octype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en" critical_thinking
[Instructivism] [ Constructivism][Information Processing] [Problem-Based Learning] [Critical Thinking] [Instructional Technology]
[History of Instructional Technology] [Effectiveness of IT] [Evaluation][Development] [Student Evaluation] [Objectives] [Systems] [Asynchronous] [Activities]
[Home]
AIL 601
Critical Thinking Skills
George E. Marsh II, Professor
Many college courses include critical thinking skills, some colleges have entire courses devoted to it, and there are institutes and foundations promoting critical thinking (e.g., Critical Thinking across the Curriculum Project,
El Paso Community College Critical Thinking Project,  Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking).  Some writers trace the critical thinking movement back in an unending chain to many eminent philosophers such as Socrates, Aquinas, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, and Kant, among others.  Some, such as Lipman (1991), regard the critical thinking movement to date back to contemporary writers beginning in the 1950s.  Current emphasis on critical thinking got its impetus from the Nation at Risk, released in 1983. Lipman (1991) said the critical thinking movement began because the editors of Educational Leadership invited articles and encouraged the movement in the early 1980s.  At about that time articles and books began to appear in the professional and popular press calling for teaching students to think, not just learn (Mullis, 1983; Beyer, 1985, Costa, 1985, Norris, 1985; Seiger-Ehrenberg, 1985; Pauker, 1987; and Resnick, 1987).

Many writers suggest that today's employers need workers who can think critically instead of just follow orders, and others warn that our democracy is at stake unless students are taught to make good decisions.  Articles about education often complain that schools focus on memorization, which is sometimes explained as a vestige of the factory model, and there is often some discussion ofBloom's Taxonomy and a plea to employ those at the top of the hierarchy.  Some writers are more pointed, stating that all thinking is related to content and that each discipline has objective criteria or standards against which thinking must be judged.  In general, critical thinking has been regarded as universal or monolithic (content free) and/or as discipline specific.

At the beginning of the Age of Reason (1550-1900) was the notion that thought is the only reality directly known (attributed to the Cartesian view proposed by Decartes in his attempt to unify all knowledge as the product of clear reasoning from self-evident premises).  It is perhaps to Descartes that we owe the modern scientific method based on his admonition, "Doubt everything." Thoughts are rational.  Scientific progress and thinking can be traced to 17th Century  Enlightenment, and it is clear that "modern scientific miracles" are based on a foundation of positivism or objectivism.  However, most scientists accept the fact that systems of logic are always incomplete and that it is impossible to reason without a "suitable set of inputs, or premises" (Simon, 1990, p. 191).  In other words, thinking is not content free and must be used to "think about something."  While there are discussions about critical thinking in general, it is applied to virtually every field and discipline so that books and articles abound in reading, mathematics, science, social studies, and so forth.  There are many definitions of critical thinking, almost as many as there are writers on the subject!

Defining Critical Thinking

Knowing that something is true requires more than believing it, you have to justify it with logical underpinnings.  If you say NAFTA is bad for the United States, immigrants will destroy America, or school choice is a good thing, you should present a cogent argument explaining clearly why you believe this to be true, not just say that it is.  If you present a logical argument and are wrong anyway, at least you have used critical thinking skills.

Ennis (1987) suggests that "critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do."  Norris (1985) said, "Critical thinking is deciding rationally what to or what not to believe."   Halpern (1996) defined it this way:  "Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome." Elder and Paul (1994) put it this way:  "Critical thinking is best understood as the ability of thinkers to take charge of their own thinking. This requires that they develop sound criteria and standards for analyzing and assessing their own thinking and routinely use those criteria and standards to improve its quality."  The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking (1996) defines it this way, "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action."  While there may be general standards for assessing critical thinking, there are domain-specific standards for the assessment of thinking in a field or discipline.

Categorizing critical thinking by common features presents at least two general views: (1) intentional use of higher order thinking skills and (2) metacognition.  Angelo (1995) concluded, "Most formal definitions characterize critical thinking as the intentional application of rational, higher order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, problem recognition and problem solving, inference, and evaluation" (p. 6).  Others take the position that critical thinking is metacognition, awareness of ones own thinking (Center for Critical Thinking, 1996).  To do this, Beyer says the thinker must have the following skills:

