?
Emotional vs. Logical Thinking: While it's essential to engage empathy, it's also crucial not to let emotions cloud judgment entirely. For instance, while the teenager's bravery is commendable, does it make him more deserving of a spot on the boat than the others?
Acknowledging Uncertainty: The scientist claims to be close to a significant breakthrough, but there's no certainty. How does this uncertainty factor into your decision?
Personal Bias: Recognize and challenge any personal biases, such as biases towards age, profession, or familial status.

The Tech Dilemma

Again, there isn’t one correct answer to this problem. Here are some elements to consider:

Evaluate the Risk: How severe is the potential vulnerability? Can it be easily exploited, or would it require significant expertise? Even if the circumstances are rare, what would be the consequences if the vulnerability were exploited?
Stakeholder Considerations: Different stakeholders will have different priorities. Upper management might prioritize financial projections, the marketing team might be concerned about the product's reputation, and customers might prioritize the security of their data. How do you balance these competing interests?
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Implications: While launching on time could meet immediate financial goals, consider the potential long-term damage to the company's reputation if the vulnerability is exploited. Would the short-term gains be worth the potential long-term costs?
Ethical Implications : Beyond the financial and reputational aspects, there's an ethical dimension to consider. Is it right to release a product with a known vulnerability, even if the chances of it being exploited are low?
Seek External Input: Consulting with cybersecurity experts outside your company might be beneficial. They could provide a more objective risk assessment and potential mitigation strategies.
Communication: How will you communicate the decision, whatever it may be, both internally to your team and upper management and externally to your customers and potential users?

The History Mystery

Dr. Amelia should take the following steps:

Verify the Letters: Before making any claims, she should check if the letters are actual and not fake. She can do this by seeing when and where they were written and if they match with other things from that time.
Get a Second Opinion: It's always good to have someone else look at what you've found. Dr. Amelia could show the letters to other history experts and see their thoughts.
Research More: Maybe there are more documents or letters out there that support this new story. Dr. Amelia should keep looking to see if she can find more evidence.
Share the Findings: If Dr. Amelia believes the letters are true after all her checks, she should tell others. This can be through books, talks, or articles.
Stay Open to Feedback: Some people might agree with Dr. Amelia, and others might not. She should listen to everyone and be ready to learn more or change her mind if new information arises.

Ultimately, Dr. Amelia's job is to find out the truth about history and share it. It's okay if this new truth differs from what people used to believe. History is about learning from the past, no matter the story.

Experimenter Bias (Definition + Examples)
Hasty Generalization Fallacy (31 Examples + Similar Names)
Ad Hoc Fallacy (29 Examples + Other Names)
Confirmation Bias (Examples + Definition)
Equivocation Fallacy (26 Examples + Description)

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Professors say they teach critical thinking. But is that what students are learning?

Suzanne Cooper. " Do we teach critical thinking? A mixed methods study of faculty and student perceptions of teaching and learning critical thinking at three professional schools . February 21, 2024

Faculty Authors

Suzanne Cooper

What’s the issue.

The ability to think critically is an essential skill for professionals, including doctors, government officials, and educators. But are instructors at professional schools teaching it, or do they just think they are? Approaches to teaching and assessing critical thinking skills vary substantially across academic disciplines and are not standardized. And little data exists on how much students are learning—or even whether they know their instructors are trying to teach them critical thinking.

What does the research say?

The researchers, including Suzanne Cooper, the Edith M. Stokey Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at HKS, compared instructors’ approaches to teaching critical thinking with students’ perceptions of what they were being taught. They surveyed instructors and conducted focus groups with students at three professional schools (Harvard Medical School, Harvard Kennedy School, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education).

The researchers found that more than half (54%) of faculty surveyed said they explicitly taught critical thinking in their courses (27% said they did not and 19% were unsure). When the researchers talked to students, however, the consensus was that critical thinking was primarily being taught implicitly. One student said discussions, debates, and case study analyses were viewed as opportunities “for critical thinking to emerge” but that methods and techniques were not a specific focus. The students were also generally unable to recall or define key terms, such as “metacognition” (an understanding of one’s own thought process) and “cognitive biases” (systematic deviations from norms or rationality in which individuals create their own subjective reality).

Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that faculty should be required to teach critical thinking explicitly and be given specific approaches and definitions that are appropriate to their academic discipline. They also recommend that professional schools consider teaching core critical thinking skills, as well as skills specific to their area of study.

More from HKS

Developing a rehabilitation program that works for incarcerated people, the link between poor housing conditions and covid-19 infection, parents play a role in leading boys and girls down different paths of study.

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Home > Blog > Tips for Online Students > Why Is Critical Thinking Important and How to Improve It

Tips for Online Students , Tips for Students

Why Is Critical Thinking Important and How to Improve It

Updated: July 8, 2024

Published: April 2, 2020

Why-Is-Critical-Thinking-Important-a-Survival-Guide

Why is critical thinking important? The decisions that you make affect your quality of life. And if you want to ensure that you live your best, most successful and happy life, you’re going to want to make conscious choices. That can be done with a simple thing known as critical thinking. Here’s how to improve your critical thinking skills and make decisions that you won’t regret.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the process of analyzing facts to form a judgment. Essentially, it involves thinking about thinking. Historically, it dates back to the teachings of Socrates , as documented by Plato.

Today, it is seen as a complex concept understood best by philosophers and psychologists. Modern definitions include “reasonable, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do” and “deciding what’s true and what you should do.”

The Importance Of Critical Thinking

Why is critical thinking important? Good question! Here are a few undeniable reasons why it’s crucial to have these skills.

1. Critical Thinking Is Universal

Critical thinking is a domain-general thinking skill. What does this mean? It means that no matter what path or profession you pursue, these skills will always be relevant and will always be beneficial to your success. They are not specific to any field.

2. Crucial For The Economy

Our future depends on technology, information, and innovation. Critical thinking is needed for our fast-growing economies, to solve problems as quickly and as effectively as possible.

3. Improves Language & Presentation Skills

In order to best express ourselves, we need to know how to think clearly and systematically — meaning practice critical thinking! Critical thinking also means knowing how to break down texts, and in turn, improve our ability to comprehend.

4. Promotes Creativity

By practicing critical thinking, we are allowing ourselves not only to solve problems but also to come up with new and creative ideas to do so. Critical thinking allows us to analyze these ideas and adjust them accordingly.

5. Important For Self-Reflection

Without critical thinking, how can we really live a meaningful life? We need this skill to self-reflect and justify our ways of life and opinions. Critical thinking provides us with the tools to evaluate ourselves in the way that we need to.

Photo by Marcelo Chagas from Pexels

6. the basis of science & democracy.

In order to have a democracy and to prove scientific facts, we need critical thinking in the world. Theories must be backed up with knowledge. In order for a society to effectively function, its citizens need to establish opinions about what’s right and wrong (by using critical thinking!).

Benefits Of Critical Thinking

We know that critical thinking is good for society as a whole, but what are some benefits of critical thinking on an individual level? Why is critical thinking important for us?

1. Key For Career Success

Critical thinking is crucial for many career paths. Not just for scientists, but lawyers , doctors, reporters, engineers , accountants, and analysts (among many others) all have to use critical thinking in their positions. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, critical thinking is one of the most desirable skills to have in the workforce, as it helps analyze information, think outside the box, solve problems with innovative solutions, and plan systematically.

2. Better Decision Making

There’s no doubt about it — critical thinkers make the best choices. Critical thinking helps us deal with everyday problems as they come our way, and very often this thought process is even done subconsciously. It helps us think independently and trust our gut feeling.

3. Can Make You Happier!

While this often goes unnoticed, being in touch with yourself and having a deep understanding of why you think the way you think can really make you happier. Critical thinking can help you better understand yourself, and in turn, help you avoid any kind of negative or limiting beliefs, and focus more on your strengths. Being able to share your thoughts can increase your quality of life.

4. Form Well-Informed Opinions

There is no shortage of information coming at us from all angles. And that’s exactly why we need to use our critical thinking skills and decide for ourselves what to believe. Critical thinking allows us to ensure that our opinions are based on the facts, and help us sort through all that extra noise.

