teaching for critical thinking

12 Solid Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

Teaching critical thinking skills is a necessity with our learners because they’re crucial for living life. As such, every teacher is looking for exciting ways to integrate it into classrooms. However, what exactly are these skills, and what are some of the best strategies teachers can use for teaching them?

Thinking critically is more than just thinking clearly or rationally; it’s about thinking independently. It means formulating your own opinions and drawing your conclusions regardless of outside influence. It’s about the discipline of analysis and seeing the connections between ideas, and being wide open to other viewpoints and opinions.

You can use these techniques for teaching critical thinking skills in every lesson and subject. Get creative and find different ways to incorporate them into your teaching practices.

12 Ways of Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

1. begin with a question.

Starting with a question is the most straightforward foray into a subject. What do you want to explore and discuss? It shouldn’t be a question you can answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ You want to develop essential questions here, ones that inspire a quest for knowledge and problem-solving. They’ll support the development of critical thinking skills beautifully.

When you pose your question to learners, encourage brainstorming. Write down possible answers on a chalkboard or oversized pad as a reference. Having open discussions with learners is a big part of defining the problem.

2. Create a Foundation

Learners cannot think critically if they do not have the information they need. Begin any exercise with a review of related data which ensures they can recall facts pertinent to the topic.

These may stem from things like:

reading assignments and other homework

previous lessons or exercises

a video or text

3. Consult the Classics

Classical literary works are a perfect launchpad for exploring great thinking. Use them for specific lessons on character motivation, plot predictions, and themes. Here are some links to explore for resources:

Shakespeare and Critical Thinking

The Critical Thinking Community

4. Create a Country

This could be a tremendous project-based learning scenario about learning what makes a country. In the process, learners experience history, geography, politics, and more. Here are some resources to help you:

The Geography Site

Could You Start Your Own Country?

5. Use Information Literacy

Mastering the proper use of information is crucial to our student's success in school and life. It’s about learning how to dig through knowledge to find the most useful and appropriate facts for solving a problem. Students must learn to amass the proper expertise to inform their thinking. Teaching critical thinking skills can be supported by an understanding of how to analyze, organize, and clarify information.

6. Utilize Peer Groups

There is comfort in numbers, as the saying goes. Digital learners thrive in environments involving teamwork and collaboration. A learner’s peers are an excellent source of information, questions, and problem-solving techniques.

7. Try One Sentence

Try this exercise: form groups of 8-10 learners. Next, instruct each learner to write one sentence describing a topic on a piece of paper. The learner then passes the paper to the next one who adds their understanding of the next step in a single sentence. This time, though, the learner folds the paper down to cover their sentence. Now only their sentence is visible and no other, so each time they pass the paper you can see only one sentence.

The object is for learners to keep adding the next step of their understanding. This teaches them to home in on a specific moment in time. Additionally, they learn to apply their knowledge and logic to explain themselves as clearly as possible.

8. Activate Problem-Solving

Assigning a specific problem is one of the best avenues for teaching critical thinking skills. Leave the goal or “answer” open-ended for the broadest possible approach. This is the essence of asking essential questions requiring the discovery and synthesis of knowledge through critical thinking. Ultimately, with the correct process to guide you, it's best to teach critical thinking and problem-solving skills simultaneously.

9. Return to Role-Playing

Role-playing has always been an excellent method for exercising critical thinking. It’s why actors do tireless research for their roles as it involves inhabiting another persona and its characteristics. Becoming someone else calls upon stretching both your analytical and creative mind.

Pair learners up and have them research a conflict involving an interaction between two famous historical figures. Then lead them to decide which character they each choose to play. They’ll each have different points of view in this conflict. Have them discuss it until they can mutually explain the other’s point of view. Their final challenge will be to each suggest a compromise.

10. Speaking Through Sketching

Though we are inherently visual learners, it can be challenging to communicate an idea without words effectively. Nevertheless, translating thoughts to picture form encourages critical thinking beautifully. It guides learners to think using a different mental skill set, and it’s also a great way to get them truly invested in an idea.

11. Make it a Priority

Every subject offers opportunities for critical thinking, so put teaching critical thinking skills at the forefront of your lessons. Check to understand and provide room for discussion, even if such periods are brief. You’ll begin to see critical thinking as a culture rather than just an activity.

12. Change Their Misconceptions

Critical thinking involves intensive work and concentration, but learners should practice it themselves for much of the process. That said, it can be helpful to step in partway through their process. Apart from correcting misconceptions or assumptions, you’ll offer more vibrant lessons, more in-depth exploration, and better lifelong learning.

Teaching the Critical Path

Teaching critical thinking skills carries the potential to exhibit a profound impact on a learner's intellectual development and overall success in life. By encouraging critical thinking constantly, educators empower their learners with the ability to analyze information, evaluate its credibility and relevance, and make informed decisions.

And here’s even better news—teaching critical thinking also cultivates creativity, empathy, and open-mindedness, skills that enable any learner to approach complex issues from multiple perspectives, engage in constructive debates, and develop well-rounded arguments. Ultimately, though, it is through teaching critical thinking that we help learners become better citizens and contributors to an ever-changing world.

Author and keynote speaker, Lee works with governments, education systems, international agencies and corporations to help people and organisations connect to their higher purpose. Lee lives in Japan where he studies Zen and the Shakuhachi.

25 Real-World Discussion Topics for Learners to Explore Together

The most useful critical thinking mental models to know about.

Helping Students Hone Their Critical Thinking Skills

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

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

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

Make Time for Metacognitive Reflection

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

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

Teach Reasoning Skills 

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

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

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

Ask Open-Ended Questions 

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

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

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

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

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

Teach Information Literacy 

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

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

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

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

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

Provide Diverse Perspectives 

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

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

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

Practice Makes Perfect 

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

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

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

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Teaching Strategies to Promote Critical Thinking

Janelle cox.

