critical thinking on education

Developing Critical Thinking

• Posted January 10, 2018
• By Iman Rastegari

In a time where deliberately false information is continually introduced into public discourse, and quickly spread through social media shares and likes, it is more important than ever for young people to develop their critical thinking. That skill, says Georgetown professor William T. Gormley, consists of three elements: a capacity to spot weakness in other arguments, a passion for good evidence, and a capacity to reflect on your own views and values with an eye to possibly change them. But are educators making the development of these skills a priority?

"Some teachers embrace critical thinking pedagogy with enthusiasm and they make it a high priority in their classrooms; other teachers do not," says Gormley, author of the recent Harvard Education Press release The Critical Advantage: Developing Critical Thinking Skills in School . "So if you are to assess the extent of critical-thinking instruction in U.S. classrooms, you’d find some very wide variations." Which is unfortunate, he says, since developing critical-thinking skills is vital not only to students' readiness for college and career, but to their civic readiness, as well.

"It's important to recognize that critical thinking is not just something that takes place in the classroom or in the workplace, it's something that takes place — and should take place — in our daily lives," says Gormley.

In this edition of the Harvard EdCast, Gormley looks at the value of teaching critical thinking, and explores how it can be an important solution to some of the problems that we face, including "fake news."

About the Harvard EdCast

The Harvard EdCast is a weekly series of podcasts, available on the Harvard University iT unes U page, that features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber and co-produced by Jill Anderson, the Harvard EdCast is a space for educational discourse and openness, focusing on the myriad issues and current events related to the field.

An education podcast that keeps the focus simple: what makes a difference for learners, educators, parents, and communities

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Integrating Critical Thinking Into the Classroom

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(This is the second post in a three-part series. You can see Part One here .)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom?

Part One ‘s guests were Dara Laws Savage, Patrick Brown, Meg Riordan, Ph.D., and Dr. PJ Caposey. Dara, Patrick, and Meg were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Today, Dr. Kulvarn Atwal, Elena Quagliarello, Dr. Donna Wilson, and Diane Dahl share their recommendations.

‘Learning Conversations’

Dr. Kulvarn Atwal is currently the executive head teacher of two large primary schools in the London borough of Redbridge. Dr. Atwal is the author of The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community , published by John Catt Educational. Follow him on Twitter @Thinkingschool2 :

In many classrooms I visit, students’ primary focus is on what they are expected to do and how it will be measured. It seems that we are becoming successful at producing students who are able to jump through hoops and pass tests. But are we producing children that are positive about teaching and learning and can think critically and creatively? Consider your classroom environment and the extent to which you employ strategies that develop students’ critical-thinking skills and their self-esteem as learners.

Development of self-esteem

One of the most significant factors that impacts students’ engagement and achievement in learning in your classroom is their self-esteem. In this context, self-esteem can be viewed to be the difference between how they perceive themselves as a learner (perceived self) and what they consider to be the ideal learner (ideal self). This ideal self may reflect the child that is associated or seen to be the smartest in the class. Your aim must be to raise students’ self-esteem. To do this, you have to demonstrate that effort, not ability, leads to success. Your language and interactions in the classroom, therefore, have to be aspirational—that if children persist with something, they will achieve.

Use of evaluative praise

Ensure that when you are praising students, you are making explicit links to a child’s critical thinking and/or development. This will enable them to build their understanding of what factors are supporting them in their learning. For example, often when we give feedback to students, we may simply say, “Well done” or “Good answer.” However, are the students actually aware of what they did well or what was good about their answer? Make sure you make explicit what the student has done well and where that links to prior learning. How do you value students’ critical thinking—do you praise their thinking and demonstrate how it helps them improve their learning?

Learning conversations to encourage deeper thinking

We often feel as teachers that we have to provide feedback to every students’ response, but this can limit children’s thinking. Encourage students in your class to engage in learning conversations with each other. Give as many opportunities as possible to students to build on the responses of others. Facilitate chains of dialogue by inviting students to give feedback to each other. The teacher’s role is, therefore, to facilitate this dialogue and select each individual student to give feedback to others. It may also mean that you do not always need to respond at all to a student’s answer.

Teacher modelling own thinking

We cannot expect students to develop critical-thinking skills if we aren’t modeling those thinking skills for them. Share your creativity, imagination, and thinking skills with the students and you will nurture creative, imaginative critical thinkers. Model the language you want students to learn and think about. Share what you feel about the learning activities your students are participating in as well as the thinking you are engaging in. Your own thinking and learning will add to the discussions in the classroom and encourage students to share their own thinking.

Metacognitive questioning

Consider the extent to which your questioning encourages students to think about their thinking, and therefore, learn about learning! Through asking metacognitive questions, you will enable your students to have a better understanding of the learning process, as well as their own self-reflections as learners. Example questions may include:

• Why did you choose to do it that way?
• When you find something tricky, what helps you?
• How do you know when you have really learned something?

‘Adventures of Discovery’

Elena Quagliarello is the senior editor of education for Scholastic News , a current events magazine for students in grades 3–6. She graduated from Rutgers University, where she studied English and earned her master’s degree in elementary education. She is a certified K–12 teacher and previously taught middle school English/language arts for five years:

Critical thinking blasts through the surface level of a topic. It reaches beyond the who and the what and launches students on a learning journey that ultimately unlocks a deeper level of understanding. Teaching students how to think critically helps them turn information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. In the classroom, critical thinking teaches students how to ask and answer the questions needed to read the world. Whether it’s a story, news article, photo, video, advertisement, or another form of media, students can use the following critical-thinking strategies to dig beyond the surface and uncover a wealth of knowledge.

A Layered Learning Approach

Begin by having students read a story, article, or analyze a piece of media. Then have them excavate and explore its various layers of meaning. First, ask students to think about the literal meaning of what they just read. For example, if students read an article about the desegregation of public schools during the 1950s, they should be able to answer questions such as: Who was involved? What happened? Where did it happen? Which details are important? This is the first layer of critical thinking: reading comprehension. Do students understand the passage at its most basic level?

Ask the Tough Questions

The next layer delves deeper and starts to uncover the author’s purpose and craft. Teach students to ask the tough questions: What information is included? What or who is left out? How does word choice influence the reader? What perspective is represented? What values or people are marginalized? These questions force students to critically analyze the choices behind the final product. In today’s age of fast-paced, easily accessible information, it is essential to teach students how to critically examine the information they consume. The goal is to equip students with the mindset to ask these questions on their own.

Strike Gold

The deepest layer of critical thinking comes from having students take a step back to think about the big picture. This level of thinking is no longer focused on the text itself but rather its real-world implications. Students explore questions such as: Why does this matter? What lesson have I learned? How can this lesson be applied to other situations? Students truly engage in critical thinking when they are able to reflect on their thinking and apply their knowledge to a new situation. This step has the power to transform knowledge into wisdom.

Adventures of Discovery

There are vast ways to spark critical thinking in the classroom. Here are a few other ideas:

• Critical Expressionism: In this expanded response to reading from a critical stance, students are encouraged to respond through forms of artistic interpretations, dramatizations, singing, sketching, designing projects, or other multimodal responses. For example, students might read an article and then create a podcast about it or read a story and then act it out.
• Transmediations: This activity requires students to take an article or story and transform it into something new. For example, they might turn a news article into a cartoon or turn a story into a poem. Alternatively, students may rewrite a story by changing some of its elements, such as the setting or time period.
• Words Into Action: In this type of activity, students are encouraged to take action and bring about change. Students might read an article about endangered orangutans and the effects of habitat loss caused by deforestation and be inspired to check the labels on products for palm oil. They might then write a letter asking companies how they make sure the palm oil they use doesn’t hurt rain forests.
• Socratic Seminars: In this student-led discussion strategy, students pose thought-provoking questions to each other about a topic. They listen closely to each other’s comments and think critically about different perspectives.
• Classroom Debates: Aside from sparking a lively conversation, classroom debates naturally embed critical-thinking skills by asking students to formulate and support their own opinions and consider and respond to opposing viewpoints.

Critical thinking has the power to launch students on unforgettable learning experiences while helping them develop new habits of thought, reflection, and inquiry. Developing these skills prepares students to examine issues of power and promote transformative change in the world around them.

‘Quote Analysis’

Dr. Donna Wilson is a psychologist and the author of 20 books, including Developing Growth Mindsets , Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains , and Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching (2 nd Edition). She is an international speaker who has worked in Asia, the Middle East, Australia, Europe, Jamaica, and throughout the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Wilson can be reached at [email protected] ; visit her website at www.brainsmart.org .