5. Better Citizens

One of the most inspiring critical thinking quotes is by former US president Thomas Jefferson: “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” What Jefferson is stressing to us here is that critical thinkers make better citizens, as they are able to see the entire picture without getting sucked into biases and propaganda.

6. Improves Relationships

While you may be convinced that being a critical thinker is bound to cause you problems in relationships, this really couldn’t be less true! Being a critical thinker can allow you to better understand the perspective of others, and can help you become more open-minded towards different views.

7. Promotes Curiosity

Critical thinkers are constantly curious about all kinds of things in life, and tend to have a wide range of interests. Critical thinking means constantly asking questions and wanting to know more, about why, what, who, where, when, and everything else that can help them make sense of a situation or concept, never taking anything at face value.

8. Allows For Creativity

Critical thinkers are also highly creative thinkers, and see themselves as limitless when it comes to possibilities. They are constantly looking to take things further, which is crucial in the workforce.

9. Enhances Problem Solving Skills

Those with critical thinking skills tend to solve problems as part of their natural instinct. Critical thinkers are patient and committed to solving the problem, similar to Albert Einstein, one of the best critical thinking examples, who said “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Critical thinkers’ enhanced problem-solving skills makes them better at their jobs and better at solving the world’s biggest problems. Like Einstein, they have the potential to literally change the world.

10. An Activity For The Mind

Just like our muscles, in order for them to be strong, our mind also needs to be exercised and challenged. It’s safe to say that critical thinking is almost like an activity for the mind — and it needs to be practiced. Critical thinking encourages the development of many crucial skills such as logical thinking, decision making, and open-mindness.

11. Creates Independence

When we think critically, we think on our own as we trust ourselves more. Critical thinking is key to creating independence, and encouraging students to make their own decisions and form their own opinions.

12. Crucial Life Skill

Critical thinking is crucial not just for learning, but for life overall! Education isn’t just a way to prepare ourselves for life, but it’s pretty much life itself. Learning is a lifelong process that we go through each and every day.

How To Improve Your Critical Thinking

Now that you know the benefits of thinking critically, how do you actually do it?

Define Your Question: When it comes to critical thinking, it’s important to always keep your goal in mind. Know what you’re trying to achieve, and then figure out how to best get there.
Gather Reliable Information: Make sure that you’re using sources you can trust — biases aside. That’s how a real critical thinker operates!
Ask The Right Questions: We all know the importance of questions, but be sure that you’re asking the right questions that are going to get you to your answer.
Look Short & Long Term: When coming up with solutions, think about both the short- and long-term consequences. Both of them are significant in the equation.
Explore All Sides: There is never just one simple answer, and nothing is black or white. Explore all options and think outside of the box before you come to any conclusions.

How Is Critical Thinking Developed At School?

Critical thinking is developed in nearly everything we do, but much of this essential skill is encouraged and practiced in school. Fostering a culture of inquiry is crucial, encouraging students to ask questions, analyze information, and evaluate evidence.

Teaching strategies like Socratic questioning, problem-based learning, and collaborative discussions help students think for themselves. When teachers ask questions, students can respond critically and reflect on their learning. Group discussions also expand their thinking, making them independent thinkers and effective problem solvers.

How Does Critical Thinking Apply To Your Career?

Critical thinking is a valuable asset in any career. Employers value employees who can think critically, ask insightful questions, and offer creative solutions. Demonstrating critical thinking skills can set you apart in the workplace, showing your ability to tackle complex problems and make informed decisions.

In many careers, from law and medicine to business and engineering, critical thinking is essential. Lawyers analyze cases, doctors diagnose patients, business analysts evaluate market trends, and engineers solve technical issues—all requiring strong critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking also enhances your ability to communicate effectively, making you a better team member and leader. By analyzing and evaluating information, you can present clear, logical arguments and make persuasive presentations.

Incorporating critical thinking into your career helps you stay adaptable and innovative. It encourages continuous learning and improvement, which are crucial for professional growth and success in a rapidly changing job market.

Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels

Critical thinking is a vital skill with far-reaching benefits for personal and professional success. It involves systematic skills such as analysis, evaluation, inference, interpretation, and explanation to assess information and arguments.

By gathering relevant data, considering alternative perspectives, and using logical reasoning, critical thinking enables informed decision-making. Reflecting on and refining these processes further enhances their effectiveness.

The future of critical thinking holds significant importance as it remains essential for adapting to evolving challenges and making sound decisions in various aspects of life.

What are the benefits of developing critical thinking skills?

Critical thinking enhances decision-making, problem-solving, and the ability to evaluate information critically. It helps in making informed decisions, understanding others’ perspectives, and improving overall cognitive abilities.

How does critical thinking contribute to problem-solving abilities?

Critical thinking enables you to analyze problems thoroughly, consider multiple solutions, and choose the most effective approach. It fosters creativity and innovative thinking in finding solutions.

What role does critical thinking play in academic success?

Critical thinking is crucial in academics as it allows you to analyze texts, evaluate evidence, construct logical arguments, and understand complex concepts, leading to better academic performance.

How does critical thinking promote effective communication skills?

Critical thinking helps you articulate thoughts clearly, listen actively, and engage in meaningful discussions. It improves your ability to argue logically and understand different viewpoints.

How can critical thinking skills be applied in everyday situations?

You can use critical thinking to make better personal and professional decisions, solve everyday problems efficiently, and understand the world around you more deeply.

What role does skepticism play in critical thinking?

Skepticism encourages questioning assumptions, evaluating evidence, and distinguishing between facts and opinions. It helps in developing a more rigorous and open-minded approach to thinking.

What strategies can enhance critical thinking?

Strategies include asking probing questions, engaging in reflective thinking, practicing problem-solving, seeking diverse perspectives, and analyzing information critically and logically.

In this article

At UoPeople, our blog writers are thinkers, researchers, and experts dedicated to curating articles relevant to our mission: making higher education accessible to everyone. Read More

Introduction to Critical Thinking Skills

First Online: 04 September 2024

Cite this chapter

K. Venkat Reddy 3 &
G. Suvarna Lakshmi 4

This chapter contains summaries of six articles that are machine generated. The summaries discuss the multitude ways in which the field of critical thinking has been understood and defined. Mostly the summaries included in the chapter project the view that critical thinking is all about certain cognitive abilities belonging to the higher order of thinking. The first summary explains the definition of critical thinking using a meta-level approach; it uses this approach because the problem of defining critical thinking is a meta-problem. The authors argue that the definitions proposed earlier were either subject-specific or skill-specific resulting in definitions that are neither universally applicable nor acceptable. The authors therefore have attempted to propose an approach that has three proper criteria that the definition should satisfy. They are: (1) rely on criteria, (2) self-correcting, and (3) sensitive to context. The summary of the second article on the skills required for the twenty-first-century education is based on the lists of skills proposed by various bodies that are broadly categorized as productive, critical, and creative thinking along with digital skills. The author proposes that the curriculum should incorporate skills that are required as per the current pace of change and the need of the hour.

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Reddy, K.V., Lakshmi, G.S. (2024). Introduction to Critical Thinking Skills. In: Reddy, K.V., Lakshmi, G.S. (eds) Critical Thinking for Professional and Language Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37951-2_1

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Why Schools Need to Change Knowing What’s True and Knowing What’s You

Matthew Riggan (he/his) Co-Founder Workshop School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Today’s learners face an uncertain present and a rapidly changing future that demand far different skills and knowledge than were needed in the 20th century. We also know so much more about enabling deep, powerful learning than we ever did before. Our collective future depends on how well young people prepare for the challenges and opportunities of 21st-century life.

Teaching critical thinking and decision making involves helping students know what’s true, and it should also include helping them know who they are and what they value.

By design, my Twitter feed is mostly basketball, school reform, and random Philadelphia stuff. I try to keep it light.