• September 9, 2014

Critical thinking is an essential skill that all students will use in almost every aspect of their lives. From solving problems to making informed decisions, thinking critically is a valuable skill that will help students navigate the world’s complexities. In a post-COVID teaching environment , incorporating teaching strategies that help students think rationally and independently is an excellent way to strengthen students’ abilities and prepare them for any new challenges in the future.

There are several techniques to engage students and help strengthen these skills. Here are some teaching strategies that prove to be effective.

Encourage Students to Question Everything

We are now living in a world where AI ( artificial intelligence ) is slowly making its way into the classrooms. With these innovations, it’s imperative today, more than ever, for students to question everything and understand how to verify information when making an informed decision. AI has the potential to spread misinformation or be biased. Teach students to be careful of what is and is not a reliable source . Discuss credibility and bias and have students look for examples of both trusted content and misinformation. By using different forms of media for this exercise, students will need to use their critical thinking skills to determine the validity of the information.

Activate Student Curiosity

You can activate a student’s curiosity by using the inquiry-based learning model. This approach involves posing questions or problems for students to discover the answers on their own. In this method, students develop questions they want to know the answers to, and their teacher serves as their guide providing support as needed along the way. This approach nurtures curiosity and self-directed learning by encouraging students to think critically and independently. Recent  research  from 2019 supports the assertion that the use of this model significantly enhances students’ critical thinking abilities.

Incorporate Project-Based Learning

Immerse students in real-world problem scenarios by having them partake in project-based learning. Engaging in hands-on projects where students need to collaborate, communicate, analyze information, and find solutions to their challenges is a great way to develop their critical thinking skills. Throughout the project, students must engage in higher-order thinking while gathering their information and making decisions throughout various stages.

This approach pushes students to think critically while they connect to a real-world issue, and it helps them understand the relevance this issue has in their lives. Throughout the project, students will hone their critical thinking skills because PBL is a process that requires reflection and continuous improvement.

Offer Diverse Perspectives

Consider offering students a variety of viewpoints. Sometimes classrooms are filled with students who share similar perspectives on their beliefs and cultural norms. When this happens, it hinders learners from alternative viewpoints or experiences. Exposing students to diverse perspectives will help to broaden their horizons and challenge them to think beyond their perspectives. In addition, being exposed to different viewpoints encourages students to be more open-minded so they are more equipped to develop problem-solving strategies and analytical skills. It also helps them to cultivate empathy which is critical for critical thinking because it helps them appreciate others more and be concerned for them.

To support diverse viewpoints in the classroom, use various primary sources such as documentaries and articles from people who have experienced current events firsthand. Or invite in a few guest speakers who can offer varying perspectives on the same topic. Bring diverse perspectives into the classroom through guest speakers or by watching documentaries from varying experts.

Assign Tasks on Critical Writing

Assign writing tasks that encourage students to organize and articulate their thoughts and defend their position. By doing so, you are offering students the opportunity to demonstrate their critical thinking skills as well as effectively communicate their thoughts and ideas. Whether it’s through a research paper or an essay, students will need to support their claims and show evidence to prove their point of view. Critical writing also requires students to analyze information, scrutinize different perspectives, and question the reliability of sources, all of which contribute to the development of their critical thinking skills.

Promote Collaboration

Collaborative learning is a powerful tool that promotes critical thinking among students. Whether it’s through group discussions, classroom debates , or group projects, peer interaction will help students develop the ability to think critically. For example, a classroom debate will challenge students to articulate their thoughts, defend their viewpoints, and consider opposing viewpoints.

It will also challenge students to have a deep understanding of the subject matter as well as sharpen their communication skills. Any group setting where students can work together and be exposed to the thought processes of their classmates will help them understand that their way of thinking is not the only way. Through peer interaction, students will develop the ability to think critically.

Critical thinking requires consistency and commitment. This means that to make the above teaching strategies effective, they must be used consistently throughout the year. Encourage students to question everything and verify all information and resources. Activate student curiosity by using the inquiry-based learning model. Incorporate a real-world project that students can work on throughout the entire semester or school year. Assign critical writing tasks that require students to analyze information and prove their point of view. Finally, foster peer interaction where students work with their classmates to sharpen their communication skills and gain a deeper understanding of other perspectives.

The ultimate goal is for students to become independent thinkers who are capable of analyzing and solving their own problems. By modeling and developing student’s critical thinking skills in the classroom we are setting the stage for our student’s growth and success in the future.

• #CriticalThinking , #TeachingStrategies

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Developing Critical Thinking

• Posted January 10, 2018
• By Iman Rastegari

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

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

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

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

About the Harvard EdCast

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

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

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What Is Critical Thinking and Why Do We Need To Teach It?

Question the world and sort out fact from opinion.

The world is full of information (and misinformation) from books, TV, magazines, newspapers, online articles, social media, and more. Everyone has their own opinions, and these opinions are frequently presented as facts. Making informed choices is more important than ever, and that takes strong critical thinking skills. But what exactly is critical thinking? Why should we teach it to our students? Read on to find out.

What is critical thinking?

Source: Indeed

Critical thinking is the ability to examine a subject and develop an informed opinion about it. It’s about asking questions, then looking closely at the answers to form conclusions that are backed by provable facts, not just “gut feelings” and opinion. These skills allow us to confidently navigate a world full of persuasive advertisements, opinions presented as facts, and confusing and contradictory information.

The Foundation for Critical Thinking says, “Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief-generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior.”

