critical thinking learning tools

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Eight Instructional Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking

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(This is the first post in a three-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

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

This three-part series will explore what critical thinking is, if it can be specifically taught and, if so, how can teachers do so in their classrooms.

Today’s guests are 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.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On Teaching & Learning Critical Thinking In The Classroom .

Current Events

Dara Laws Savage is an English teacher at the Early College High School at Delaware State University, where she serves as a teacher and instructional coach and lead mentor. Dara has been teaching for 25 years (career preparation, English, photography, yearbook, newspaper, and graphic design) and has presented nationally on project-based learning and technology integration:

There is so much going on right now and there is an overload of information for us to process. Did you ever stop to think how our students are processing current events? They see news feeds, hear news reports, and scan photos and posts, but are they truly thinking about what they are hearing and seeing?

I tell my students that my job is not to give them answers but to teach them how to think about what they read and hear. So what is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom? There are just as many definitions of critical thinking as there are people trying to define it. However, the Critical Think Consortium focuses on the tools to create a thinking-based classroom rather than a definition: “Shape the climate to support thinking, create opportunities for thinking, build capacity to think, provide guidance to inform thinking.” Using these four criteria and pairing them with current events, teachers easily create learning spaces that thrive on thinking and keep students engaged.

One successful technique I use is the FIRE Write. Students are given a quote, a paragraph, an excerpt, or a photo from the headlines. Students are asked to F ocus and respond to the selection for three minutes. Next, students are asked to I dentify a phrase or section of the photo and write for two minutes. Third, students are asked to R eframe their response around a specific word, phrase, or section within their previous selection. Finally, students E xchange their thoughts with a classmate. Within the exchange, students also talk about how the selection connects to what we are covering in class.

There was a controversial Pepsi ad in 2017 involving Kylie Jenner and a protest with a police presence. The imagery in the photo was strikingly similar to a photo that went viral with a young lady standing opposite a police line. Using that image from a current event engaged my students and gave them the opportunity to critically think about events of the time.

Here are the two photos and a student response:

F - Focus on both photos and respond for three minutes

In the first picture, you see a strong and courageous black female, bravely standing in front of two officers in protest. She is risking her life to do so. Iesha Evans is simply proving to the world she does NOT mean less because she is black … and yet officers are there to stop her. She did not step down. In the picture below, you see Kendall Jenner handing a police officer a Pepsi. Maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal, except this was Pepsi’s weak, pathetic, and outrageous excuse of a commercial that belittles the whole movement of people fighting for their lives.

I - Identify a word or phrase, underline it, then write about it for two minutes

A white, privileged female in place of a fighting black woman was asking for trouble. A struggle we are continuously fighting every day, and they make a mockery of it. “I know what will work! Here Mr. Police Officer! Drink some Pepsi!” As if. Pepsi made a fool of themselves, and now their already dwindling fan base continues to ever shrink smaller.

R - Reframe your thoughts by choosing a different word, then write about that for one minute

You don’t know privilege until it’s gone. You don’t know privilege while it’s there—but you can and will be made accountable and aware. Don’t use it for evil. You are not stupid. Use it to do something. Kendall could’ve NOT done the commercial. Kendall could’ve released another commercial standing behind a black woman. Anything!

Exchange - Remember to discuss how this connects to our school song project and our previous discussions?

This connects two ways - 1) We want to convey a strong message. Be powerful. Show who we are. And Pepsi definitely tried. … Which leads to the second connection. 2) Not mess up and offend anyone, as had the one alma mater had been linked to black minstrels. We want to be amazing, but we have to be smart and careful and make sure we include everyone who goes to our school and everyone who may go to our school.

As a final step, students read and annotate the full article and compare it to their initial response.

Using current events and critical-thinking strategies like FIRE writing helps create a learning space where thinking is the goal rather than a score on a multiple-choice assessment. Critical-thinking skills can cross over to any of students’ other courses and into life outside the classroom. After all, we as teachers want to help the whole student be successful, and critical thinking is an important part of navigating life after they leave our classrooms.

‘Before-Explore-Explain’

Patrick Brown is the executive director of STEM and CTE for the Fort Zumwalt school district in Missouri and an experienced educator and author :

Planning for critical thinking focuses on teaching the most crucial science concepts, practices, and logical-thinking skills as well as the best use of instructional time. One way to ensure that lessons maintain a focus on critical thinking is to focus on the instructional sequence used to teach.

Explore-before-explain teaching is all about promoting critical thinking for learners to better prepare students for the reality of their world. What having an explore-before-explain mindset means is that in our planning, we prioritize giving students firsthand experiences with data, allow students to construct evidence-based claims that focus on conceptual understanding, and challenge students to discuss and think about the why behind phenomena.

Just think of the critical thinking that has to occur for students to construct a scientific claim. 1) They need the opportunity to collect data, analyze it, and determine how to make sense of what the data may mean. 2) With data in hand, students can begin thinking about the validity and reliability of their experience and information collected. 3) They can consider what differences, if any, they might have if they completed the investigation again. 4) They can scrutinize outlying data points for they may be an artifact of a true difference that merits further exploration of a misstep in the procedure, measuring device, or measurement. All of these intellectual activities help them form more robust understanding and are evidence of their critical thinking.

In explore-before-explain teaching, all of these hard critical-thinking tasks come before teacher explanations of content. Whether we use discovery experiences, problem-based learning, and or inquiry-based activities, strategies that are geared toward helping students construct understanding promote critical thinking because students learn content by doing the practices valued in the field to generate knowledge.

An Issue of Equity

Meg Riordan, Ph.D., is the chief learning officer at The Possible Project, an out-of-school program that collaborates with youth to build entrepreneurial skills and mindsets and provides pathways to careers and long-term economic prosperity. She has been in the field of education for over 25 years as a middle and high school teacher, school coach, college professor, regional director of N.Y.C. Outward Bound Schools, and director of external research with EL Education:

Although critical thinking often defies straightforward definition, most in the education field agree it consists of several components: reasoning, problem-solving, and decisionmaking, plus analysis and evaluation of information, such that multiple sides of an issue can be explored. It also includes dispositions and “the willingness to apply critical-thinking principles, rather than fall back on existing unexamined beliefs, or simply believe what you’re told by authority figures.”

Despite variation in definitions, critical thinking is nonetheless promoted as an essential outcome of students’ learning—we want to see students and adults demonstrate it across all fields, professions, and in their personal lives. Yet there is simultaneously a rationing of opportunities in schools for students of color, students from under-resourced communities, and other historically marginalized groups to deeply learn and practice critical thinking.

For example, many of our most underserved students often spend class time filling out worksheets, promoting high compliance but low engagement, inquiry, critical thinking, or creation of new ideas. At a time in our world when college and careers are critical for participation in society and the global, knowledge-based economy, far too many students struggle within classrooms and schools that reinforce low-expectations and inequity.

If educators aim to prepare all students for an ever-evolving marketplace and develop skills that will be valued no matter what tomorrow’s jobs are, then we must move critical thinking to the forefront of classroom experiences. And educators must design learning to cultivate it.

So, what does that really look like?

Unpack and define critical thinking

To understand critical thinking, educators need to first unpack and define its components. What exactly are we looking for when we speak about reasoning or exploring multiple perspectives on an issue? How does problem-solving show up in English, math, science, art, or other disciplines—and how is it assessed? At Two Rivers, an EL Education school, the faculty identified five constructs of critical thinking, defined each, and created rubrics to generate a shared picture of quality for teachers and students. The rubrics were then adapted across grade levels to indicate students’ learning progressions.

At Avenues World School, critical thinking is one of the Avenues World Elements and is an enduring outcome embedded in students’ early experiences through 12th grade. For instance, a kindergarten student may be expected to “identify cause and effect in familiar contexts,” while an 8th grader should demonstrate the ability to “seek out sufficient evidence before accepting a claim as true,” “identify bias in claims and evidence,” and “reconsider strongly held points of view in light of new evidence.”

When faculty and students embrace a common vision of what critical thinking looks and sounds like and how it is assessed, educators can then explicitly design learning experiences that call for students to employ critical-thinking skills. This kind of work must occur across all schools and programs, especially those serving large numbers of students of color. As Linda Darling-Hammond asserts , “Schools that serve large numbers of students of color are least likely to offer the kind of curriculum needed to ... help students attain the [critical-thinking] skills needed in a knowledge work economy. ”

So, what can it look like to create those kinds of learning experiences?

Designing experiences for critical thinking

After defining a shared understanding of “what” critical thinking is and “how” it shows up across multiple disciplines and grade levels, it is essential to create learning experiences that impel students to cultivate, practice, and apply these skills. There are several levers that offer pathways for teachers to promote critical thinking in lessons:

1.Choose Compelling Topics: Keep it relevant

A key Common Core State Standard asks for students to “write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” That might not sound exciting or culturally relevant. But a learning experience designed for a 12th grade humanities class engaged learners in a compelling topic— policing in America —to analyze and evaluate multiple texts (including primary sources) and share the reasoning for their perspectives through discussion and writing. Students grappled with ideas and their beliefs and employed deep critical-thinking skills to develop arguments for their claims. Embedding critical-thinking skills in curriculum that students care about and connect with can ignite powerful learning experiences.

2. Make Local Connections: Keep it real

At The Possible Project , an out-of-school-time program designed to promote entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, students in a recent summer online program (modified from in-person due to COVID-19) explored the impact of COVID-19 on their communities and local BIPOC-owned businesses. They learned interviewing skills through a partnership with Everyday Boston , conducted virtual interviews with entrepreneurs, evaluated information from their interviews and local data, and examined their previously held beliefs. They created blog posts and videos to reflect on their learning and consider how their mindsets had changed as a result of the experience. In this way, we can design powerful community-based learning and invite students into productive struggle with multiple perspectives.

3. Create Authentic Projects: Keep it rigorous

At Big Picture Learning schools, students engage in internship-based learning experiences as a central part of their schooling. Their school-based adviser and internship-based mentor support them in developing real-world projects that promote deeper learning and critical-thinking skills. Such authentic experiences teach “young people to be thinkers, to be curious, to get from curiosity to creation … and it helps students design a learning experience that answers their questions, [providing an] opportunity to communicate it to a larger audience—a major indicator of postsecondary success.” Even in a remote environment, we can design projects that ask more of students than rote memorization and that spark critical thinking.

Our call to action is this: As educators, we need to make opportunities for critical thinking available not only to the affluent or those fortunate enough to be placed in advanced courses. The tools are available, let’s use them. Let’s interrogate our current curriculum and design learning experiences that engage all students in real, relevant, and rigorous experiences that require critical thinking and prepare them for promising postsecondary pathways.

Critical Thinking & Student Engagement

Dr. PJ Caposey is an award-winning educator, keynote speaker, consultant, and author of seven books who currently serves as the superintendent of schools for the award-winning Meridian CUSD 223 in northwest Illinois. You can find PJ on most social-media platforms as MCUSDSupe:

When I start my keynote on student engagement, I invite two people up on stage and give them each five paper balls to shoot at a garbage can also conveniently placed on stage. Contestant One shoots their shot, and the audience gives approval. Four out of 5 is a heckuva score. Then just before Contestant Two shoots, I blindfold them and start moving the garbage can back and forth. I usually try to ensure that they can at least make one of their shots. Nobody is successful in this unfair environment.

I thank them and send them back to their seats and then explain that this little activity was akin to student engagement. While we all know we want student engagement, we are shooting at different targets. More importantly, for teachers, it is near impossible for them to hit a target that is moving and that they cannot see.

Within the world of education and particularly as educational leaders, we have failed to simplify what student engagement looks like, and it is impossible to define or articulate what student engagement looks like if we cannot clearly articulate what critical thinking is and looks like in a classroom. Because, simply, without critical thought, there is no engagement.

The good news here is that critical thought has been defined and placed into taxonomies for decades already. This is not something new and not something that needs to be redefined. I am a Bloom’s person, but there is nothing wrong with DOK or some of the other taxonomies, either. To be precise, I am a huge fan of Daggett’s Rigor and Relevance Framework. I have used that as a core element of my practice for years, and it has shaped who I am as an instructional leader.

So, in order to explain critical thought, a teacher or a leader must familiarize themselves with these tried and true taxonomies. Easy, right? Yes, sort of. The issue is not understanding what critical thought is; it is the ability to integrate it into the classrooms. In order to do so, there are a four key steps every educator must take.

• Integrating critical thought/rigor into a lesson does not happen by chance, it happens by design. Planning for critical thought and engagement is much different from planning for a traditional lesson. In order to plan for kids to think critically, you have to provide a base of knowledge and excellent prompts to allow them to explore their own thinking in order to analyze, evaluate, or synthesize information.
• SIDE NOTE – Bloom’s verbs are a great way to start when writing objectives, but true planning will take you deeper than this.

QUESTIONING

• If the questions and prompts given in a classroom have correct answers or if the teacher ends up answering their own questions, the lesson will lack critical thought and rigor.
• Script five questions forcing higher-order thought prior to every lesson. Experienced teachers may not feel they need this, but it helps to create an effective habit.
• If lessons are rigorous and assessments are not, students will do well on their assessments, and that may not be an accurate representation of the knowledge and skills they have mastered. If lessons are easy and assessments are rigorous, the exact opposite will happen. When deciding to increase critical thought, it must happen in all three phases of the game: planning, instruction, and assessment.

TALK TIME / CONTROL

• To increase rigor, the teacher must DO LESS. This feels counterintuitive but is accurate. Rigorous lessons involving tons of critical thought must allow for students to work on their own, collaborate with peers, and connect their ideas. This cannot happen in a silent room except for the teacher talking. In order to increase rigor, decrease talk time and become comfortable with less control. Asking questions and giving prompts that lead to no true correct answer also means less control. This is a tough ask for some teachers. Explained differently, if you assign one assignment and get 30 very similar products, you have most likely assigned a low-rigor recipe. If you assign one assignment and get multiple varied products, then the students have had a chance to think deeply, and you have successfully integrated critical thought into your classroom.

Thanks to Dara, Patrick, Meg, and PJ for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

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Article • 8 min read

Critical Thinking

Developing the right mindset and skills.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

We make hundreds of decisions every day and, whether we realize it or not, we're all critical thinkers.