Constructivism, Postmodernism, and Objectivism

Paralleling the growth of the critical thinking movement has been the rise of constructivism and postmodernism (I have accepted elimination of the hyphen}. For most persons, truth means reality or fact.  To the ancient Sophists and postmodern philosophers, it is a social construction.  It may be true for that group.  These issues deal with epistemology and can become very convoluted.  If there is no objectivity, truth is what you believe. Postmodern thought and constructivism complicate consideration of critical thinking, both from a theoretical point of view and at the practical level for developing curricula and erecting teaching methods.  If, as many writers maintain, standards must be employed in judging thinking in a domain, what are the implications for critical thinking?  At the very least, schools have a difficult time juggling the traditions of behaviorism (the curriculum structure), the philosophy of constructivism, and critical thinking in a context of postmodern influences.  It is also curious that some who subscribe to constructivism also believe that they can teach thinking skills directly.  There is an inconsistency in the logic, if one accepts constructivist principles. Teaching adult-like thinking skills to children is not constructivism.

The issues are confounded by postmodern theories that attack objectivism.  To the extent that any domain employs specific standards, those who label it as objectivist may criticize its logic.  In learning theory, objectivism has its roots in behaviorism and information processing (IP) theory. The objectivist view maintains that knowledge exists independently of instruction. By presenting instruction consistent with the principles and by probing learner's understandings of the "knowledge base," judgments can be made about the depth of knowledge.  The objectivist tends to treat different understandings as errors, deviations from the correct answer or as distortions of fact or reality.  In many math and science classes, there is only one understanding, the right answer.  This is certainly the intent of national standards and testing programs.  In the literature some advocates of critical thinking seem to be less concerned with the right answers as with how you defend your final conclusion, but many people in the general public probably think that critical thinking means to be able to solve problems and give correct answers.  An instructional approach that regards thinking strategies as the application of critical thinking in specific domains, with accepted standards in each field, is difficult to characterize other than as objectivist.

Teaching Critical Thinking

Whether or not generic instruction can be taught and transferred to specific domains is an important concern.  If schools invest a lot of time and energy in generic strategies, and there is no payoff, they will suffer the penalties.  Most articles about how to teach critical thinking are vague, even the domain specific articles.  A great deal of time and space is devoted to discussing the importance of critical thinking and defining it, but not how to teach it. In theory, critical thinking is a shift from teaching students facts and what the teacher knows to teaching students how to think for themselves.  The most authoritative stance on how to teach is provided by the Center for Critical Thinking (1996), which is adapted here:

There is a similarity between this approach and process-product literature (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). The common teaching model is performance in front of students, and many school districts evaluate teachers for their ability to establish "effective" eye contact, use different kinds of questions, pause in explanations to allow pupil reflection, use of a variety of concepts, and redirect student questions.  As colleges and universities attempt to improve college instruction, they employ the same model.

Sorzio (1994) contends that people are satisfied with inferences.  If a conclusion seems to fit the available facts, other possibilities are not considered or are disregarded.  People are satisfied with incomplete reasoning, and there is the suggestion that humans conserve cognitive energy whenever they can and avoid thinking.  One's current understanding biases how new information is interpreted (Bartlett, 1932).  Sorzio said:

...humans utilize background knowledge to emphasize relations and properties for tokens that are explicitly introduced in the ongoing discourse, to the neglect of other possible information they could get.
As mentioned in another section, in genuine attempts to remember, people tend to rely upon their own constructions, not the details from which the model originated (Duff & Barnard, 1990; Kieras & Bovair, 1984; Bartlett (1932).  As Wason & Johnson-Laird, (1972) conclude:
[Subjects] are always ready to leave the logical requirements of the task behind and to try to establish some meaningful connection between events. If the events cannot be directly related, the best that can he done is to establish some temporal connection between them. But where the events do seem to be related to one another, the subjects will spend a considerable amount of time attempting to derive a satisfactory causal model of them (p. 81-82).
When important information is lacking, the cognitive system adds it from previous experience in order to make current understanding complete (Gregory, 1970), although the construction may be considered in error by experts or simply wrong.  It is these instances where the teacher is encouraged to probe the learner's thinking and to challenge it. However, the extent to which probing and questioning can be effective is debatable, even for young adults. Piaget, (1955) said "the fact of being or not being communicable is not an attribute that can be added to thought from the outside, but is a constitutive feature of profound significance for the shape and structure which reasoning may assume" (p. 67).