But the algorithms are always trying to widen the aperture to my attention, testing what I’ll respond to and foisting content on me accordingly. As a result, I get a decent amount of content about politics pushed into my feed. (To be clear: I’m not looking to avoid information on political issues, I am looking to avoid information about these issues on Twitter . It’s not the medium for nuance.) And while I am reluctant to linger too long for fear of encouraging the algos, it doesn’t take much probing to realize that some significant portion of what I am seeing—let’s call it a third—is either totally fabricated or intentionally misleading.

Disinformation and PsyOps are hardly new, but the cocktail of AI to generate content and social media to spread it is probably the most potent we’ve ever seen. Given the fact that these tools are so easily accessible to anyone, including and especially those acting in bad faith, it’s no surprise that my formerly fun Twitter feed can read like dystopian satire.

All of which inevitably leads me back to the simplest and most basic of questions:

How do we know what is true?

Critical thinking, media literacy, blah blah blah. Yes, all of these. Way smarter people than me have written a ton about that. (My one small addition is the reminder that these need to be modes of inquiry and reflection rather than electives layered on top of school-as-we-have always-known-it. It’s not what we’re teaching and learning, it’s how we’re doing it.)

What’s really interesting to me is the logical extension of that question in the year 2024:

How do we know what is true when we almost always have incomplete and/or bad information ?

As educators, our approach to knowing what’s true is usually characterized by a kind of empiricism: if we get good enough at identifying credible sources and checking claims against evidence, we can sleuth out the truth and distill the signal from the noise. That may be true for the simple stuff—I am confident that I can get a third grader to fact check Donald Trump’s claim that he reduced insulin prices—but most of the things we need to understand, from the effects of climate change to how to talk to our relatives, aren’t simple.

I’m currently designing a project for a college class at our postsecondary program, Workshop U , called “How to decide.” It’s rooted in our students’ lives and experiences (they are literally deciding what kind of internship experience they want to design), but really, it’s about 1.) how to make a choice with incomplete information and imperfect options, and 2.) how to commit to, and be at peace with, that decision once you’ve made it. There is a high-level cognitive aspect to this work. An entire field is dedicated to decision making under uncertainty, and understanding or estimating risk is as critical as it is complex. But just as important as our cognitive tools is the ethical or moral foundation on which we build our learning. We know what’s true first by knowing ourselves, what we believe, and what we value. This is reflective, philosophical, even spiritual work. It steadies us amid the inability to fully know and impels us to turn our decisions into commitments.

Our values and beliefs shape what kinds of activity feed us and what drains us. They influence what we pay attention to and what we marginalize. If we think about our movement through life as a vector, our effort is the magnitude but our values and beliefs set the direction.

In schools, our approach to teaching critical thinking, media literacy, and the like sometimes assumes that arriving at a decision is simply a matter of adjudication. On important questions (the war in Gaza, reproductive freedom, economic policy), what is true is seldom that objective. The more information we have, the more nuanced, and often muddled, the picture can become. In these instances, what is true becomes a question of which pieces of the picture matter most to each of us. Failure to realize this leads us to view those who arrive at other conclusions as dishonest or corrupt.

At the Workshop School , the curriculum is designed so that students can “sample” different kinds of subject matter and ways of working. We want them to build knowledge and skills, but the most important subject they are learning is themselves. Through community building rituals like morning circle, reflective practices such as exhibitions, and diverse explorations of how they might change the world, we’re trying to help them build a foundation of self-awareness. A deep understanding of our values and commitments serves as our home base, the place we return to when we encounter new information and experience or when we reach key decision points in our lives.

A grounding in values is also what makes voice and choice meaningful. In both our high school and postsecondary programs we ask students to make big decisions about what they want to work on. The ones who succeed at this are those who have a deep commitment to what they want to do and understand why they want to do it. Those who are loosely attached to their vision are quick to abandon projects when obstacles arise, as they inevitably do. The offer of choice does not automatically make work meaningful.

So yes: let’s teach students a healthy skepticism, an ability to filter, and a capacity to weigh claims against evidence. But let’s also remember that these capabilities are like a spotlight. The deeper work is helping students figure out where to point it.

Photo at top courtesy of Workshop School.

Matthew Riggan (he/his)

Co-founder, workshop school.

Matthew Riggan is the co-founder of the Workshop School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Critical thinking: definition and how to improve its skills

Critical thinking process all ideas must be open.

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What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is a discipline based on the ability of people to observe, elucidate and analyze information, facts and evidences in order to judge or decide if it is right or wrong.

It goes beyond mere curiosity, simple knowledge or analysis of any kind of fact or information.

People who develop this type of outlook are able to logically connect ideas and defend them with weighty opinions that ultimately help them make better decisions.

Critical thinking: definition and how to improve its skills

How to build and improve critical thinking skills?

Building and improving critical thinking skills involves focusing on a number of abilities and capacities .

To begin the critical thinking process all ideas must be open and all options must be understood as much as possible.

Even the dumbest or craziest idea can end up being the gateway to the most intelligent and successful conclusion.

The problem with having an open mind is that it is the most difficult path and often involves a greater challenge and effort. It is well known that the easy thing to do is to go with the obvious and the commonly accepted but this has no place in critical thinking.

By contrast, it is helpful not to make hasty decisions and to weigh the problem in its entirety after a first moment of awareness.

Finally, practicing active listening will help you to receive feedback from others and to understand other points of view that may help you as a reference.

Impartiality

An important point in the critical thinking process is the development of the ability to identify biases and maintain an impartial view in evaluations.

To improve this aspect it is advisable to have tools to be able to identify and recognize the prejudices and biases you have and try to leave them completely aside when thinking about the solution.

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Observation

Observation allows you to see each and every detail , no matter how small, subtle or inconsequential they may be or seem to be.

Behind the superficial information hides a universe of data, sources and experiences that help you make the best decision.

One of the pillars of critical thinking is objectivity. This forces you to base your value judgments on established facts that you will have gathered after a correct research process.

At this point in the process you should also be clear about the influencing factors to be taken into account and those that can be left out.

Remember that your research is not only about gathering a good amount of information that puts the maximum number of options, variables or situations on the table.

For the information to be of quality, it must be based on reliable and trustworthy sources.

If the information you have to collect is based on the comments and opinions of third parties, try to exercise quality control but without interference.

To do this, ask open-ended questions that bring all the nuances to the table and at the same time serve to sift out possible biases.

How to build and improve critical thinking skills?

With the research process completed, it is time to analyze the sources and information gathered.

At this point, your analytical skills will help you to discard what does not conform to unconventional thinking, to prioritize among the information that is of value, to identify possible trends and to draw your own conclusions.

One of the skills that characterize a person with critical thinking is their ability to recognize patterns and connections between all the pieces of information they handle in their research.

This allows them to draw conclusions of great relevance on which to base their predictions with weighty foundations.

Analytical thinking is sometimes confused with critical thinking. The former only uses facts and data, while the latter incorporates other nuances such as emotions, experiences or opinions.

One of the problems with critical thinking is that it can be developed to infinity and beyond. You can always keep looking for new avenues of investigation and new lines of argument by stretching inference to limits that may not be necessary.

At this point it is important to clarify that inference is the process of drawing conclusions from initial premises or hypotheses.

Knowing when to stop the research and thinking process and move on to the next stage in which you put into practice the actions considered appropriate is necessary.

Communication

The information you collect in your research is not top secret material. On the contrary, your knowledge sharing with other people who are involved in the next steps of the process is so important.

Think that your analytical ability to extract the information and your conclusions can serve to guide others .

Problem solving

It is important to note at this point that critical thinking can be aimed at solving a problem but can also be used to simply answer questions or even to identify areas for improvement in certain situations.

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When Critical Thinking Is Not Worth It

Personal perspective: should we always share our critical thinking.

Updated September 5, 2024 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

In a recent post, I discussed social barriers to applying critical thinking . I received interesting feedback on this particular topic and I thought further discussion around this dialogue would be of interest. First and foremost, consider when we should apply critical thinking. As I’ve stated before, it might come as a surprise to readers that someone like me, who places great value on such thought, would suggest that critical thinking doesn’t need to be applied as often as many might think. The reality is that critical thinking is effortful and time-consuming. If we thought critically about every mundane decision we had to make each day, we’d be exhausted before mid-morning. We should only think critically about issues that we care about and that are important to us.