We use critical thinking each time we weigh up our options, prioritize our responsibilities, or think about the likely effects of our actions. It's a crucial skill that helps us to cut out misinformation and make wise decisions. The trouble is, we're not always very good at it!

In this article, we'll explore the key skills that you need to develop your critical thinking skills, and how to adopt a critical thinking mindset, so that you can make well-informed decisions.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the discipline of rigorously and skillfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions, and beliefs. You'll need to actively question every step of your thinking process to do it well.

Collecting, analyzing and evaluating information is an important skill in life, and a highly valued asset in the workplace. People who score highly in critical thinking assessments are also rated by their managers as having good problem-solving skills, creativity, strong decision-making skills, and good overall performance. [1]

Key Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinkers possess a set of key characteristics which help them to question information and their own thinking. Focus on the following areas to develop your critical thinking skills:

Being willing and able to explore alternative approaches and experimental ideas is crucial. Can you think through "what if" scenarios, create plausible options, and test out your theories? If not, you'll tend to write off ideas and options too soon, so you may miss the best answer to your situation.

To nurture your curiosity, stay up to date with facts and trends. You'll overlook important information if you allow yourself to become "blinkered," so always be open to new information.

But don't stop there! Look for opposing views or evidence to challenge your information, and seek clarification when things are unclear. This will help you to reassess your beliefs and make a well-informed decision later. Read our article, Opening Closed Minds , for more ways to stay receptive.

Logical Thinking

You must be skilled at reasoning and extending logic to come up with plausible options or outcomes.

It's also important to emphasize logic over emotion. Emotion can be motivating but it can also lead you to take hasty and unwise action, so control your emotions and be cautious in your judgments. Know when a conclusion is "fact" and when it is not. "Could-be-true" conclusions are based on assumptions and must be tested further. Read our article, Logical Fallacies , for help with this.

Use creative problem solving to balance cold logic. By thinking outside of the box you can identify new possible outcomes by using pieces of information that you already have.

Self-Awareness

Many of the decisions we make in life are subtly informed by our values and beliefs. These influences are called cognitive biases and it can be difficult to identify them in ourselves because they're often subconscious.

Practicing self-awareness will allow you to reflect on the beliefs you have and the choices you make. You'll then be better equipped to challenge your own thinking and make improved, unbiased decisions.

One particularly useful tool for critical thinking is the Ladder of Inference . It allows you to test and validate your thinking process, rather than jumping to poorly supported conclusions.

Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset

Combine the above skills with the right mindset so that you can make better decisions and adopt more effective courses of action. You can develop your critical thinking mindset by following this process:

Gather Information

First, collect data, opinions and facts on the issue that you need to solve. Draw on what you already know, and turn to new sources of information to help inform your understanding. Consider what gaps there are in your knowledge and seek to fill them. And look for information that challenges your assumptions and beliefs.

Be sure to verify the authority and authenticity of your sources. Not everything you read is true! Use this checklist to ensure that your information is valid:

• Are your information sources trustworthy ? (For example, well-respected authors, trusted colleagues or peers, recognized industry publications, websites, blogs, etc.)
• Is the information you have gathered up to date ?
• Has the information received any direct criticism ?
• Does the information have any errors or inaccuracies ?
• Is there any evidence to support or corroborate the information you have gathered?
• Is the information you have gathered subjective or biased in any way? (For example, is it based on opinion, rather than fact? Is any of the information you have gathered designed to promote a particular service or organization?)

If any information appears to be irrelevant or invalid, don't include it in your decision making. But don't omit information just because you disagree with it, or your final decision will be flawed and bias.

Now observe the information you have gathered, and interpret it. What are the key findings and main takeaways? What does the evidence point to? Start to build one or two possible arguments based on what you have found.

You'll need to look for the details within the mass of information, so use your powers of observation to identify any patterns or similarities. You can then analyze and extend these trends to make sensible predictions about the future.

To help you to sift through the multiple ideas and theories, it can be useful to group and order items according to their characteristics. From here, you can compare and contrast the different items. And once you've determined how similar or different things are from one another, Paired Comparison Analysis can help you to analyze them.

The final step involves challenging the information and rationalizing its arguments.

Apply the laws of reason (induction, deduction, analogy) to judge an argument and determine its merits. To do this, it's essential that you can determine the significance and validity of an argument to put it in the correct perspective. Take a look at our article, Rational Thinking , for more information about how to do this.

Once you have considered all of the arguments and options rationally, you can finally make an informed decision.

Afterward, take time to reflect on what you have learned and what you found challenging. Step back from the detail of your decision or problem, and look at the bigger picture. Record what you've learned from your observations and experience.

Critical thinking involves rigorously and skilfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions and beliefs. It's a useful skill in the workplace and in life.

You'll need to be curious and creative to explore alternative possibilities, but rational to apply logic, and self-aware to identify when your beliefs could affect your decisions or actions.

You can demonstrate a high level of critical thinking by validating your information, analyzing its meaning, and finally evaluating the argument.

Critical Thinking Infographic

See Critical Thinking represented in our infographic: An Elementary Guide to Critical Thinking .

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Three Tools for Teaching Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills

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As the world economy shifts away from manufacturing jobs and towards service industry and creative jobs, there’s a consensus among parents, educators, politicians and business leaders that it is crucial students graduate into university or the workforce with the ability to identify and solve complex problems, think critically about information, work effectively in teams and communicate clearly about their thinking.

While many teachers agree with this premise, they don’t often know exactly how to teach these skills explicitly, especially because many of the mandates and required curriculum seem to push in the opposite direction. Process-oriented skills are hard to pin down; teachers can see them in certain students, but developing these competencies in students who aren’t already demonstrating them can be tricky. A few teachers in Ontario, Canada have been experimenting with tools they think could make the difference.

Jason Watt has always had very high expectations for his students, whether they were seven-year-olds in grade two or the young adolescents he now teaches in grade seven at Norseman Junior Middle School. But Watt was frustrated that in order to meet his expectations his students would often have to redo their work six or seven times. He often received writing responses that were a simple sentence and he was struggling to empower his students to push their thinking further. Many of them already had deeply ingrained ideas about what they were and weren’t good at, what they could and couldn’t accomplish.

“I wanted the kids to realize there is no bad answer,” Watt said. “There’s just an appropriate answer or a not-quite there answer.” In a training on “ integrative thinking ” at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Watt finally found the tools he needed to develop students’ critical thinking. Several Ontario school boards (the Canadian version of school districts) are now supporting training in the effort.

Originally developed by Rotman’s former dean, Roger Martin , integrative thinking is a broad term to describe looking for solutions through the tensions inherent in different viewpoints. Martin noticed that effective CEOs understood that their own world view was limited, so they sought out opposing viewpoints and came to creative solutions by leveraging seemingly opposing positions. For the past seven years, a spin-off group called the I-Think Initiative has been training teachers in the Toronto area on how integrative thinking can build critical thinking in students from a young age.

LADDER OF INFERENCE 

One of the tools Jason Watt learned about in his training is called the ladder of inference . It’s a model for decision making behavior developed by Harvard professors Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. Essentially, it helps students slow down and realize which data they are taking into account when they make a decision and how the data they choose is informed by their past experiences. Assumptions are often made in a split second decision because the brain is wired to prioritize data that confirms the model a person already holds. The ladder of inference is a way to check those assumptions.

Watt first used the ladder in a very basic way; he showed his grade two students an image of a soccer player lying on the ground, one leg up, holding his head. The image was intentionally a little vague. At first Watt’s students concluded that the man had fallen. But as they worked their way up the ladder of inference they began to notice different aspects of the image and add those to their “data pool.”

“Students started to realize there was a lot more going on in the picture just in terms of data than what they first said,” Watt said. For example, students would say the man was hurt. That’s not a data point, it’s an inference. Watt could tease out from them that they thought the man was hurt because he was on the ground, holding his head and had a pained look on his face. “I started getting much deeper, more thoughtful answers from students,” Watt said.

As students practiced using the ladder of inference in various content areas they also started to use it on their own when dealing with social problems. When there is a disagreement, students now use the ladder of inference to back up and think through the data they chose and the assumptions that stemmed from that data. Watt says now students solve problems on their own or ask a friend to help them make their ladders.

“We’ve learned that there’s nothing wrong with questioning, so the kids have become much more willing and accepting of criticism because it’s not really criticism anymore,” Watt said. He feels the integrative thinking tools have naturally encouraged his students to build a growth mindset about all aspects of life because multiple viewpoints or ways to solve a problem are a core part of why integrative thinking works. Difference is the strength of the model.

Another integrative thinking tool called the pro/pro chart offers some good examples of how students are learning to think flexibly. Most people are familiar with pro/con charts, but in a pro/pro chart the group thinks through the positives of two different ideas. Rather than deciding between two choices, this tool helps students identify the positive traits of different viewpoints, and then create a third option by merging the good qualities of both.

Watt asked his students to brainstorm ideas for the worst restaurant of all time. When they had a good list of terrible ideas, Watt then asked groups of students to each take one idea and explain why it was the best restaurant of all time. One group had initially proposed a restaurant with no seating would be the worst; they reframed that to say if everyone was standing up they would move through the restaurant faster and turn more of a profit. A second group had said a restaurant in the woods would be terrible; they reframed that as dining under the stars.

“They were coming up with these really good ideas out of a terrible idea,” Watt said. “It helps kids see that they are capable and switches those mindsets.” Watt built on the activity, asking the groups to pitch their ideas in a Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den style contest. Students came up with hilarious slogans and designs for their restaurants and what started as a silly, fun activity became a rich interdisciplinary project with written and oral communication, presentation skills, media literacy, and of course, the process skills that enable them.

“The students now are no longer afraid to think,” Watt said. “They’re being more creative thinkers.” He even uses integrative thinking in math instruction, asking students to use the ladder of inference to determine information in a word problem, or asking them to do Pro/Pro charts for different multiplication strategies and then letting them come up with their own third way. His students’ math scores started skyrocketing, and even better, they no longer felt they weren’t “math people.”

PROVOKING SELF REFLECTION

Jennifer Warren became curious about integrative thinking through her daughter who kept coming home from her grade six classroom saying things like, “we had the most interesting discussion today.” That piqued Warren’s interest.

“The way she was talking about her own thinking developing, I was kind of thinking I didn’t think my students were saying the same kind of things,” Warren said. She wanted to be sure she was provoking the same response from her high school English students at Dundas Valley Secondary School in Hamilton. So when her board of education decided to fund the I-Think training she signed up.

The integrative thinking tools gave Warren a solution to a problem she and many other teachers have struggled with for a long time: how to deepen student thinking. Until then, Warren had tried to do this by modeling what deep thinking looks like. She was confident she could help any student become a strong writer. But the integrative thinking training forced her to ask some hard questions about her instruction and prompted her realization that her students were recreating her example, not creating it on their own.

“It completely flipped what mattered to me in an English classroom,” Warren said. She used to be mostly concerned with the product. Now, “instead of defending a stance, I’m so much more interested in having students reflect on their stance and shift and explain why they shifted. That metacognitive piece is more interesting to me now.”

CAUSAL MODELS

Warren starts the first semester by asking students to do a causal model -- another core integrative thinking tool -- of their values. She asks them to pick three to five things they value, anything from profound qualities like independence or kindness, to passions like music or hockey. They then have to dive deeply into why they value those qualities, what caused that? Often this requires them to have conversations with family about values taught to them from a young age.

She then asks them to make visual representations of their causal models and present them to one another. “I like that because they realize people don’t value the same things that they do,” Warren said. Those causal models go up on the wall as a reminder that everyone in the class is different and that the diversity of values, perspectives and opinions makes them better problem solvers.

Warren teaches a course for students who failed the Ontario literacy exam, a graduation requirement. The kids in this class often don’t have a lot of self confidence and are often missing some key literacy skills, like the ability to elaborate on a topic in writing. The ladder of inference has been an incredible tool to help Warren walk students through their thinking, modeling the tool step by step, climbing up or down the ladder as students offer insights from the text.

“It was such a simple and elegant way to allow someone who couldn’t wrap their head around inferring to do it well,” Warren said. She thinks the visual of a ladder helped these struggling students pin their thoughts to different steps and make connections.

She’s also found the tool to be helpful when she has disagreements with students. She’ll use the language of the tools to describe to students what data she’s using to make conclusions about their work ethic, their attendance, their behavior. But she always asks, “What am I missing.”

“It changes the conversation,” Warren said. It gives her a voice to express her disappointment to students in a way that is transparent and uses the shared language of their critical thinking tools. And because integrative thinking is based on the fact that one’s understanding of something is always incomplete, constantly shifting, there is room for students to be participants in the conversation.

TRUE COLLABORATION

“I’m completely and utterly blown away whenever I use one of these tools with my kids,” said Kristen Slinger, a grade two teacher at Norseman Junior Middle School. Before learning about integrative thinking, Slinger would have said she has been doing collaboration in the classroom for the past ten years. But she’s shifted her definition of collaboration and now sees what she was doing before as merely asking kids to write on the same piece of paper.

“When you use these tools [students] realize that they hit a roadblock when not everyone is participating,” Slinger said. The natural need for every students’ voice in order to solve the problem creates genuine collaboration.

Slinger remembers one boy who came from a Montessori background. He was used to a small school and small classes and was overwhelmed when he joined her class of 20 and the broader school of close to 700 students. Slinger said he was selectively mute until Christmas, an issue she raised with his mother. The news came as a surprise to his mom who said he was very chatty at home. Slinger kept the boy in a consistent group so he could develop trust with a few peers and slowly he realized that they really wanted to hear his opinion.

“It would have taken me probably months longer to get him to that point, but it was that idea that his peers valued what he had to say,” Slinger said. He went from never talking in class to volunteering to be the student who went around to other classes polling students on their favorite lemonade for a project.

Slinger said before she learned about integrative thinking she would get interesting responses from students, but she wouldn’t know how they got to their conclusions. The integrative thinking tools help make student thinking visible. “It’s the thinking that’s been put into the responses and the way it’s been broken down,” Slinger said. When she can see the steps of their thinking she has more ways to push them to go even further.

“I haven’t taken a course in a very long time that has reshaped my entire program,” she said.