Diane Dahl has been a teacher for 13 years, having taught grades 2-4 throughout her career. Mrs. Dahl currently teaches 3rd and 4th grade GT-ELAR/SS in Lovejoy ISD in Fairview, Texas. Follow her on Twitter at @DahlD, and visit her website at www.fortheloveofteaching.net :

A growing body of research over the past several decades indicates that teaching students how to be better thinkers is a great way to support them to be more successful at school and beyond. In the book, Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains , Dr. Wilson shares research and many motivational strategies, activities, and lesson ideas that assist students to think at higher levels. Five key strategies from the book are as follows:

• Facilitate conversation about why it is important to think critically at school and in other contexts of life. Ideally, every student will have a contribution to make to the discussion over time.
• Begin teaching thinking skills early in the school year and as a daily part of class.
• As this instruction begins, introduce students to the concept of brain plasticity and how their brilliant brains change during thinking and learning. This can be highly motivational for students who do not yet believe they are good thinkers!
• Explicitly teach students how to use the thinking skills.
• Facilitate student understanding of how the thinking skills they are learning relate to their lives at school and in other contexts.

Below are two lessons that support critical thinking, which can be defined as the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.

Mrs. Dahl prepares her 3rd and 4th grade classes for a year of critical thinking using quote analysis .

During Native American studies, her 4 th grade analyzes a Tuscarora quote: “Man has responsibility, not power.” Since students already know how the Native Americans’ land had been stolen, it doesn’t take much for them to make the logical leaps. Critical-thought prompts take their thinking even deeper, especially at the beginning of the year when many need scaffolding. Some prompts include:

• … from the point of view of the Native Americans?
• … from the point of view of the settlers?
• How do you think your life might change over time as a result?
• Can you relate this quote to anything else in history?

Analyzing a topic from occupational points of view is an incredibly powerful critical-thinking tool. After learning about the Mexican-American War, Mrs. Dahl’s students worked in groups to choose an occupation with which to analyze the war. The chosen occupations were: anthropologist, mathematician, historian, archaeologist, cartographer, and economist. Then each individual within each group chose a different critical-thinking skill to focus on. Finally, they worked together to decide how their occupation would view the war using each skill.

For example, here is what each student in the economist group wrote:

• When U.S.A. invaded Mexico for land and won, Mexico ended up losing income from the settlements of Jose de Escandon. The U.S.A. thought that they were gaining possible tradable land, while Mexico thought that they were losing precious land and resources.
• Whenever Texas joined the states, their GDP skyrocketed. Then they went to war and spent money on supplies. When the war was resolving, Texas sold some of their land to New Mexico for $10 million. This allowed Texas to pay off their debt to the U.S., improving their relationship.
• A detail that converged into the Mexican-American War was that Mexico and the U.S. disagreed on the Texas border. With the resulting treaty, Texas ended up gaining more land and economic resources.
• Texas gained land from Mexico since both countries disagreed on borders. Texas sold land to New Mexico, which made Texas more economically structured and allowed them to pay off their debt.

This was the first time that students had ever used the occupations technique. Mrs. Dahl was astonished at how many times the kids used these critical skills in other areas moving forward.

Thanks to Dr. Auwal, Elena, Dr. Wilson, and Diane for their contributions!

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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Critical thinking.

• Derek Allen , Derek Allen University of Toronto
• Sharon Bailin , Sharon Bailin Simon Fraser University
• Mark Battersby Mark Battersby Capilano University
•  and  James B. Freeman James B. Freeman Hunter College of the City University of New York, Emeritus
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1179
• Published online: 27 October 2020

There are numerous definitions of critical thinking, but the core concept has been said to be careful, reasoned, goal-directed thinking. There are also many conceptualizations of critical thinking, which are generally more detailed than brief definitions, and there are different views about what the goal(s) of critical thinking instruction should be. Whether critical thinking is a good thing is a matter of debate. Approaches to teaching critical thinking vary, partly according to whether they focus on general principles of critical thinking or on subject-matter content or on a combination of both. A meta-analysis research report published in 2015 concluded that, subject to certain qualifications, a variety of critical thinking skills and dispositions can develop in students through instruction at all educational levels. Critical thinking instruction has been influenced by research in cognitive psychology that has suggested strategies for countering factors (e.g., biases) that the research has found to produce irrational beliefs. Methods of assessing critical thinking ability include teacher-designed tests and standardized tests. A research report published in 2014 on assessing critical thinking in higher education describes challenges involved in designing standardized critical thinking tests and proposes a framework for a “next-generation” assessment. The challenges include achieving a balance between the assessment's real-world relevance and its psychometric quality, and designing an assessment useful for instructional purposes and for comparisons of programs and institutions. The proposed framework is based partly on a review of existing frameworks of critical thinking in higher education. It has two analytical dimensions and two synthetic dimensions, and a dimension on understanding causation and explanation. Surveys show that employers value employees with strong critical thinking ability; this fact has significant implications for students, teachers, and administrators at all levels of education.

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Created by the Great Schools Partnership , the GLOSSARY OF EDUCATION REFORM is a comprehensive online resource that describes widely used school-improvement terms, concepts, and strategies for journalists, parents, and community members. | Learn more »

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a term used by educators to describe forms of learning, thought, and analysis that go beyond the memorization and recall of information and facts. In common usage, critical thinking is an umbrella term that may be applied to many different forms of learning acquisition or to a wide variety of thought processes. In its most basic expression, critical thinking occurs when students are analyzing, evaluating, interpreting, or synthesizing information and applying creative thought to form an argument, solve a problem, or reach a conclusion.

Critical thinking entails many kinds of intellectual skills, including the following representative examples:

• Developing well-reasoned, persuasive arguments and evaluating and responding to counterarguments
• Examining concepts or situations from multiple perspectives, including different cultural perspectives
• Questioning evidence and assumptions to reach novel conclusions
• Devising imaginative ways to solve problems, especially unfamiliar or complex problems
• Formulating and articulating thoughtful, penetrating questions
• Identifying themes or patterns and making abstract connections across subjects

Critical thinking is a central concept in educational reforms that call for schools to place a greater emphasis on skills that are used in all subject areas and that students can apply in all educational, career, and civic settings throughout their lives. It’s also a central concept in reforms that question how teachers have traditionally taught and what students should be learning—notably, the 21st century skills movement, which broadly calls on schools to create academic programs and learning experiences that equip students with the most essential and in-demand knowledge, skills, and dispositions they will need to be successful in higher-education programs and modern workplaces. As higher education and job requirements become competitive, complex, and technical, proponents argue, students will need skills such as critical thinking to successfully navigate the modern world, excel in challenging careers, and process increasingly complex information.

Critical thinking also intersects with debates about assessment and how schools should measure learning acquisition. For example, multiple-choice testing formats have been common in standardized testing for decades, yet the heavy use of such testing formats emphasizes—and may reinforce the importance of—factual retention and recall over other skills. If schools largely test and award grades for factual recall, teachers will therefore stress memorization and recall in their teaching, possibly at the expense of skills such as critical thinking that are vitally important for students to possess but far more challenging to measure accurately.

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Helping Students Hone Their Critical Thinking Skills

Used consistently, these strategies can help middle and high school teachers guide students to improve much-needed skills.

Critical thinking skills are important in every discipline, at and beyond school. From managing money to choosing which candidates to vote for in elections to making difficult career choices, students need to be prepared to take in, synthesize, and act on new information in a world that is constantly changing.

While critical thinking might seem like an abstract idea that is tough to directly instruct, there are many engaging ways to help students strengthen these skills through active learning.

Make Time for Metacognitive Reflection

Create space for students to both reflect on their ideas and discuss the power of doing so. Show students how they can push back on their own thinking to analyze and question their assumptions. Students might ask themselves, “Why is this the best answer? What information supports my answer? What might someone with a counterargument say?”

Through this reflection, students and teachers (who can model reflecting on their own thinking) gain deeper understandings of their ideas and do a better job articulating their beliefs. In a world that is go-go-go, it is important to help students understand that it is OK to take a breath and think about their ideas before putting them out into the world. And taking time for reflection helps us more thoughtfully consider others’ ideas, too.

Teach Reasoning Skills 

Reasoning skills are another key component of critical thinking, involving the abilities to think logically, evaluate evidence, identify assumptions, and analyze arguments. Students who learn how to use reasoning skills will be better equipped to make informed decisions, form and defend opinions, and solve problems. 

One way to teach reasoning is to use problem-solving activities that require students to apply their skills to practical contexts. For example, give students a real problem to solve, and ask them to use reasoning skills to develop a solution. They can then present their solution and defend their reasoning to the class and engage in discussion about whether and how their thinking changed when listening to peers’ perspectives. 

A great example I have seen involved students identifying an underutilized part of their school and creating a presentation about one way to redesign it. This project allowed students to feel a sense of connection to the problem and come up with creative solutions that could help others at school. For more examples, you might visit PBS’s Design Squad , a resource that brings to life real-world problem-solving.