In other words, good critical thinkers know how to analyze and evaluate information, breaking it down to separate fact from opinion. After a thorough analysis, they feel confident forming their own opinions on a subject. And what’s more, critical thinkers use these skills regularly in their daily lives. Rather than jumping to conclusions or being guided by initial reactions, they’ve formed the habit of applying their critical thinking skills to all new information and topics.

Why is critical thinking so important?

Imagine you’re shopping for a new car. It’s a big purchase, so you want to do your research thoroughly. There’s a lot of information out there, and it’s up to you to sort through it all.

• You’ve seen TV commercials for a couple of car models that look really cool and have features you like, such as good gas mileage. Plus, your favorite celebrity drives that car!
• The manufacturer’s website has a lot of information, like cost, MPG, and other details. It also mentions that this car has been ranked “best in its class.”
• Your neighbor down the street used to have this kind of car, but he tells you that he eventually got rid of it because he didn’t think it was comfortable to drive. Plus, he heard that brand of car isn’t as good as it used to be.
• Three independent organizations have done test-drives and published their findings online. They all agree that the car has good gas mileage and a sleek design. But they each have their own concerns or complaints about the car, including one that found it might not be safe in high winds.

So much information! It’s tempting to just go with your gut and buy the car that looks the coolest (or is the cheapest, or says it has the best gas mileage). Ultimately, though, you know you need to slow down and take your time, or you could wind up making a mistake that costs you thousands of dollars. You need to think critically to make an informed choice.

What does critical thinking look like?

Source: TeachThought

Let’s continue with the car analogy, and apply some critical thinking to the situation.

• Critical thinkers know they can’t trust TV commercials to help them make smart choices, since every single one wants you to think their car is the best option.
• The manufacturer’s website will have some details that are proven facts, but other statements that are hard to prove or clearly just opinions. Which information is factual, and even more important, relevant to your choice?
• A neighbor’s stories are anecdotal, so they may or may not be useful. They’re the opinions and experiences of just one person and might not be representative of a whole. Can you find other people with similar experiences that point to a pattern?
• The independent studies could be trustworthy, although it depends on who conducted them and why. Closer analysis might show that the most positive study was conducted by a company hired by the car manufacturer itself. Who conducted each study, and why?

Did you notice all the questions that started to pop up? That’s what critical thinking is about: asking the right questions, and knowing how to find and evaluate the answers to those questions.

Good critical thinkers do this sort of analysis every day, on all sorts of subjects. They seek out proven facts and trusted sources, weigh the options, and then make a choice and form their own opinions. It’s a process that becomes automatic over time; experienced critical thinkers question everything thoughtfully, with purpose. This helps them feel confident that their informed opinions and choices are the right ones for them.

Key Critical Thinking Skills

There’s no official list, but many people use Bloom’s Taxonomy to help lay out the skills kids should develop as they grow up.

Source: Vanderbilt University

Bloom’s Taxonomy is laid out as a pyramid, with foundational skills at the bottom providing a base for more advanced skills higher up. The lowest phase, “Remember,” doesn’t require much critical thinking. These are skills like memorizing math facts, defining vocabulary words, or knowing the main characters and basic plot points of a story.

Higher skills on Bloom’s list incorporate more critical thinking.

True understanding is more than memorization or reciting facts. It’s the difference between a child reciting by rote “one times four is four, two times four is eight, three times four is twelve,” versus recognizing that multiplication is the same as adding a number to itself a certain number of times. When you understand a concept, you can explain how it works to someone else.

When you apply your knowledge, you take a concept you’ve already mastered and apply it to new situations. For instance, a student learning to read doesn’t need to memorize every word. Instead, they use their skills in sounding out letters to tackle each new word as they come across it.

When we analyze something, we don’t take it at face value. Analysis requires us to find facts that stand up to inquiry. We put aside personal feelings or beliefs, and instead identify and scrutinize primary sources for information. This is a complex skill, one we hone throughout our entire lives.

Evaluating means reflecting on analyzed information, selecting the most relevant and reliable facts to help us make choices or form opinions. True evaluation requires us to put aside our own biases and accept that there may be other valid points of view, even if we don’t necessarily agree with them.

Finally, critical thinkers are ready to create their own result. They can make a choice, form an opinion, cast a vote, write a thesis, debate a topic, and more. And they can do it with the confidence that comes from approaching the topic critically.

How do you teach critical thinking skills?

The best way to create a future generation of critical thinkers is to encourage them to ask lots of questions. Then, show them how to find the answers by choosing reliable primary sources. Require them to justify their opinions with provable facts, and help them identify bias in themselves and others. Try some of these resources to get started.

• 5 Critical Thinking Skills Every Kid Needs To Learn (And How To Teach Them)

100+ Critical Thinking Questions for Students To Ask About Anything

• 10 Tips for Teaching Kids To Be Awesome Critical Thinkers
• Free Critical Thinking Poster, Rubric, and Assessment Ideas

More Critical Thinking Resources

The answer to “What is critical thinking?” is a complex one. These resources can help you dig more deeply into the concept and hone your own skills.

• The Foundation for Critical Thinking
• Cultivating a Critical Thinking Mindset (PDF)
• Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking (Browne/Keeley, 2014)

Have more questions about what critical thinking is or how to teach it in your classroom? Join the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook to ask for advice and share ideas!

Plus, 12 skills students can work on now to help them in careers later ..

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1. Teaching Critical Thinking: How to Inspire Better Reasoning

Teaching critical thinking, as most teachers know, is a challenge. Classroom time is always at a premium and teaching thinking and reasoning can fall by the wayside, especially when testing goals and state requirements take precedence. But for a growing number of educators, critical thinking has become a priority. 