GETTING STARTED

“The safest way in was by using fiction stories,” Slinger said of her own attempts to use integrative thinking. “Find that story that maybe has that emotional clincher that may have different endings and then stop there and use the ladder of inference to come up with what they think might happen at the end.”

Jason Watt suggests starting with an activity that’s part of the curriculum every year. That way a teacher new to the practice can compare the kind of thinking students demonstrate when using an integrative thinking tool with their previous lesson plan.

One important element of success is choosing a topic that’s engaging to kids, that has multiple entry points and solutions, and that has a real stakeholder. “One of the biggest mistakes is when you give the tension without the problem to be solved from a particular perspective,” said Nogah Kornberg, Associate Director of the I-Think Initiative at the Rotman School of Management.

For example, a grade one teacher offered her students a challenge from the school’s janitor. In the summer the trash is stored outside and becomes infested with bees. In the winter the trash is stored inside and smells bad. What might be a better solution? Giving students the challenge from the perspective of the stakeholder helps them solve the problem for him. If it is just presented as an A or a B solution, they don’t know who to solve for.

Kornberg was a high school teacher herself before becoming part of the I-Think Initiative. She sees the program as offering two things: critical thinking skills and building better citizens.

“We’re seeing quite young students learning how to play the game of school and this is about how to become good thinkers and good questioners of our thinking,” she said. Getting started on this metacognition piece can’t start too young in her opinion. She also sees the tool as a way to empower young people. “Because it’s rooted in problem solving it’s about saying things are the way they are, but we can make them better and I have a responsibility to make them better.”

Rahim Essabhai wholeheartedly agrees with Kornberg; he’s seen the shift in his students. He teaches a class called Business and Cooperative Education for seniors at John Polanyi Collegiate Institute that asks students to work on one big problem for an outside organization over the course of the school year.

“When I have my kids coming back to visit me and they say that this course has gotten them ready for the next stage more than any course they took in high school, I don’t take that lightly,” Essabhai said. And since students are coming up with interesting solutions to problems real businesses and organizations have, they see that their thinking has value.

And he knows students are using the tools beyond his course as well. In a final reflection for his class, one student described how she constantly found herself having to choose between hanging out with her friends and spending time with her little sister. When she did either she felt bad, so she came up with a third option. Once a month she hosted a gathering for all her friends and their little sisters to spend time together.

“They’re not being a passenger in their own life,” Essabhai said. “Nothing is too messy or too tough.” Growing students who feel that way about tough challenges should be an essential function of education.

Here's a challenge for your students to tackle:

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Critical Thinking: Where to Begin

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If you are new to critical thinking or wish to deepen your conception of it, we recommend you review the content below and bookmark this page for future reference.

Our Conception of Critical Thinking...

"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness..."

"Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fairminded way. People who think critically attempt, with consistent and conscious effort, to live rationally, reasonably, and empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest.

They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society. At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so. They strive never to think simplistically about complicated issues and always to consider the rights and needs of relevant others. They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement. They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living , because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world."

Why Critical Thinking?

The Problem:

Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our lives and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.

A Brief Definition:

Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. The Result: 

  A well-cultivated critical thinker:

• raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
• gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively;
• comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
• thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
• communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.

Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It requires rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities, and a commitment to overcoming our native egocentrism and sociocentrism. Read more about our concept of critical thinking .

The Essential Dimensions of Critical Thinking

Our conception of critical thinking is based on the substantive approach developed by Dr. Richard Paul and his colleagues at the Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking over multiple decades. It is relevant to every subject, discipline, and profession, and to reasoning through the problems of everyday life. It entails five essential dimensions of critical thinking:

At the left is an overview of the first three dimensions. In sum, the elements or structures of thought enable us to "take our thinking apart" and analyze it. The intellectual standards are used to assess and evaluate the elements. The intellectual traits are dispositions of mind embodied by the fairminded critical thinker. To cultivate the mind, we need command of these essential dimensions, and we need to consistently apply them as we think through the many problems and issues in our lives.

The Elements of Reasoning and Intellectual Standards

To learn more about the elements of thought and how to apply the intellectual standards, check out our interactive model. Simply click on the link below, scroll to the bottom of the page, and explore the model with your mouse.

Why the Analysis of Thinking Is Important If you want to think well, you must understand at least the rudiments of thought, the most basic structures out of which all thinking is made. You must learn how to take thinking apart. Analyzing the Logic of a Subject When we understand the elements of reasoning, we realize that all subjects, all disciplines, have a fundamental logic defined by the structures of thought embedded within them. Therefore, to lay bare a subject’s most fundamental logic, we should begin with these questions:

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Review article, how do technology-enhanced learning tools support critical thinking.

• Computer Science Education, Computer Science and Society, Department of Computer Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

This paper reviews existing computer-supported learning systems that have claimed to adopt Socratic methods for enhancing critical thinking. Several notions of Socratic methods are differentiated: the critical thinking framework of Paul and Elder (2006) , the classic Socratic method, the modern Socratic method, and the neo-Socratic group discussion method. Three lessons are highlighted. First, the development of learning systems specifically supporting critical thinking is still lacking Thus, further research in this area is urgent. Second, most developed computer-supported learning systems claim to support Socratic approaches (e.g., Socratic tutoring) which are based on human tutoring strategies and do not show a systematic Socratic method. Third, the classic Socratic method has not been applied in any reviewed learning system.

Introduction

What is critical thinking? The definition of Sumner (1940 , p. 632–633) might be one of the earliest notions of “critical thinking”: [Critical thinking is] “… the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not .” This notion implies active scrutiny of propositions when articulated. Similarly, most definitions share the common requirement on question asking. That is, the critical thinker needs to ask questions in order to test assumptions, to recognize ambiguity, to examine, to interpret, to evaluate, to reason, to reflect, to clarify, to articulate, and to justify positions ( Ennis, 1962 ; Ruggiero, 1975 ; Hallet, 1984 ; Halpern, 1996 ). However, none of these definitions provides a systematic framework for adoption in educational scenarios.

In 2012, Richard Paul published an article criticizing the education of critical thinking at schools as follows: “ The fundamental problems in schooling today at all levels are fragmentation and lower order learning. Both within and between subject areas there is a dearth of connection and depth. Atomized lists dominate curricula, atomized teaching dominates instruction, and atomized recall dominates learning. What is learned are superficial fragments, typically soon forgotten. What is missing is coherence, connection, and depth of understanding… ” ( Paul, 2012 ). Many empirical studies reported a similar situation of critical thinking education at schools. Most teachers and school students do not use deep questions that are supposed to evoke high-order cognitive functions ( Graesser et al., 2010 ; Chafi and Elkhouzai, 2014 ). Thus, students have limited exposure to more beneficial inquiry. Approximately 60% of teachers' questions evoke lower-order cognitive demands, whereas 20% invoke higher-order cognitive demands, leaving 20% that represent procedural day-to-day questions ( Dickman, 2009 ). A recent study conducted with 143 teachers in Germany expressed a similar result that low-order questions are mostly used in classroom teaching ( Le et al., 2018 ).

Critical thinking is the skill that is in high demand in many workplaces nowadays. For global industry groups such as the World Economic Forum, critical thinking has been consistently ranked as one of the top three most important skills from 2015 to 2020 ( WEF, 2016 ). Despite the importance of critical thinking in education, research on technology-enhanced support for developing and enhancing critical thinking is still rare. The goal of this paper is to investigate the research question: How do existing technology-enhanced learning tools help learners develop critical thinking? Answering this question should also shed light on associated pedagogical practices. As a first step, the discussion focuses on the Socratic methods and its relationship with critical thinking.

Methodology

In order to investigate the research question being addressed in this paper, first, it is required to review different approaches to develop critical thinking in order to be able to classify learning tools. Thus, the following sections are devoted to differentiating variants of Socratic approaches to critical thinking.

The Paul-Elder's Socratic Approach to Critical Thinking

One of the pioneers of promoting critical thinking in education is Richard Paul. Paul's definition for critical thinking is as follows: “ Critical thinking is disciplined, self-directed thinking which exemplifies the perfections of thinking appropriate to a particular mode or domain of thought .” Paul suggested the following twelve criteria for perfections of thought: clarity, precision, specificity, accuracy, relevance, consistency, logicalness, depth, completeness, significance, fairness, and adequacy (for purpose). These criteria for perfections of thought can be used to assess the level of critical thinking, and thus, are also referred to as the intellectual standards ( Paul and Elder, 2006 ). In order to achieve the perfections of thought, Paul suggested six categories of questions for critical questioners ( Paul, 1990 , Chapter 19) (see Table 1 ).

Table 1 . Six classes of critical questions proposed by Paul and Elder (2006) .

By applying the six classes of critical questions, the development of social intellectual traits might be expected ( Paul and Elder, 2006 ). The criteria for intellectual standards of critical thinking and the six categories of questions build a framework of critical thinking.

The Classic Socratic Method

The classic Socratic method originated primarily from the early dialogues of Socrates that are documented in Plato's books ( Maxwell, 2014 ). In these dialogues, Socrates used questions to refute existing beliefs of the interlocutor. Such refutation allows the interlocutor to rethink the topic under discussion (e.g., “ What is virtue? ”). The expected result of the classic Socratic method is that the interlocutor can recognize by himself/herself the failure during the process of searching for a correct answer to a discussion question. Another expected effect is that the interlocutor would rethink his/her existing belief more deeply and free himself/herself from holding firmly to his/her wrong belief. This is referred to as the “Socratic effect” by Maxwell and Melete (2014) . Through this effect, new knowledge of the interlocutor may be established.

Boghossian (2012) identified five common steps of the classic Socratic method: (1) Wonder question, (2) Hypothesis, (3) Elenchus (refutation or cross-examination), (4) Acceptance/rejection of the hypothesis, and (5) Action. The first step starts with a wondering question, e.g., “ What is justice? ” (Chapter “The republic,” Plato 1 ). The second step of a Socratic dialogue is the response of the interlocutor who is in charge by presenting a hypothesis, a possible answer or a tentative answer to the question. In this stage, the interlocutor may use his/her knowledge to answer the “wonder” question asked by Socrates. The answer shows the pre-conception of the interlocutor and represents a hypothesis. Socrates would not evaluate the answer given in this stage. The third step of a Socratic dialogue, elenchus or refutation, is the core of Socratic dialogues ( Gulley, 1968 ). The purpose of this step is to ask questions to test the hypothesis given by the interlocutor. The hypothesis could be tested by elenchus (refutation or cross-examination, e.g., fact check, critical questions, counter-arguments, counter-examples, fallacy-check, or check for contradiction, etc.). The purpose of the elenchus (refutation or cross-examination) is to call the hypothesis into question. That is to undermine the interlocutor's belief. The fourth step of a Socratic dialogue is to accept or reject the hypothesis of the interlocutor based on results of rethinking. If a new fact (or counterexample, counter-arguments, fallacy-check, check for contradiction) shows that the hypothesis cannot be true, then the interlocutor should change his/her belief. He/she goes back to the second step and offers another hypothesis. If a new fact (or counter-arguments, fallacy-check, check for contradiction) is rejected by the interlocutor, then both the Socratic questioner and the interlocutor agree that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to undermine the hypothesis. That means that the hypothesis is tentatively accepted. The final step is to act by the interlocutor accordingly, after the cycle of examining facts (or counterexamples, counter-arguments, fallacy-check, check for contradiction) has been finished. That is, one would change his/her pre-conception.

Maxwell and Melete (2014) compared the five steps of the classic Socratic method with the general steps of the scientific approach to investigating a research question. An example from Meno ( Jowett, 2019 ) illustrates the classic Socratic method as follows, sentences in italics are my notes indicating the steps of the classic Socratic method.

The classic Socratic method has been proven useful in teaching and learning ( Lam, 2011 ). However, several researchers argued that the classic Socratic method tends to confuse and to perplex students ( Pekarsky, 1994 ; Tarnopolsky, 2001 ; Weisner and Westerhof-Shultz, 2004 ) and that students may become humiliated and ashamed. Boghossian (2012) represented the opposite point of view by showing different examples: “ The purpose of the Socratic method is not to humiliate, shame, or perplex students, but to help them have beliefs that accord with reality .” For Boghossian, the classic Socratic method has much potential: it can help participants formulate arguments, improve their critical thinking and moral reasoning skills, and learn to distinguish truth from falsity. The perplexed and confused feelings are just the side-effect of the classic Socratic method ( Boghossian, 2010 ). Socratic dialogues, as described above, aim only to free one's wrong belief from holding tightly on to previous convictions, and thus evelop critical thinking.

The Modern Socratic Method

Maxwell (2014) distinguished the modern Socratic method from the classic Socratic method. The modern Socratic method uses questions to lead the interlocutor to acquire knowledge in small steps. This means that the answers of leading questions can be verified and anticipated by the Socratic questioner. This is the main difference between the modern Socratic method and the classic Socratic method such that neither the Socratic questioner nor the interlocutor knows the answer. According to Maxwell, this Socratic method is popular in modern times and thus, referred to as the modern Socratic method. This type of Socratic method is also the root of the dialogues of Socrates. One of the Socrates' dialogues that can illustrate this method is the conversation between Socrates with a slave boy about the geometry experiment found in the dialogues “Meno” (Meno 82b−85d: Socrates and the Slave 2 ). A part of this dialogue is shown in Figure 1 .

Figure 1 . An illustration of modern Socratic dialogues (Meno 82b−85d: Socrates and the Slave, Source: Wikimedia.org ).

The Neo-Socratic Discussion Method

Nelson (1970) developed a Socratic discussion method which is referred to as the neo-Socratic method in literature ( Popp, 2001 ). This method is intended to support a group discussion for six to ten participants. The discussion serves to explain existing but unreflected concepts in daily life (e.g., What is happiness ?) that are fundamental for the discussion. Through a discussion held by the neo-Socratic method, the participants perform argumentation and strive for a result in consensus. Similar to Socratic dialogues that can be found in the books of Plato, the neo-Socratic discussion method applies concrete examples in daily life for self-reflection. Based on self-experience, the participants express their points of view on the discussion question. The central point of this method is the enhancement of self-initiated thinking, the improvement of the ability of logical and objective argumentation, and the promotion of problem-oriented and solution-oriented communication. Heckmann (1981) extended Nelson's neo-Socratic method by explicitly defining the rules for the discussion moderator and for discussion participants. With these rules, Heckmann (1981) wanted to make sure that the abstraction process from examples given by discussion participants is granted. Horster (1994) investigated the theoretical assumptions of the neo-Socratic method, modified the abstraction process proposed by Nelson, and described the neo-Socratic method as Figure 2 illustrates. The steps of this process are elaborated by Horster (1994) . Since this abstraction process of the neo-Socratic method seems to be clearly defined, it could be mapped to a computational model.