Ask Open-Ended Questions 

Moving beyond the repetition of facts, critical thinking requires students to take positions and explain their beliefs through research, evidence, and explanations of credibility. 

When we pose open-ended questions, we create space for classroom discourse inclusive of diverse, perhaps opposing, ideas—grounds for rich exchanges that support deep thinking and analysis. 

For example, “How would you approach the problem?” and “Where might you look to find resources to address this issue?” are two open-ended questions that position students to think less about the “right” answer and more about the variety of solutions that might already exist. 

Journaling, whether digitally or physically in a notebook, is another great way to have students answer these open-ended prompts—giving them time to think and organize their thoughts before contributing to a conversation, which can ensure that more voices are heard. 

Once students process in their journal, small group or whole class conversations help bring their ideas to life. Discovering similarities between answers helps reveal to students that they are not alone, which can encourage future participation in constructive civil discourse.

Teach Information Literacy 

Education has moved far past the idea of “Be careful of what is on Wikipedia, because it might not be true.” With AI innovations making their way into classrooms, teachers know that informed readers must question everything. 

Understanding what is and is not a reliable source and knowing how to vet information are important skills for students to build and utilize when making informed decisions. You might start by introducing the idea of bias: Articles, ads, memes, videos, and every other form of media can push an agenda that students may not see on the surface. Discuss credibility, subjectivity, and objectivity, and look at examples and nonexamples of trusted information to prepare students to be well-informed members of a democracy.

One of my favorite lessons is about the Pacific Northwest tree octopus . This project asks students to explore what appears to be a very real website that provides information on this supposedly endangered animal. It is a wonderful, albeit over-the-top, example of how something might look official even when untrue, revealing that we need critical thinking to break down “facts” and determine the validity of the information we consume. 

A fun extension is to have students come up with their own website or newsletter about something going on in school that is untrue. Perhaps a change in dress code that requires everyone to wear their clothes inside out or a change to the lunch menu that will require students to eat brussels sprouts every day. 

Giving students the ability to create their own falsified information can help them better identify it in other contexts. Understanding that information can be “too good to be true” can help them identify future falsehoods. 

Provide Diverse Perspectives 

Consider how to keep the classroom from becoming an echo chamber. If students come from the same community, they may have similar perspectives. And those who have differing perspectives may not feel comfortable sharing them in the face of an opposing majority. 

To support varying viewpoints, bring diverse voices into the classroom as much as possible, especially when discussing current events. Use primary sources: videos from YouTube, essays and articles written by people who experienced current events firsthand, documentaries that dive deeply into topics that require some nuance, and any other resources that provide a varied look at topics. 

I like to use the Smithsonian “OurStory” page , which shares a wide variety of stories from people in the United States. The page on Japanese American internment camps is very powerful because of its first-person perspectives. 

Practice Makes Perfect 

To make the above strategies and thinking routines a consistent part of your classroom, spread them out—and build upon them—over the course of the school year. You might challenge students with information and/or examples that require them to use their critical thinking skills; work these skills explicitly into lessons, projects, rubrics, and self-assessments; or have students practice identifying misinformation or unsupported arguments.

Critical thinking is not learned in isolation. It needs to be explored in English language arts, social studies, science, physical education, math. Every discipline requires students to take a careful look at something and find the best solution. Often, these skills are taken for granted, viewed as a by-product of a good education, but true critical thinking doesn’t just happen. It requires consistency and commitment.

In a moment when information and misinformation abound, and students must parse reams of information, it is imperative that we support and model critical thinking in the classroom to support the development of well-informed citizens.

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Defining Critical Thinking

• Schools & departments

Critical thinking

Advice and resources to help you develop your critical voice.

Developing critical thinking skills is essential to your success at University and beyond.  We all need to be critical thinkers to help us navigate our way through an information-rich world. 

Whatever your discipline, you will engage with a wide variety of sources of information and evidence.  You will develop the skills to make judgements about this evidence to form your own views and to present your views clearly.

One of the most common types of feedback received by students is that their work is ‘too descriptive’.  This usually means that they have just stated what others have said and have not reflected critically on the material.  They have not evaluated the evidence and constructed an argument.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the art of making clear, reasoned judgements based on interpreting, understanding, applying and synthesising evidence gathered from observation, reading and experimentation. Burns, T., & Sinfield, S. (2016)  Essential Study Skills: The Complete Guide to Success at University (4th ed.) London: SAGE, p94.

Being critical does not just mean finding fault.  It means assessing evidence from a variety of sources and making reasoned conclusions.  As a result of your analysis you may decide that a particular piece of evidence is not robust, or that you disagree with the conclusion, but you should be able to state why you have come to this view and incorporate this into a bigger picture of the literature.

Being critical goes beyond describing what you have heard in lectures or what you have read.  It involves synthesising, analysing and evaluating what you have learned to develop your own argument or position.

Critical thinking is important in all subjects and disciplines – in science and engineering, as well as the arts and humanities.  The types of evidence used to develop arguments may be very different but the processes and techniques are similar.  Critical thinking is required for both undergraduate and postgraduate levels of study.

What, where, when, who, why, how?

Purposeful reading can help with critical thinking because it encourages you to read actively rather than passively.  When you read, ask yourself questions about what you are reading and make notes to record your views.  Ask questions like:

• What is the main point of this paper/ article/ paragraph/ report/ blog?
• Who wrote it?
• Why was it written?
• When was it written?
• Has the context changed since it was written?
• Is the evidence presented robust?
• How did the authors come to their conclusions?
• Do you agree with the conclusions?
• What does this add to our knowledge?
• Why is it useful?

Our web page covering Reading at university includes a handout to help you develop your own critical reading form and a suggested reading notes record sheet.  These resources will help you record your thoughts after you read, which will help you to construct your argument. 

Reading at university

Developing an argument

Being a university student is about learning how to think, not what to think.  Critical thinking shapes your own values and attitudes through a process of deliberating, debating and persuasion.   Through developing your critical thinking you can move on from simply disagreeing to constructively assessing alternatives by building on doubts.

There are several key stages involved in developing your ideas and constructing an argument.  You might like to use a form to help you think about the features of critical thinking and to break down the stages of developing your argument.

Features of critical thinking (pdf)

Features of critical thinking (Word rtf)

Our webpage on Academic writing includes a useful handout ‘Building an argument as you go’.

Academic writing

You should also consider the language you will use to introduce a range of viewpoints and to evaluate the various sources of evidence.  This will help your reader to follow your argument.  To get you started, the University of Manchester's Academic Phrasebank has a useful section on Being Critical. 

Academic Phrasebank

Developing your critical thinking

Set yourself some tasks to help develop your critical thinking skills.  Discuss material presented in lectures or from resource lists with your peers.  Set up a critical reading group or use an online discussion forum.  Think about a point you would like to make during discussions in tutorials and be prepared to back up your argument with evidence.

For more suggestions:

Developing your critical thinking - ideas (pdf)

Developing your critical thinking - ideas (Word rtf)

Published guides

For further advice and more detailed resources please see the Critical Thinking section of our list of published Study skills guides.

Study skills guides  

This article was published on 2024-02-26

Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

• What information should be included?
• Which information resources should the author look to?
• What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

Are there any services that can help me use more critical thinking?

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• Resource Hub

Future-Ready Education: Navigating Tech, Fostering Critical Thinking, and Beyond with Steve Tozer 

• NAESP Staff

Topics: Health and Wellness , Middle Level , Principal Pipeline , Professional Learning , Student Engagement

“Success is a much better learning platform than failure. Yes, we have to fail sometimes, but a steady diet of failure means that kids aren’t going to consider life long learning to be a part of their toolkit.” Dr. Steve Tozer

In this episode, listeners will have the privilege of hearing insights from Steve Tozer, Professor Emeritus, as he explores the practical aspects of integrating technology, fostering inclusivity, and driving growth through collaborative leadership in modern education.

Hosted by NAESP member, author, and keynote speaker Adam Welcome, NAESP Leadership Conversations is a new way to bring you professional learning and in-depth conversations from thought leaders in the field. Through these conversations, you’ll learn strategies to do your job better with more satisfaction, collaboration, and flexibility and gain tools you can use daily.