Why would someone even contemplate engaging in critical thinking when they could potentially face negative outcomes for it? It’s because the issue is important to them. But, is that a good enough reason? It depends. For example, I have thought critically about some rather controversial topics (arguably, these are the ones that require the most critical thinking given that what makes them controversial is that so many people care about them, yet have very different views) and I recognise that the conclusions yielded, in light of logic and evidence, may not always be palatable to people in certain contexts. Depending on the situation, I will choose to share my conclusions or choose against them. This, of course, is where we find the fork in the road at the crux of this conversation.

As I mentioned in the aforementioned post, there are arguably two different perspectives on whether or not one should share their critical thinking in environments that might discourage or even punish this thinking, if the conclusions drawn contradict what is deemed acceptable (be it socially, politically, or even legally). First, there is the idealistic, yes, we should always share critical thinking. Second is the practical, ‘know your audience’. Often, staying quiet seems like a practical and prudent move.

With that, such prudence might be seen to contradict what many might view as intellectual integrity; but, on the other hand, it can just as easily be argued that inhibiting such response is appropriate—an act of metacognition (thinking about thinking) about a specific metacognitive process (critical thinking). And so, the intellectually appropriate thing would be to make the best decision you can for the preservation of what or who you care about, such as through this 'meta-metacognition'. Perhaps the key is the question of what’s contextually more important, being right or avoiding punishment ? What is to be gained from speaking out? For me, the only situation I would share my critical thinking, in this context, is if my well-being or that of my family was at risk to the extent that such risk surpasses the impact of the punishment.

To reiterate, context is key here; what I do depends on the situation. Sometimes, having a conclusion is all that is needed. If I have thought critically about a topic to determine what is best for me or my family, why would I have to advertise my decision publicly? I don’t. Sure, I may choose to if I’m in discussion with friends, but I’m not required to do so (of course, this might change in situations where we are ‘forced’ to share our thinking, such as in cases where important decisions are being made for us or when we are specifically asked to infer a conclusion—for example, at work). Moreover, I’m less likely to share if I think it’s going to start a fight or annoyance. Why risk the hassle if there’s nothing real to gain? In both cases, self-regulation is useful. Most of the time, we can simultaneously benefit from engaging in critical thinking and keeping it to ourselves.

Consistent with this perspective, an important aspect of critical thinking is being practical. A practical person would not risk punishment unless they have a genuine chance of positively affecting the issue that they care about. An unfortunate by-product of this, in context, is that many critical thinkers remain quiet on controversial topics presented in the media (particularly if their thinking contradicts the status quo of the moral majority and their value signaling ). Even though you may not be imprisoned for your conclusions (that is, in nations where people enjoy free speech), you might risk other negative outcomes. Sure, we are aware of various sides of the argument; but quite often, we only hear the bias and emotion -based perspectives. Passion is distinct from care in consideration of applying such thinking.

We often hear the emotional callouts of those ‘for’ and ‘against’ particular ideas and movements; but less often do we hear the critical thinking. That’s not to say that the thinking isn’t there; rather, it’s less likely to get the focus because of social mechanisms that thrive when emotion is at play—like ‘they who shout loudest’ or the ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease.’ It could well be the case, in terms of controversial topics, that critical thinkers might actually represent a substantially large, though silent population.

I’m cognisant that some people fear that critical thinking is dying. I don’t think this is necessarily the case; rather, it might be that those not engaging in such thinking are getting louder – not because there are growing numbers of people who lack critical thinking , but because we have so many platforms available for people to spread their messages. I’m not saying that this is harmless and that such people can simply be ignored (for example, uninformed populations can vote other uninformed individuals into positions of power and law-making), but at the same time, we should not overestimate the impact of every erroneous statement made publicly. Give people credit – just because one person posts something silly online, doesn’t mean that the majority agrees with them. With that, some errors are more influential than others. Avoid stressing over the ones that don’t affect you. Be concerned about the ones that do and evaluate whether it is in your interest to share your thinking in those situations. Engage critical thinking but be practical; and don’t get baited into discourses with people who haven’t thought critically, are not open-minded to other perspectives, and not willing to change their mind.

Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the Technological University of the Shannon in Athlone, Ireland.

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Opinion: The power of youth research: Phase 1’s mission to revolutionize education

Vedant Sagare

As someone deeply involved with Phase 1, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of youth engagement in research and education. At Phase 1, we believe that research is not merely a tool for academics and professionals but a fundamental skill that every young person should cultivate. Our mission is clear: to democratize access to research opportunities and mentorship, ensuring that every student, regardless of background, can explore their potential and contribute meaningfully to society.

Why does this work matter? It’s about equipping young minds with essential skills that extend far beyond the classroom. Research fosters critical thinking, problem-solving, and resilience—qualities crucial for navigating an increasingly complex world. Through our initiatives, we not only empower students to innovate but also instill in them a lifelong love of learning and a sense of curiosity about the world around them.

Beyond skills development, Phase 1 addresses profound disparities in educational access globally. From providing laptops and Wi-Fi routers to underserved communities to educating students in sustainable energy solutions, our efforts bridge gaps that inhibit learning and growth. In India, we empower youth with knowledge about renewable energy, while in Zambia, we lay foundations for computer science education in remote areas. These initiatives not only enhance educational outcomes but also empower communities to thrive.

Our commitment to cutting-edge research is evident in projects like Engineering Antibodies for Cancer Treatment, where young researchers are tackling pressing health challenges with innovation and determination. This isn’t just about academic achievement—it’s about making tangible contributions to society’s well-being.

Looking ahead, our goals are ambitious yet essential. We aim to expand educational initiatives globally, ensuring that every youth has access to quality education and research opportunities. By establishing schools and educational facilities in underserved regions, such as Zambia, and developing educational resources in emerging fields like computer science and data analysis, Phase 1 is laying the groundwork for a more equitable future.

Phase 1 is not just an organization; it’s a movement that empowers youth to shape their futures and drive societal progress through research and education. Join us in our mission to make research and quality education accessible to all. Together, we can build a world where every young person has the tools and opportunities to thrive.

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LingYing Wang 1 ,
WenLing Chang 2 ,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1507-7890 HaiTao Tang 3 ,
WenBo He 4 ,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6682-8279 Yan Wu 3 , 5
1 Critical Care Medicine Department, West China Hospital, Sichuan University/West China School of Nursing, Sichuan University , Chengdu , China
2 School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences , King’s College London , London SE1 1UL , UK
3 Department of Postgraduate Students, West China School of Medicine/West China Hospital, Sichuan University , Chengdu , China
4 Institute of Hospital Management, West China Hospital, Sichuan University , Chengdu , Sichuan , China
5 College of Marxism, Sichuan University , Chengdu , China
Correspondence to Yan Wu; wuyan{at}wchscu.cn

Objectives This study aimed to investigate the associations between critical thinking (CT) disposition and personal characteristics and tutors’ guidance among medical graduate students, which may provide a theoretical basis for cultivating CT.

Design A cross-sectional study was conducted.

Setting This study was conducted in Sichuan and Chongqing from November to December 2021.

Participants A total of 1488 graduate students from clinical medical schools were included in this study.

Data analysis The distribution of the study participants’ underlying characteristics and CT was described and tested. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the correlation between each factor and the CT score. The independent risk factors for CT were assessed using a logistic regression model.

Results The average total CT score was 81.79±11.42 points, and the proportion of CT (score ≥72 points) was 78.9% (1174/1488). Female sex (OR 1.405, 95% CI 1.042 to 1.895), curiosity (OR 1.847, 95% CI 1.459 to 2.338), completion of scientific research design with reference (OR 1.779, 95% CI 1.460 to 2.167), asking ‘why’ (OR 1.942, 95% CI 1.508 to 2.501) and team members’ logical thinking ability (OR 1.373, 95% CI 1.122 to 1.681) were positively associated with CT while exhaustion and burn-out (OR 0.721, 95% CI 0.526 to 0.989), inattention (OR 0.572, 95% CI 0.431 to 0.759), Following others’ opinions in decision-making (OR 0.425, 95% CI 0.337 to 0.534) and no allow of doubt to tutors (OR 0.674, 95% CI 0.561 to 0.809) had negative associations with the formation of CT disposition in the fully adjusted model.