This is because, for many reasons, young people simply need critical thinking instruction:

• They are faced with myriad crises — many real and some imagined or exaggerated by unreliable news sources and overstimulated social media users. 
• They spend more and more of their time in internet-connected environments where advertisers and interest groups hold previously unimaginable powers of manipulation over them. 
• Technology, politics, and society in general all seem to be changing faster than ever before, and the future seems more uncertain than ever.

These changes don’t only complicate the world itself; they affect our powers of understanding at the same time. There’s evidence suggesting social media use can damage attention spans , have an outsized impact on emotions and mental health, and even affect memory . Psychologically addictive reward systems are built into many of these platforms. 

Even generally reliable news sources, which increasingly orient themselves to their own fragmented segment of the journalism market, can overwhelm our powers of judgment with sensationalistic headlines, misleading framing, and the sheer volume of information at our fingertips.

The kind of thinking and attention required to engage with complicated issues becomes harder to foster and harder to maintain than it might be in a less saturated information ecosystem. Under these conditions, critical thinking, which has long been a buzzword in education, takes on a new and more urgent significance. New opportunities and methods for teaching critical thinking are needed.

Being able to think critically — with rigor, depth, patience, emotional intelligence, and humility — can have wide-ranging impacts on every aspect of students’ lives: their contributions to civic life, their professional success, their ability to build and maintain healthy relationships, their mental health, and even their physical well-being. 

What are the key strategies for teaching critical thinking skills? In many ways, we are still at square one when it comes to teaching our students how to think critically. There are a number of obstacles here:

• Teachers are not given the time, freedom, materials, or professional development tools to teach their students how to think critically.
• Mainstream education priorities — too focused on test results and narrowly defined skills — don’t leave room for critical thinking.
• The best education research, which strongly suggests that critical thinking instruction must be embedded in specific domain instruction, is not well-known or widely put into practice.
• Traditional curricula have not evolved quickly enough to adapt to the new challenges students face in analyzing information and media. 

What Is Critical Thinking?

For all the talk about critical thinking, there remains a lot of confusion about what exactly it is. So what does critical thinking mean? This is key to teaching critical thinking, of course. 

The Reboot Foundation defines critical thinking quite simply as high-level skills in reasoning, coming to judgments, and making decisions. Even more simply: critical thinking is thinking well. 

To get a little more specific, critical thinkers are regularly reflective, objective, and analytical in their thinking:

• They step back to reflect on their own thinking, taking time to plan, strategize, and reform their thinking when necessary. 
• They do their best to overcome subjective biases. While they know that pure objectivity is an ideal we can never reach, they draw on the perspectives of others, especially those with opposing views, in order to expand their own horizons.
• They use the analytical tools of logic and effective argumentation to evaluate evidence, make judgments, and discuss issues with others. 

For more about Reboot’s definition of critical thinking please see this post: “What Is Critical Thinking?”

How to Teach Critical Thinking

The importance of domain knowledge in teaching critical thinking.

Despite a great deal of rhetoric about critical thinking, not enough time is actually spent teaching critical thinking. One major reason is a misconception about its nature. Critical thinking is not a single skill that can be taught, like playing the cello, or content that can be memorized, like the history of the French Revolution.  What critical thinking entails often depends on the content and discipline. 

What critical thinking entails often depends on the content and discipline.

Although there is overlap, good thinking habits and strategies in physics don’t look the same as those in literary interpretation. We must keep this in mind when we seek to teach thinking. As cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham  puts it , “Thought processes are intertwined with what is being thought about.”

What does that mean for teaching critical thinking? There is good and bad news. The bad news is that critical thinking, as a generic skill, is challenging to teach. Critical thinking skills learned in one area aren’t guaranteed to transfer to other areas.  The good news is that specific critical thinking instruction can, in many cases, be integrated into existing classroom practices. The key is to understand what constitutes deeper thinking in particular domains and implement classroom practices that leads students toward that kind of thinking. That’s what we’ve set out to do in this guide.

How to teach Critical Thinking Habits

That said, there are some habits and virtues that cut across domains when it comes to how to teach critical thinking. Teachers can make an impact by modeling these intellectual virtues, when possible, for their students.

How to Teach Critical Thinking: Sparking Curiosity. 

Young students are eager to know about the world and ask questions tirelessly. Why is the grass green? Why do zebras have stripes? Even adolescents are prone to constant questioning — though their questions sometimes have a more cynical slant.

In the classroom, it’s not always possible to indulge every last question, and some of these questions can be disruptive. But it is still absolutely vital that educators make time to indulge and encourage the curiosity of students. Curiosity, if it’s developed and refined, is crucial to being an informed and engaged citizen of the world.

Open-ended discussions are an excellent way to spark curiosity. We model this kind of discussion in our article on critical thinking and reading .  There you’ll find tips on how to prompt students to ask deeper moral and philosophical texts about literary texts. With practice in refining their curiosity, students will begin to develop what’s called “metacognition,” or thinking about thinking. This is a foundational part of critical thinking, in which students turn their curiosity on themselves, and begin to ask why they think and believe what they do.

How to Teach Critical Thinking: Managing Emotions. 

Emotions may seem far afield from the ability to reason but critical thinking is emotionally difficult. Critical thinkers have to exhibit the humility to admit that they don’t know everything and they may be wrong. At the same time, they have to be confident enough to ask tough questions and challenge authority when appropriate. And, perhaps most crucially, they have to be able to consider and analyze arguments on their merits, instead of judging the person making them.

