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Critical Thinking: It’s a Hard Skill to
Teach
Are there any faculty members who don’t aspire to teach
their students to think critically? For most of us it’s a given: critical
thinking is one of the skills we would most like students to take from our
courses. And yet most of us would also admit that teaching this skill is
hard, and some students leave without having mastered it.
In a truly excellent summary and explanation of what
cognitive science contributes to our understanding and efforts to teach
critical thinking, van Gelder identifies six lessons that can help our
students develop their ability to think critically.
Lesson 1: Critical Thinking is Hard
Even though it’s basic, critical thinking depends on a complicated
process. Van Gelder uses this analogy to illustrate: “like ballet, critical
thinking is a highly contrived activity. Running is natural; nightclub
dancing is less so; but ballet is something people can only do well with
many years of painful, expensive, dedicated training. Evolution did not
intend us to walk on the ends of our toes, and whatever Aristotle might have
said, we were not designed to be all that critical either.” (p. 42)
For teachers, this means there are no shortcuts, no
magic bullets, and no technological solutions. We should expect our students
to develop this skill slowly. “Critical thinking is more of a lifelong
journey than something picked up in a two-week module.” (p. 42)
Lesson 2: Practice Makes Perfect
Even though it’s hard, some people end up being able to do it well. How do
they achieve that goal? Plain and simple, they practice. It is not enough to
learn about critical thinking, although this helps (see lesson 4). It is not
enough to be exposed to good examples, even though the instructional
practice of many faculty is predicated on the assumption that student learn
by imitation. Of teaching critical thinking by example van Gelder writes,
“These strategies are about as effective as working on your tennis by
watching Wimbledon. Unless students are actively doing the thinking
themselves, they will never improve.” (p. 43)
Fortunately cognitive science research has identified
the characteristics of practice that enables people to become good. It is
practice done with full concentration and an overt commitment to
improvement. It is practice not just of the skill generically but practice
of each individual part that makes up the skill. It is practice that is
developmental—it gradually gets harder as more and more of the skills are
mastered. It is practice accompanied with close guidance and accurate
feedback.
Lesson 3: Practice for Transfer
When learning a new skill, like critical thinking, transfer is a problem.
The skill is learned and applied in a specific context. Because the skills
we teach we have learned so thoroughly and apply so regularly, we cannot
imagine not being able to transfer the new skill from one situation to
another. If students know how to do problem A, they should be able to use
that knowledge to solve problem B. We are surprised when they can’t and
disappointed that they only want to solve problems exactly like the ones
they first mastered. We have forgotten that it was through deliberate
practice that we learned to transfer skills from one situation to another.
Lesson 4: Practical Theory
The analogy is that a person can enjoy beer without knowing much about it.
But learn a bit about beer and you come to appreciate it even more. With
critical thinking, van Gelder goes even a bit further. He doesn’t think
students can improve their critical thinking beyond a certain point without
knowing some theory. Learning something about critical thinking as an entity
in its own right allows students to perceive much more of what’s going on.
This doesn’t mean that theory alone will carry the day. Practice is
essential but “a bit of theory is like the yeast that makes bread rise. You
only need a small amount relative to other ingredients, but that small
amount is crucial for a good loaf.” (p. 44)
Lesson 5: Map it Out
At its core, critical thinking rests on arguments, and arguments are
expressed in sequences of words that become sentences and then paragraphs of
collected thoughts. But arguments can also be expressed diagrammatically.
The process is slow and cumbersome, but for students learning how to think,
it enables them to see the reasoning, identify the important issues, check
for assumptions and look for the presence of supportive evidence. Again
cognitive science contains some compelling evidence that critical thinking
skills improve faster when students use argument mapping techniques.
Lesson 6: Belief Preservation
The problems here involve those cognitive biases and blind spots that derive
from those beliefs we strongly hold. In that case, we use evidence to
preserve our opinions rather than starting with the evidence and letting it
guide us to sound opinions. When we start with strong beliefs, we look for
evidence that supports what we believe and ignore that which goes against
them. We decide whether the evidence is good or bad depending on whether it
supports our beliefs. And we stick with those beliefs even in the face of
overwhelming contrary evidence. Good critical thinkers understand this
tendency, actively monitor thinking and deploy compensatory strategies.
Some of these lessons we already know—others may be
new. But the lessons together remind us that critical thinking is not an
automatically acquired skill. We can and should rededicate ourselves to
those activities that will help our students to learn this most important
skill
Reference: van Gelder, T., (2005). Teaching critical
thinking: some lessons from cognitive science. College Teaching, 53
(1), 41-46.
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