About Teaching: Teaching for Critical Thinking

Learning to think critically is essential for preparing students for success in life; thus, there is wide consensus in academia about the necessity to teach students to develop and refine their competence in critical thinking. Teaching for critical thinking requires intentionality.  This means that the instructor guides the student not just to master the disciplinary content but also to understand and evaluate the subject matter in order to make informed judgments and/or decisions. 

Students who have acquired critical thinking skills engage with the subject matter in a number of ways that are described as

• Purposeful and productive
• Mindful of assumptions
• Informed by multiple inputs
• Contextual awareness
• Based on evidence
• Reasoned consideration
• Recursive and evolving

Thus, students who think critically demonstrate a deep understanding, even ownership, of their knowledge.  Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain provides a useful representation for the developmental nature of critical thinking and articulates the sequence of steps for teaching students to think critically. 

Teaching for critical thinking requires you to be very deliberate in your approach.  Whether (re)designing an assignment or an entire course, the first step is to identify clear student learning objectives related to the specific critical thinking skills you want to emphasize. (Note: these are often related to ways of thinking in your discipline.) You will want to consider your methods for student evaluation when you design the assignment/course.  More specifically, you want to match your assessment to the student learning objective.  For example, if you want students to develop their ability to apply theoretical knowledge, your exam questions and assignments should reflect this.

Teaching for critical thinking is challenging; remember that you can approach this incrementally as you become more familiar with this way of teaching.

• Resources for Critical Thinking
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Development of GMU Critical Thinking Rubric
• Rubrics for Critical Thinking
• George Mason Critical Thinking Assessment Report Summer 2010
• Additional References on Critical Thinking

Resources for Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking Source
From the Center for Teaching and Learning Services of the University of Minnesota. This resource  draws on the psychology of critical thinking and offers three sets of  tools: an essential points page with an overview of main research on critical thinking;  an annotated bibliography;   a resource page with links to critical thinking sites at other universities.

Reasoning Across the Curriculum Program
From the PDF file of the Handbook of Resources compiled by faculty across the disciplines for Prince George's Year of Critical Thinking. This resource offers numerous links to websites and materials on teaching reasoning and critical thinking at the program level and course level. This resource offers rich examples of different strategies that can be used to promote/develop Critical Thinking. It also addresses changes that faculty would need to think about if they were to re-design/re-work their content to promote Critical Thinking.

Helping Your Students Develop Critical Thinking Skills
IDEA Paper #37 by C. L. Lynch and S. K. Wolcott. This resource presents a model for developing critical thinking/problem-solving skills based on reflective judgment and “theoretically grounded and empirically supported strategies”. The authors provide a rubric and a “road map” to support faculty thinking of the ways in which they can infuse Critical Thinking in their teaching.

Major Categories in the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
by G. Krumme, University of Washington, Seattle.  The site, geared towards visual learners, offers applications to different disciplines and test question development. This resource offers also basic information about affective and psychomotor domains related to Critical Thinking.

How to build  multiple choice questions based on Bloom’s Taxonomy
From the Instructional Assessment Resource unit at the University of Texas, Austin. Guidelines and worksheets are available for faculty to support their thinking as they develop multiple choice questions that require critical thinking.

Tutorial on Creativity, Brainstorming and Innovation
from Infinite Innovations Ltd. - This tutorial provides basic information about creativity, brainstorming, and innovation.  “brainstorming” software is available and free for downloading.  This website also offers a good overview of terms and strategies.

American Philosophical Association Delphi Research Report
a report based on international expert consensus definition of critical thinking, including its core cognitive skills.

Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking 
The Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking aim to improve education by offering program that emphasize instructional strategies. The website offers links to such programs and resources for socratic questioning, critical reading and writing, higher order thinking, assessment, research, quality enhancement, and competency standards.

Miami University's Critical Thinking Project  
The Liberal Education office of Miami University of Ohio shares documents about critical thinking, disciplinary integration and creative processes.  Many examples of rubrics for different disciplines  and also criteria for evaluation of rubrics are offered.

Rubrics for Critical Thinking

• Mason's Development of Critical Thinking Rubric
• Inquiry and Analysis VALUE Rubric
• Critical Thinking VALUE Rubric
• Problem Solving VALUE Rubric
• Washington State University’s Critical and Integrative Thinking Rubric

Bloom’s Taxonomy

(download pdf here)

Additional References on Critical Thinking

• Crow, L. W. (Ed.). (1989). Enhancing Critical Thinking in the Sciences. Washington, D.C.: Society for College Science Teachers.

• Donald, J. (2002). Learning to think: Disciplinary perspectives. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers

• Nelson, C. T. (1994). Critical Thinking and Collaborative Learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 59, 45-59