Piaget suggested that it may be through quarreling "that children first come to feel the need for making themselves understood" (p. 83), a point of view highly regarded by some writers in critical thinking. Both logical and social knowledge are created because of conflict and arguments with peers, and very little because of questioning and explanations.  The peer group causes cognitive disequilibrium, and children can motivate, challenge, and stimulate knowledge creation, apparently much better than adults.  But quarreling is unacceptable in most American classrooms, and a skill not taught to classroom teachers.   In fact, there is widespread concern about teaching conflict resolution.  The distinction between debating and quarreling may not apply, because in a quarrel there is ego involvement, emotion, and a desire to persuade or to dominate, although some debaters may also have personal and emotional involvement in winning, even if they do not truly believe in the position they must hold in a debate.

Evaluating Critical Thinking

Boisvert (1996) reported on a study of a Canadian college psychology course that integrated critical thinking skills and concluded "students developed their capacities and dispositions for critical thinking" but intellectual development was limited to lower cognitive levels.  On the other hand, people who are apparently capable of thinking critically do not do it as a matter of routine.  The correlation between critical thinking and IQ is essentially zero. Perkins, Farady, and Bushey (1991) found in a series of studies that people with higher IQs are no more likely to attend to the other side of position than those with lower IQs, although people with higher IQs offer more elaborate justifications of their preferred side of a case. It is curious that one of the indictments of education in "A Nation at Risk" (1983), of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, was this statement:

          Many 17-year-olds do not possess the 'higher-order' intellectual skills we should expect of them. Nearly
          40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material; only one-fifth can write a persuasive essay; and only
          one-third can solve a mathematics problem requiring several steps.

Applying a little "critical thought" to this, and drawing upon the work of Piaget, we might expect this, just as certainly as we expect half the population to be below average in intelligence or height.  Many high school and college students do not apparently function at the apex in formal operations, and many never will.  Expecting children in elementary and middle school and many at the high school level to engage in high-level thinking may be impossible, and certainly less probably than it is with adults who have extraordinary intelligence and training and still do not use it.

While there may be intellectual and social limitations, thinking has other obstacles than genetics and nurture.  As many experiments have shown, people resist new information that challenges their beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They hang on to their beliefs.  In fact, Piagetian research showed that when confronted with new and confusing information, his subjects would retreat to a lower level where they had understanding.  As Inhelder and Piaget (1958) commented, "...there is more to thinking than logic" (p. 335).

While logical and social knowledge is created by conflict and arguments with peers, they are not much affected by questioning and explanations of adults.  In fact, efforts of teachers to change thinking in students are frustrated.  As mentioned in the section on constructivism, Kamiloff-Smith and Inhelder (1975) reported that children are highly resistant to changing theories, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and Walberg (1991) stated: "...students' reasoning is often mistaken but logically consistent, confidently held, and difficult to change" (p. 55).  It is here, also, that students are likely to revert to authority (parents, the Bible) in resisting the teacher's challenge, and here that conflict in many subjects may cause problems for the school, especially challenges that conflict with religious beliefs and political attitudes.  With older students and adults beliefs may be fortified, because older persons are often certain of their convictions.

Except for extraordinary claims of Pogrow (1994) and Feuerstein (Feuerstein, Rand, &  Rynders, 1988), which are both proprietary, there has been a paucity of research about the effectiveness of programs that employ critical thinking skills.  In terms of the evaluation of individual students, there are few instruments and teachers are considered to be the final judges of the quality of thinking.  The criteria suggested by the Center for Critical Thinking (1996) are general guidelines and rubrics but not instruments.  The California Academic Press offers six instruments, but they have not been extensively used in research.

Most states employ achievement tests and many have high-stakes testing---required tests for promotion and graduation (Source: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing).  Recent actions of the Clinton administration and the U.S. Congress show that this trend is supported at the federal level, so high-stakes testing is likely to be a routine expectation in schools in the foreseeable future.   While schools may be applauded for teaching thinking skills, unless these activities also result in better standardized test scores they will not be valued.  Even if schools can provide data showing that students think well, this will pale in the light of disappointing achievement scores.

The Mental Model

An alternative to the storage metaphor is the mental model, which has been employed in cognitive psychology, research in hypermedia, engineering designs, and complex strategies such as battle plans.  A mental model is a cognitive construct that reflects a combination of predispositions (biases) and situation specific learning (Tversky, 1991).  Through encounters with the world we make sense of it in idiosyncratic ways, make the complex concrete, and often believe that what we imagine is real.

Johnson-Laird (1983) is most noted for advancing the theory of the mental model, although Kant, Bartlett and others proposed similar concepts.  Bloch (1991) describes a mental model as partly visual, partly analytical, partly a series of procedures that contain only examples and not variables.  So it is rule based and visual, meaning it is can be partly concrete.  The mental model represents significant aspects of the physical and social world; it manipulates elements of those models in thinking, planning and understanding events (Bower & Morrow, 1990).  The mental model functions  mediate "reality" or the events and consequent actions through intuitive, plastic processes resulting in almost instantaneous inferences.  In other words there is not elaborate analytical processing.