 Top Takeaways:

• Embrace Collaborative Strategies : Educators should seek guidance and collaboration from districts and peers when navigating technological advancements, recognizing the limitations of individual efforts.
• Continuous Learning Journey : Professional learning and technology integration present ongoing challenges; seeking resources and engaging in conversations are essential for growth.
• Critical Thinking Enhancement : Combatting disinformation requires cultivating critical thinking skills in students, emphasizing not only logic and evidence but also fostering a sense of belonging and safety in schools.
• Community-Centric Approach : School leaders should prioritize instructional leadership and community engagement, effectively communicating the school’s vision and leveraging external resources for the benefit of students.
• Adapting to Changing Job Markets : While we can’t predict the future job market, educators can broaden educational goals to encompass citizenship, work readiness, and personal development, fostering adaptability in students.
• Inclusive Learning Environments : Creating inclusive spaces involves aligning school design with inclusive principles, focusing on asset-based approaches, and ensuring students see themselves reflected and welcomed in the learning environment.
• Community Engagement in Education : Engaging the community in mutual education requires respect, transparency about educational goals, and clear communication about the purpose behind school initiatives.
• Balancing Success and Failure : While failure can be a valuable learning experience, a balanced approach that emphasizes success is essential for maintaining students’ desire to learn and grow.
• Shared Leadership in Education : Principal preparation programs should emphasize instructional leadership and staff development, recognizing community values as an integral part of school authority.
• Continuous Professional Growth : Teachers and educators should recognize the importance of ongoing collaboration and learning, leveraging resources to enhance their critical thinking skills and adapt to evolving educational landscapes.

Reflection Questions:

• How can educators effectively leverage collaborative strategies to navigate technological advancements and address the evolving needs of students?
• In what ways can schools foster a culture of continuous learning and professional development to meet the ongoing challenges of integrating technology into education?
• Reflecting on the concept of critical thinking enhancement, how can educators ensure that students not only develop logical reasoning skills but also feel a sense of belonging and safety within the learning environment?
• Considering the importance of community engagement in education, how can schools cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with external stakeholders while maintaining transparency and respect?
• How can educators strike a balance between encouraging students to embrace failure as a learning opportunity and providing them with the support and resources they need to achieve success?

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Center for Excellence in Teaching

Encouraging critical thinking with scientific sketching activities, pragna patel, professor of biochemistry & molecular medicine at usc’s keck school of medicine, uses sketching activities to help students develop critical thinking skills in her courses and beyond..

Professor Patel was a 2021 recipient of the Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching

Watch this 2-minute video and scroll down for the full interview, plus tips for implementing this in your course!

Read more about this approach in Pragna’s own words:

Download this file [6.23 MB]

Interested in using sketching activities in your course?

Here are some tips for implementation:.

• Explain the purpose and process of making a sketch. Make a point to students that the artfulness of the sketch is not the main focus, rather it is the information contained in the sketch that is important.
• Provide them with a model and identify the key elements of a successful sketch.
• Ask students to complete their sketches individually or in small groups.
• Ask students to either reflect on their individual sketches, switch sketches with a peer and review, or discuss as a class.
• Lead a class debrief or provide group or individual feedback to tie the activity back to course content and your objectives for the activity.
• After the activity, students may submit their sketches or keep them as a study guide. Sketches could also be posted in the classroom or shared with the class virtually on a discussion board for follow-up activities.

More resources for active learning and sketching activities :

• CET’s Active Learning Facilitation Process Resource
• Hoskins, S. G., Lopatto, D., & Stevens, L. M. (2011). The C.R.E.A.T.E. Approach to Primary Literature Shifts Undergraduates’ Self-Assessed Ability to Read and Analyze Journal Articles, Attitudes about Science, and Epistemological Beliefs . CBE Life Sciences Education , 10(4), 368–378.
• From STEM to STEAM: 9 Specific Strategies for Adding the Art (Blog post)

What does the research say?

Edlund, A. F., & Balgopal, M. M. (2021). Drawing-to-Learn: Active and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Biology . Frontiers in Communication , 6.

Helen J. DeWaard, Giulia Forsythe, & Deborah Baff. (2024). Graphically Speaking: Expanding Landscapes of Scholarly Writing Using Sketchnotes . Brock Education , 33(1).

Nesbit JC, Adesope OO. Learning with Concept and Knowledge Maps: A Meta-Analysis . Review of educational research . 2006;76(3):413-448.

Wu, S. P. W., Van Veen, B., & Rau, M. A. (2020). How drawing prompts can increase cognitive engagement in an active learning engineering course . Journal of Engineering Education (Washington, D.C.), 109(4), 723–742.

Category: Teaching

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Australia’s national(ist) history curriculum: history education as a site of attempted de-democratisation

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 23 April 2024

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• Alison Bedford   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6708-9896 1 &
• Martin Kerby   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4073-2559 1  

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This paper explores the contested content of the Australian history curriculum to understand the curriculum’s national(ist?) purpose and investigate if national histories can be taught in a way which combats the anti-democratic forces at play in our culture. This question will be explored through analysis of the three topics in the Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 , which have a strong focus on Australian history specifically, and semi-structured interviews with secondary teachers on pedagogies for history and instilling democratic dispositions in students (UniSQ ETH2023-0315). Since Prime Minister John Howard’s call for reform of the curriculum to ensure that the national narrative “is one of heroic achievement” (Howard, 2006 ), the conservative right’s desire to have the curriculum deliver a singular, nationalist narrative has become increasingly more extreme. We risk an “acute crisis of democracy” (Repucci and Slipowitz, 2021, p. 1) as our students are taught a singular narrative that silences First Nations peoples and other cultural minorities. The best defence against this nascent de-democratisation of Australian history classrooms is found in the vital work of history teachers as curriculum workers. If teachers adhere to the curriculum directives focused on historical thinking skills, our students must consider “different perspectives” and use a “range of sources” (ACARA, 2023a) to make evidence-based decisions about our past. The teaching of critical thinking and the use of varied evidence which considers a range of perspectives and assesses their reliability serves as a bulwark against the monocultural assault which seeks to control the content of the curriculum. If we ensure our next generation of citizens have the skills to make informed and critical choices rather than be blind adherents to a nationalist monomyth, our pluralistic liberal democracy will not only survive but thrive.

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Liberal democracies are by definition based upon principles of pluralism and tolerance. In granting individuals freedom of belief, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties, there is also the expectation that individuals respect (or at least tolerate) the rights of others to hold differing views. The goal of democracy is not to achieve unanimous conformity, but rather to achieve a workable compromise though civil debate and free and fair elections of representative governments. Within this system, political parties aim to woo voters by offering them a vision of the nation under their leadership which aligns with the voters’ beliefs and values, offering a construction of national identity which resonates. Yet because liberal democracies are not one-party states, even the majority party must compromise and work with opposition politicians to satisfy the electorate at large, lest they lose the next election. This means that the national identity of liberal democracies is constantly being constructed and contested, as to create a singular identity from pluralistic community made up of different cultural backgrounds, faiths, and value systems is an impossible task, yet one that is also vital to the maintenance of liberal democratic society. By negotiating what it is to be ‘Australian’ (or ‘British’ or ‘American’) through political and social change, nations establish the shared characteristics that are valued, while also tolerating the diversity that shapes this construction. These values are reaffirmed and protected through legislation and the establishment and maintenance of social norms (such as violence being unacceptable, and harm to others being a criminal offence).

National curricula, and particularly the teaching of a nation’s history, have long been battlegrounds for all sides of politics in establishing national narratives and identities. In telling a nation’s story, the history curriculum also works to shape the next generation of the nations’ citizens. In most liberal democracies, this agenda of citizen-making is explicit and often linked to the students’ ability to both understand the history of, and make a meaningful future contribution to, the democratic society of which they are a part. The goal of democratic education is to foster an understanding of the pluralist nature of democracy, and to develop the toleration of differing views that enables civil debate. As the political and social climate has been increasingly impacted by both the rise of the far-right and global watersheds like the COVID-19 pandemic, the norms of liberal democracy have been challenged in new ways.

The most obvious assault on democracy played out in storming of the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2020, by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn a democratic election result. Efforts to influence education have also intensified. In Florida, Governor Ron De Santis has introduced the Stop the Wrongs to our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E) Act and the Parental Rights in Education Act (2022) (colloquially, the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws) which limit discussions of racism, gender diversity, and sexuality in schools and allow parents and other interested groups to more direct action to oppose materials they disagree with (Reilly, 2022 ). De Santis has also suggested that schools should teach that slavery had “benefits” for enslaved peoples (Planas, 2023 ). These efforts to challenge democratic norms directly and through the subversion of the education system to serve partisan agendas highlight how quickly the values of liberal democracies can be eroded.

