LEARNING Critical Thinking — Educating Yourself
If you want to learn, you can use online tutorials about The Logic of Critical Thinking offered by Critical Thinking Web plus Mission Critical and Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum, from Hong Kong, San Jose, and Kansas City!
TEACHING Critical Thinking — Activities & Strategies
Useful ideas about critical thinking and education are in Critical Thinking by Design (Joanne Kurfiss) and Critical Thinking: Basic Questions and Answers (Richard Paul). For a broad overview, A Brief History of the Idea of Critical Thinking. And to help those responsible for big-picture decisions, Peter Facione (past president of the American Conference of Academic Deans) wrote 26 Case Studies for Conversation and Reflection for academic deans and department chairs.
Thinking is encouraged by a creative use of Thinking Activities (*) such as Socratic Teaching (Six Types of Socratic Questions) and other teaching tactics that encourage active learning. * Eventually there will be "critical thinking activities" (especially for K-12 teachers) in the area for TEACHING ACTIVITIES; although most principles of critical thinking are useful for teachers & students at all levels, instructional activities should be customized for students with different ages, experiences, and abilities.
Dany Adams explains how, "because the scientific method is a formalization of critical thinking, it can be used as a simple model that removes critical thinking from the realm of the intuitive and puts it at the center of a straightforward, easily implemented, teaching strategy," in Critical Thinking and Scientific Method.
ERIC Digests offers excellent introductory summary/overviews for teaching critical thinking in schools at all levels, from K-12 through higher education — How Can We Teach Critical Thinking? & Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom & Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking — plus methods for teaching critical thinking in the contexts of environmental education & literature & television & adult ESL. { All except "adult ESL" were written between 1989 and 1994, so they're not up-to-date, but most principles for "teaching critical thinking" were discovered/invented before 1989 and are still relevant today. } And ERIC has a wide range of resources, letting you search for research & other information about thinking skills (critical thinking, evaluative thinking, decision making, ...) and much more.
The evaluation of thinking skills is a challenge. Accurate evaluation of a thinking skill — or even defining precisely what the "skill" is, and how we can observe and measure it — is much more difficult than evaluating knowledge. Some educators have accepted the challenge, and (as one example) Insight Assessment describes options for evaluation of critical thinking.
Critical Thinking on the Web offers links to many interesting, useful resources about critical thinking in a WIDE variety of areas, for teaching & tutorials and more. It's run by Tim van Gelder, whose specialty is Argument Mapping — overview & tutorials & links-page.
The Center for Critical Thinking (led by Richard Paul) offers a links-page for critical thinking education — scroll down their page to "Higher Education Strategies & Samples" and "K-12 Strategies & Samples" and "For Students"; and they describe research about critical thinking in colleges with links to "Effect of a Model for Critical Thinking..." and "The Effect of Richard Paul's Universal Elements..." and the full Executive Summary for a study of 56 universities (public & private) to "Determine Faculty Emphasis on Critical Thinking in Instruction." Of course, education also occurs outside schools, and most thinking occurs outside the classroom in everyday life and business (a workshop) and other areas of life.
The Role of Critical Thinking in Education and Life
All proponents of thinking skills (critical, creative,...) emphasize the relevance of thinking for many aspects of life, not just those usually associated with "thinking." For example, the Critical Thinking Community says, "Critical thinking is the art of taking charge of your own mind. Its value is simple: if we can take charge of our own minds, we can take charge of our lives."
In another page they describe the centrality of thinking, and a common educational problem:
"Critical thinking is not an isolated goal unrelated to other important goals in education. Rather, it is a seminal goal which, done well, simultaneously facilitates a rainbow of other ends. It is best conceived, therefore, as the hub around which all other educational ends cluster. For example, as students learn to think more critically, they become more proficient at historical, scientific, and mathematical thinking. Finally, they develop skills, abilities, and values crucial to success in everyday life. ...
Recent research suggests that critical thinking is not typically an intrinsic part of instruction at any level. Students come without training in it, while faculty tend to take it for granted as an automatic by-product of their teaching. Yet without critical thinking systematically designed into instruction, learning is transitory and superficial."
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