Figure 2 . The Socratic group discussion method developed by Nelson (1970) , extended by Heckmann (1981) and Horster (1994) .

The differences between the classic, the modern, and the neo-Socratic discussion methods are summarized in Table 2 .

Table 2 . The differences between the Socratic methods.

Socratic questioning not only involves the use of systematic questioning, but also inductive reasoning ( Carey and Mullan, 2004 ). Inductive reasoning uses specific examples to arrive at a general rule. For example, we can observe from specific examples that a bicycle has two round wheels, a motor bike also has two round wheels, and a car has four round wheels. We would induce a general rule that all vehicles have round wheels.

The foregoing investigation of Socratic Methods is presented as important context for understanding the application of contemporary technology support for critical thinking, for the main reason that most systems have adopted the modern Socratic Method. This discussion now addresses findings associated with this.

For the review of technology-enhanced learning systems for critical thinking, the following inclusion criteria were defined:

1. Scientific articles describing a technology-enhanced learning system must mention “critical thinking” or “Socratic” (including “Socratic dialogue,” “Socratic method,” “Socratic questioning”), and “reasoning”;

2. A system must have educational purposes, e.g., learning, developing/enhancing skills;

3. A system must have been evaluated or technically validated.

In addition to the inclusion criteria, one exclusion criterion is that assessment systems are not considered, because they do not provide didactic/pedagogical strategies to enhance critical thinking skills.

Applying these three inclusion criteria and the exclusion criterion, articles were collected from Google Scholar, DBLP and open access journal databases on the Internet, 14 learning systems for critical thinking were included ( Table 2 ). In the following, each system is briefly summarized and assigned to one of the critical thinking approaches. If the authors of the system claimed that it supports the Socratic method but did not show the systematic Socratic method, we will assign that system to the category “claimed to be Socratic.” If a system is still available online, it is indicated by an Internet URL on a column of the table.

The review starts with the learning systems that adopt the modern Socratic method. The common feature is that the systems control the dialogue, ask questions and the students answer the system's questions in free text. One of the earliest computer systems that adopted the modern Socratic method is SCHOLAR ( Carbonell, 1970 ). In this system, the author modeled the domain geography using a semantic network. The system allows mixed initiative dialogues, i.e., both students and the system can initiate questions. The user interface allows the users to input an answer or a question in free form. The system understands the student's question or answer by matching a pattern with pre-specified keywords. In order to generate texts, the system fills answer and question templates with information from the semantic net. Since the semantic network represents only fact knowledge rather than procedural knowledge, the system is limited to categorize student utterances beyond simply right/wrong. Also adopting the modern Socratic method, Weusijana et al. (2004) developed a questioning strategy for the system SASK. It is a domain-independent architecture for deepening students' reflections on well-defined tasks using Socratic dialogues. In the domain of biomedical engineering, for example, the system adopts the questions used by experts for students such as “ What are you trying to do here? ” or “ What variables are you controlling? ” Person and Graesser (2002) developed an intelligent tutoring system that applies the modern Socratic method to improve students' knowledge in the areas of computer literacy and Newtonian physics using an animated agent that is able to ask a series of deep reasoning questions according to the question taxonomy proposed by Graesser and Person (1994) .

Beside the learning systems that applied the modern Socratic method, several learning systems adopted the neo-Socratic group discussion method. Le and Huse (2016) developed a conversational agent that plays the role of a moderator for a group discussion. The conversational agent leads the discussion participants through the phases of the neo-Socratic group discussion method and encourages participants to strengthen their critical thinking in order to develop arguments for the given discussion topic. The evaluation study of the Socratic conversational agent ( Le and Huse, 2016 ) reported encouraging results that the Socratic group discussion moderated by a conversational agent has the tendency to activate participants' thinking and join the group discussion more actively. For similar purpose, Hoeksema (2004) developed a group discussion environment that is intended to serve virtual Socratic dialogues. The Socratic dialogues using this discussion environment are intended to be held similarly in a usual face-to-face environment. Whereas, this work focused on developing an environment for Socratic group discussions, the Socratic conversational agent of Le and Huse (2016) was used to formalize the neo-Socratic group discussion method to help students develop critical thinking.

While the classic and modern Socratic methods are based on the dialogues of Socrates documented in the books of Plato, the conceptualization of the Socratic method has been developed and modified in different guises.

Edelson (1996) developed a so-called Socratic case-based architecture Crimeanate using thought-provoking questions and cases. Two pedagogical principles underlying this architecture are active learning and learning from cases. These principles are implemented by two system components: a task environment and a storyteller. The learning domain supported by this architecture is biology. Specific subject matter is animal adaptation. A session begins with an invitation to the student to create his or her own animal by taking an existing animal and changing it in some way. Following the choice of an animal, the system engages the student in a series of natural language dialogues in which the student considers the ramifications of the proposed modification of his or her animal. The storyteller recognizes opportunities for learning during the course of interactions of the student with the task environment and presents cases that may help the student to learn from his/her own problem.

Glass (2001) developed CIRCSIM, a dialogue-based intelligent tutoring system that uses questions to lead conversations with student and claimed that the pedagogical strategy is Socratic tutoring. This tutoring strategy is based on a corpus of human tutoring dialogues that contains many instances of students' short answers ( Glass, 2001 ). The notion of Socratic tutoring suggested by Glass is as follows: “ The dialogue is under the tutor's control; the machine asks questions and the student answers with free text in imitation of the Socratic style of human tutoring .”

Similarly, Weusijana et al. (2004 , p. 561) characterized a Socratic tutoring method very informally: “ An educator may know of these issues and choose to tutor their learners socratically; to conversationally engage with learners, often while they work on their learning task, with pertinent and probing questions .” Based on this concept of the Socratic method, the authors developed a web-based system that helps students foster reflection.

Domeshek et al. (2002) conceptualized the Socratic method as follows: “ Socratic instruction is a kind of teaching interaction typically applied in high-level professional education (e.g., law and business) and most often characterized by its external form: the teacher asks a lot of questions, and the student answers.” Based on this notion of the Socratic method, Domeshek et al. (2004) developed ComMentor, an automated Socratic tutoring system, for command skills for high-level professional education such as law and business. This system is claimed to be able to guide the student in a Socratic mode as an expert would: the teacher asks questions and the student answers. The sequence of the questions is intended to help the student reconstruct the logic of expert situation analysis and decision-making. Domeshek et al. (2004) described four characteristics of a typical Socratic session: (1) a thought-provoking problem, (2) a student's attempt to provide solutions, (3) the instructor's repeated exploration and challenging of the student's solutions, and (4) incremental justification, elaboration, refinement, and revision of both the student's understanding of the situation under discussion and their proposed solution.

According to the notions for the Socratic method above that are not based on the analysis of Socrates' dialogues, a teacher should engage students by posing questions. It is controversial whether these notions for the Socratic method can be categorized as the modern Socratic method because the modern Socratic method also applies a sequence of questions for that the Socratic questioner anticipates correct answers. However, since the computer applications that adopt these notions for the Socratic method are based on the analysis of human tutoring dialogues, it is questionable whether these dialogues follow a systematic methodology and whether the methodology of human tutors is really effective.

Several educational applications support tutorial dialogues. Olney et al. (2012) presented a method for generating questions for tutorial dialogue. This involves automatically extracting concept maps from textbooks in the domain of biology. Five question categories were deployed: hint, prompt, forced choice question, contextual verification question, and causal chain questions. Also, with the intention of supporting students using conversational dialogues, Lane and VanLehn (2005) developed PROPL, a tutor, which helps students build a natural-language style pseudo-code solution to a given problem. All these educational applications deployed some kinds of dialogue, however, they neither apply the classic nor modern Socratic method.

There have been several computer-supported learning systems for human reasoning which could be considered a part of the critical thinking process since critical thinking involves the use of inductive reasoning ( Carey and Mullan, 2004 ). For example, the framework of critical thinking proposed by Paul and Elder (2006) includes the class of questions that probe reason and evidence. Le and Wartschinski (2018) proposed a cognitive assistant that holds conversation with students to develop human reasoning skills. This study, with more than 60 test persons, showed significant improvement in reasoning skills. Pursuing the similar aim, an existing serious game, Argotario ( Habernal et al., 2017 ) addressed argumentation and critical thinking skills by identifying fallacies in arguments and intentionally developing fallacious arguments during the process of playing a game. Both the cognitive assistant developed by Le and Wartschinski (2018) and the serious game Argotario proposed a conversational agent as the communication interface with the user. However, the difference between these systems lies in the training tasks. The cognitive assistant developed by Le and Wartschinski (2018) covered several issues that lead to irrational thoughts and decisions: (1) sunk cost fallacy, (2) gambler's fallacy, (3) Bayesian reasoning, (4) belief bias in syllogistic reasoning, (5) regression toward the mean, (6) co-variation detection, and (7) Wason's selection tasks. Training tasks provided by this cognitive assistant were based on psychology literature ( Larrick, 2004 ; Toplak et al., 2014 ). The serious game, Argotario, only addressed the single issue of “fallacy.”

From this review of technology-enhanced learning systems for critical thinking ( Table 3 ), we can learn three lessons. First, the number of developed learning systems for critical thinking is still low. Thus, given the proliferation of misinformation and ‘fake news' on the web, further research in this area is arguably urgent. Second, most of the developed learning systems (e.g., Olney et al., 2012 ) claimed that they support Socratic approaches (e.g., Socratic tutoring), which are based on human tutoring strategies rather than Socrates' strategies. It is controversial whether the human tutoring strategies are pedagogically effective and whether they need to be empirically validated before being integrated into a learning system. Third, the classic Socratic method has not been applied in any reviewed learning system. This absence of the classic Socratic method in learning systems can be explained by which the steps of the classic Socratic method might be very challenging to be mapped to a computational model. Especially the third step, which is the core of the classic Socratic method, would require a computer system to be able to ask a question to test a hypothesis by posing a fact check, a counter argument, counter example, a fallacy check, or a check for contradiction.

Table 3 . A summary of computer-supported educational systems for critical thinking.

Conclusions

This paper has reviewed 14 existing technology-enhanced learning systems for critical thinking. The review shows that almost all existing systems adopted the notion of the modern Socratic method, e.g., the system uses questions to lead the learner to acquire knowledge in small steps and knowledge that is to be acquired can be anticipated by the system. Thus, questions and anticipated knowledge of a learning domain can be modeled computationally. Whereas, the modern Socratic method has been adopted in many systems, the classic Socratic method is rarely deployed in computer-supported learning systems. Perhaps the reason is that steps of the classic Socratic method are challenging to be mapped to a computational model. Another finding is that several dialogue-based learning systems claimed to adopt Socratic questioning method, however, they only support conversation between users and the system in natural language. That is, those systems may enhance critical thinking through questions, but a systematic Socratic approach cannot be identified.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge support by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

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Keywords: critical thinking, classic Socratic method, modern Socratic method, Socratic group discussion, critical thinking

Citation: Le N-T (2019) How Do Technology-Enhanced Learning Tools Support Critical Thinking? Front. Educ. 4:126. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2019.00126

Received: 07 May 2019; Accepted: 15 October 2019; Published: 06 November 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Le. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Nguyen-Thinh Le, nguyen-thinh.le@hu-berlin.de

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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

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Written by international authorities on critical thinking, this book details an integrated, universal concept of critical thinking that is both substantive and applicable to any and every situation in which human thinking is necessary. It provides students with the basic intellectual tools needed for life-long learning, helping them understand the mind and how its three functions—thinking, feeling, motivating—influence one another.

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Active learning tools improve the learning outcomes, scientific attitude, and critical thinking in higher education: Experiences in an online course during the COVID ‐19 pandemic

Izadora volpato rossi.

1 Postgraduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba Brazil, Brazil

Jordana Dinorá de Lima

Bruna sabatke, maria alice ferreira nunes, graciela evans ramirez.

2 Technological Professional Education Sector, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba Brazil

Marcel Ivan Ramirez

3 EVAHPI ‐ Extracellular Vesicles and Host‐Parasite Interactions Research Group Laboratório de Biologia Molecular e Sistemática de Tripanossomatideos, Carlos Chagas Institute‐Fiocruz, Curitiba Brazil

Associated Data

Active teaching methodologies have been placed as a hope for changing education at different levels, transiting from passive lecture‐centered to student‐centered learning. With the health measures of social distance, the COVID‐19 pandemic forced a strong shift to remote education. With the challenge of delivering quality education through a computer screen, we validated and applied an online course model using active teaching tools for higher education. We incorporated published active‐learning strategies into an online construct, with problem‐based inquiry and design of inquiry research projects to serve as our core active learning tool. The gains related to students' science learning experiences and their attitudes toward science were assessed by applying questionnaires before, during, and after the course. The course counted on the participation of 83 students, most of them (60.8%) from postgraduate students. Our results show that engagement provided by active learning methods can improve performance both in hard and soft skills. Students' participation seems to be more relevant when activities require the interaction of information, prediction, and reasoning, such as open‐ended questions and design of research projects. Therefore, our data show that, in pandemic, active learning tools benefit students and improve their critical thinking and their motivation and positive positioning in science.