Yet democratic norms have also been challenged in less dramatic ways and by groups other than far-right conservatives. The COVID-19 pandemic saw power shift from elected officials to health sector bureaucrats, whose lockdowns curtailed democratic norms such as freedom of movement and impinged upon bodily autonomy through vaccine mandates. In Australia, the harshest lockdowns were imposed by the left-leaning Victorian Labor government (Windholz, 2020 ). Australia’s provision of a secular public education has faced challenges from various faith groups who wish to exclude particular groups or topics (such as LGBTQIA + students) since the 1970s (Barnes et al., 2022 ). As in the United States, these efforts have found renewed energy in the last decade (Read, 2022 ). The sudden empowerment of unelected decision-makers and the persistent efforts to intrude upon what is taught in schools to the detriment of specific social groups both show the pressures liberal democracies are constantly under and why the active promotion and maintenance of democratic norms is an ongoing project rather than an end point that can be achieved.

All sides of politics use education as an ideological battleground, with Australian Labor leaders focusing on constructing a multicultural narrative centred on our relationship with Asia and reconciliation with First Nations peoples that still builds a sense of shared national unity (Bedford et al., 2023 ), a narrative that is difficult to substantiate with the Voice to Parliament referendum failing to achieve constitutional recognition and the establishment of an Indigenous advisory organisation. Neither the left’s ‘happy melting pot’ history nor the right’s ‘glorious national progress’ narrative are accurate when interrogated through rigorous historical inquiry, however, the efforts of far-right conservatism to reshape society in their own (white Christian nationalist ‘patriot’) image pose a particular threat to the core tenets of liberal democracy. As Giroux argues, the effect of this conflation of patriotism and citizenship is the creation of “a discourse of national unity and moral fundamentalism that drains from public life its post dynamic political and democratic possibilities” (2005, p. 4), counter to Australia’s self-identification as a culturally diverse liberal democracy.

Australia’s vision for its young people and their education is articulated in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration (2019), a joint statement issued by the federal and state education ministers. Its aims that through their education, young Australians:

appreciate and respect Australia’s rich social, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity and embrace opportunities to communicate and share knowledge and experiences.

have an understanding of Australia’s system of government, its histories, religions and culture.

are committed to national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia’s civic life by connecting with their community and contributing to local and national conversations.

understand, acknowledge and celebrate the diversity and richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. (p. 6)

Here, the mandate for education to promote “national values of democracy” is made explicit, as is Australia’s construction as a multicultural and inclusive nation, with “rich social, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity”. Importantly, history is pluralised to “histories”, including that of Australia’s First Nations’ peoples, reflecting the contemporary disciplinary understanding that history is not a singular narrative but the varied experiences of and responses to a shared event. Finally, the expectation that this knowledge equips students to “participate in Australia’s civic life” ties students’ historical understandings directly to their role as active citizens in our liberal democracy.

Drerup echoes these ideas in their definition of “democratic education” as

the initiation into basic values, norms and practices that are conducive for the intergenerational reproduction of liberal democracies. …. Central aims of democratic education are, among others, personal and political autonomy as the capacity and willingness to critically question one’s inherited convictions and perspectives as well as the capacity to participate in public discussions in an informed and reasonable way. (2021, p. 253)

The question of how teachers (as the curriculum workers who interpret policy through pedagogy), go about this work of developing autonomous, critical and informed young citizens, and how they perceive their role in fostering these “democratic dispositions” (Bedford, 2023 ), is the focus of this paper. As Australian history education researchers Parkes and Donelley argue,

historical thinking skills are vital for democratic citizenship; the ability to discuss and listen to differing perspectives; consider a range of opinions and values; and come to reasonable conclusions; and they operate as a path to the development of a sophisticated historical consciousness, which the well-informed can use as a tool to navigate, understand, and interpret the social world. (2014, p. 129)

Savenijie and Goldberg highlight that it is history teachers, in their teaching of historical thinking skills which Parkes and Donnelly describe, and “motivated by a desire to promote critical citizenship” (2019, p. 47) who must foster the next generation of citizens within our democracy. Thus, the study of how history educators specifically contribute to the promotion and maintenance of liberal democratic norms through the consideration of “different perspectives” and use of a “range of sources” (ACARA, 2023a ), when anti-democratic sentiment is increasingly visible, is timely and pressing.

Methodology

The research drawn upon in this paper are the initial findings of a study (UniSQ ETH2023-0315) which aims to address the following questions:

RQ1. How do material factors (school setting and demographics, resources, professional culture and external contexts such as personal background and beliefs) influence how history curricula are enacted in Australian secondary schools?

RQ2: How are history curriculum documents interpreted and translated into pedagogical practices and teaching resources in Australian secondary schools?

RQ3: What are the dominant discourses of secondary history education in Australia and to what extent do they address the formation of democratic dispositions?

The questions are framed by Stephen Ball et al.’s theory of policy enactment, which considers the material, interpretative and discursive elements of policy (2011, p. 15). Foucault’s conception of discourse as the rules of “what can and can’t be said” (McHoul & Grace, 1995 ) within a discipline area further inform the project. The project participants are Australian secondary history teachers (as ‘interpreters’ of curriculum) and both state and federal curriculum authority staff (as the authors or designers of curriculum).

Ball et al.’s ( 2011 ) discussion of teachers who translate or interpret the curriculum through their pedagogical practice is helpful in clarifying the nexus between the curriculum as written and the curriculum as experienced by students. It is a process of both “invention and compliance” (Ball et al., 2011 , p. 47), and in this act of ‘curriculum translation’, teachers “play a key role in the interpretation and meaning making and are themselves key sites in the discursive articulation of policy” (p. 51). If the role of teachers in curriculum enactment is understood as that of “curriculum workers”, it “elevates teachers from being simply the implementers of curriculum to being creators and designers matched to the needs of the individual students in their classes” (Kennedy, 2022 , p. 67). This recognition of teachers as the nexus for curriculum enactment underpins both the research design and the argument that it is through teacher’s pedagogy that the aims of the curriculum can be realised (or subverted).

This analysis focuses RQs 2 and 3 particularly, drawing on data from the first phase of the project, which involved 1 curriculum authority staff member and 10 secondary history teachers and in the state of Queensland from both state and private schools across metropolitan, regional and rural locations. Data was collected through a mix of face-to-face and online semi-structured interviews. This study is now being expanded to other Australian states and territories. Curriculum documents were also subject to thematic discourse analysis to address RQ3. Themes which emerged in the initial analysis of both the curriculum and the interview responses focused on the strong emphasis on Australian history and the construction of a largely positive national narrative, the ongoing challenges of teaching First Nations histories, and the relationship between the historical skills of the curriculum and the skills needed as a citizen in a liberal democracy.

The Australian curriculum: a brief history

To better understand the discourses present in the most recent version of the Australian Curriculum, a brief charting of the discursive landscape from which it has emerged is helpful. While much has been written about the national curriculum’s inception and the History Wars of the early 2000s (Bedford, 2023 ; Bedford et al., 2023 ; Clark, 2010 ; McIntyre and Clark, 2003 ), less attention has been given to more recent changes. As Version 9 was developed, the conservative Liberal National coalition (LNP) had been in power for almost a decade, and took up the national curriculum’s key architect, Liberal Prime Minister John Howard’s call to ensure that the national narrative within the curriculum “is one of heroic achievement” (Howard, 2006 ). The lead author of the first draft of the Australian Curriculum: History in the mid-2000s, Professor Tony Taylor, rejected the final version, suggesting “was too close to a nationalist view of Australia’s past” (Topsfield, 2008 ). Taylor characterised Howard’s intervention in the curriculum as an attempt “to gain ownership of Australian history in schools and create their own neoconservative master narrative” (2009, p. 317). After an election defeat in 2007, the Liberal National coalition returned to power in 2013, and Prime Minster Tony Abbott ( 2013 ) immediately undertook a review of the curriculum, citing concerns around “lack of references to our heritage other than an indigenous heritage, too great a focus on issues which are the predominant concern of one side of politics.” The two-man review panel consisted of Kevin Donnelly and Ken Wiltshire, both active advocates for conservative values (Taylor, 2014 ). Donnelly called for the curriculum to place greater emphasis on the “Judeo-Christian heritage” of Australia, which was strongly supported by Christian Schools Australia (Greene, 2014 ). In the most recent review undertaken to produce Version 9 , LNP members placed a strong emphasis on ensuring a particular narrative was constructed. These calls reflected the centrality of service in foreign wars in the construction of the Australian national identity (Kerby et al., 2021 ). Federal Education Minister at the time, Alan Tudge argued that ANZAC Day, a commemoration of Australian military service, should be “presented as the most sacred of all days in Australia” (in Hurst, 2021 ). Acting Education Minster Stuart Robert requested the Chair of ACARA ensure “that key aspects of Australian History, namely 1750–1914 and Australia’s post-World War II migrant history, are appropriately prioritised and can be taught within the time available” (Roberts, 2022 ). Despite these visible and vocal political machinations to strengthen nationalist discourses through the focus on Australia’s military conflicts in the 20th century, the content of the curriculum is also reflective of efforts to foreground discourses of social inclusivity and diversity in the opportunities for students to engage with other cultures and identities.