Conclusions Factors associated with motivation and internal drive are more important in the educational practice of cultivating CT. Educators should change the reward mechanism from result-oriented to motivation-maintaining to cultivate students’ CT awareness.

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public health

Data availability statement

Data are available on reasonable request.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ .

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-082461

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STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY

Our study focused on postgraduate medical students, and the sample size was relatively large.

Previous research on critical thinking has focused primarily on Europe, the USA and Japan. Hence, researching critical thinking in Chinese populations is a valuable addition to this area.

Given the traditional limitations of cross-sectional studies, the findings of this study cannot be used as direct evidence of a causal relationship between potential influences and outcomes. Nevertheless, they can provide clues to reveal causal relationships.

Introduction

Critical thinking (CT) is reasoned, reflective thinking that decides what to believe or do. The emphasis is on reasonableness, reflection and decision-making. 1 CT is even more important in the medical field, where a lack of CT can lead to delayed or missed diagnoses, incorrect cognition and mismanagement. The centrality of CT is reflected in the competency framework of health professions and is a core skill of healthcare professionals. 2–6 Six crucial skills have been proposed to operationalise the definition of CT: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-regulation. Specifically, interpretation involves comprehending the significance of information and conveying it effectively to others. Analysis requires piecing together fragmented data to decipher their intended purpose. Inference entails identifying and leveraging relevant information to formulate logical conclusions or hypotheses. Evaluation necessitates assessing the trustworthiness of a statement or information. Explanation aims to clarify shared information to ensure its comprehensibility to others. Finally, self-regulation pertains to regulating one’s thoughts, behaviours and emotions. 7–9

The role of CT in assisting medical students in navigating complex health scenarios and resolving clinical issues through sound decision-making is paramount. Extensive research has established positive correlations between CT and clinical proficiency, 10 11 academic excellence 12 and research capabilities. 13 Consequently, the Institute for International Medical Education has emphasised ‘CT and research’ as one of the seven crucial competencies that medical graduates must possess, as outlined in the Global Minimum Essential Requirements. 14 Similarly, the Ministry of Education in the People’s Republic of China has underscored the importance of ‘scientific attitude, innovation and CT’ as essential requirements for Chinese medical graduates. 15

Research on CT in medical students has been carried out to varying degrees in Western countries and many Asian countries. 16 17 Some scholars have pointed out that Western methods, including CT and clinical reasoning, are used in thinking skills education worldwide. However, there are significant differences between Chinese and Western culture, especially educational culture while cultural differences affect ways of thinking 17 18 ; therefore, previous research may not be able to reflect the actual situation of Chinese students and teaching methods may not apply to them. Most Western students tend to possess assimilating learning styles, enabling them to excel in student-centred learning environments. Conversely, Eastern students often exhibit accommodating learning styles that align more with teacher-centred instruction. 19 The discipline-based curriculum in China may not adequately foster the development of CT dispositions among Chinese medical students. This curriculum typically comprises isolated phases (theory, clerkship and internship), limited faculty–student interaction and a knowledge-focused evaluation system. 20

Previous research has suggested that a range of personal characteristics, including gender, major, blended learning methods, increased self-study hours, heightened self-efficacy in learning and performance, exposure to supportive environments and active participation in research activities, contribute to varying degrees of CT dispositions and skills. 21–24 A study conducted in Vietnam revealed that age, gender, ethnicity, educational level, health status, nursing experience, tenure at the current hospital, familiarity with ‘CT’ and job position all influence CT ability. 25 Furthermore, teacher support is paramount to learners’ mental and psychological development. This support encompasses educators’ empathy, compassion, commitment, reliability and warmth towards their students. 26 According to Tardy’s social support paradigm, 27 teacher support is defined as providing informational, instrumental, emotional or appraisal assistance to students, irrespective of their learning setting. Supportive teachers prioritise fostering personal relationships with their students and offering aid, assistance and guidance to those in need. 28 Practical teacher assistance can make students feel comfortable and inspired, motivating them to invest more effort in their studies, engage more actively in educational pursuits and achieve superior educational outcomes. 29

Current CT research on mainland Chinese medical students focuses on the impact of undergraduates’ experiences and classroom instruction. However, for postgraduates, their tutors play a more critical role in education and cultivation. According to Wosinski’s study, 30 tutors should be trained to effectively guide the teamwork of undergraduate nursing students during the problem-based learning (PBL) process to achieve their goals. There is no analysis of the influencing factors of CT focused on medical postgraduates.

Therefore, assessing the tutor’s effect on postgraduates’ CT disposition. This study investigated the associations between CT disposition and personal characteristics and tutors’ guidance among medical graduate students, which may provide a theoretical basis for cultivating CT.

Study design and participants

Study design.

This was a cross-sectional observational study. The project team sent 1525 electronic questionnaire links to WeChat groups of full-time medical graduate students in higher medical institutions in Sichuan and Chongqing between November and December 2021. After removing incomplete and duplicate questionnaires, a total of 1488 valid questionnaires were returned for an effective rate of 97.57%.

Sampling procedure

We employed a random sampling method to select medical graduate students carefully and used PASS V.15.0 software to calculate the sample size for different analyses and outcome scenarios. In the estimation of the sample size with the proportion of CT disposition as the primary outcome, we considered p=0.5, adopted the two-sided Z value under the significance level of a=0.05, and the sample size was the largest when the sampling error was 3%, which was 1067. Moreover, estimating of sample size with the correlation coefficient as the primary outcome, we considered r=0.1 according to the results from the prestudy, and the test power was 0.9; thus, we obtained n=1048. The sample size should be at least 1334 considering a 20% non-response rate.

The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) full-time medical graduate students (clinical medicine, medicine technology, integrative Chinese and Western medicine, medical laboratory, nursing and so on) in higher medical institutions in Sichuan and Chongqing and (2) after reading the introduction to the research, participants voluntarily agreed to participate and electronically signed the study’s informed consent form. The exclusion criterion was a refusal to participate in the study.

Procedure and data collection

The electronic questionnaire we used consisted of a condensed version of the Critical Thinking Measurement Scale, which was used to evaluate participants’ scores on CT disposition and a Potential Influencing Factors Questionnaire, which investigated participants’ underlying information, personal factors and education-related factors. To increase the response rate, we told the students how long it might take to fill out this questionnaire when we sent the questionnaire link to WeChat groups. Moreover, our participants all had master’s degrees or above whose understanding ability and compliance were better. We also sent reminders to all invited participants three times, and the survey lasted approximately 1 month.

Critical Thinking Measurement Scale

We used the Chinese version of the short-form critical thinking disposition inventory (SF-CTDI-CV), which is based on the CTDI-CV reported by Huang. 31 The CTDI-CV includes seven subscales, namely Truth Seeking, Open-mindedness, Analyticity, Systematicity, Critical Thinking Self-confidence, Inquisitiveness and Cognitive Maturity, which have good reliability and validity (0.90 for the overall Cronbach’s alpha and 0.89 for the overall Content Validity Index). 32 Huang removed ineffective questions based on the CTDI-CV and obtained a simplified scale with 18 items of three factors, which increased the proportion of total explained variation and had better reliability and validity than the original version. Huang selected items according to important indicators in factor analysis, including factor loading and communality. Specifically, Huang removed items whose factor loading was less than 0.4 or whose commonality was less than 0.3. Each item of the SF-CTDI-CV has six options (Likert scale) from 1 to 6 (1 means complete agreement and 6 means disagree entirely); the higher the score is, the stronger the CT tendency. 31 The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value for SF-CTDI-CV is 0.90 while the p value of Bartlett’s test is less than 0.05, indicating that this short-form inventory has ideal structural validity. A total score of 72 or more indicates a CT disposition, and all participants were divided into two groups according to whether they possessed essential characteristics of thinking.