When emotions run high in the classroom, for example in a discussion of a controversial topic, it’s a great time for teachers to model these virtues. We offer tips on how to do so in our article on civics education . The goal is to give students civic competence and confidence, ultimately, contribute positively to their communities and society as a whole.

How to Teach Critical Thinking: Checking for Bias. 

Emotional arguments can make it especially difficult to recognize and overcome biases. When we’re emotional, we usually fail to step back and look for misinterpretations, hasty conclusions, and assumptions we may have made about the people we’re arguing against.

Instruction in logic and philosophy can help students recognize biased thinking in themselves and, especially, in some of the weak reasoning they all inevitably come across online. Too often, especially in the United States, we’ve considered these topics too advanced for K-12 learners.

Check out our articles on media literacy and philosophy for more on how to help students navigate emotional appeals and understand biases, and for more tips on how to teach critical thinking.

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5 ways educators can shrink the critical thinking gap

When we help students develop fundamental cognitive and metacognitive skills, learning becomes easier--and a lot more fun.

Join eSchool News for the 12 Days of Edtech with 2024’s most-read and most-loved stories. On the 2nd Day of Edtech,  our story  focuses on critical thinking.

Key points:

• Critical thinking should not be separate from and on top of what teachers are doing in the classroom
• How to help students build critical success skills
• 3 lessons on perseverance from Stoffel the honey badger
• For more news on durable skills, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub

Achievement discrepancies among U.S. students remain persistent and troubling–despite decades of targeted interventions and whole-school improvement programs. To make real gains, teachers need to address the underlying problem: the critical thinking gap .

Focusing on core cognitive skills sets students up for success throughout their academic careers. These five critical thinking strategies can help.  

Why focus on critical thinking?

Most academic interventions focus on core knowledge and basic skills: Let’s practice two-digit addition. Review the parts of the cell. Learn these vocabulary words. Read these passages for fluency. These kinds of exercises can help students make marginal gains in reading, math, and general content knowledge, but they don’t address the root of the problem: learning how to think and how to learn.

Growing evidence points to the role of critical thinking in educational achievement. Students need to activate higher-order thinking skills and metacognition to effectively master and retain new content knowledge, synthesize it with prior knowledge, and apply it to new scenarios and domains. However, most students are not explicitly taught how to do this.

Colin Seale, author of  Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students  (Prufrock Press, 2020), noted in an interview with ASCD : “When you start to look at how critical thinking looks in practice in K–12 classrooms, it’s often being treated as a luxury good. You’ll see critical thinking in an after-school mock trial program, or for an honors program that serves 8 percent of the school population, or for the special debate team or the selective entry school.”

Teaching students how to activate critical thinking and metacognition will enable them to learn more efficiently and effectively. Fortunately, that can be done within the context of the existing curriculum. Here are some ways teachers can get started:

1. Integrate critical thinking with content

Critical thinking should not be something that is separate from and on top of everything else teachers are doing in the classroom. For best results, it should be fully integrated with the content that is being taught. Think about the standards you are teaching to. Most will have both a content knowledge component and a thinking component. For example, if the standard requires students to understand the causes of the Revolutionary War, they need to know specific content, but they also need to understand cause-and-effect thinking. Teachers can help students by explicitly calling out the type of thinking required–e.g., defining, classifying, part-to-whole relationships, sequencing, etc.–and making sure students know what that kind of thinking looks like.

2. Give students a framework for thinking

Once students understand the type of thinking required, they need a framework to support it. A visual framework supports the development of critical thinking skills. Making thinking visible and concrete helps students activate the type of thinking required by the task and organize their ideas effectively. While there are tons of graphic organizers out there, it’s most beneficial to have a consistent framework for thinking that spans grade levels and content areas. This supports the growth of automaticity in activating cognitive skills.

3. Make learning active

Models such as project-based learning and inquiry learning have been demonstrated to improve learning outcomes. But you don’t have to upend your entire curriculum or implement a complicated model to make learning more active. Building in time for debate and discussion and collaborative learning activities are simple ways to make learning more active and engaging. For example, students can work together to construct meaning using a thinking map. Look for learning activities that require students to go beyond simple recitation of facts and engage deeply with the content as they solve a problem, develop and defend a point of view, or create something original.

4. Ask better questions–and teach students to ask their own

Increasing the rigor of the questions we are asking is another way to support critical thinking. That means asking questions that go beyond basic knowledge and comprehension to require higher-order thinking skills such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. (See some examples in the image below.) Even better, teach students how to ask their own questions. After introducing new content, for example, pause for a class brainstorming session where students come up with as many questions as they can, including basic clarification questions and higher-order “why,” “what if,” and ‘what else” kinds of questions. Then, students can work together to start answering some of these questions using the active learning methods above.

5. Get metacognitive

One important aspect of critical thinking is metacognition, or “thinking about one’s own thinking.” Students who are skilled in metacognition are able to recognize how well they understand a concept, where they need extra help or support, and how to apply and adjust learning strategies. Metacognitive skills include planning for learning, monitoring understanding, and evaluating the learning process. Like fundamental cognitive skills such as cause-and-effect or sequencing, metacognitive skills can also be explicitly taught. The questions in the Tree Maps below can help teachers get started.

These essential strategies can be applied across all grades and content areas. When we help students develop fundamental cognitive and metacognitive skills, learning becomes easier–and a lot more fun.

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How to teach critical thinking, a vital 21st-century skill

A well-rounded education doesn’t just impart academic knowledge to students — it gives them transferable skills they can apply throughout their lives. Critical thinking is widely hailed as one such essential “ 21st-century skill ,” helping people critically assess information, make informed decisions, and come up with creative approaches to solving problems.