Rather than using mental rules, like a computer program, much of thinking may rely upon unconscious processes, an evolutionary propensity for thinking that can be thought of as the "manipulation of models" (Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1993, p. 332).  "A model makes explicit those objects, properties, and relations that are relevant to potential actions" (Legrenzi, Girotto, & Johnson-Laird 1993, p. 42).  Therefore, the mental model operates as a form of pattern recognition. Reasoning is often dynamic or reactionary because mental models frame problems within the context of prior understanding and experiences of the learner (Johnson-Laird 1983; Rogoff, 1984).  It should be noted, however, that Johnson-Laird (1983) considers the theory of the mind to be computational, since he is a functionalist, and maintains that human thinking can be reproduced in a computer.  Most applications of the mental model in research, particularly in military applications, are based on a computational view and concepts of long-term memory storage.  So it is curious that constructivists also use the model as a representation of thinking.  As Jonassen (1995) points out, the concept is generalizable to most content domains and processes as well as general world knowledge and can be used as a Piagetian construct; or equilibrating differences between what is "in the world" and what is understood by the subject.

Although emotional content has been disregarded in both the storage metaphor and the mental model, it is possible to conceive how emotions and personality variables interact with aspects of the social world perceived in a mental model.  Emotional content of a mental model may be conscious products of unconscious processes, products of systems of behavioral adaptation retained in evolutionary development. Dynamic intelligence may account for many aspects of mental constructions including emotion, perception, attention, and other factors, such as the interaction between declarative memory and emotional memory.  Much reasoning in many daily activities is inaccessible to consciousness.  Marsh and Iran-Nejad (1992) make the point:

An exclusive focus on the uniquely human characteristics of intelligence (i.e., analytical reasoning, symbolic information processing) obscures the fact that other stages of development were critical and are still innately important for fostering intelligence.  The brain is a large interactional system that engages in nonlinear dynamic activities as well as in intentional problem solving (p. 332).
Reasoning is based on the properties of the model and perceptions of an event, not necessarily the reality of an event, and certainly not necessarily the way others perceive the same event. The mental model uses personal beliefs and leads to conclusions free of contradiction (however erroneous, the conclusions may be).  As Sorzio (1994) put it, people are satisfied with inferences.  If a conclusion seems to fit the available facts, other possibilities are not considered.  People are satisfied with incomplete reasoning because the alternative is analytical reasoning, which puts significant demands on the central nervous system (executive control), not to mention the time it requires to reason through everything on a daily basis.  According to Rhoads (1997), humans conserve cognitive energy whenever they can and will avoid thinking.  Thus, current understanding (a mental model) biases how new information will be interpreted (Bartlett (1932).   In later attempts to remember, learners tend to rely upon the mental model rather than the details from which the mental model originated (Duff & Barnard, 1990; Chi & Ceci, 1987; Kieras & Bovair, 1984; Bartlett (1932).  Not the facts but the facts as perceived.

As Wason & Johnson-Laird put it, people are always ready to leave the logical requirements of the task behind and to try to establish some meaningful connection between events. Similarly, Gregory (1970) suggests that where important information is lacking, the cognitive system adds information from previous experience and current understanding to make it complete, although the construction may be wrong or considered in error by experts.  Novice or expert, the major characteristic of a mental model can be described as thematic knowledge (Iran-Nejad, 1980).  It becomes richer in details the more it is used to accommodate new information, and it is unlikely to change unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Prejudice exemplifies how this works.

Despite contradictory evidence, one who holds a prejudice will ignore the evidence, reinterpret it in some fashion to match the viewpoint, or invent other plausible explanations.  Rarely, however, will someone suspend judgment or seek more evidence to intentionally attack one's own views.  In a conspiracy model, when the facts do not seem to agree with the theory, a wider conspiracy theory is developed.  The problem with a mental model is that is biases your viewpoint automatically.  Johnson (1995) said:  "Once a filter is installed in the brain, it bends everything we see. Gazing out on the jungle, a Darwinist sees the beauty of natural selection...A structuralist imagines instead a multidimensional fitness landscape...Like all of us, both are faced with never knowing the extent to which the patterns they see are out in the world or imposed by the prisms of our nervous systems."