1. INTRODUCTION

Academically first‐world countries have debated how the training of students should be, from basic primary education at schools to higher education at universities. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 A major concern is how education can collaborate in the formation of citizens and professionals capable of leading technological, economic, social, cultural, and political changes. 5 , 6 , 7 Specifically, in the area of science, researchers should be trained with skills that go beyond the technical reproduction of experiments, but that employ critical thinking and that are capable of applying scientific concepts to propose solutions and generate knowledge. 8 , 9 , 10 The change of curricular programs in the STEM area (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and new proposals for educational strategies have been stimulated in different countries. 11 , 12 Lecture‐based and teacher‐centered pedagogy is undergoing a shift toward more active learning, in which students build their own understanding of a subject through learning activities. 13 , 14 The benefits of active learning seem substantial, both in cognitive learning and in the development of soft skills by students, such as leadership, problem‐solving, and autonomy. 15 , 16 , 17 In Brazil, few efforts have been made to discuss structural changes in education from basic to university. The absence of adequate working conditions encourages teachers to adopt an old‐fashioned type of education, in which passive teaching methods predominate. Although there is no state initiative that encourages the incorporation of active learning methods, some higher teaching institutions have introduced methods of problem‐solving, critical thinking, and/or problem‐based learning with inspiring success. 18 , 19 , 20 , 21

Active learning comprises approaches that focus more on developing students' skills than transmitting information and require students to perform activities that require higher‐order thinking. 13 For this, students use critical thinking, which involves analysis, reflection, evaluation, interpretation, and inference to synthesize information that is obtained through reading, observation, communication, or experience to answer a question. 22 There are several methodologies that fit the concept of active teaching, such as inquiry‐based learning, project‐based learning, and problem‐based learning. 17 , 23 , 24 Among them is, for example, project‐based learning is a model that organizes learning around projects, in which challenging questions or problems are involved that involve proposing solutions, formulating hypotheses, and investigative activities. 17

The COVID‐19 pandemic has produced a situation of health emergency, economic, and social instability that challenged the entire educational system. The intense contact and exchange of information that took place during face‐to‐face classes in normal life have been restricted to virtual spaces. Given all these sudden changes, online courses have been a viable option to prepare students at different levels (Figure  1 ). Although some groups have already reported their teaching experiences and perceptions in times of lockdown and social distance, 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 very few of them reported the impact of active learning on online courses, and rarer are the studies in postgraduate students. During the pandemic, we have seen the opportunity to validate a course model with the aim of actively encouraging students of higher education to acquire important biological concepts. We planned to create a rich, multifaceted course that integrated active learning methodologies. We incorporated active‐learning strategies that allowed transit in the course from passive lecture‐centered to active student‐centered learning. With this approach, we were interested in understanding the benefit of our course at the student formation and in answering two important questions:

• Does the course increase the cognitive and intellectual skills of the students?
• How was the impact of critical thinking methodologies on the student's attitudes toward science and soft skills?

Our interest was concentrated in analyzing whether students through the course showed more enthusiasm for the concept of research and science. Crucial elements in science such as forming and testing hypotheses, defining strategies, communicating results were evaluated to determine whether critical thinking methods could improve thinking and rational logic. In order to assess students' gains in these two aspects, we applied questionnaires to students before, during, and after the course. Here, we will comment on the results of this experience that incorporated active methodologies and student‐teacher interaction tools for remote higher education.

Passive (teacher‐centered) and active (student‐centered) learning in classroom or remote teaching models

2. MATERIAL AND METHODS

2.1. undergraduate pilot course to validate online active learning tools.

In order to validate an online course model and test some active learning tools, we have offered a course aimed primarily at undergraduates. The subject of this course was cell culture which has a wide interest and application in the biological area. Knowledge on cell culture is required for some research activities and also represents a promising alternative for replacement of animal experimentation.

In order to follow contagious preventive actions during the COVID‐19 pandemic, the course was administered remotely in a teleconference format through the Microsoft Teams platform. This platform allows the instructors to interact through video, audio, and live chat, which gives the feeling of a personal meeting from a safe distance. Before each class, there was a moment of relaxation with “icebreaker” conversations to get to know the audience. This moment helped to create a more intimate environment and also to share tensions and concerns about the pandemic.

The course had a total of 15 h, 10 h of synchronous activities and 5 h of asynchronous activities. Synchronous activities included lectures, simultaneous online quiz activities, and discussion of scientific papers. Asynchronous activities consisted of two questionnaires containing guided questions for critical reading of a scientific paper (one of the papers involving chronic diseases and the other infectious diseases). After returning this questionnaire, the papers were discussed during classes. To measure perceptions of the overall effectiveness of the course and the proposed methodologies, we asked students to complete a questionnaire at the end of the course.

2.2. Experimental undergraduate and postgraduate course

2.2.1. course design.

The experimentation course was offered as a satellite event during a symposium hosted by a Postgraduate Program at a Brazilian state university. The focus of the course was redefined from our previous basic course to contemplate strategies for the study of infectious diseases using cell culture. In order to know the profile of the enrolled students, we applied two questionnaires containing open and closed questions: one with demographic questions and previous research experience and the other about their previous experiences with active learning methodologies.

The course had a short duration (12 h total), divided between synchronous (7 h) and asynchronous activities (5 h). The synchronous activities of the course were structured as follows: (i) 2 h of key concepts to introduce the subject and situate the content and emphasis of the course; (ii) 2 h of strategies for studying the pathogen‐host cell interaction using cell culture, (iii) 1 h of presentation of an inquiry research project (IRP) with the subject chosen by the participant, (iv) 1 h of questions about concepts and strategies to solve problems (Table  1 ). The “offline” time was used to prepare the scientific IRP and participate in the questionnaires with questions related to the classes. The description of the activities developed can be found in the topic “Active learning instruments/tools” below.

Course schedule

Abbreviations: A.A.T., asynchronous activities time; S.A.T., Synchronous Activities Time.

2.2.2. Active learning instruments/tools

In order to place the student as the center of the course, we incorporated some active‐learning strategies into an online course construct. Some moments of the dynamics of the classes and the approaches used during the course are gathered in Video S 1 . We proposed some activities that required student's engagement:

The quiz was a knowledge fixation tool performed at the end of lectures. In this activity, participants answered questions related to the presented content directly through the Voxvote website ( https://www.voxvote.com/ ). Table  2 contains some examples of applied questions; the questions were corrected at the end of the time proposed by the VoxVote tool (Video S 1 , min 02:36–02:51).

Examples of questions administered during live quiz using VoxVote

We proposed to the participants to develop an IRP to stimulate the construction of knowledge and critical thinking. The IRP should contain the scientific relevance of the project, main objectives, and methodologies to achieve the proposed objectives. Along with the description of the project, participants could send a graphic design summarizing their project proposal, following a Graphical Abstract model indicated as a reference (Figure S 1 ). The IRP was sent using Google Forms. The IRP proposals were evaluated by all instructors who selected the best 10 for presentation based on criteria of coherence and conceptualization of the biological question, ampleness of the applied methodologies, and connection between the proposed strategies.

Inquiry questionnaires

Two online questionnaires were sent to all participants via email and were available for at least 48 h. Both questionnaires contained eight multiple‐choice and four open‐ended questions about biological concepts related to the course subject. The first questionnaire (Q1) was available before the beginning of the course, while the second (Q2) was available 2 days after the experimental course started. Q1 and Q2 had the same level of difficulty, with multiple‐choices (basic) and problem‐based questions (open‐ended) (see Table  3 ). Q2 was answered while the students were simultaneously participating in several activities of the hosted event.

Examples of questions applied in the inquiry questionnaires

2.2.3. Inquiry questionnaire assessment

Questionnaire responses were corrected by five evaluators. Multiple‐choice questions scores were calculated by sum of the right answers. Open‐ended questions required a more detailed evaluation process where four evaluation criteria were scored in each answer: comprehension, specificity, ampleness, and connection. All evaluators considered whether the student had understood the question (comprehension), the approaches that the student proposed to solve the problem (ampleness), the specificity of this or these approaches (specificity), and the rationale and feasibility of the strategy (connection). For comprehension evaluation only 0 (lack of comprehension) and 1 (adequately answered). The other criteria considered three levels of score: insufficient (0), good (1), and excellent (2). The maximum score was seven points for each answer. Answers zeroed in comprehension were not evaluated in the remaining criteria. Furthermore, the order of questions and answers were randomized to avoid possible bias during the assessment process. The scores were generated from the average of five evaluators. Total score was calculated by the sum of multiple‐choice questions (0%–50%) and open‐ended questions (0%–50%).

Intra‐questionnaires comparisons, that is, between questions, were assessed by ANOVA, while questionnaire differences were analyzed by unpaired t test. All analyses were performed in GraphPad Prism version 6.01.

2.2.4. Analysis of students' perception of the course

At the end of the course, students were asked to fill up their impressions and suggestions about the course in a feedback form containing multiple‐choice and open‐ended questions. Some questions were to choose the sentence which they felt more identified and in others the students evaluated sentences in a five points scale, with 0 being “nothing” and 5 being “very” (Likert scale. 32 ). Open‐ended questions were added to stimulate the students to express their opinion about the course. The open‐ended data were coded in categories considering the most cited answer for each question. Qualitative thematic content analysis was applied to quantify answers, providing support for a quantitative evaluation.

3.1. The online course can be a platform of active learning methodologies: A pilot experience

In order to validate an online course model and test some active learning tools, we have offered a course aimed primarily at undergraduates during pandemic. The wide theme Cell Culture was well received by students, attracting participants from different fields of health sciences (including biology, biomedicine, pharmacy, biotechnology, and medicine—data not shown) and with different backgrounds (3.37% bachelor degree, 56.75% undergraduate students, 18.91% mastering students, 4.72% masters, 10.13% doctoral students, graduate course 2.02% and 4.05% doctoral also participated. n  = 148. Figure S 2 A).

The great advantage of remote education is being able to bring together or to mix participants from different educational institutions and different backgrounds. Participants were from 22 different Brazilian institutions and 1 foreign institution, with public and private education (Figure S 2 B).

Although only 29% of students had worked with cell culture, the positive perception of the course was very high (Figure  2a ). Moreover, 87% of the participants evaluated the course as excellent (Figure  2b ). Active learning tools used during the course (real‐time online quiz [live], paper reading guide, etc.) was positively rated by participants (data not shown) and the participants pointed out as main strengths the didactics, teaching methodology, and the interaction between teacher and student (Figure  2c ).

The methodology tools used during the validation course were positively evaluated by the participants. (a) Course evaluation by participants. (b) Contribution in the course in learning cell culture. (c) The open‐ended question on “course strengths” was content analyzed, and the responses were classified into categories that included similar statements

Excited by the positive experience of the first course, we decided to go deeper into a course aimed at postgraduate students to understand whether active learning tools could improve their cognitive and thinking skills. With the validation and approval of the active learning approach, we decided to maintain some activities (such as the real‐time online quiz and questionnaires) and adjust some activities targeting the topic to the participants.

3.2. Experimental course: Active learning tools improve the performance of students in higher education

3.2.1. participants students profile: a representative sample of brazilian higher education.

The second experience with the online course model had a heterogeneous audience profile, including participants with different levels and from different locations. There were 83 enrolled, most of them master students (38.0%) (Figure  3a ). Undergraduate students constituted 24.1% and PhD students 19.0%. There was also the participation of PhDs, constituting a very heterogeneous public. The participants belonged to 22 Brazilian institutions from different states (Figure  3b ). Although 94% had previous research experience, only 59.4% had experience in cell culture (Figure S 3 A), either carrying out in vitro experiments (full experience) or just accompanying other people (partial experience) (Figure  3c ). The focus of the course was infectious diseases, which was the object of work of 59.5% of participants, including the biological model of bacteria (20.3%), fungi (15.2%), parasites (16.5%), and viruses (7.6%) (Figure S 3 B).

The audience of attendants to the course was heterogeneous. (a) Participants' educational background, divided between complete and incomplete. Others include “specialist” as complete and “Incomplete second degree” and “residency” as incomplete. (b) Distribution of participants' institutions in Brazilian states (highlighted in gray). (c) Students' previous experience with cell culture techniques

To obtain an overview of students' previous experience with teaching methodologies, we asked students ( n  = 60) about which method was most used during their academic experience. The majority of the respondents (76.7%) affirm that their predominant teaching approach was passive, mainly represented by traditional lectures (Figure S 4 A,B). Among graduate students, 50% answered that their classes have similar proportions between active and passive classes (Figure S 4 C). When asked in an open question about what could be improved in their education (undergraduate or graduate), 72.1% of students admitted that other teaching approaches could be employed (data not shown). Most comments pointed to the necessity of interactive classes, including solving clinical cases and practical application of knowledge. The answers pointed out that most of the students (76.7%) consider that active teaching methodologies are excellent for their learning and that participating interactively in the subjects improve their apprenticeship (Figure S 4 D).

3.2.2. Active methodologies promote improved short‐term learning outcomes

Interested in observing the development of students during the course, we used research‐based learning approaches through the application of questionnaires in a pretest (Q1) and posttest (Q2). Fifty‐four students participated in the online questionnaire activities (Figure S 5 —graduation: n  = 14; masters: n  = 25; doctoral: n  = 14; postdoctoral: n  = 3; other: n  = 1). Most of them participated in the first questionnaire (Q1: n  = 49), while a minority participated in the second one (Q2: n  = 26); finally, 20 students participated in both questionnaires.

The average scores of students in the questionnaires were higher in Q2 compared with Q1 (Figure  4a , Table S 1 ). This progress was distributed similarly through multiple‐choice (13.51%) and open‐ended questions (15.67%). On average, no student had zeroed their score in Q2, which may represent that students were more committed to the second test (Figure  4a ). The proportion of students with high performance (total score > 80%) was at least three times higher in Q2 compared with Q1 (6.1% at Q1 and 19.2% at Q2. Figure  4b ). The students showed improvement in all four criteria evaluated in the open‐ended questions from Q1 to Q2 (Suppl. Figure  6 ). When multiple‐choice and open‐ended questions were analyzed separately, Q2's superior performance was predominantly due to the scores at the multiple‐choice questions (Figure  4c ) than from the open‐ended (Figure  4d ).