Despite the widespread recognition of critical thinking’s importance for future success, there can be some ambiguity about both what it is and how to teach it . 1 Let’s take a look at each of those questions in turn, and explore how you can use Kialo Edu to teach critical thinking to students — completely free !

What is critical thinking?

Throughout history, humanity has attempted to use reason to understand and interpret the world. From the philosophers of Ancient Greece to the key thinkers of the Enlightenment, people have sought to challenge their preconceived notions and draw logical conclusions from the available evidence — key elements that gave rise to today’s definition of “critical thinking.”

At its core, critical thinking is the use of reason to analyze the available evidence and reach logical conclusions. Educational scholars have defined critical thinking as “reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do,” 2 and “interpretation or analysis, followed by evaluation or judgment.” 3 Some have pared their definition down to simply “good” or “skillful thinking.”

At the same time, being a good critical thinker relies on certain values like open-mindedness, persistence, and intellectual humility. 4 The ideal critical thinker isn’t just skilled in analysis — they are also curious, open to other points of view, and creative in the path they take towards tackling a given problem.

Alongside teaching students how to analyze information, build arguments, and draw conclusions, educators play a key role in fostering the values conducive to critical thinking and intellectual inquiry. Students who develop both skills and values are well-placed to handle challenges both academically and in their personal lives.

Let’s examine some strategies to develop critical thinking skills and values in the classroom.

How to teach students to think critically — strategies

1. build a classroom climate that encourages open-mindedness.

Fostering a classroom culture that allows students the time and space to think independently, experiment with new ideas, and have their views challenged lays a strong foundation for developing skills and values central to critical thinking.

Whatever your subject area, encourage students to contribute their own ideas and theories when addressing common curricular questions. Promote open-mindedness by underscoring the importance of the initial “brainstorming” phase in problem-solving — this is the necessary first step towards understanding! Strive to create a classroom climate where students are comfortable thinking out loud.

Emphasize to students the importance of understanding different perspectives on issues, and that it’s okay for people to disagree. Establish guidelines for class discussions — especially when covering controversial issues — and stress that changing your mind on an issue is a sign of intellectual strength, not weakness. Model positive behaviors by being flexible in your own opinions when engaging with ideas from students.

2. Teach students to make clear and effective arguments

Training students’ argumentation skills is central to turning them into adept critical thinkers. Expose students to a wide range of arguments, guiding them to distinguish between examples of good and bad reasoning.

When guiding students to form their own arguments, emphasize the value of clarity and precision in language. In oral discussions, encourage students to order their thoughts on paper before contributing.

In the case of argumentative essays , give students plenty of opportunities to revise their work, implementing feedback from you or peers. Assist students in refining their arguments by encouraging them to challenge their own positions. 

They can do so by creating robust “steel man” counterarguments to identify potential flaws in their own reasoning. For example, if a student is passionate about animal rights and wants to argue for a ban on animal testing , encourage them to also come up with points in favor of animal testing. If they can rebut those counterarguments, their own position will be much stronger!

Additionally, knowing how to evaluate and provide evidence is essential for developing argumentation skills. Teach students how to properly cite sources , and encourage them to investigate the veracity of claims made by others — particularly when dealing with online media .

3. Encourage metacognition — guide students to think about their own and others’ thinking

Critical thinkers are self-reflective. Guide students time to think about their own learning process by utilizing metacognitive strategies, like learning journals or having reflective periods at the end of activities. Reflecting on how they came to understand a topic can help students cultivate a growth mindset and an openness to explore alternative problem-solving approaches during challenging moments.

You can also create an awareness of common errors in human thinking by teaching about them explicitly. Identify arguments based on logical fallacies and have students come up with examples from their own experience. Help students recognize the role of cognitive bias in our thinking, and design activities to help counter it.

Students who develop self-awareness regarding their own thinking are not just better at problem-solving, but also managing their emotions .

4. Assign open-ended and varied activities to practice different kinds of thinking

Critical thinkers are capable of approaching problems from a variety of angles. Train this vital habit by switching up the kinds of activities you assign to students, and try prioritizing open-ended assignments that allow for varied approaches.

A project-based learning approach can reap huge rewards. Have students identify real-world problems, conduct research, and investigate potential solutions. Following that process will give them varied intellectual challenges, while the real-world applicability of their work can motivate students to consider the potential impact their thinking can have on the world around them.

Classroom discussions and debates are fantastic activities for building critical thinking skills. As open-ended activities, they encourage student autonomy by requiring them to think for themselves.

They also expose students to a diversity of perspectives , inviting them to critically appraise these different positions in a respectful context. Class discussions are applicable across disciplines and come in many flavors — experiment with different forms like fishbowl discussions or online, asynchronous discussions to keep students engaged.

5. Use argument-mapping tools such as Kialo Edu to train students in the use of reasoning

One of the most effective methods of improving students’ critical thinking skills is to train them in argument mapping .

Argument mapping involves breaking an argument down into its constituent parts, and displaying them visually so that students can see how different points are connected. Research has shown that university students who were trained in argument mapping significantly out-performed their peers on critical thinking assessments. 5

While it’s possible — and useful — to map out arguments by hand, there are clear benefits to using digital argument maps like Kialo Edu. Students can contribute simultaneously to a Kialo discussion to collaboratively build out complex discussions as an argument map. 

Individual students can plan essays as argument maps before writing. This helps them to stay focused on the line of argument and encourages them to preempt counterarguments. Kialo discussions can even be assigned as an essay alternative when teachers want to focus on argumentation as the key learning goal. Unlike traditional essays, they defy the use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT!

Kialo discussions prompt students to use their reasoning skills to create clear, structured arguments. Moreover, students have a visual, engaging way to respond to the content of the arguments being made, promoting interpretive charity towards differing opinions. 