Is it a national or nationalist curriculum?

Version 9 of the Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 has been decluttered after longstanding concerns about the amount of content to be covered in each year level. The new curriculum has reduced the number of compulsory topics from three per year to two, which also better aligns with the way in which many schools timetable the subject, giving one semester (two terms) to History and another to Geography each year. The structure of the new curriculum is summarised in Table  1 .

Despite the claim that “History takes a world history approach within which the history of Australia is taught” (ACARA, 2023a ) the curriculum is national in its focus, with five out of the eight compulsory sub-strands either being explicitly centred on Australian history or framed through the lens of Australian experience (the World Wars). The Rationale for the History 7–10 curriculum argues that “the application of history is an essential characteristic of any society or community and contributes to its sense of shared identity” (ACARA, 2023b ). The role of curriculum as a nation-building tool is well-established and not unique to Australia: “public education, as an extension of the state, contributes to the shaping of national identity and fostering patriotism, and thus state-sponsored history education can play a central role in nation building” (Kawamura, 2023 , p. 149). The ‘nation’ is the construction of a shared imaginary, where identity is inherently shaped by a sense of what is ‘us’, in contrast to what is ‘not us’. This intangible sense of national selfhood is constantly in flux, expanding and contracting to include or exclude particular groups over time (Bedford et al., 2023 ), and is currently in a phase of contraction as far right conservatives seek to exclude others as ‘un-Australian’, constructing a narrow definition of national identity.

Briefly, Australia has followed British and North American influences in the development of a national curriculum and history pedagogy. Until the 1970s, both British (and Australian) history classrooms “typically reflected what is often characterised as the ‘great tradition’ of history teaching, with its distinctively Anglocentric, nationalistic and conservative emphasis” (Foster, 2023 , p. 127). Secondary school curricula responded to the broader shifts in disciplinary history that saw a new focus on “history from below” (Feldman and Lawrence, 2011 , p. 3), focusing on the experiences of non-dominant cultural groups, such as First Nations peoples, migrants and women. This began in the 1970s with the introduction of the Schools History Project in Britain, which emphasised the disciplinary skills of history and using historical sources rather than memorisation of a grand monocultural narrative (Bedford, 2023 ). This shift was mirrored by changes in Canada, with Peter Seixas’ Historical Thinking Project working in tandem with social shifts that placed greater emphasis on Canada’s settler colonial and First Nations histories to reform history education in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Bedford, 2023 ). These influences circulated in Australia for almost 30 years (Dallimore & Condie, 2022 ) before the creation of the Australian Curriculum in the late 2000s, which bought to the fore the tensions between those who sought to maintain a singular ‘national identity’ into which the increasingly diverse community should assimilate or an approach which both recognises and celebrates this diversity as contributing to the development of the modern nation through the development of historical thinking and skills. The analysis of the curriculum focuses specifically on the sub strands ‘Deep Time history of Australia’, ‘Making and transforming the Australian Nation’ and ‘Building Modern Australia’ (ACARA, 2023a ), the most overtly ‘Australian’ of the curriculum topics. Each sub strand consists of Knowledge and Understanding content descriptors, which outline core content to be covered. These are supported by elaborations, which are not compulsory but designed to help teachers identify how the larger content descriptor may be addressed. There is also a Historical Skills strand which describes the historical thinking skills expected of students. It is up to each teacher or school as to how much emphasis and time is given to each of the content descriptors. Delving into these curriculum sub strands through discursive analysis of the elaborations reveals some which perhaps are reflective of the ideological tussle over the curriculum’s national imperatives.

First nations agency

The focus on First Nations pre-colonial history in Year 7 ‘Deep Time Australia’ is not a new addition, but a renewal more reflective of contemporary historical, archaeological, and social understandings of First Nations histories (Zarmati, 2022 ). Yet this unit is still positioned within a linear chronology, imposing the broader western onto-epistemology of time upon First Nations culture, positioning it as ‘past’ in a way that fails to fully realise First Nations’ understandings of time as “contemporary entanglements between ancient knowledge looms, ancestors and land, which connect all existent things within a recurrent experience of time. This notion of time, [is] characterised by the synchronous assembling of continuous experience” (Kelly and Rigney, 2021 , p. 393).

Roberts’ ( 2022 ) demand that there be a focus on the period 1750–1914 is an interesting one, given it covers the period of settler-colonial violence now recognised as the Frontier Wars, which the conservative right often ignore or minimise. Prime Minister John Howard refused to offer an apology to the Stolen Generation on the grounds that one generation should not take responsibility for the actions of a past generation (Davies, 2008 ), which further perpetuates the idea that harms done to First Nations peoples and cultures are an issue of the past, rather than having ongoing ramifications. In the final version of the curriculum, of the seven content descriptors for the period 1750–1914, only two explicitly refer to First Nations peoples. The first explores “the causes and effects of European contact and extension of settlement, including their impact on the First Nations Peoples of Australia”. It is important to note that in this descriptor, First Nations peoples are acted upon , with no consideration of their agency within the colonial encounter. The second descriptor is: “different experiences and perspectives of colonisers, settlers and First Nations Australians and the impact of these experiences on changes to Australian society’s ideas, beliefs and values” (ACARA, 2023a ). Yet as Lowe and Yunkaporta found in their analysis of the first version of the Australian Curriculum in 2013, the presence of Aboriginal history in the curriculum does “not necessarily represent Aboriginal perspectives” (p. 4).

This opaque phraseology echoes one of the most common critiques of First Nations histories is the way in which First Nations agency, resistance and cultural value are minimised in settler-colonial societies (Synot, 2019 ). This is again reflected in the elaborations in ‘Making and Transforming the Australian Nation’. First Nations peoples are denied agency, nominalised into objects who suffer the effects of “colonisation, such as frontier conflict and massacres of First Nations Australians, the spread of European diseases and the destruction of cultural lifestyles” (ACARA, 2023a ). Importantly, it is not only the First Nations peoples who are denied agency or resistance here – the perpetrators of these massacres and destruction go unnamed. This lack of naming is addressed in a subsequent elaboration, which “analys[es] the impact of colonisation by Europeans on First Nations Australians such as frontier warfare, massacres, removal from land and relocation to ‘protectorates’, reserves and missions” (ACARA, 2023a , authors’ emphasis). However, First Nations peoples are again denied any agency, as the students explore the “impacts …on First Nations Australia” rather than their active involvement in and response to these events. This ‘acted upon’ framing is repeated in the elaborations of the content descriptor that considers the different perspective and experience of settlers and First Nations peoples, which “describe[es] the impact of changes brought about by non-Indigenous groups on First Nations peoples”. Despite historians’ recognition of the Frontier Wars as, “one of the few significant wars in Australian history and arguably the single most important one” (Reynolds, 2013 , p. 248), the curriculum still frames this conflict as something done to First Nations peoples.

The Stolen Generations are covered in the curriculum and do include some consideration of “the experiences of separation” in Year 9, but again, any formal recognition of First Nations resistance to these laws or broader campaigning against the legislation is not made explicit. In Year 10’s ‘Building a Nation’, First Nations civil rights is addressed, first with a focus on the “causes of First Nations Australians’ campaigns for rights”. First Nations agency is directly acknowledged in “the contributions of significant individuals and groups in the campaign…” yet this is later conflated with the experience of other groups in the content descriptor “the continuing efforts to create change in the civil rights and freedoms in Australia, for First Nations Australians, migrants and women” (ACARA, 2023a ). Interview responses and curriculum directives make clear that this conflation is not the intent, as teachers have the freedom to choose how much emphasis is given to content descriptors. However, this requires a degree of both disciplinary knowledge and professional expertise to understand, which is increasingly less likely in the midst of a teacher shortage forcing teachers to teach outside of their discipline expertise, and the declining number of experienced teachers available to mentor new educators.

Overall, while there is much greater inclusion of First Nations experiences and perspectives promoted by the curriculum, it is at the same time perpetuating the idea that colonisation was enacted upon a passive Indigenous population. This is not limited to History, as Kelley and Rigney point out it remains one of the greatest challenges to Australian education today:

In Australian education, Eurocentric perceptions of time influence teachers’ and students’ values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Problems arise when Indigenous ecologies of time inscribed with culture get overridden in classrooms that see time as linear. For example, a teacher’s language becomes problematic when they use past tense to refer to Aboriginal cultures; invoke common myths of Dreaming as historical; and use stereotypes of Aboriginal societies as dated primitive and prehistoric. First Nations children are penalised and receive unwanted abuse when they rebel in class against perceptions that ancient traditional knowledges are of the past, rather than viewed as a knowledge loom device for weaving new fibres of knowing into the modern cultural fabric (2021, p. 393).