Students showed a rapid evolution in their performance during the course. (a) General average score in each questionnaire (0%–100%); multiple‐choice and open‐ended questions represent 50% of the score each; (b) Proportion of students within score ranges in Q1 ( n  = 49) and Q2 ( n  = 26). (c) Students' scores average only in the multiple‐choice questions between questionnaires; (d) Students' scores average only in the open‐ended questions between questionnaires

We hypothesized that the overall improvement of open‐ended questions may be due to a lower engagement at the more difficult and exploratory questions (such as the open‐ended questions). Regarding this point we calculated the student dropout rate to each question by the rate of NA answers—that is, described as blank answers and “I don't know” type of answers. In fact, the dropout for open‐ended questions (Q1: 22% and Q2: 15%, Table  4 ) was higher than for multiple‐choice questions, which was irrelevant (Q1: 2% and Q2: 0%). Furthermore, there was a 31.8% reduction in the dropout rate in open‐ended questions from Q2 compared with Q1 (Table  4 ). This may indicate that the students felt more confident and motivated to commit intellectual effort during the performance of Q2, resulting in a better outcome.

Dropout rate among open‐ended questions in Q1 and Q2

Note : Dropout was considered for blank answers and “I don't know” type of answers. “OE” stands for open‐ended questions from 1 to 4 in each questionnaire.

3.2.3. Formulating hypotheses and proposing strategies: A scientist‐like experience through project‐based learning

The inclusion of project‐based learning strategies is effective in STEM courses, to involve students in authentic “real world” tasks. 17 , 33 During the course, students were motivated to prepare a mini scientific project to answer a biological question of their interest; applying cell culture strategies (see Materials and Methods). The elaboration of the scientific IRP represented the most demanding activity for the student and we had only 26.5% of participation (22 IRPs), most of which are master's students (Figure S 7 ). This type of activity was a challenge for the students, who feel freedom to “think outside the box” and find ways to answer their biological questions. Many students elaborate different and curious hypotheses, from which the instructors selected the 10 best IRPs based on criteria of coherence, conceptualization, applied methodologies, and connection between the proposed strategies. We were able to see some students who stood out for the quality of their IRP proposal. Interestingly, among the 10 best IRPs selected, the fourth part was written by undergraduate students (data not shown). In addition, we reserved a period of the course for the presentation of the selected IRPs to the whole class at a “symposium‐like moment,” using their graphical abstracts as support. This type of activity adds other soft skills to students, such as communication and accepting challenges, essential for future scientists. Part of the presentations of the selected students and their graphical abstract/poster as other course activities were compiled in Video S 1 (min 03:01–03:51).

3.2.4. Engagement in active‐learning activities correlates to better student performance

Active methodologies place the student as the center of learning and for this reason, their effectiveness relies heavily on the student's engagement in activities. Motivated by the various studies that show a positive correlation between student engagement and performance, 12 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 we assessed whether the most engaged students during our course had higher scores.

First, we evaluated the scores of the group of students who participated in both inquiry questionnaires (“BOTH”) separated from those who have answered only one of the questionnaires (“ONLY Q1” or “ONLY Q2”). This analysis showed that students that were engaged in both activities had higher performance in open‐ended questions, but not in multiple‐choice (Figure  5A,B ).

Highly engaged students have better performances in open‐ended questions. (a) Students' scores average in the multiple‐choice questions within each engagement subgroup; (b) Students' scores in the open‐ended questions within each engagement subgroup. (c) Venn diagram, representing the number of participants in each activity (Q1, Q2, IRP, and TOP IRP). (d) Total score (%) in Q1 and Q2 analyzed in groups classified by the level of engagement in the course activities. The questionnaire to which the average scores refer is indicated by the horizontal bars (Q1 or Q2). (e) Students average in multiple‐choice questions within each group engagement. (f) Students average in open‐ended questions within each group engagement

We hypothesized whether engagement in activities proposed during the course (questionnaires and IRP) would be related to the best performance of students. For this, we considered the following groups: students who had been selected as TOP IRP and also participated in both Q1 and Q2 (TOP IRP + Q1 + Q2, n  = 5), students who participated in Q1 and Q2 and sent IRP (but were not TOP IRP, named IRP + Q1 + Q2, n  = 6), students who only participated in the questionnaires (BOTH Q1 and Q2, n  = 9) and those who participated in only one of the questionnaires (Only Q1, n  = 23 or Only Q2, n  = 3) (Figure  5c ). Interestingly, half of the students who were selected as TOP IRP also engaged in both Q1 and Q2 ( n  = 5). The students who participated in all activities had higher score levels when compared with the other groups of engagement, mainly in the open‐ended questions analyzed separately (Figure  5d ). Among the students who participated in the IRP, the best scores were from the students who were in the top‐10 IRP (TOP IRP) (Figure  5c,d ). Our data show that the participants who answered only one of the questionnaires (Only Q1 or Only Q2) had the worst scores in the open questions and shows that involvement in more than one activity improves the student's performance (Figure  5d ). Altogether, the data show a positive trend in the relationship between engagement and performance (Figure S 8 ).

3.2.5. Active learning tools improve students' critical thinking and motivation in science

The evaluation of the course was positive by 74% of the participants ( n  = 50), who considered that the course was excellent (Figure  6a ). The open‐ended questions on “Course strengths” and “Course weaknesses” were content analyzed, and the responses were classified into categories that included similar statements (Table  5 ). Among the strengths, 70% of the students considered the didactics as a strong point, which includes the quality of the presentations, the confidence of the instructors regarding the domain of the content, the lesson plan, and the dynamics of the class. Fifty‐six percent of the participants assessed that the student–teacher interaction was a positive aspect of the classes, where the students revealed that they felt included (even remotely). Another point highlighted as strength of the classes was the teaching methodology and the subjects covered, which brought a balance between variety and depth. As negative points of the course, issues with infrastructure and technical problems (such as timetable, platform, class time, sound) and course complexity for a short time were mentioned.

Students demonstrate a positive feeling about active learning tool. (a) Percentage of responses from students on the multiple‐choice question “How do you think the course contributed to your learning?,” with possible answers “excellent,” “moderate,” and “insufficient.” (b) Percentage of responses to the multiple‐choice question “In the questionnaires, what type of question do you prefer?” with possible answers “multiple‐choice,” “open‐ended,” and “I have no preference.” (c) Percentage of students' responses to the question “How do you evaluate the problem‐based questions present in the questionnaires?” with possible answers “They were excellent,” “They were very difficult,” and “They were very simple.” (d) Percentage of responses to the question “How did you feel during the conduct of the inquiry research project?,” with possible responses being “motivated,” “comfortable,” and “apprehensive.” The percentage of responses was calculated on the number of students who answered the questionnaire ( n  = 50)

The main positive points cited by the students were didactics, teaching methodology, and instructor–student interaction

Note : content categories in the table represent any categories included by more than 6% ( n  ≥ 3) of students who responded to feedback. The open‐ended questions on “course strengths” and “course weaknesses” were content analyzed, and the responses were classified into categories that included similar statements.

The students' feelings about the course's active learning tools were assessed by the feedback form. Students were instructed to rate from 1 to 5 on how positive the online inquiry questionnaires were for their learning, being 1 “negative” and 5 “very positive.” The average score of the responses was 4.34, indicating that the questionnaires were validated by the students. Regarding the type of question contained in the questionnaires, 48% of students prefer multiple‐choice questions (Figure  6b ). This shows that at least half of students prefer questions that students prefer questions that only recall information and do not require elaborating their own reasoning. Despite the high preference for multiple‐choice questions among the participants (48%), 62% considered that discursive problem‐solving questions are a great way to make them think critically and formulate strategies for real situations that a researcher faces (Figure  6c ).

One of the proposed activities was the writing of an IRP about some biological question of their interest. The participation rate in IRPs was relatively low (26.2%), being 68.2% postgraduate students. Interestingly, 54% of the participants felt motivated during elaboration of the scientific project (Figure  6d ). In an open question, the participants affirm that the elaboration of an IRP improves its positioning in science, becoming more critical and more motivated. It is also mentioned that the IRP stimulates the acquisition of more knowledge, they are able to expand their scientific vision, simulate a real situation of researchers, and collaboration in scientific communication (data not shown).

In general, there was a demonstration of positive perception regarding active learning methodologies by most students (96%) (data not shown). The main points commented by the students regarding their perception of active methodologies were that they are more effective for lasting learning, stimulate critical thinking and improve the dynamics of the class and the student–teacher interaction.

When consulted in an open‐ended question about the skills they improved with the course, the answers were directed to three points: incorporation of knowledge, motivation about science, and gains in their skills on scientific processes. Forty‐four percent of the participants cited an improvement in their logical critical and rational thinking. A gain in knowledge of the subject was pointed out by 22% of them, and the expansion of the vision by 20% (Figure  7a ). It is also interesting to note that 94% of the participants indicate that the course was able to give a real insight into problems that scientists face in their research. When questioned how motivated they are to solve scientific problems using critical thinking after the course on a scale of 1 to 5 (1: nothing; 5: very), the average response was 4.14, with a rating of 4 and 5 by 86% of them (Figure  7b ).

Active methodologies are able to increase the incorporation of knowledge, motivation in front of science and students show gains in soft skills. (a) Answers to the open question “what are the main gains you obtained with the course?” were categorized among common themes (showing categories that comprise 6% [ n  = 3] or more of the answers). (b) Student responses to the question “how motivated are you to solve scientific problems using critical thinking after the course?” on a scale of 1 to 5 (1: Nothing; 5: Very). The percentage of responses was calculated on the number of students who answered the questionnaire ( n  = 50)

4. DISCUSSION

The constant concern with excellence in the scientific training of academics encountered a new challenge during the COVID‐19 pandemic: how to engage students in effective learning in remote education? This question was the driving force of our study, which reports a semi‐experimental online course for higher education. Our course incorporated active methodology tools that promoted the integration of students in the construction of knowledge and stimulated their critical thinking skills. For this, we proposed problem‐based learning strategies in questionnaires, elaboration of a scientific project, and online quiz in order to complete the lectures. In the last few months, there has been a huge increase in the number of studies dedicated to developing and validating active‐learning strategies in remote or hybrid education, driven by the pandemic. 28 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42

Our study was interested in evaluating mainly two types of achievement in students: (i) Cognitive and intellectual skills (learning outcomes) and (ii) Critical thinking, attitudes toward science and soft skills. For this, different activities and questionnaires were applied before, during, and after the course. Our data show that student engagement in the different active learning tools proposed is directly linked to their performance in the course. The average score of the groups that participated in all the proposed activities and stood out in the writing of the IRP was considerably higher compared with the groups with less involvement in the course when evaluating the discursive questions. In fact, other studies have already shown that active learning approaches in the classroom improve academic performance. In a long‐term study (3 years), the implementation of problem‐based learning (PBL) and learning by teaching (LbT) resulted in an increase from 5 to 6–7 in the average scores in final exams of engineering students. 43 Interactive‐engagement also shows score improvements in physics courses compared with traditional pedagogical strategies. 44

Our data show that student involvement is a key point for their learning. This is widely accepted and experienced at different levels. 45 , 46 Emotional, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions can be considered when analyzing engagement. 47 First, emotional engagement happens when students are emotionally affected and motivated by the learning environment. 48 In our courses, introductory icebreakers and friendly communication was a factor that contributed to students to feel comfortable in interacting with instructors and with each other. Second, behavioral engagement corresponds to attitudes students demonstrate in class, such as listening and paying attention to the class or the persistence and concentration in activities. 49 In this scenario, at least three forms of interaction were provided (chat, audio only, and video), in which the chat demonstrated that students were constantly connected to instructors during the presentation. Finally, cognitive engagement happens when students apply their ability to select, connect, and plan in constructing and self‐regulating the learning process. 47 , 50 Here, these movements were detected, under our point of view, in the construction of the IRP and in the responses to open‐ended questions in both questionnaires, in which students provide strategies to real problems inside and outside their fields of study. All three‐dimensions of engagement are linked together and may contribute to improvement on students' academic performance, then one should not consider them solely.

Beyond the intellectual benefit, traditionally used as teaching quality indicators, we hypothesized that student‐centered teaching methodologies would lead to a positive attitude or perception with science and thinking skills. In a self‐assessment, students reported that they had an improvement in their critical thinking, which involves judging the information with criteria and healthy skepticism. This relationship between active learning and improving critical thinking has been reported in other groups around the world. 22 , 51 , 52 Active‐learning strategies (such as collaborative work in small groups and case studies) improved students' critical thinking skills as measured by the Watson‐Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, which assesses decision‐making ability as well as predicts judgment, problem‐solving, and creativity. 53 Umbach and Wawrzynski 54 analyzed two sets of American national data and showed a positive relationship between university environments where teachers used active and collaborative learning techniques and students' gains in personal‐social development. Improving students' ability to recognize problems and apply effective strategies and solutions to fundamental challenges in the field is the basis of good scientific training. Our results show that tools of active methodology can impact the attitude of students that will be reflected in future scientists able to position themselves in the face of problems.

The improvement of the indicators added to the approval of the course by the students confirmed that the approaches were well chosen and encouraged us to write our experience in order to facilitate the implementation of active methodologies in other courses. We opted for active learning tools that could be easily applied to the virtual environment, improving the dynamics of the classes. Online questionnaires seem to be a great option for validating students' learning, and makes them reflect on the class and apply their knowledge in the answers. Because our courses aim at a scientific formation associated with the resolution of real problems, the questionnaires addressed both concept questions and interpretive/exploratory open‐ended questions. This allowed us to highlight a clear problem in Brazilian education: students are trained as “information recorders/archivers” and not as “critical thinkers,” as many students showed good levels in concept questions and poor performance in problem‐based questions. The use of open and closed questions is ideal to provide greater freedom of responses for students and to stimulate reasoning, but they also need clear criteria for their correction. In order to guarantee the impartiality of the corrections, all five instructors of the courses corrected all the questions and the scores were given by an average between evaluators.

During the course design, we were interested in getting immediate feedback on student learning in relation to the main concepts discussed. For this, at the final of everyday classes, ~10 final minutes were reserved for an online quiz. This activity was very interesting to reaffirm “take home messages,” that is, what the student cannot “get out of class” without learning and their perception about the acquired knowledge. There are several online tools for this type of quiz, and we emphasize that the most interesting ones are those that allow a real‐time assessment of the result with a percentage of “votes” in each of the questions. This allows questions to be promptly corrected and students can use that time to clear up any doubts.