G. E. Mullings  (1a49 kairos@utech.edu.jm) of Jamaica has written to me (June 1, 1999) about the web site and made some suggestions.  In the personal communication he said:

Mr. Mullings suggests that students be exposed to informal and formal fallacies and to the implications of worldviews in controlling beliefs:For a complete listing of informal and formal fallacies, see the Connoisseur's Guide to Logical Inconsistencies.

In any encounter with reality there is a logical need to:

The problem is most of us don't do this very often.  Watch any debate among people about religion or politics and you will see problems in thinking, if analyzed logically.  The point is that most people engage in thinking that does not observe the steps in critical thinking, and in fact the decision may be made at the outset based on a prejudice.

Some mental models are said to be wrong.  In the literature about teaching mathematics and science there is considerable research on this aspect. Feltovich, Spiro, & Coulson, (1989) describe how congestive heart failure is misunderstood as a mechanical rather than a chemical disorder by both practicing physicians and teachers in medical schools.  Changing students' thinking presents a unique obstacle in education.  According to Walberg (1991): . . ."students' reasoning is often mistaken but logically consistent, confidently held, and difficult to change" (Walberg, 1991, p. 55).

The Mind in Society

Past experiences and socio-cultural influences are critical in limiting and defining mental constructs. Vygotsky(1978) maintained that the mind has social origins and the cultural tools available to the individual influence the nature of the mind that is constructed.  Signs--graphical, verbal, and gestural--carry meaning between people, which is unique to the culture and variable within a culture at the familial and colloquial levels.  It is here that Vygotsky believed that we might understand social influences and how culture forms the basis for translating perceptions into shared meanings and individual mental constructs.  In the first instance the individual learns by imitating the immediate social environment, which is influenced in different ways by the larger culture.

The individual's psychological processes are always bound to the culture in some way because the individual uses a particular "set" of cultural tools.  The worldview (Weltanschauung) held by different societies, cultural groups, and those who share religious or political attitudes are clearly tied to culture and society.  In fact, the shared beliefs, values, and prejudices of a group are important in group identification.  Members of a scientific group share mental representations, and they reject notions and theories that do not correspond to representations shared among the group (Simonton, 1988).  In this respect, a community of scholars, a religious order, and the Ku Klux Klan demonstrate similar traits.

A mental model is individual and idiosyncratic and cannot be shared, but there is interaction between others and within the surrounding social context that forms the parameters for development of mental models in the first place.  Comparing a mental model, or its conclusions, to objective standards shows that a mental model can be incorrect.  While people construct negative views about other groups, which can be called prejudice, or have widely different beliefs about the existence of a deity, called religion, or attitudes about who should run the government, called politics, most often these are considered to be differences of opinion.  If the Catholic Church is a cult according to Bob Jones University, or America is the "Great Satan" according to one or more Ayatolloahs, these are factual for those who believe them and share the same world views.  To this extent, they share a surrounding social context that forms and supports such beliefs.

Inhelder and Piaget (1958) stress the importance of the social group:

In sum, far from being a source of fully elaborated 'innate ideas,' the maturation of the nervous system can do no more than determine the totality of possibilities and impossibilities at a given stage. A particular social environment remains indispensable for the realization of these possibilities. It follows that the realization can be accelerated or retarded as a function of cultural and educational conditions. This is why the growth of formal thinking as well as the age at which adolescence itself occurs--i.e., the age at which the individual starts to assume adults roles--remain dependent on social as much as and more than on neurological factors (p. 337).
The Weltanschauung of different epochs reveals "shared cognition" or common viewpoints.  Prior to Newton, with the Earth at the center of the universe, most people believed a quite different universe existed than the one most people imagine today.  Until the emergence of modern political states, few people had allegiance to a country or nation-state but identified with tribes or clans.  Modern concepts of patriotism and serving one's country were unknown.  For most of history people have believed in magic and evil spirits and explained many daily events as the work of angels, fairies, demons and other forces.  Postmodern views of civilization are important in shaping current politics and behavior of nations, such as the view that Earth's resources should be exploited or that the world will soon come to an end--beliefs that can and will lead to certain actions with a range of possible outcomes.  (Change your Weltanschauung and change the world).