Potential Influencing Factors Questionnaire

The Potential Influencing Factors Questionnaire was based on previous research and interviews. The interviewees including senior education practitioners and invited medical postgraduate students, focused on their experiences and feelings regarding medical education in China. We compiled an interview outline and invited a total of 22 professionals, including 9 doctoral candidates, 5 doctoral supervisors, 2 counsellors and 6 young backbone teachers, to participate in the interviews. The interview schedule is flexible, but to ensure efficiency, we controlled the interview duration for each participant to within 40 min. After the interviews, we used professional NVivo V.11.0 software to analyse the collected interview data thoroughly.

The Potential Influencing Factors Questionnaire consists of 10 questions in the essential information section, 35 questions in the influencing factors section and 3 flexible questions, for 48 valid entries. The essential information section includes gender, age, secondary education background, higher education major, level of education, type of degree, full-time work experience, type of household registration, the highest level of parental education and whether the respondent was from an only child family. The influencing factors section can be grouped into two main areas: ‘personal factors’ and ‘educational factors’, with personal factors including the individual characteristics section. The educational factors include the practice and training, tutor and team, and educational environment section. This study defines every potential factor as an ordinal variable, with greater rank, depth and frequency of the corresponding factors. For reliability, Cronbach’s alpha=0.795 indicates that the questionnaire’s reliability is good enough for investigation. The content validity of the questionnaire was tested to determine whether the content met the objectives and requirements of the study. Most of the items of the influencing factors questionnaire were selected from previous literature, and the content validity was good. The KMO values and p values for the Bartlett’s test of sphericity for every aspect indicate that the structural validity of the questionnaire is good (see more details in online supplemental table S1 ).

Supplemental material

In the questionnaire design process, we first formed a preliminary framework concerning previous qualitative and quantitative research. Then we conducted interviews with educators, doctoral supervisors and representatives of medical postgraduate students according to the initial framework to understand their work experience in the practice of medical postgraduate education in China. Then, the questionnaire was supplemented according to the frequently mentioned items in the interviews. Finally, a questionnaire focusing on whether personal and educational pathways influence the formation of CT disposition was developed, as well as the key points of CT cultivation.

Data collection and organisation

The project team designed the electronic questionnaire based on the Influencing Factors Questionnaire and Critical Thinking Measurement Scale. Excel 2019 collated the raw data exported from the electronic questionnaire platform. Using the electronic questionnaire platform, answer completion settings rule out the possibility of logical anomalies. Samples with missing answers on the Critical Thinking Inventory were eliminated. Participants who were missing other information were asked to fill in as much as possible through the telephone number they had left. Those who were unable to do so were eliminated. Each factor in the influencing factors section was assigned a value in steps of 1 from lowest to highest (eg, the four categorical variables were assigned values of 1, 2, 3, and 4; 1 for never and 4 for always).

Students and public involvement

Former students were involved in the preparatory phase of this study. They reviewed the informed consent form and provided feedback.

Statistical analysis

The data were analysed by using SPSS V.24.0 software. The distribution of the study participants’ underlying characteristics and CT were described and tested. Continuous variables are described as the mean±SD, and t-tests or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for hypothesis tests. Categorical variables are expressed as composition ratios and χ 2 tests are used for hypothesis tests. Correlation analysis: The Spearman rank correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the correlation between each factor and the CT score. Difference analysis: Trend ANOVA was used to test whether there was a trend change in CT scores at different levels of each potential influencing factor. A t-test was used to compare the differences in the levels of influencing factors between different CT trait groups. Factors with differences between groups were included in a multivariate unconditional logistic regression model. We fitted several multivariate logistic regression models to evaluate potential confounding variables. By comparing the χ 2 value, the −2-likelihood ratio, the Akaike information criterion, and the practical meanings of this study’s interesting factors, the final model in which X variables could explain most of the Y variables (CT scores) was chosen. The above tests were performed at 0.05, and a p<0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Essential characteristics

A total of 1488 medical graduate students were included in this study, with an average age of 26.63±3.72 years. Most of the participants had a science background in high school (96.84%), a higher education major in clinical medicine (78.43%) and had never participated in full-time work (71.91%). Most of the participants were female (65.93%), lived in urban areas (61.69%), had parents with junior school education or below (39.18%), were not the only child in the family (51.48%), scientific graduate students (51.61%) and had a master’s degree (55.51%). Among all the research subjects, the average total CT score was 81.79±11.42 points, and the proportion of CT (score ≥72 points) was 78.9% (1174/1488). The essential characteristics of the included subjects are shown in table 1 .

View inline

Participants’ essential characteristics and the distribution of critical thinking dispositions

Distribution of CT disposition

Table 1 demonstrates the distribution of CT disposition among the study participants. For the essential CT scores, participants with urban residence, higher parental education, only-child families, a science background before admission, science-based graduates, longer full-time employment and higher education levels had significantly greater CT scores (p<0.05). According to the CT questionnaire used in this project, subjects with a score more excellent than 72 points were considered to have an apparent CT disposition. The results showed that among our participants, women (80.80% vs 75.10%), science students (79.50% vs 61.70%) and PhD students (81.60% vs 76.80%) had a more significant proportion of CT disposition (p<0.05).

CT scores are linearly correlated with impact factor scores

Table 2 shows the correlation between each factor and the CT scores. The Spearman correlation coefficients suggested that most terms related to personal factors were correlated with CT scores (p<0.001). Sense of achievement (r=0.324), curiosity (r=0.480) and following others’ opinions in decision-making (r=−0.292) were strongly correlated with CT scores. Regarding educational factors, all factors in the practice and training section, all factors in the tutor and team section, and most factors in the educational environment impacted CT scores (p<0.001). Factors in the tutor and team section were more strongly related to CT scores, such as teaching students according to their aptitude (r=0.247) and tutors asking heuristic questions (r=0.242). Only no allow of doubt to tutors hurt the CT scores (r=−0.179, p<0.001).

The correlation between the potential influencing factors and the score of critical thinking

Factors influencing CT disposition

Univariate analysis.

The influencing factors associated with CT disposition are presented in table 3 . Univariate analysis revealed that in terms of personal factors, a sense of achievement, curiosity and interpersonal skills were all possible facilitators of CT disposition (p<0.05), and the group with CT disposition had higher average scores. In contrast, fatigue and burn-out, inattention and following others’ opinions in decision-making were possible hindering factors. Regarding educational factors, most factors in the ‘practice and training’ section, all factors in the ‘tutor and team’ section, and some factors in the ‘educational environment’ section were impact factors on CT disposition. In the practice and traning section, academic performance (p<0.001), number of intensively reading (p<0.001), paper writing (p=0.001), participation in academic conferences (p=0.009), completion of scientific research design with reference (p<0.001), time for extracurricular reading (p=0.006), summarisation and reflection (p<0.001), asking ‘why’ (p<0.001) and knowledge of critical thinking (p<0.001) were all positively related to CT disposition. For the tutor and team section, participants with CT disposition had higher scores for the following factors (p<0.01): tutors sharing thinking methods, communicating learning and life with tutors, tutors asking heuristic questions, encouragement of using ‘possible’ and ‘potential’, advocation of logical thinking training and lifelong learning, teaching students according to their aptitude and team members’ logical thinking skills. No allow to doubt tutors hurt CT disposition (p<0.001). The use of multifunctional classrooms (p<0.001) and having active classes (TBL class, flipped class, p=0.006) in the educational environment section were also correlated with CT disposition.

Impact factors

Multivariate logistics regression analyses

Multivariate logistics regression analysis demonstrated that female (OR 1.405, 95% CI 1.042 to 1.895), curiosity (OR 1.847, 95% CI 1.459 to 2.338), completion of scientific research design with reference (OR 1.779, 95% CI 1.460 to 2.167), asking ‘why’ (OR 1.942, 95% CI 1.508 to 2.501) and team members’ logical thinking ability (OR 1.373, 95% CI 1.122 to 1.681) were the promoting factors for the development of CT disposition after adjusting for other confounding factors. However, exhaustion and burn-out (OR 0.721, 95% CI 0.526 to 0.989), inattention (OR 0.572, 95% CI 0.431 to 0.759) and following others’ opinions in decision-making (OR 0.425, 95% CI 0.337 to 0.534) and no allow of doubt to tutors (OR 0.674, 95% CI 0.561 to 0.809) may be hindering factors for the formation of CT disposition in the fully adjusted model ( table 4 , adjusted R 2 =0.323).