During the undergraduate course, we opted for a questionnaire that represented a “critical reading guide” for scientific papers. Participation in the questionnaires was very positive, but we replaced this activity with the elaboration of a mini‐scientific project in the graduate course, since reading scientific papers is a basic/trivial activity for graduate students. The preparation of the IRP represented the most demanding activity for the student, because there he should use the knowledge of the course to answer a scientific question of his preference. This type of activity gives students freedom to “think outside the box” and search for ways to answer biological questions that interest them. With this activity, we detected—observed some students who were highlighted for their commitment to develop a project as a principal investigator. In addition, we reserved a time within the course for some students who had the IRPs selected to present for everybody. This type of activity adds other soft skills to students, such as communication and accepting challenges, which are essential for future scientists.

Although we have achieved good results as an online course model for higher education, we have encountered some limitations in our study. The course was presented in a short‐time (3 consecutive days) which hampered a robust evaluation regarding the impact of active tools in student progress. In addition, the experimental course was transmitted simultaneously with other activities of the hosted congress, which may have impacted on students' outcomes due to other demanding activities. In addition, because it is an optional course (as a satellite event), there were no ways to require student participation, nor condition performance to the approval of the course. This could have been caused, among other possible reasons, by the low responsiveness in certain activities, showing that part of the students only engages in activities when they are required for approval. Previous experiences with the theme were not considered as a differential advantage, students from different fields in health and biological sciences were analyzed together; the same happened to undergraduate students and postdoctoral fellows, for example. Finally, a point that can be seen in a positive and negative way was the heterogeneity of the class. This was interesting because it brought the most different backgrounds to the same class, however, it also made it difficult to know about the level of knowledge among students, since the same knowledge could be very basic or essential for some and very advanced or specific for others.

Interestingly, although our study was carried out during a pandemic, with a limited number of students, our data reflect the profile of Brazilian education. The students admit that most of their academic training was with passive approaches, but they are interested and willing to more interactive activities. This exposes a gap in the unequal Brazilian educational model: changes in the educational environment are strongly necessary to prepare citizens socially and personally able to participate in society in a democratic way. 55 , 56 , 57 The current model of higher education in force in Europe after the establishment of the parameters determined by the European Higher Education Area prioritizes among the student's abilities the development of an autonomous learning capacity. 58 , 59 However, the models found in traditional schools, including Brazil, prepare students equally, minimizing the idea that knowledge acquisition is motivated in cognitive, personal, and also social skills. 60

The introduction of active learning methodologies has been widely encouraged worldwide, but it requires a great effort from both teachers and students: educators need to review their lesson plans and add new tools and students need to be willing to engage in the construction of knowledge. 14 Unquestionably, the process requires dynamic instructors, with a flexible mind and willing to use the class to produce a transformation in the students to acquire knowledge through active methodologies. The course was carried out after 3 months in full lockdown. We have no elements to evaluate if the impact of our proposal could be different spending more time within the course. Certainly, with all the uncertainties of this moment in the world, our experience reaffirms the remote method of learning when using elements of critical thinking and active methodologies, with a real benefit of self‐confidence and empowerment of students to motivate themselves in their long and arduous road to be a scientist.

Above all, our experience showed that making the student the center of the class brings not only cognitive benefits (such as intellectual growth) but also in the psychosocial and personal spheres, giving students independence, improvement in their effective communication, and in their ability to accept challenges for self‐development. Our data show that active learning tools that require constant engagement benefits students and improve their critical thinking. This study also shows that if courses on various scientific topics were reformulated by adding active methodologies, it is likely that more students will obtain better intellectual baggage and positive positioning towards participation in science, forming/preparing more powerful thinkers.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

No competing interest has been declared. All authors have seen and approved the manuscript. The manuscript has not been accepted or published elsewhere.

Supporting information

Appendix S1. Supporting Information.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful for the invitation from the Graduate Program in Biosciences and Pathophysiology (State University of Maringá) through Prof. Gessilda de Alcantara Nogueira de Melo to participate in the VII International Meeting of Biosciences and physiopathology. This study received support from FIOCRUZ, UFPR, CNPq, CAPES, and Programa Básico de Parasitologia AUXPE 2041/2011 (CAPES) Brazil. Marcel Ivan Ramirez is currently a fellow from CNPq‐Brazil.

Rossi IV, de Lima JD, Sabatke B, Nunes MAF, Ramirez GE, Ramirez MI. Active learning tools improve the learning outcomes, scientific attitude, and critical thinking in higher education: Experiences in an online course during the COVID‐19 pandemic . Biochem Mol Biol Educ . 2021; 49 :888–903. 10.1002/bmb.21574 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

Contributor Information

Izadora Volpato Rossi, Email: moc.liamg@otaplovarodazi .

Marcel Ivan Ramirez, Email: [email protected] .

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Mental models: 13 thinking tools to boost your problem-solving skills

Imagine you've gone out to dinner with friends. You’ve just sat down at your favorite table at your favorite restaurant, looking forward to the evening ahead.

The waiter brings over your menus and tells you about the specials. It sounds like one of the dishes is really good — you've always wanted to try it, and the way they've described it sounds amazing.

You're mulling it over in your mind while the others order, and then it's your turn — and you just ask for the same meal you always get.

Sound familiar?

Whether it’s your favorite meal or the perfectly worn-in pair of jeans in your closet, this tendency to fall back on what we know rather than risk something unknown is the result of a common thinking tool called a mental model.

Mental models, like the status quo bias in the scenario above, represent how we perceive something to operate in the world based on what we have learned in our lives. We all use them to help us understand complex situations and predict what will happen. If leveraged well, they can be powerful thinking tools.

This article will explore the concept of mental models as thinking tools and uncover 13 mental models you can add to your toolkit of thinking skills.

Mental models as thinking tools

Most of the time, we're not as thoughtful as we think. While many of us consider ourselves capable of critical thinking, researchers say we tend to make snap judgments without using our knowledge.

For example, let’s try an exercise. Take a look at this image:

Did you immediately react based on what you think is about to happen?

Although there isn’t a picture showing what takes place next, most of us made a guess using a tool we weren't even aware of — a mental model. Through our mental model, we could predict a possible outcome (which hopefully didn’t involve any scratches or falls).

Many of our snap judgments and reactions — whether about a photo we see or a problem we encounter — are shaped by the mental models we use to view the world. We begin to develop mental models as soon as we are born and continue to develop them throughout our lives, using them as a thinking tool to make sense of life, solve problems, and make decisions.

We all start out with different sets of mental models — after all, we all have different experiences that shape our early lives. As we gain experiences and knowledge, we add more models to our toolkit and learn to see things in new ways.

Sometimes our mental models work against us. If we limit our thinking to only a few mental models, we can suffer from critical thinking barriers . However, when we actively pursue thoughtful learning and collect many mental models, they can be extremely valuable tools for critical and creative thinking.

Munger's Latticework of Mental Models

Mental models as thinking tools were first made popular by Charlie Munger in his 1995 " The Psychology of Human Misjudgment " speech at Harvard University. Entrepreneurs and thinkers have since embraced mental models to achieve success.

According to Munger's Latticework of Mental Models theory, we can use various thinking tools to see problems from several points of view. Combining mental models increases original thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills instead of relying on one frame of reference.

As Munger said , "All the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department ... 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90 percent of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight."

This is why we need to keep learning — to expand our toolbox. The more mental models we have in our toolkit, the easier it is to find one that works for the situation.

A well-stocked toolbox is more effective at solving a problem than a single nail.

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13 valuable tools for your thinking skills toolkit

There are hundreds of mental models and thinking tools available, which can be overwhelming. Most of us are familiar with concepts like the Eisenhower Matrix and brainstorming. However, we can use many other mental models for creative and critical thinking. Here are 13 thinking tools to boost decision-making, problem-solving, and creative thinking skills.

1. First Principles

First principle thinking is a mental model that can be used for problem-solving by breaking things down to the most basic level. This thinking tool is based on the idea that all complex problems can be reduced to more specific, fundamental parts. Using first-principles thinking, you identify the underlying causes of a problem and then find the best solutions that address those root causes.

For instance, it would be impossible to pack up your entire house at once if you were moving. To pack efficiently and safely, you’d need to go room by room, tackling one room at a time.

2. Inversion

Inversion is a technique used to generate ideas of creative solutions to problems by imagining the opposite of them. Inversion is higher-order thinking that requires thinking about the solution you don't want. With inverted thinking, you consider how something might fail and then try to avoid those mistakes. This approach differs from "working backward," another way of doing things that encourages you to begin with the desired end solution in mind.

3. Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor is a mental model that can simplify complex problems and situations by determining which explanation is most likely. This thinking tool is based on the principle that the simplest answer is usually correct. When using Occam's Razor, you should look for the most obvious, straightforward reasoning that fits all facts.

4. Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a mental model used for categorizing the knowledge levels of learners. The cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning domains are grouped into three hierarchical levels, with each level encompassing the previous one. In a hierarchical structure, areas of knowledge begin with simple skills and progress to higher-order thinking.

The six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy are:

• Knowledge: Recalling or recognizing facts and information
• Comprehension: Understanding the meaning of information
• Application: Using information in new ways
• Analysis: Breaking down information into smaller parts
• Synthesis: Putting pieces of information together to form a new whole
• Evaluation: Making judgments about the value of information

By applying the actions from each level of this tool, we can analyze situations from different angles and find more comprehensive solutions.

5. Incentives

Incentives are a model that can be used to encourage desired behavior. Based on a cause and effect concept, people will be more likely to act if they are given an incentive to do so. The incentives can be monetary, such as a bonus or commission, or non-monetary, such as recognition or privileges.

6. Fundamental Attribution Error

The fundamental attribution error is characterized by the tendency to focus too much on personal characteristics and not enough on circumstances when judging others. This mental model believes that people's actions reflect who they are without considering their point of view. This can lead to misunderstanding and conflict.

For example, it's easy to get angry and lash out at someone who cuts you off in traffic without considering that maybe they are rushing to the hospital for an emergency. Keeping this model in mind can help us avoid over-simplifying behavior.

7. Law of Diminishing Returns

The Law of Diminishing Returns provides a way to determine when it’s no longer efficient to continue investing in something. This thinking tool is based on the idea that there’s a point at which additional investment in something will result in diminishing returns.

The law of diminishing returns is often used in higher-level business decisions to determine when to stop investing in a project, but it’s also used in other forms of decision-making. Research has found that decision-makers tend to use a "matching" strategy in which they make their choice based on the relative value each option has.

8. Redundancy

The redundancy theory suggests that learners retain less new knowledge if the same information is presented in multiple ways or if it’s unnecessarily elaborate. Studies have shown that using several sources to relay information, such as text, visuals, and audio can create a lack of focus and less learning. Integrating the redundancy model can help teachers and leaders make learning more efficient.

9. Hanlon's Razor

Hanlon's Razor is a mental model that suggests most mistakes are not made maliciously. The purpose of this tool is to remind us not to assume the worst in the actions of others. Hanlon's Razor can help us see the situation from another's point of view and have more empathy, therefore avoiding making wrong assumptions.

For example, friends who aren't answering their mobile phones most likely aren't mad at you. Maybe they're just busy, or perhaps there are various other reasons to explain their delay.

10. Common Knowledge

We usually think of common knowledge as universal facts most people understand. However, the mental model of common knowledge is a little different. Used as a thinking tool, it focuses on pooling together the knowledge we don't share and taking into account the wisdom of others to help us make better decisions. Brainstorming, creating concept maps, and integrating feedback are useful tools we can use to share common knowledge.

11. Survivorship Bias

Survivorship bias refers to the tendency to focus on successful people, businesses, and strategies while overlooking failed ones.

For example, the idea that all 21st-century Hollywood stars got there through hard work may underestimate the amount of networking used to achieve fame. The idea dismisses the millions of other actors who worked just as hard but didn't have the same connections.

This thinking process can lead to decision-making errors because it causes people to overestimate their chances of success. However, when used to frame thinking, understanding the survivorship bias can help us consider other points of view and avoid making incorrect decisions.

12. The Ladder of Inference

The Ladder of Inference is a mental model that helps explain why we make judgments quickly and unconsciously. The ladder illustrates the rapid steps our minds go through to make decisions and take action in any given situation. The seven steps are:

• Observations: The data or information that we carry in through our senses
• Selected Data: The process of our brain choosing which information is important and which to ignore
• Meanings: Making interpretations and judgments based on our experiences, beliefs, and values
• Assumptions: The views or beliefs that we hold that help us interpret the facts
• Conclusions: The decision or opinion that we form based on our assumptions
• Beliefs: The convictions that we have about ourselves and the world around us
• Actions: The way we act or respond based on our thoughts

Using the Ladder of Inference as a thinking tool can help us avoid rash judgments based on assumptions and ensure sound thinking.

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13. 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 Rule is a thinking tool that we can use to understand the relationship between inputs and outputs. This model is based on the idea that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. The 80/20 rule can be used to decide how to allocate resources.

Thinking tools are essential for a learner's toolkit

Every lifelong learner should have a toolbox of thinking tools. Mental models are helpful thinking tools that can enhance the creative and critical thinking processes. By having more tools at your disposal, you can approach any situation from various angles, increasing the probability of finding a successful solution.

Remember — building your thinking toolkit is an ongoing process. Keep learning, and you'll soon find that you're making better decisions consistently and solving problems more quickly.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article. Feel free to share, recommend and connect 🙏

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Erin E. Rupp

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9 Critical Thinking Tools for Better Decision Making

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” William James

This article is a companion to my previous article about a Decision-Making Framework for Leaders and will refer to some of the concepts in that post. Today, I’m sharing an overview of 9 critical thinking tools you can use as a leader making decisions for your organisation or team. I have written a more in-depth article on each of the tools and you will find links to those articles below.

Table of Contents

What is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is the mode of thinking – about any subject, content, or problem – in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.

It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities, as well as a commitment to overcoming our biases.

Or, to put it another way – critical thinking is the art of thinking about our approach to thinking. It’s about gaining knowledge, comprehending it, applying that knowledge, analyzing and synthesizing.

Critical thinking can happen at any part of the decision making process. And the goal is to make sure we think deeply about our thinking and apply that thinking in different ways to come up with options and alternatives.

Think of it as a construct of moving through our thinking instead of just rushing through it.