According to Vygotsky, the internalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology.  The culture and social system surrounding the child form the ingredients of constructivism or the building blocks for cognitive development by means of signs the child incorporates from the environment.  Culture is particularly relevant in determining the meaning of events, people, and things (Applegate & Sypher, 1988). The child's language, articulation, pronunciation and regional accent, style of dress, expressions, and political and religious attitudes are all initiated and reinforced through social imitation.  To Piaget, the child's mind is self-organized by a constant antagonism between internal, subjective mental states and external reality, a progression of internalization that occurs because of the reciprocal effects of assimilation and accommodation, constantly forcing the child to attain an equilibrium between subjective and objective states.  But shared constructions and social relations are also critical for individual learning because they form the background for behavior and the possibilities within a given context.

Reason in an Unreasonable World

For much of the history of Western Civilization there has been a great struggle between reason and faith and superstition.  There have been many dangerous times when imprisonment or death could be the penalty for critical thinking out loud or writing it down, as in the case of Galileo.  This struggle lingers today in the polemics of evolution versus creationism, or more generally, science versus religion, New Ageism, paranormal psychology, UFOs, astrology, therapeutic touch, crop circles, reincarnation, ESP, psychics, alien abduction, near death experiences, and magical thinking.  While critical thinking was the province of the learned, according to Durant (1961) it was the microscope, the telescope, the thermometer, and the barometer, the logarithmic and decimal systems, and other scientific advances that carried the day for reason in an uneasy alliance with religion and superstition.   Even today, however, there is often a contentious relationship between science and its critics.  Many people accept rationality and science because of advances in a standard of living, health, and convenience, but surveys show that many people believe in ghosts, angel visitations, and witches.

A central feature of critical thinking is conflict between the teacher and students and among students.  At the heart of the matter is the contention that we should teach students how to think, not what to think, but some programs place the teacher between the learner and the environment to guide the child's though processes, for example the "Mediated Learning" approach of Feuerstein.  No matter what approach is used, the teacher creates dissonance and encourages students to question, doubt, and argue. Conflict in the form of debate or confrontation that challenge one's precepts or reasoning processes can lead to emotional outbursts if not handled properly.   In fact, some writers believe that to truly engage in critical thinking there must be dissonance and conflict (Frager, 1984; Johnson & Johnson, 1979).  Only through such cognitive disturbances can the learner be brought to a level that requires some resolution or accommodation, a concept suggested by Piaget.

Disregarding constructivism and postmodern influences, the current climate of education is much like it was in the early 1980s when the current reform movement began.  The view of the public and most politicians was and remains that the purpose of school is to transmit knowledge and that schools are failing.  It is assumed that knowledge can be dispensed in the classroom, consumed by students, and that test scores  (SAT, ACT, state tests) can reveal the amount that students have learned.  If the scores are low, the schools have done a bad job of unloading knowledge.  It is not surprising that in almost every state most teachers complain about preparing students to take standardized tests rather than spending time teaching.  In Florida, for example, the socioeconomic distribution of the school enrollment is critical, because a new law will take away funds from schools with low scores and provide more to schools with high scores.  Unless critical thinking instruction pays off both in terms of better thinking and improved achievement, it may become attacked as another fad in education, as it is has been in some literature advocating school choice.

Many groups actively monitor schools for what is taught in the curriculum with particular attention to values, the content of textbooks, "Darwinism," and other matters they believe should be abolished or left to the home.  "Harry Potter" books are now a major concern in American schools, because the stories of magic are considered to be satanic.  Sex education is also a good case in point.  Although the rates of sexual activity by youths in the United States and Europe are about the same, the incidences of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy are much higher in the United States.  Some argue that we should provide better education for students so they can avoid gonorrhea and unwanted pregnancy.  Others believe that the only valid instructional approach is to teach abstinence, because teaching anything else is the same as encouraging sexual activity. Raising these issues in sex education can invoke the ire of watchdog groups that have all the answers, including many topics considered in the general curriculum or critical thinking.

Strohm and Baukus (1995) claim than an essential part of critical thinking is creating doubt, "Ambiguity and doubt serve a critical-thinking function and are a necessary and even a productive part of the process" (p. 56).  Playing the "Devil's advocate," creating doubt, intentionally or inadvertently, and challenging students' beliefs in religion, political convictions and other attitudes can bring the school into conflict in the public arena.  It was Socrates' skill at creating self-doubt by merely asking questions that caused the Athenian assembly to put him to death. In fact, a teacher need not ask penetrating questions to get into trouble.  For example, a college professor introduced the theory of probability with a deck of playing cards, but one student admonished her for using a "Devil's tool" and promptly fled the classroom to avoid demonic danger.