Best of all, Kialo Edu offers a way to track and assess your students’ progress on their critical thinking journey. Educators can assign specific tasks — like citing sources or responding to others’ claims — to evaluate specific skills. Students can also receive grades and feedback on their contributions without leaving the platform, making it easy to deliver constructive, ongoing guidance to help students develop their reasoning skills.

Improving students’ critical thinking abilities is something that motivates our work here at Kialo Edu. If you’ve used our platform and have feedback, thoughts, or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on social media or contact us directly at [email protected] .

•  Lloyd, M., & Bahr, N. (2010). Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking in Higher Education. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 4 (2), Article 9. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2010.040209
•  Ennis, R. H. (2015). Critical Thinking: A Streamlined Conception. In: Davies, M., Barnett, R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
• Lang-Raad, N. D. (2023). Never Stop Asking: Teaching Students to be Better Critical Thinkers . Jossey-Bass.
•  Ellerton, Peter (2019). Teaching for thinking: Explaining pedagogical expertise in the development of the skills, values and virtues of inquiry . Dissertation, The University of Queensland. Available here .
• van Gelder, T. (2015). Using argument mapping to improve critical thinking skills. In The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education (pp. 183–192). doi:10.1057/9781137378057_12.

Want to try Kialo Edu with your class?

Use Kialo Edu to have thoughtful classroom discussions and train students’ argumentation and critical thinking skills — completely free!

Ask the Cognitive Scientist: How Can Educators Teach Critical Thinking?

How does the mind work—and especially how does it learn? Teachers’ instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology who seek to understand the mind. In this regular American Educator column, we consider findings from this field that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application.

I ndividuals vary in their views of what students should be taught, but there is little disagreement on the importance of critical thinking skills. In free societies, the ability to think critically is viewed as a cornerstone of individual civic engagement and economic success.

Despite this consensus, it’s not always clear what’s meant by “critical thinking.” I will offer a commonsensical view. 1 You are thinking critically if (1) your thinking is novel—that is, you aren’t simply drawing a conclusion from a memory of a previous situation; (2) your thinking is self-directed—that is, you are not merely executing instructions given by someone else; and (3) your thinking is effective—that is, you respect certain conventions that make thinking more likely to yield useful conclusions. These would be conventions like “consider both sides of an issue,” “offer evidence for claims made,” and “don’t let emotion interfere with reason.” This third characteristic will be our main concern, and as we’ll see, what constitutes effective thinking varies from domain to domain.

Critical Thinking Can Be Taught

Planning how to teach students to think critically should perhaps be our second task. Our first should be to ask whether evidence shows that explicitly teaching critical thinking brings any benefit.

There are many examples of critical thinking skills that are open to instruction. 2 For example, in one experiment, researchers taught college students principles for evaluating evidence in psychology studies—principles like the difference between correlational research and true experiments, and the difference between anecdote and formal research. 3 These principles were incorporated into regular instruction in a psychology class, and their application was practiced in that context. Compared to a control group that learned principles of memory, students who learned the critical thinking principles performed better on a test that required evaluation of psychology evidence.

But perhaps we should not find this result terribly surprising. You tell students, “This is a good strategy for this type of problem,” and you have them practice that strategy, so later they use that strategy when they encounter the problem.

When we think of critical thinking, we think of something bigger than its domain of training. When I teach students how to evaluate the argument in a set of newspaper editorials, I’m hoping that they will learn to evaluate arguments generally, not just the ones they read. The research literature on successful transfer of learning * to new problems is less encouraging.

Teaching Critical Thinking for General Transfer

It’s a perennial idea—teach something that requires critical thinking, and such thinking will become habitual. In the 19th century, educators suggested that Latin and geometry demanded logical thinking, which would prompt students to think logically in other contexts. 4 The idea was challenged by psychologist Edward Thorndike, who compared scores from standardized tests that high school students took in autumn and spring as a function of the coursework they had taken during the year. If Latin, for example, makes you smart, students who take it should score better in the spring. They didn’t. 5

In the 1960s, computer programming replaced Latin as the discipline that would lead to logical thinking. 6 Studies through the 1980s showed mixed results, 7 but a recent meta-analysis offered some apparently encouraging results about the general trainability of computational thinking. 8 The researchers reported that learning to program a computer yielded modest positive transfer to measures of creative thinking, mathematics, metacognition, spatial skills, and reasoning. It’s sensible to think that this transfer was a consequence of conceptual overlap between programming and these skills, as no benefit was observed in measures of literacy.

Hopeful adults have tried still other activities as potential all-purpose enhancers of intelligence—for example, exposure to classical music (the so-called Mozart effect), 9 learning to play a musical instrument, 10 or learning to play chess. 11 None have succeeded as hoped.

It’s no surprise then that programs in school meant to teach general critical thinking skills have had limited success. Unfortunately, the evaluations of these programs seldom offer a good test of transfer; the measure of success tends to feature the same sort of task that was used during training. 12 When investigators have tested for transfer in such curricular programs, positive results have been absent or modest and quick to fade. 13

Transfer and the Nature of Critical Thinking

We probably should have anticipated these results. Wanting students to be able to “analyze, synthesize, and evaluate” information sounds like a reasonable goal, but those terms mean different things in different disciplines. Literary criticism has its own internal logic, its norms for what constitutes good evidence and a valid argument. These norms differ from those found in mathematics, for example. Thus, our goals for student critical thinking must be domain-specific.

But wait. Surely there are some principles of thinking that apply across fields of study. Affirming the consequent is always wrong, straw-person arguments are always weak, and having a conflict of interest always makes your argument suspect. 14 There are indeed principles that carry across domains of study. The problem is that people who learn these broadly applicable principles in one situation often fail to apply them in a new situation.