Multifactor regression model

This cross-sectional study explored the factors influencing the CT disposition of Chinese medical graduate students in terms of both personal and educational factors. A total of 78.9% of the participants in this study had positive CT dispositions (score ≥72, 1174/1488), and women were 40.5% more likely than men to have CT dispositions (OR 1.405, 95% CI 1.042 to 1.895). Multivariate logistics regression analysis revealed that among personal factors, curiosity was the promoting factor while exhaustion and burn-out, inattention and following others’ opinions in decision-making may be the hindering factors. For educational factors, completing the scientific research design with reference, asking ‘why’ and the high logical thinking ability of team members were associated with CT disposition. However, no allow of doubt to tutors may hinder the disposition of CT.

According to our demographic information, our study revealed a greater prevalence of CT disposition among women, aligning with Zhai’s findings. 22 Several factors may contribute to this observed gender disparity. A systematic review established that men tend to engage more with objects while women prefer interpersonal interactions. 33 Women are more inclined to engage in dialogue and foster their understanding through collaborative learning, often exhibiting a more receptive mindset. Second, a study using fractional anisotropy measures derived from diffusion tensor imaging in 425 participants, including 118 males, revealed that divergent thinking in females correlates positively with fractional anisotropy in the corpus callosum and the right superior longitudinal fasciculus. 34 Conversely, it correlates with fractional anisotropy in the right tapetum in males. Zhang et al ’s 34 research sheds light on the sex-specific structural connectivity within and between hemispheres that underpins divergent thinking. These gender differences in creativity may reflect the inherent diversity between males and females in society. However, Faramarzi and Khafri 35 reported contrasting results. They concluded that although the results differed between the sexes, the likely cause was females’ higher education level rather than a difference due to gender. Several studies concur that self-esteem is a principal determinant of CT. 22 35 Barkhordary et al , 36 in their study of 170 third-year and fourth-year nursing students in Yazd, identified a significant link between CT and self-esteem. Pilevarzadeh et al further demonstrated that students with higher self-esteem exhibit more robust CT skills. 37 Self-esteem is defined as ‘an individual’s overall subjective emotional assessment of their worth’. 38 Bleidorn et al 39 conducted a groundbreaking large-scale, cross-cultural study with an internet sample of 985 937 participants, examining gender and age differences in self-esteem across 48 nations. They discovered significant gender differences, with males consistently reporting higher self-esteem levels than females, which may influence their responses to negative feedback to some degree.

In the section on personal factors, the results of this study on personal internal and external environmental factors such as curiosity, burn-out and inattention are consistent with previous studies. 40–45 The relationship between these internal and external environmental factors and cognitive capacity has been described in cognitive load theory, 46 particularly the role of ‘working memory’, the capacity to process information. Specifically, researchers 47 reported on a consensus on CT teaching, assessment and faculty development compiled by a high-level team recommended by 32 medical schools across the USA. Learners’ personal attributes, characteristics, perspectives and behaviours are critical components of their motivation to prepare for and engage in deeper learning and laborious clinical reasoning. Distractions and interruptions, on the other hand, can reduce attention to important issues, affecting learners’ ability to engage in clinical reasoning and their CT skills. 48 Making decisions based on the opinions of others in this study may reflect the participants’ interdependent view of self, which was identified by Futami et al 49 as a negative factor for CT dispositions.

Regarding the educational factors, learning methods and research group membership characteristics were more strongly associated with CT disposition than learning frequency and learning form. Completing the scientific research design with reference and asking ‘why’ are learning methods that promote the formation of CT for medical graduate students. Research 50 suggests that CT requires a persistent effort to test any belief or supposed form of knowledge according to the evidence supporting it and the further conclusions it tends to help. Completing scientific research design with reference is the specific manifestation of evidence-based reasoning in the scientific research field, which may be why it affects the formation process of CT. Furthermore, similar to our research, much research has explored the crucial role that questioning or problem-based thinking plays in CT. 47 51–53 Our research also suggested that the teaching style of the group supervisor and the logical thinking ability of other group members also impacted CT dispositions. Although no previous research has explored the role-specific behaviours of subject mentors and peers in CT disposition from a quantitative perspective, Futami et al 49 reported higher CT scores for subjects who had connections with research experts, suggesting a positive influence of research mentors on CT. Self-esteem positively affects CT, and overbearing instructors may undermine students’ self-esteem and, thus, their CT disposition. Moreover, several authors 47 53 54 have argued that professors’ encouragement of students to express uncertainty, to question and assess the quality of knowledge learnt, and to improve team members’ logical thinking skills are all positively associated with CT, consistent with our findings.

The CT scores in our study were lower than those in several Western countries among medical students, 55 56 possibly because of differences in educational culture and methods. In China, medical education comprises three stages: primary medical education, clinical education and internships. Primary medical education introduces students to the medical world. The delivery of traditional courses used to be prescribed and even dull simply because teachers were accustomed to a conventional teaching style and were afraid of making changes to course delivery. 57 The strategies to develop reflective and CT in nursing students in eight countries indicated that reflexive CT was found in most curricula, although with diverse denominations. The principal learning strategies used were PBL, group dynamics, reflective reading, clinical practice and simulation laboratories. The evaluation methods are the knowledge test, case analysis and practical exam. 58

The importance of early clinical exposure is universally acknowledged, particularly in developing countries where its value is profoundly esteemed. For instance, the South African Health Professions Council has spearheaded educational reforms for medical professionals, enabling first-year medical students to participate in healthcare visits. These visits aim to enrich the comprehension of future professional environments and foster a more profound passion for medicine. 59 Notably, most students perceived these visits as invaluable learning experiences, leaving them better prepared for medical practice. Similarly, Chinese medical colleges offer comparable programmes spanning 1–2 weeks. A Peking University study using questionnaires and reports revealed that all students benefited from these activities, gaining perceptual knowledge of clinical work. Remarkably, 61.5% of students reported that their early clinical exposure had significantly assisted them. 60

Interestingly, there was a more significant proportion of PhD students with a CT disposition in our study. This may be because doctoral research is more in-depth and complex, requiring students to engage in more detailed, rigorous and innovative thinking based on their existing knowledge. During the research process, doctoral students must constantly question, analyse, evaluate and reconstruct knowledge, which undoubtedly exercises and enhances their CT abilities. 61 However, this does not imply that master’s students possess lower CT skills than doctoral students. The master’s programme also emphasises cultivating CT, although possibly differing in depth and breadth. Both stages have unique development paths and manifestations in terms of CT. Regardless of the stage, graduate students should focus on developing their CT skills to address challenges in academic research and life.