Higher-order thinking skills emerge from the natural brain activity of the learner who has learned to use knowledge, connect old and new knowledge, and derive conclusions based on personal experiences. Reflective teaching requires the teacher to refrain from giving direct answers directly but use prompting questions that encourage further thought and exploration, based on intuition about the students' internal states.  If the teacher or school is called upon to provide evidence that such instructional strategies are sound, there is, unfortunately, no extensive research base to answer many important questions. As Romberg and Carpenter (1986) have reported, we know much more about how students learn than we know how to use such knowledge for instruction.

Pointing out to a student that he or she has an inaccurate conception is easy to do, but how to get the student to strive for a better conception or a "correct" concept does not necessarily follow from challenges and explanations.  Solipsism does not so easily yield.  The learner must recognize a misconception and want to change it.

While few educators would argue against teaching thinking skills, there are many questions about how to do it. What do teachers need to know to improve thinking? How should thinking be organized in the school curriculum?  Do all subject fields require similar or different strategies for incorporating thinking strategies?  Is there transfer of thinking skills?  Which learning activities and sequences lead to development of thinking skills?  What is the role of subject matter content in the development of thinking skills?  What are the parameters of conflict and disputation in the classroom and what are the limits?  What are the signs of students' thinking skills?  How can we evaluate thinking efficiently and reliably?   Are there outcome goals for thinking that should accompany knowledge of content at certain levels?  Which type of questions and at what levels lead to self-questioning?  What can be intentionally introduced to invoke interest or provocation? What kind of learning environment provides students with a sense of ownership of their own learning?  How can we foster basic and higher-order thinking skills simultaneously and not sequentially?   What is the difference between teaching critical thought and indoctrination?  Knowing the learners cognition may be essential but insufficient for teaching. These and other questions seem certain to arise about the critical thinking movement.

Students who learn to assess the credibility of facts and search for more facts and alternatives do not necessarily employ critical thinking.  On an individual basis, some students are incapable of critical thinking until they reach a certain level of maturity.  Despite efforts to enhance critical thinking, most students are subjected to a curriculum that requires the memorization of facts and uncritical acceptance of information in lectures and textbooks.  Without attention to the research or the processes by which the academic community and scholars arrive at their conclusions, students do not have the information or the skills to question the conclusions.  They are in the position of accepting, at face value, the "knowledge" presented to them by their teachers and their textual sources.  Students do not ordinarily have the information or the experience to foster a different set of assumptions, and so they are encouraged or forced to accept that which is presented to them, especially if memorization of such content will be evaluated and rewarded on tests.  Especially at the K-12 level, where standards exist or are implied by nationally standardized tests, the school is encouraged to sustain this pattern in its own self-interest, because test scores are universally used as the indication of school quality.  Spending a lot of time on alternative explanations detracts from the time that may be devoted to "covering" the content that will be evaluated.  Such forces conspire to prevent critical thinking because there is not enough time to cover the conclusions and also the evidence, and argumentation supports or disputes the credibility of knowledge.

In 1690, Christiaan Huygens noted that:

      (I)t is not well to identify certitude with clear and distinct perception, for it is evident that there are, so to speak,
      various degrees of that clearness and distinctness.  We are often deluded in things which we think we certainly
      understand.
 

References

Angelo, T. A. (1995). Beginning the dialogue: Thoughts on promoting critical thinking: classroom assessment for critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology, 22(1), 6-7.

Bartlett, S. F.  (1932).  Remembering:  A study in experimental and social psychology.  Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press.

Bartlett, S. F. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology.  Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Beyer, B.K. (1985). Critical thinking: What is it? "Social Education," 49, 270-276.

Beyer, B. K. (1987). Practical Strategies for the Teaching of Thinking. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Inc.

Boisvert Jacques. (1996). Formation de la pensée critique au collégial. Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu: Collège Saint-Jean-sur Richelieu.

Center for Critical Thinking (1996). Structures for student self-assessment.

Center for Critical Thinking (1996). The role of questions in thinking, teaching, and learning.

Confrey, J.  (1990).  A review of the research on student conceptions in mathematics, science, and programming.  In C.B. Cazden (Ed.), Review of Research in Education, volume 16.  Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association, p. 3-56.

Costa, A.L. (Ed.)(1985). "Developing minds: A resource book for teaching thinking." Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Boston: D.C. Heath & Co.

Duff, S.C. and Barnard, P.J. (1990) Influencing behaviour via device representations; decreasing performance by increasing instruction. In D. Diaper, D. Gilmore, G. Cockton and B. Shackel (Eds.), Human-Computer Interaction. INTERACT'90, 1990. Elsevier Science Publishers, B.V. (North-Holland).