Thus, while greater inclusion of First Nations histories is a positive, the framing and language remains problematic (and politicised), so it falls to teachers to navigate this through the content descriptors they choose to focus on and the language choices they make when doing so.

Growth is good

Another key theme that emerges in an analysis of the curriculum elaborations is a celebration of Australia as an agricultural powerhouse. While this is factually true, its framing is problematic at times. As the last theme highlighted, First Nations resistance to settler-colonial invasion is minimised through a denial of agency. When First Nations agency is acknowledged, it is framed around their contribution to the new nation rather than giving any recognition to their fierce opposition to its establishment: “investigating how First Nations Australians responded to colonisation, including through making important contributions to the various industry that were established on their lands and waters, adopting Christianity and other settler religions” (ACARA, 2023a ). Another elaboration foregrounds “Australia’s economic development and prosperity” which stemmed from “wheat, wool, beef, mining, cotton, fishing, pearling and whaling”. Many of these industries exploited First Nations and migrant workers (Lawrence & Jones, 2023 ), but this is not addressed. Gold mining, and the emerging agricultural and pastoral industry are also addressed in the elaborations on the “key social, cultural, economic and political changes” of the period. Australia’s relatively rapid transition from a carceral outpost to an important agricultural exporter is impressive, but the cost of this transition to First Nations peoples, Pacific Islanderss who were black-birded (coerced, mislead or kidnapped) to work on cane farms, and other groups who did not willingly join this agricultural revolution is understated. This again works to reinforce a discourse of national progress.

“Australians all let us rejoice” …

The curriculum acknowledges Australia’s political foundation as a white utopia, where three-time PM Alfred Deakin argued “if we exclude all coloured peoples we go a long way towards obtaining a white Australia” (Deakin, 1901 ). The curriculum recognises “the ‘White Australia’ ideal, nationalist ideals and egalitarianism” that “contributed to Federation and the development of democracy in Australia” (ACARA, 2023a ). The egalitarianism of the fathers of Federation only extended to Anglo-European men, reflecting the white nationalist values dominant at the time and well into the 20th century.

This celebratory tone, which downplays the negative experience of minority groups and continues to laud western civilisation, was present in the curriculum feedback that informed the development of Version 9 .

Students need to understand where western civilisation comes from, the foundations of our democracy, our freedom of speech movement thought and conscience. More aboriginal studies is important however not at the expense of Greek and Roman history. Studies about the early characters which help establish our nation, our constitution, and our growth as a nation should also be included. (Secondary teacher, South Australia, Government, Regional). (ACARA, 2021, p. 80)

The argument it is more important for young Australians to study Ancient Greece and Rome than the history of their own First Nations peoples exemplifies the Eurocentrism of the ‘national progress’ discourse. In ancient Athens, only free male citizens could vote (approximately 30% of the adult population) (Thorley, 2005 ) and in Rome, the limited democracy of the republic reverted to imperial rule under the Julio-Claudians and their successors after a spate of unfortunate stabbings. While the study of Greece and Rome as the beginnings of democratic systems of government is relevant in any liberal democracy, the preferencing of this over the history of their own nation’s ancient past, as suggested by the ACARA syllabus feedback respondent, would further limit the study of non-European cultures in one of only three units where Australia is not the focus.

Understanding the foundations of democracy and our political system are vitally important, yet it is also important we understand our own political and social complexities, and how other societies and cultures have developed over time, and the limited opportunities for students in Years 7–10 to study nations other than Australia or European nations challenges the curriculum’s claim of a “world history approach” (ACARA, 2023a ). This tension between discourses of diversity and inclusion in the broader aims of the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration (2019), where students “are informed and responsible global and local members of the community who value and celebrate cultural and linguistic differences, and engage in the global community, particularly with our neighbours in the Indo-Pacific regions” and the history curriculum’s emphasis on Australia’s narrative, with only two sub-strands offering a mix of European and non-European cultures in a 50/50 split, making it possible for teachers to select a European culture in every sub-strand if they wish.

A moral equivalency

The fact that Britain undertook a settler-colonial invasion of lands owned by First Nations people, which resulted in a protracted period of frontier conflict is now well-accepted by historians (MacIntyre & Clark, 2003 ; Reynolds, 2013 ; Ryan, 2022 ). However, the curriculum softens this by “discussing terms in relation to Australian history such as “invasion”, colonisation’, and ‘settlement’, and why these continue to be contested within society today”. This ‘discussion’ occurs again in Year 10, where students can explore the “debates over multiculturalism” and “changes in the debate about immigration and border protection”. Given that Australia’s offshore processing of immigrants is considered a human rights violation by the UN Human Rights Committee (Cody and Nawaz, 2017 ), debating its merits seems disingenuous. This use of language which obfuscates the reality of invasion and frontier warfare has been identified as a consistent issue since the curriculum’s inception (Lowe & Yunkaporta, 2013 , p. 11).

While the curriculum states that the attention given to each of the elaborations is up to the school or the teacher, this is not always the case. In its first iteration, several states and territories attempted to adopt the curriculum wholesale, meaning teachers were directed to cover all of the content descriptors. In this messaging, the ability to choose the time given to each descriptor was overwhelmed by the need to cover so many none were done in any depth. In Queensland, there was a brief period where it was thought that all the elaborations should be taught as well. This has resulted in ongoing ‘mixed messaging’ within various schools and sectors. This legacy of initial implementation and what has become curriculum mythology presents some concerns in reading the Year 10 sub-strand, which has content descriptors on migration, First Nations’ civil rights, and womens’ rights, and these are conflated in the final descriptor: “the continuing efforts to create change in the civil rights and freedoms in Australia, for First Nations Australians, migrants and women” (ACARA, 2023a ). While it is not the intent of the curriculum designers to suggest an equivalency between First Nations dispossession and intergenerational harm and the discrimination faced by migrants and women (Participant 2), the legacies of the curriculum implementation may result in this being the case.

As our analysis reveals, the Australian Curriculum Version 9 is a genuinely national curriculum, in that it is centred on Australian history and Australia’s place in the global historical narrative. While it has its flaws, this is perhaps inevitable given that the document seeks to respond to a wide range of imperatives, reflected in the heated political debate that accompanies each revision. The final report on feedback on the curriculum acknowledged this, with concerns expressed about the resourcing of First Nations topics to ensure culturally appropriate implementation. The report also recounts calls to “get the balance right” between First Nations content and “western” content, “specifically towards a stronger consideration of Christianity” (ACARA, 2021 , p.15). This need to encompass not only the vast span of history in its content but do so in way that attempts to be inclusive of the broad spectrum of beliefs, values and attitudes present in Australia is a Herculean task. The curriculum itself is not nationalist, just very national in focus, but it is being used by some conservative political pundits in service of a nationalist discourse, and thus how it is taught to young Australians is vitally important.

Pedagogies to promote democratic dispositions

It is clear that both the social and political discourse around the teaching of history and the curriculum itself work along a spectrum. At one end is the Anglo-Christian conservatism that promotes a singular national narrative of progress and achievement. This approach however, as little traction amongst history teachers, with one teacher suggesting, “If I’m teaching history to make everyone feel patriotic and happy, well then I’m not actually a history teacher” (Participant 8). At the other end of the spectrum is an effort to explore the histories of a wider range of our nations’ citizens, recognising both achievements made, and harms done. This spectrum is also mirrored in the approaches to history teaching, with more conservative views promoting a ‘knowledge-rich’ approach which centres on the development of a grand national narrative, or a ‘historical thinking’ approach, which centres on inquiry, consideration of a range of different perspectives and the use of historical sources to support argument. This pedagogical tension has been resolved to a degree in the embedding of Seixas’ historical thinking concepts in the Australian Curriculum since its inception, and in the explicit statement that “History is a disciplined process of inquiry into the past…[which] develops transferable skills such as the ability to ask relevant questions, critically analyse and interpret sources, consider context, explain different perspectives, develop and substantiate interpretations with evidence, and communicate effectively” (ACARA, 2023b ). This is reinforced in the Historical Skills strand of the curriculum, and in the Achievement Standards that make clear that students must actively participate in the historical inquiry process. It is also reflected in the views of various curriculum authority staff, with one member pointing out that in developing historical skills, “we are equipping students, with no matter what they do in life, that we want them to be well-informed, active members of society” (Participant 2).