Our research revealed that factors influencing CT motivation appear to be more closely linked to CT tendencies in personal and educational components. Miele and Wigfield 50 suggested that the factors affecting students’ critical analytical thinking motivation can be divided into two aspects: quantity and quality, the quantitative relationship between motivation and CT, that is, whether students have sufficient motivation to make high-level spiritual efforts. This is reflected in our study regarding curiosity, burn-out, distraction, an interdependent self-view and influence by research team members. The qualitative relationship is the willingness of students to engage in CT, which corresponds to the desire to ask ‘why’ and to refer to existing evidence to complete a research design in this study. This suggests that internal motivation may play an essential role in CT and that educators should focus more on maintaining students’ motivation and building awareness than on the frequency of rigid external research training and curriculum formats. Students are actively promoted and encouraged to apply CT in practice. At the same time, the existing overly outcome-oriented reward mechanism is changed, and assessment criteria are enriched, for example, by including ‘whether you ask interesting questions’ as one of the criteria for classroom assessment to motivate people to become more proactive learners. Recently, medical education has garnered considerable attention and traditionally assumes that medical students are inherently motivated by their dedication to specialised training and a highly focused profession. However, motivation plays a crucial role in determining the quality of learning and ultimate success. Its absence may provide a plausible explanation for why teachers occasionally encounter medical students who appear discouraged, have lost interest or abandon their studies, feeling a sense of powerlessness or resignation. 62

To foster CT among medical students, educational reform should encompass several key aspects: (1) Encouraging active learning and exploration: Teachers must urge students to engage actively in the learning process, providing resources and guidance to kindle their intellectual curiosity. This will empower students to seek out challenges, pose inquiries and address them through a critical lens. 63 (2) Implementing heuristic learning and case studies: Educators should incorporate case studies, enabling students to hone their CT, discriminatory skills and decision-making abilities by analysing authentic or hypothetical scenarios. 64 65 (3) Stressing the mastery of professional knowledge: It is imperative to ensure that students grasp the fundamental theories and principles of the medical field, along with proficiency in practical medical skills. 66 (4) Nurturing teamwork skills: Group discussions, collaborative projects and similar activities should be used to cultivate teamwork among medical students. This teaches them to listen attentively, manage team dynamics, and allocate resources effectively, enhancing their CT and problem-solving capabilities. 67 (5) Providing clinical practical experience: Early exposure to clinical practice is crucial in developing students’ analytical and problem-solving skills through firsthand observation and participation in real-life case management. 68 (6) Shifting teachers’ roles: Educators must evolve into mentors and role models for CT, leading by example and inspiring students through their practices and teachings. 69 Collectively, these recommendations for educational reform will empower medical students to address intricate issues they may encounter in their future medical careers, ultimately increasing the quality and safety of healthcare services.

It is worth noting that our questionnaire incorporated many potential entries with high reliability. It mostly also showed differences between the two groups with or without CT disposition in univariate analysis but were not ultimately presented in the regression models. These factors are meaningful for the development of CT but taking into account the simplicity and informativeness of the model, other entries in the model may have represented them. Our model explained more of the variance in CT than regression models from previous studies. 49 70 71

Strengths and limitations

This study has particular strengths. First, the questionnaire for this study was scientific and practice based. The findings of previous studies on personal and educational factors were extensively referenced, and in-depth interviews were also conducted. Second, our study focused on postgraduate medical students and the sample size was relatively large. Postgraduate medical students are the key group for CT development, and the findings obtained among postgraduate medical students are more relevant and better reflect the thinking characteristics of postgraduate medical students. Research from China has considerably enriched the worldwide sample of CT influencing factors. It has been suggested that cultural context strongly influences CT, 72 but previous research on CT has mostly focused on Europe, the USA and Japan. Therefore, researching CT in Chinese populations is a valuable addition to this area. In addition, this study is the first to quantitatively explore the impact of tutor and team on CT disposition. For Chinese postgraduates, tutors and their scientific research teams are the people who have the most contact during their studies. In our previous interviews, educators, tutors and postgraduates all recognised the vital role of tutors in postgraduate education, especially in the cultivation of thinking. Based on interviews and literature extraction, we summarise the specific influence of tutors and teams and present them as numerical indicators to refine the influence of tutors on educational factors to make them more comprehensive and exact.

There are several limitations to our study. First, given the traditional constraints of cross-sectional studies, the findings of this study cannot be used as direct evidence of a causal relationship between potential influences and outcomes. Still, they can provide clues to reveal causal relationships. Second, some influencing factors, such as participation in project submissions, participation in CT courses, attempts at innovation and entrepreneurship, and exchange abroad may need to be revised when measured due to limited educational resources. The lack of opportunity for most students to participate in the projects mentioned above, even if they had the will to do so, may help obscure the correlation between CT and these factors. Our regression models did not include other factors of the same type with higher coverage, such as article writing. This suggests that specific formal factors do not significantly influence CT disposition and that bias may not affect the overall results. In addition, we did not use the CTDI-CV scale. Given the busy workload of postgraduate medical students and the fact that online surveys are challenging to monitor and quality control, to avoid as much as possible the impact of too many questions on the quality of the study and to increase the recall rate, we used a condensed version of the Critical Thinking Scale, which has a greater total explained variance than the CTDI-CV scale and has good reliability and validity.

Conclusions

In conclusion, this study provides a comprehensive scientific assessment of the factors influencing the CT disposition of Chinese medical postgraduates in terms of personal and educational factors. Being curious, completing the scientific research design with reference, asking ‘why’, and having high logical thinking ability among team members were positively associated with CT. Exhaustion and burn-out, inattention, following others’ opinions in decision-making and not allowing to doubt tutors were negatively associated with CT scores. These findings suggest that we pay more attention to factors related to motivation and internal drive in our educational practice, shift from an outcome-focused reward mechanism and focus on motivation maintenance to build students’ CT awareness.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not applicable.

Ethics approval

The research team collected data after obtaining their consent and signatures on the study’s informed consent form. The Ethics Committee of West China Hospital (tertiary), Sichuan University, approved the study in 2021 (Ethics No. 980).

Acknowledgments

The authors want to acknowledge the medical students who participated in this study.

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LW and WC contributed equally.

Contributors LW and WC were involved in designing the study, reviewing the literature, designing the protocol, developing the questionnaire, collecting the data, performing the statistical analysis and preparing the manuscript. TH and W-BH were involved in searching and collecting the data. YW was involved in interpreting the data and critically reviewed the manuscript. YW is responsible for the overall content as the guarantor . All the authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding This study was supported by the Sichuan University Postgraduate Education Reform project (GSSCU2021038).

Competing interests None declared.

Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the Methods section for further details.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.

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Paraeducator- Special Circumstances (Internal Only) at Perris Union High School District

Application Deadline

9/9/2024 4:00 PM Pacific

Date Posted

Number of openings, add'l salary info, length of work year, employment type, about the employer.

The mission of Perris Union High School District is to create high-quality relevant learning opportunities for all in a safe and caring environment. We will develop a high-quality, caring staff who will be dedicated to learning, and connect students to their education and potential goals. We will care for all students while developing a growth mindset through collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking.

Requirements / Qualifications

The Perris Union High School District is currently establishing an eligibility pool in order to fill vacancies for various Paraeducator positions throughout our school district. As positions become available, we will begin recruiting from this list. Please note this recruitment is open to internal candidates only. Please note the 8 hour positions will require the aide to ride the bus with the student. Education: High School Diploma or General Education Diploma Have one of the following: An associates or higher college degree; or The equivalent of 60 semester or 90 quarter units of college credit; or Pass the Perris Union High School District proficiency examination Completion of District mandated training within one year of date of employment (Provided at the time of hire) Course work in child growth and development, special education, or closely related field desirable *Please note: Perris Union High School District proficiency examination is currently being waived. Experience: Experience working with students requiring a specialized learning environment is desirable

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Critical thinking is based on the observation and analysis of facts and evidences to return rational, skeptical and unbiased judgments. This type of thinking involves a series of skills that can be created but also improved, as we will see throughout this article in which we will begin by defining the concept and end with tips to build and improve the skills related to critical thinking.
When Critical Thinking Is Not Worth It
Engage critical thinking but be practical; and don't get baited into discourses with people who haven't thought critically, are not open-minded to other perspectives, and not willing to change ...
Opinion: The power of youth research: Phase 1's mission to
Research fosters critical thinking, problem-solving, and resilience—qualities crucial for navigating an increasingly complex world. Through our initiatives, we not only empower students to innovate but also instill in them a lifelong love of learning and a sense of curiosity about the world around them.
Exploring the link of personality traits and tutors' instruction on
Objectives This study aimed to investigate the associations between critical thinking (CT) disposition and personal characteristics and tutors' guidance among medical graduate students, which may provide a theoretical basis for cultivating CT. Design A cross-sectional study was conducted. Setting This study was conducted in Sichuan and Chongqing from November to December 2021. Participants A ...
Paraeducator- Special Circumstances (Internal Only) at Perris Union
We will care for all students while developing a growth mindset through collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking. The Perris Union High School District is currently establishing an eligibility pool in order to fill vacancies for various Paraeducator positions throughout our school district.