Elder, L. and Paul, R. "Critical Thinking: Why we must transform ourteaching." Journal of Developmental Education 18:1, Fall 1994, 34-35.

Ennis, Robert H. "A Logical Basis for Measuring Critical Thinking Skills." EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 43 (October 1985): 45-48.

Feltovich, P. J., Spiro, R. J., & Coulson, R. L. (1989). The nature of conceptual understanding in biomedicine: The deep structure of complex ideas and the development of misconceptions. In D. Evans & V. Patel (Eds.), The cognitive sciences in medicine (pp. 113-172). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (Bradford Books).

Feuerstein, R., Rand Y., & Rynders, J.E.. Don't Accept Me As I Am. NY: Plenum Press, 1988.

Gregory, R.L. (1970) The Intelligent Eye. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Halpern, Diane F. Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to CriticalThinking. 1996.

Inhelder, B. & Piaget, J.  (1958).  The growth of logical thinking.  New York:  Basic Books.

Kieras, D.E. and Bovair, S. (1984) The role of a mental model in learning to operate a device. Cognitive Science, 8, 225-273.

Lipman, M. (1991). Thinking in education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lipman, Matthew. "Critical thinking--What can it be?" Educational Leadership, 46 (1), September 1988, pp. 38-43.

Lipman, M.  (1991).  Thinking in education.  New York:  Cambridge University Press.

Mullis, Ina V. S., and Mead, Nancy. "How well can students read and write?" Issuegram 9. Denver: Education Commission of the States, 1983. 9pp. ED 234 352

Newman, Fred M. (1990). "Higher order thinking in teaching social studies: a rationale for the asessment of classroom thoughtfulness". Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22(1): p. 41-56.

Nickerson, Raymond S. (1988). "On Improving Thinking Through Instruction". Review of Research in Education, 15: p. 3-57.

Norris, Stephen P. "Synthesis of Research on Critical Thinking. EducationalLeadership, v 42 n 8 May 1985. 40-45.

Pauker, R.A. (1987). "Teaching thinking and reasoning skills: Problems and solutions." Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators.

Piaget, J. (1932) The moral judgment of the child. London: Routledge & Kegan

Piaget, J. (1955). Language and thought of the child. (2nd Ed.) New York: Meridian Books.

Piaget, J. (1959). Judgment and reasoning in the child. Totowa, New Jersey:  Littlefield, Addams & Company.

Piaget, J. (1969). Science of education and the psychology of the child. New York:  Grossman Publishers.

Piaget, J. (1970). Structuralism. New York: Basic Books.

Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1958). The growth of logical thinking. New York: Basic Books.

Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1964). The early growth of logic in the child. New York:  W.W. Norton Co.

Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1970). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.

Piaget, J.  (1954).  The construction of reality in the child.  New York:  Basic Books.

Piaget, J. (1959).  Judgment and reasoning in the child.  Totowa, New Jersey:  Littlefield, Addams & Company.

Pogrow, S. (1994). Students who just don't understand. Educational Leadership, 52(3), 62-66.

Romberg, T. & Carpenter, T.  (1986).  Research on teaching and learning mathematics: Two disciplines of scientific inquiry.   In M.C. Wittrock Ed.), Handbook for research on teaching. New York:  Macmillan, 850-873.

Rosenshine, B. V. (1986). Synthesis of research on explicit teaching. Educational Leadership, 43(7), 60-69.

Rosenshine, B. and Stevens, R. (1986). Teaching functions. In (M.C. Wittrock, ed.) Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.

Resnick, Lauren. Education and Learning to Think. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1987.

Seiger-Ehrenberg, S. (1985). Concept development. In A.L. Costa (Ed.), "Developing minds: A resource book for teaching thinking." Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Simon, R.K.  (1990).  Alternative visions of rationality.  In (P.K. Moser, Ed.) Rationality in action:,  Contermporary approaches.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

Skinner, B.F.  (1968).  The technology of teaching.  New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Sorzio, P.  (1994). Cultural representations and individual understandings: Comparing the historical and the inferential models of thinking. The Proceedings of International Conference L.S. Vygotsky and the Contemporary.  Moscow, Russia.

Sternberg, R.J. (1982). Reasoning, problem solving, and intelligence. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of human intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 225-307.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L.S.(1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Walberg, H. J. (1991). Improving school science in advanced and developing countries.  Review of Educational Research, 61(1), 25-70.

Wason, P.C., & Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1972). Psychology of reasoning: Structure and content. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.