The relationship between historical thinking and the skills of effective democratic citizens is a vital one, particularly within a society saturated with fake news and online echo chambers which amplify misinformation. Ensuring students can not only locate a range of perspectives, but evaluate their reliability is a curriculum expectation (ACARA, 2023a ). This does mean that students will encounter perspectives which differ from their own, and views which are antithetical to the social values of a liberal democracy (such as anti-Semitic, racist and other exclusionary ideologies). This is the risk that accompanies opening topics to wider discussion, which can be “a double-edged sword in terms of promoting a democratic, inclusive climate, at times leading to the opposite effect” (Savenije & Goldberg, 2019 , p. 58). However, to engage with a range of perspectives does not suggest that all perspectives are equally valid. As we have argued elsewhere (Bedford and Barnes, 2024, in press ), by considering the veracity of the evidence presented to support various claims, students can learn to identify misinformation more readily, and so challenge and question views which violate school or social values.

One strategy for doing this is lateral reading. As Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew found in their study of historians, history students and fact-checkers, traditional “vertical reading” strategies can no longer be relied upon to determine the veracity of online source material (2019, p. 1). The fact-checkers were best placed to make determinations about a site’s veracity as they read laterally: that is, they navigated away from the website they were asked to assess, instead opening new tabs to research the author or organisation, their funding, political leaning and other relevant contextual information that allowed them to make a more accurate assessment (Wineburg & McGrew, 2019 ). These skills aren’t only useful in assessing historical sources found online, but all online material. Wineburg and McGrew close with the example of how lateral reading might be used specifically to make decisions before voting on a range of social reforms ( 2019 , p. 33). This view of the benefits of critical literacies promoted by skills like lateral reading is reinforced by a teacher of more than 30 years’ experience, who argues, “you’re not going to get those analytical, creative, critical, active and informed citizens if they don’t know how to determine fact from fiction” (Participant 8). While this may seem simplistic, the participant’s comments speak to the syllabus requirement for analysis and evaluation of sources, where students are expected to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of the evidence they locate. Thus, determining fact from fiction is not an uninformed personal preference, but rather a demonstration of the complex skills students will need as members of a pluralistic democracy, where they will have to consider differing perspectives and interpretations to make informed decisions.

The knowledge and skills developed in Australian history classrooms are linked explicitly to the development of thoughtful and effective citizens by history teachers. The early findings of our research into the teaching of history in secondary schools in Queensland suggest most history teachers see their work as explicitly linked to the development of students as citizens. One curriculum authority representative argued for the Humanities by pointing out “when they [students] turn 18, they’re going to be voting, they’re going to be members of our civic society and that is something that, when you think about broadly, and they will shape our nation through that” (Participant 2).

Teaching students to understand their histories and engage with evidence in a critical way has a range of benefits. As Kawamura argues, “This approach [historical thinking], with an agenda towards accommodating diversity, can potentially offer two critical outcomes: an understanding that many divergent narratives and perspectives may coexist in pluralistic societies, and that citizens will be able to meaningfully and critically engage with the past and one another” ( 2023 , p. 167). This belief is also held by practising secondary teachers, with Participant 4 explaining:

the students who come into it [history] and who can make those critical connections between ‘this is the way that the people were acting in the past’ and ‘this is informing the way that we live now’ and ‘these are all of the connections that we’re making between my own life and the politics of today and what’s happened in the past’, it’s those kids that are going to take it and actually use it. I don’t know. I think my approach in terms of, and this is why I use this approach [teaching historical thinking], in terms of trying to develop student capacity for their own critical thinking and their own reflection, that’s why I do that.

Across the respondents, this theme of developing students’ as critical thinkers was dominant, and frequently linked to how they would be able to use these skills in their adult lives. This would suggest that despite the issues in the curriculum language and design that may point towards a grand national narrative discourse, teachers are using pedagogical approaches which take up the Historical Skills strand’s focus on inquiry and historical thinking to counter monocultural narrative constructions by establishing a discourse of pluralistic critical inquiry. This is clear in the research findings: when asked about the key terms they associate with the teaching of history, the respondents focused on cognitions such as “analyse, evaluate, justify” (Participant 1) and “explaining and analysing and evaluating” (Participant 3). One respondent listed the curriculum’s historical thinking concepts almost verbatim: “evidence, perspectives, interpretations, contestability, continuity and change, cause and effect and significance” (Participant 2). Another stated that “I tend to focus on the skills and the concepts” (Participant 4). Overwhelmingly, it seems that teachers are largely unaffected by the political rhetoric or the specific language of the curriculum and are instead focused on ensuring students are developing the historical thinking skills that will serve them well in both their studies and their adult lives.

The interview responses suggest that history teachers position themselves within a discourse of democratic education, which Drerup argues allows student to

acquire and cultivate a variety of epistemic, communicative and political attitudes, skills and virtues as well as associated bodies of knowledge on which democratic societies depend. These include, for example: knowledge about and interest in political issues, critical thinking skills, motivation for political engagement as well as acceptance of basic democratic values and principles (equality, tolerance, pluralism, etc.) and the ability to deal with conflict in a civil and peaceful way. (2021, p. 256)

Thus, while the Australian Curriculum establishes a largely national discourse in its Knowledge and Understanding content descriptors, interview responses suggest teachers are more engaged with the Historical Skills strand, which emphasises historical thinking. The responses also show that teachers see these skills as fundamental to the student’s later successful engagement in our pluralistic, multicultural society, and so could be framed as a discourse for democratic dispositions.

Concluding thoughts: what is a citizen?

Taken together, the views of history teachers and curriculum authority staff and the inquiry-centred focus of the skills strand in the curriculum reveal a belief that teaching young people critical thinking skills, in the context of learning about their nation’s past, fosters the development of effective citizens within liberal democracies like Australia. This framing of citizenship as a critical act is of particular importance in the current political climate, in which being a good citizen is synonymous with being a loyal patriot in far-right discourses.

Thus, we might move towards a definition of what it is to be a citizen that is more nuanced. Citizenship certainly does involve a degree of patriotism; in that we all want our nation to be prosperous and safe. But this doesn’t mean a blind allegiance. In the context of history education, this involves teaching both our nation’s successes and the wrongs that have been perpetuated under our flag – these are the “differing perspectives” that are so foundational to history as discipline. A vibrant democracy is one in which differing views can be heard, and the decision of the majority respected. Again, history education fosters the democratic dispositions that allow this sort of effective citizenship by developing in students the critical thinking skills to engage with evidence to make informed decisions (Wineburg & McGrew, 2019 ) and participate in respectful debate (Bedford, 2020 ). If understood in this way, the debate about the content of the curriculum and its status as a national document recedes in importance, although the need for greater inclusivity and representation remains. Rather, it is how this history is taught that shapes the next generation of citizenry, and so foregrounding the skills that promote democratic dispositions, which history teachers, as curriculum workers, see as central to their work, is of vital importance to our nation’s next chapter.

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Bedford, A., Kerby, M. Australia’s national(ist) history curriculum: history education as a site of attempted de-democratisation. Curric Perspect (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-024-00248-9

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Technology enablement gives critical thinking support

University of Northern Iowa to offer fully online MBA degree with updated curriculum

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa –  Following unanimous approval by the Iowa Board of Regents, working professionals will now be able to earn their Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Northern Iowa fully online. The move comes with a revamped curriculum to meet the demands of modern business professionals. The top-ranked MBA program offered by the  Wilson College of Business highlights the university’s dedication to academic excellence and meeting student needs, making it easier and more flexible for professionals to advance their careers.

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"UNI alumni want to earn a Wilson MBA. They value the coursework, experiences and relationships they have developed during their undergraduate program,” said Mary Connerley, associate dean of the Wilson College of Business. “I'm excited to deliver the same level of excellence and support to all professionals across Iowa and beyond. Our focus is on meeting the needs of employers who are looking for professionals with strong written and oral communication skills and critical thinking abilities."

Participants in the program with a desire to earn their MBA have the option of a flexible pathway to achieving their goal by completing all three certificate programs. The program aims to enhance the skills of degree holders, responding to employers' growing demand for professionals with strong communication and critical thinking skills.

“These new stackable certificates, along with the online MBA program, are designed to offer unparalleled convenience,” said Stephanie Huffman, dean of the  College of Graduate, Research and Online Education . “This allows students to tailor their education to their career goals while studying from anywhere.” 

The Wilson MBA program is comprised of 10 courses, totaling 30 credits. Those in the program can attend these courses online from any location. 

"Our decision to add an online MBA program is a direct response to the evolving needs of today's business professionals," said Alicia Rosburg, MBA program coordinator. "By adding an online format, we prioritize convenience and flexibility, reflecting our dedication to student success. This approach guarantees that all students can access our top-tier education from anywhere, creating opportunities to advance their education, especially for those living outside of the Cedar Valley or those balancing work and family commitments."

Prospective students interested in earning their MBA through the Wilson College of Business can find more information about the program and admissions process at  business.uni.edu/mba .

Media Contact: Adam Amdor

[email protected], uni introduces online pathway for special education endorsements.

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