Enhancing Critical Thinking for All Students

What matters in education? If we posed this question to teachers, students, parents, politicians, business leaders and other members of the community the central importance of critical thinking skills, and the need to ensure all students develop them, would probably be among the few points of broad agreement.

As soon as we start thinking about defining what we mean by critical thinking, or agreeing on how it might best be taught, however, we immediately stray into areas where far less consensus exists. Two recent studies from Canada may help establish at least some broad principals in these areas.

Study One: A Summary of Research

This study is actually a meta-analysis of 117 different studies of pedagogical interventions in the area of critical thinking including a total of 20,698 participants. One of the questions asked in the analysis was what types of pedagogical intervention were most effective in supporting students to develop critical thinking skills.

The study defined four approaches to teaching critical thinking:

1. General approach—critical thinking is taught separately from subject area content.

2. Infusion approach—critical thinking is infused into subject area content. Subject area curricula have explicit objectives in the area of critical thinking, alongside the subject area objectives.

3. Immersion approach—instruction in the subjects is thought-provoking but critical thinking principles are not made explicit.

4. Mixed approach—a combination of the general approach and either infusion or immersion. Students receive explicit instruction in critical thinking in the context of subject matter, but there is also a separate thread or course aimed at teaching general principals of critical thinking.

What were the results of the study?

• The immersion method was the least effective.

• The mixed approach was generally the most effective, followed closely by the infusion approach.

• In situations where teachers received professional development related to the teaching of critical thinking skills, student outcomes in critical thinking were improved significantly.

• Involvement in collaborative group work resulted in a small but statistically significant advantage in critical thinking over situations where students did not work in groups.

Study Two: Defining Critical Thinking

So what do we mean by critical thinking anyway? In the meta-analysis summarized above, critical thinking was defined as “... the ability to engage in purposeful, self-regulatory judgment” (p. 1102). Numerous skill sets have been identified for inclusion under the banner of critical thinking, including interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-regulation.

One of the key skills underpinning much of critical thinking is the ability to reason independently of one’s prior beliefs and opinions. A number of studies have shown that we are able to critically evaluate conclusions that are inconsistent with our own much more easily than we can evaluate those which are consistent with our own.

Researchers at the University of Toronto pushed this line of thinking further. They wanted to see whether it might not be more than just our prior beliefs and opinions that interfere with our ability to reason logically. What else might be at work here? The researchers hypothesized that we tend to have habitual ways of approaching problems and tasks, which they termed heuristics, or cognitive biases. They further hypothesized that these might also be detrimental to our ability to think critically if we are unaware of them, or unwilling to consider different approaches.

The researchers were also interested in thinking dispositions that might affect either our awareness of our own thinking strategies or our ability to be reflective about the thinking strategies we are applying when drawing conclusions or solving problems. They therefore included measures of two particular thinking dispositions: active open-mindedness and the need for cognition. These two dispositions were measured using a Likert scale questionnaire. Sample items included: “No one can talk me out of something I know is right” (active open-mindedness) and “The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me” (need for cognition).

What were the results of this second study?

• The potential negative effect of prior beliefs and opinions on the ability to think critically was confirmed.

• Cognitive biases were also seen to affect critical thinking negatively.

• Both of the thinking dispositions measured correlated strongly with the ability to override cognitive biases and with the ability to reason independently or prior beliefs.

What Does This Mean for Our Classrooms?

Taken together, these studies seem to suggest that we should:

• Explicitly teach critical thinking skills across the curriculum.

• Ensure all teachers have training in pedagogy related to critical thinking.

• Create situations where students can explore issues and topics critically through collaborative group work.

• Find ways to foster deliberate open-minded thinking and a need for cognition.

• Find ways to help students become aware of their own beliefs as well as their own thinking processes.

• Give students opportunities to apply specific critical thinking strategies to the information sources they use, the topics and issues they study and to their own beliefs and thinking routines.

Unfortunately neither of these studies looked specifically at classroom strategies that might help develop critical thinking skills. Many potentially helpful tools exist, however. One example of a critical thinking tool that can be applied to any topic, including a student’s own beliefs, comes from the Coalition of Essential Schools.

Assessment within coalition schools is partially by exhibition, and as students demonstrate their knowledge and understanding through their exhibition they are expected to make use of the following habits of mind:

• Point of View—From what point of view is the topic being approached?

• Evidence—What evidence is being used to support the argument?

• Connections—How are ideas connected within the topic and to other topics?

• Alternatives—What alternative viewpoints are there?

• Significance—Why is this topic important?

MELTABRC is another example of a useful critical thinking tool. It was developed by the English faculty at Seaton High School in South Australia to be used in evaluating information sources, but it could just as easily be applied by a student to their own thinking and their own conclusions and products:

M—What are the author’s/presenter’s Main points?

E—What Evidence or Examples does the author/presenter provide?

LT—What Language/Techniques does the author/presenter use in his or her line of thinking?

A—What Assumptions does the author/presenter make?

B—What Biases does the author/presenter show in his or her line of thinking?

R—How Relevant is this information?

C—How Credible is the author/presenter? What might the Consequences be if the readers (or listeners, or viewers) believed the author/presenter?

One final point needs emphasizing: critical thinking is essential for everyone. It is so easy to lower our expectations in this area for some learners, but a recent study shows that this is not only unhelpful, it is also unnecessary.

Researchers from the College of William and Mary implemented a Language Arts curriculum in Elementary Schools which had a particular focus on critical thinking. The curriculum was specifically designed to be challenging for gifted and talented learners, but was implemented with all learners in the experimental groups at the schools involved in the research.

The results suggest that the curriculum was successful at raising the critical thinking ability of all learners. Significantly, learners with an IQ between 85 and 100 raised their scores on measures of critical thinking over the three years of the study even more than learners with higher IQs.

We owe it to all learners to keep our expectations high in this area.

References

Abrami, P., Bernard, R., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M., Tamim, R. and Zhang, D. (2008) “Instructional Interventions Affecting Critical Thinking Skills and Dispositions: A Stage 1 Meta-Analysis”. Review of Educational Research 78 4, pp. 1102-1134.

West, R., Toplak, M. and Stanovich, K. (2008) “Heuristics and Biases as Measures of Critical Thinking: Associations

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