Critical Thinking Is An Important Part of Decision-Making

It’s important to understand that critical thinking can sit outside of a specific decision-making process. And by the same token, decision making doesn’t always need to include critical thinking.

But for the purposes of this article, I’m addressing critical thinking within the problem and decision-making context.

And I’m sharing 9 critical thinking tools that are helpful for people at every stage of their leadership journey. There are so many tools out there and I’d love to hear from you if you have a favourite one that you’ve found useful.

So, whether you are:

• just beginning to flex your critical thinking and decision-making muscles
• or an experienced leader looking for tools to help you think more deeply about a problem

There is something here for you.

Let’s dive in.

9 Critical Thinking Tools For Leaders

• Decision Tree
• Changing Your Lens
• Active Listening & Socratic Method
• Decision Hygiene Checklist
• Where Accuracy Lives
• Overcoming Analysis Paralysis

Of course, there are many other tools available. But let’s look at how each of these can improve your decision-making and leadership skills .

1. Decision-Making Tree

The decision making tree can be useful before going into a decision-making meeting to determine how collaborative or inclusive you need to be and who should be included in the discussion on a particular issue.

This tree is a simple yes/no workflow in response to some specific questions that can guide you to identify if you need others to help you make a certain decision and if so, who you should include.

To take a deeper dive into the decision-making tree framework read our latest article.

2. Changing Your Lens

Looking at problems through a different lens is about changing your point of view, changing the context, or changing the reality. Let’s go into each of those a little more.

Point of View

Ask yourself these questions as it relates to the problem at hand.

• Can you change your point of view?
• How is the problem defined from the perspective of the CEO, of the frontline staff, of customers, of adjacent groups? The goal is to look at the problem from the perspective of others within your specific organisation, so adjust these as needed.

They will all look at the problem in different ways as well as define it differently, depending upon their point of view. Understanding all of the viewpoints can give you a deeper understanding of all the ramifications of the problem at hand.

We tend to come at the problem from our own functional perspective. If I work in finance, well, it’s going to be a finance problem. If you ask someone who works in IT, they’ll likely look at the same thing and say, “It’s an IT problem.”

Can you change the context in terms of how you define the problem? Find someone from another area and ask them how they would define the problem. Use their perspective to generate that different point of view.

Change Your Reality

Ask yourself, “What if I …

• Removed some of these constraints?
• Had some of these resources?
• Was able to do X instead of Y?

By changing the reality, you may find a different way to define the problem that enables you to pursue different opportunities.

3. Active Listening & Socratic Method

This is pairing active listening with the Socratic method. Active listening is one of the core skills you’ll want to develop to get better at critical thinking. I also touched on active listening / deep listening in my article on difficult conversations .

Because you need to turn down the volume on your own beliefs and biases and listen to someone else. It’s about being present and staying focused.

Listening Skills include:

• Be present and stay focused
• Ask open-ended and probing questions
• Be aware of your biases
• Don’t interrupt or preempt
• Be curious and ask questions (80/20 talk time)
• Recap facts – repeat back what you heard using their language
• Allow the silence
• Move from Cosmetic>Conversational>Active>Deep Listening

When you are trying to find the problem, talk about what success looks like, and think about what the real question is, you have to be aware of your own biases. The things that resonate with you because it’s what you already believe.

Learn to ask questions and listen for insight.

When you’re trying to understand and gather information, it’s very easy to want to jump in to clarify your question when someone’s thinking.

But they’re actually thinking – so you need to sit back and allow it.

When you marry this type of active listening with some key questions that come from Socrates, it can help you understand problems at a deeper level.

To use this, just highlight one or two questions you’ve never used before to clarify, to understand the initial issue, or to bring up some assumptions. You can take just one question from each area to try out and listen for the answer.

As simple as this sounds, this is part of critical thinking. It’s about uncovering what’s actually going on to get to the root cause of a situation.

To take a deeper dive into the socratic method framework and some scenarios in the worplace read our latest article.

4. Decision Hygiene Checklist

When we think about active listening with great questions, we need to make sure that we are learning what someone else thinks without infecting them with what WE think.

That’s where the Decision Hygiene Checklist comes in. When we’re in this gathering and analysing data phase, you need to make sure you keep that analysis in a neutral environment. Don’t signal your conclusions.

You may want to quarantine people from past decisions, as well. Don’t bring up past decisions or outcomes because you want to get the information from them without it being polluted.

When you’re seeking feedback from others, exercise good decision hygiene in the following ways:

• Quarantine others from your opinions and beliefs when asking for feedback.
• Frame your request for feedback in a neutral fashion to keep from signalling your conclusions.
• Quarantine others from outcomes when asking about past decisions.
• Prior to being amid a decision, make a checklist of the fact and relevant information you would need to provide feedback for such a decision.
• Have the people seeking and giving feedback agree to be accountable to provide all the relevant information, ask for anything that’s not been provided, and refuse to give feedback if the person seeking feedback can’t provide relevant information.

When involved in a group setting, exercise these additional forms of decision hygiene:

• Solicit feedback independently, before a group discussion or before members express their views to one another.
• Anonymize the sources of the views and distribute a compilation to group members for review, in advance of group meetings or discussion.

5. Where Accuracy Lives

Remaining on the flavour of understanding that our own beliefs can compete or pollute reality and our decision making, another approach is to think about where accuracy lives.

The Inside View is from your own perspective, experiences, and beliefs. The Outside View is the way others see the world and the situation you’re in. And somewhere in the middle may be the reality.

This tool is quite simple. Start out with your inside view and describe the challenge from your perspective. Write down your understanding, your analysis, and maybe even your conclusions.

Then it’s almost like De Bono’s six hats where you take that hat off and you look at the outside view. Describe the situation from an outside view. Ask yourself if a co-worker had this problem, how would they view it? How might their perspective differ? What kind of solutions could they offer?

And then you marry those two narratives. One thing about the outside view is that you can get statistics around some of the information you’re looking at.

It can be quite helpful to get a base level of what is actually proven and true, statistically, that is not polluted by the inside view.

Once you’ve run through this process, ask yourself:

• Did this actually change my view?
• Can I see the biases that were sitting there?
• And if Yes, why?

To learn more about how to use this framework and how to overcome some of the obstacles you might encounter read our deeper dive here.

6. The 5 Whys: Root Cause Analysis

This is a really simple tool that starts off by defining the problem or the defect and then continuing to ask why until you get to the 5th Why. This is is usually where you’ll start to discover a possible solution.

Here’s a simple example:

• Problem – I ran a red light.
• Well, why did it happen? I was late for an appointment.
• Why did that happen? Well, I woke up late.
• And why did that happen? My alarm didn’t go off on my phone.
• Why did that happen? I didn’t plug it into the charger.
• And why is that happening? It wasn’t plugged in. It’s because I forgot to plug it in.

So there’s the possible solution – I’ve got to set up a recurring alarm at 9pm to remind me to plug my phone in.

This is a tool perfect for junior members on your team, or ones that come to you with a barrage of questions on a problem. Have them take the 5 Whys template and think it through, ask themselves the 5 why’s.

Interested in learning more about how to use the 5 Why’s framework and how to overcome some of the obstacles you might encounter? Read our latest article with case studies.

7. RAID Log

RAID stands for

• Risks – write down the risks that will have an adverse impact on this?
• Assumptions – list out all the associated assumptions
• Issues – What are some of the issues that have already impacted or could impact the project?
• Dependencies – what are the dependencies

The RAID Log is often used when you’ve got multiple decisions about an ongoing project.

Whether you’ll be assessing your thinking by yourself, or with team members or customers, this is a great way to make sure you’re gathering all of the necessary information including the assumptions, any issues and dependencies.

8. The 7 So-Whats: Consequences of Actions

All of the previous tools are designed to help you define what the problem is. But it’s also important to think about the consequences of actions.

As you grow as a leader, you’ll need to be comfortable understanding both big thinking and little thinking. Big picture and little details so you are confident in your decisions.

A big part of that is understanding the consequences of your actions and decisions. That’s what the 7 So-Whats tool is about.

The 7 So-Whats is similar to the 5 Whys in that you ask the same question repeatedly to get the answer. Start with your recommendation or possible solution and then ask “So, what will that mean” 7 times.

For example, if you need to hire a new sales rep, the first ‘So, what’ would be something like, “We’ll need to have the right job description and salary package for them, and let the team know they’re coming on.”

And then you work your way through the rest of the ‘So, Whats’ to detail out the results or consequences of the action you’re thinking about.

To read more about the 7 So-Whats read our comprehensive article with case studies.

9. Overcoming Analysis Paralysis

A lot of people get caught up in analysis paralysis. I know I do. Whether it’s thinking about moving house or taking on a new hire, you get all the information but you still feel stuck.

What I find is that it’s usually because we are narrowing our focus too much, especially when it comes to advancement in your career or self-promotion.

So here are some questions to help you push through that analysis paralysis. Ask yourself:

• How would I make this decision if I was focused on opening up opportunities for myself / the situation?
• What would I advise my best friend to do? Or What would my successor do in this situation?
• Your caution may be the result of short-term fears, such as embarrassment, that aren’t important in the long run. Can you create a timeline or deadline to make the decision that will give you some mental distance?

Basically, you want to ask yourself what is holding you back. Is it fear? Fear of disappointment? Or that you don’t have enough information?

Perhaps you think you could get more information, but can you get more information in the time available? If not, then make the decision with what you have.

If you hold back from making your decision, what will the impact be for your stakeholders, your career, and how people view you?

The purpose of this tool is to separate yourself from the situation a little bit so you can look at it more subjectively as if you were advising a friend. And push through the paralysis to make the decision.

9 Critical Thinking Tools For Better Decision-Making

Taking time to think about how you think and using tools like these can be the difference between becoming a good leader and a great one.

Use these nine critical thinking tools to empower you to make better decisions for your business, organisation, and career – and feel confident doing so.

For personalised guidance on how best to use critical thinking skills for your business or organisation, drop us a line . We would be happy to partner with you to create a plan tailored to your needs.

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Helping Students Practice Knowledge Transfer

Being able to apply information that is learned in one context to solve problems in another context, is known as ‘transfer’.  Many would argue that being able to transfer concepts and knowledge to a new context is the true test of learning.  We agree!

“A central and enduring goal of education is to provide learning experiences that are useful beyond the specific conditions of initial learning.”

(Lobato, 2006, in Nokes-Malach and Richey 2015 )

It turns out that researchers have been arguing over, and studying, both content and context in which learning transfer fails or succeeds since the very early 1900s. Nokes-Malach and Richey (2015), summarize the arguments, research, and outcomes in this complex literature. For our purpose of sharing practices that can make transfer more likely, we will focus on the outcomes. To illustrate just a bit about the complexity of this topic, transfer of knowledge can be: ‘near’ (executing learned procedures), ‘intermediate’ (adapting learned procedures), and ‘far’ transfer (relating concepts to each other and to new problems with different features).

Examples will be discipline specific. Here are examples of where transfer of knowledge is required in a civil engineering design course:

Basic Knowledge: Structural Analysis (Beam). Using the principles of statics and mechanics of materials, students learn to determine the shear force, bending moment, and deflection along the length of the beam.

Near transfer: structural analysis (frame). students are asked to analyze a structural frame, such as a door frame. the frame consists of interconnected beams and columns, subjected to various loads and boundary conditions., in the frame analysis, there is a more complex structural system with multiple members connected at joints. this requires additional considerations and analysis techniques (frame stability, joint behavior, and load distribution among members)., intermediate transfer: truss analysis. this problem involves the analysis of a truss structure. the truss consists of interconnected members subjected to external loads., the new approach must be adapted to account for the unique characteristics of truss structures (i.e. axial forces in the members)., far transfer: foundation design: this example involves the design of a  structural foundation. the structure has specific requirements for load-bearing capacity, settlement, and stability, designing a foundation system that interacts with the underlying soil and supports the entire structure involves applying principles from different areas of civil engineering, such as geotechnical engineering and foundation design, which may not have been directly addressed in the analysis of a beam..

These levels of transfer require different skills and likely help explain the variety of learning outcomes in the transfer literature. Applying, adapting, comparing and contrasting, and evaluating are (more or less) progressively more challenging cognitive tasks (think ‘Blooms taxonomy’, Agarwal, 2018 ). These different levels can be promoted using different learning strategies.

If transfer of knowledge is an expectation and it requires critical thinking skills, this should be transparent in the learning objectives for the course and/or assignment. Rather than teaching or practicing these skills, it may be that students are expected to already have these skills. Some likely do; others do not and need structured practice.  This is a question of equity. Because  students are transitioning to college courses from a variety of educational experiences, not all have been challenged to critically think and transfer complicated knowledge to a new context. This does not mean they are unable to learn how. If we make assumptions about students’ critical thinking skills, we perpetuate an inequitable situation in our classrooms and institutions.

Higher level critical thinking skills needed for information transfer include the ability to analyze, compare contrast, link concepts, and evaluate approaches. These skills can be practiced and scaffolded so that students who have a grasp on content in the context it was taught can know how to use that information in a new context.

• Identifying ‘knowledge transfer’ as an expected learning outcome.
• Scaffolding complex problems by helping students build on the basic information using metacognitive questions and reflection.
• Comparing and contrasting the simple questions with more complex questions.
• Provide relevant real-world problems for students to practice and collaborate on.
• One key here is inviting students – in groups – to practice and discuss a progression of problems from one context to another.

This is an easy way to help our students be more successful in their learning.  Happy teaching and learning. Happy transferring!!

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Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Title: cu-mamba: selective state space models with channel learning for image restoration.

Abstract: Reconstructing degraded images is a critical task in image processing. Although CNN and Transformer-based models are prevalent in this field, they exhibit inherent limitations, such as inadequate long-range dependency modeling and high computational costs. To overcome these issues, we introduce the Channel-Aware U-Shaped Mamba (CU-Mamba) model, which incorporates a dual State Space Model (SSM) framework into the U-Net architecture. CU-Mamba employs a Spatial SSM module for global context encoding and a Channel SSM component to preserve channel correlation features, both in linear computational complexity relative to the feature map size. Extensive experimental results validate CU-Mamba's superiority over existing state-of-the-art methods, underscoring the importance of integrating both spatial and channel contexts in image restoration.

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