Halpern offers five: verbal reasoning, argument analysis, hypothesis testing, likelihood and uncertainty, and decision-making and problem-solving. Your critical thinking disposition is the attitude you take toward the information you consume and the decisions you must make.
Edward Glaser, who could be considered a father of critical thinking, found in his research that disposition is the easiest of these four components to learn and change. Halpern puts forth five attitudes that make up the disposition of the best critical thinkers and compliment the two former, simpler descriptions:.
You can develop these attitudes by conducting thought experiments around what it looks like to exhibit these attitudes in specific contexts. In other words, what looks different to them has fundamental similarities.
By learning the common deep structures you may encounter and the cues that will signal to you that a certain context belongs to a certain deep structure, you can determine in real-time which learned skills part 1 you should apply in the context at hand. Consultants have seen the same problems over and over again across many clients so that when they begin working with a new client, they quickly recognize what type of problem is at hand and as a result, can leverage the appropriate lessons from past experiences.
How do you identify the mental models in your industry? This is why spontaneous noticing accurately identifying the structure at hand often comes with time. You can try to short-cycle this process by finding a way to observe the experiences of others e. It can also help to build a mental menu of common generic mental models. Shane Parrish, former Canadian intelligence officer and writer of the widely read Farnam Street blog, has compiled a broad list of mental models in his blog and books series.
Metacognition is your ability to monitor your own thoughts and pass judgment on the quality of your thoughts and thought processes. Those good at metacognition use a discrete set of questions to move their thought process from their subconscious to their conscious thoughts.
Together these four components make up an evidence-based way to learn critical thinking skills. However, how you attempt to learn these skills will also influence your success. Researchers have reviewed four different methods of learning the four modules of critical thinking mentioned above:. The review of studies mentioned earlier found that dialogue and authentic instruction each produced significant results independently. Dialogue worked well when a teacher or facilitator posed questions to a group.
Critical thinking is all the rage in education. Schools brag that they teach it on their websites and in open houses to impress parents. Some argue that critical thinking should be the primary purpose of education and one of the most important skills to have in the 21st century, with advanced machines and algorithms replacing manual and repetitive labor. But a fascinating review of the scientific research on how to teach critical thinking concludes that teaching generic critical thinking skills, such as logical reasoning, might be a big waste of time.
And he argues that the best approach is to explicitly teach very specific small skills of analysis for each subject. For example, in history, students need to interpret documents in light of their sources, seek corroboration and put them in their historical context. But it is entirely applicable to the American context. In the paper, Willingham traces the history of teaching critical thinking. More than a century ago, many thought that difficult subjects like Latin might improve thinking abilities.
There are mixed results from more recent studies in teaching students computer science. A meta-analysis showed better creative thinking, mathematics, meta-cognition, spatial skills and reasoning for students who take computer programing. But the gains were much smaller for studies with good control groups. A lot of the so-called benefit to studying computer science appears to be a placebo effect.
Related: Gifted classes may not help talented students move ahead faster. But students typically fail to apply even generic principles like these in new situations. In one experiment described by Willingham, people read a passage about how rebels successfully attacked a dictator hiding in a fortress they dispersed the forces to avoid collateral damage and then converged at the point of attack.
Immediately afterwards, they were asked how to destroy a malignant tumor using a ray that could cause a lot of collateral damage to healthy tissue.
In a follow-up experiment, people were told that the military story might help them solve the cancer problem and almost everyone solved it. A research-tested strategy here, developed by Richard Catrambone at the Georgia Institute of Technology , is to label the sub-steps of the solution with the goal they serve. Just as enough consensus exists about what critical thinking is, so too we have adequate agreement regarding how critical thinking is best taught.
Research shows that elements of critical thinking need to be taught explicitly , rather than assumed to come along for the ride when thoughtful teachers run through complex material with students.
For example, mathematics is a subject where students are continually introduced to examples of deductive reasoning in the form of mathematical proofs. Yet how many math professors use this opportunity to explicitly introduce students to principles of deductive reasoning, or contrast deductive with inductive logic the primary mode of reasoning used in science?
Similarly, activities involving informational reading and argumentative writing provide ideal opportunities to introduce students in college writing classes to logical arguments in which evidence in the form of premises of an argument leads to a conclusion and how those arguments can be tested for validity, soundness, strength and weakness. As it turns out, the number of critical-thinking topics professors and students need to understand is relatively small, certainly compared to the much larger body of content that students need to master in an English, math, science or history course.
For students to develop as critical thinkers, however, they must put that knowledge to work through deliberate practice that specifically focuses on development of critical-thinking skills. That can be accomplished through carefully designed activities and assignments that provide students opportunities to practice applying critical-thinking principles to answer questions and solve problems specific to academic content areas.
The previous example of a math professor contrasting deductive and inductive reasoning and explaining what each form of reasoning brings to different disciplines demonstrates the potential for critical-thinking skills to transfer between academic domains. Since critical thinking is universally applicable, faculty members can also use examples and deliberate practice exercises to show students how they can apply critical-thinking techniques to issues outside class, such as how to systematically make decisions regarding college or work or how to avoid manipulation by politicians and advertisers.
One critical-thinking researcher has proposed that becoming a skilled critical thinker requires the same amount of practice required to become a highly skilled athlete or musician: approximately 10, hours. If this suggestion is even partially correct, it points out a problem, since no single class, or even years of education, can provide this amount of dedicated practice time. That is why professors must not just teach students critical-thinking skills and give them opportunities to put them to use, but they must also inspire them to continue practicing those skills on their own across academic subjects and in all areas of life.
Given that thinking is something we do every waking hour and does not require practice fields, instruments or special equipment, inspired students can apply the critical-thinking skills they learn in class to improve their grades and make better decisions in life, reinforcing their value and creating a virtuous cycle of continuous use. Such practices can be applied to focused content areas, highlighting the fact that integrating critical-thinking practices into the curriculum does not need to crowd out other activities college instructors have used for years.
Concrete methods for improving student critical-thinking ability can help colleges and universities, including liberal arts schools struggling in an era emphasizing STEM and career-oriented majors like business, define their mission as the place where the most vital 21st-century skills are explicitly taught, practiced and mastered.
One major where a new emphasis on practical critical-thinking skills development can have a double impact is education, where students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate teacher-preparation programs can be taught using high-leverage critical-thinking practices they can then bring into the classroom as they enter jobs in K schools.
Changing colleges to embrace both methods and a culture of critical thinking does not require overhauling education, eliminating courses or even asking professors to sacrifice approaches they have developed and used successfully. It simply involves adding new tools to their arsenal that allow them to accomplish what they already wholeheartedly support: helping students develop the skills needed to think critically about the world.
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