The law of large numbers provides an example. It states that a large sample will probably be closer to a “true” estimate than a small sample—if you want to know whether a set of dice is loaded, you’re better off seeing the results of 20 throws rather than two throws. People readily understand this idea in the context of evaluating randomness, but a small sample doesn’t bother them when judging academic performance; if someone receives poor grades on two math tests, observers judge they are simply bad at math. 15

In another classic experiment, researchers administered a tricky problem: a malignant tumor could be treated with a particular ray, but the ray caused a lot of collateral damage to healthy tissue. How, subjects were asked, could the ray be used to destroy the tumor? Other subjects got the same problem, but first read a story describing a military situation analogous to the medical problem. Instead of rays attacking a tumor, rebels were to attack a fortress. The military story offered a perfect analogy to the medical problem, but despite reading it moments before, subjects still couldn’t solve the medical problem. Merely mentioning that the story might help solve the problem boosted solution rates to nearly 100 percent. Thus, using the analogy was not hard; the problem was thinking to use it in the first place. 16

These results offer a new perspective on critical thinking. The problem in transfer is not just that different domains have different norms for critical thinking. The problem is that previous critical thinking successes seem encapsulated in memory. We know that a student has understood an idea like the law of large numbers. But understanding it offers no guarantee that the student will recognize new situations in which that idea will be useful.

Critical Thinking as Problem Recognition

Happily, this difficulty in recognizing problems you’ve solved before disappears in the face of significant practice. If I solve a lot of problems in which the law of large numbers is relevant, I no longer focus on the particulars of the problem—that is, whether it seems to be about cars, or ratings of happiness, or savings bonds. I immediately see that the law of large numbers is relevant. 17 Lots of practice is OK if you’re not in a hurry, but is there a faster way to help students “just see” that they have solved a problem before?

One technique is problem comparison; show students two solved problems that have the same structure but appear to be about different things, and ask students to compare them. 18 In one experiment testing this method, business school students were asked to compare two stories, one involving international companies coping with a shipping problem, and the other concerning two college students planning a spring break trip. In each, a difficult negotiation problem was resolved through the use of a particular type of contract. Two weeks later, students were more likely to use the solution on a novel problem if they had contrasted the stories compared to other students who simply read them. 19 Richard Catrambone developed a different technique to address a slightly different transfer problem. He noted that in math and science classes, students often learned to solve standard problems via a series of fixed, lockstep procedures. That meant students were stumped when confronted with a problem requiring a slight revision of the steps, even if the goal of the steps was the same. For example, a student might learn a method for solving word problems involving work like “Nicola can paint a house in 14 hours, and Carole can do it in 8. How long would it take them to paint one house, working together?” A student who learns a sequence of steps to solve that sort of problem is often thrown by a small change—the homeowner had already painted one-fourth of the house before hiring Nicola and Carole.

Catrambone 20 showed that student knowledge will be more flexible if students are taught to label the substeps of the solution with the goal it serves. For example, work problems are typically solved by calculating how much of the job each worker can do in an hour. If, during learning, that step were labeled so students understood that that calculation was part of deriving the solution, they would know how to solve the problem when a fraction of the house is to be painted.

Open-Ended Problems and Knowledge

Students encounter standard problems that are best solved in a particular way, but many critical thinking situations are unique. There are no routine, reusable solutions for problems like designing a product or planning a strategy for a field hockey match. Nevertheless, critical thinking for open-ended problems is enabled by extensive stores of knowledge about the domain. 21

First, the recognition process described above (“oh, this is that sort of problem”) can still apply to subparts of a complex, open-ended problem. Complex critical thinking may entail multiple simpler solutions from memory that can be “snapped together” when solving complex problems. 22 For example, arithmetic is needed for calculating the best value among several vacation packages.

Second, knowledge impacts working memory. Working memory refers, colloquially, to the place in the mind where thinking happens—it’s where you hold information and manipulate it to carry out cognitive tasks. So, for example, if I said “How is a scarecrow like a blueberry?,” you would retrieve information about scarecrows (not alive, protect crops, found in fields, birds think they are alive) and blueberries (purple, used in pies, small, featured in Blueberries for Sal ) from your memory, and then you’d start comparing these features, looking for overlap. But working memory has limited space; if I added three more words, you’d struggle to keep all five and their associations in mind at once.

With experience, often-associated bits of knowledge clump together and thus take up less room in working memory. In chess, a king, a castle, and three pawns in a corner of the board relate to one another in the defensive position, so the expert will treat them as a single unit. An experienced dancer similarly chunks dance moves allowing him to think about more subtle aspects of movement, rather than crowding working memory with “what I’m to do next.”

Third, knowledge is sometimes necessary to deploy thinking strategies. As noted above, sometimes you have an effective thinking strategy in your memory (for example, apply the law of large numbers) but fail to see that it’s relevant. In other situations, the proper thinking is easily recognized. We can tell students that they should evaluate the logic of the author’s argument when they read an op-ed, and we can tell them the right method to use when conducting a scientific experiment. Students should have no trouble recognizing “Oh, this is that sort of problem,” and they may have committed to memory the right thinking strategy. They know what to do, but they may not be able to use the strategy without the right domain knowledge.

For example, principles of scientific reasoning seem to be content free: for example, “a control group should be identical to the experimental group, except for the treatment.” In practice, however, content knowledge is needed to use the principle. For example, in an experiment on learning, you’d want to be sure that the experimental and control groups were comparable, so you’d make sure that proportions of men and women in each group were the same. What characteristics besides sex should you be sure are equivalent in the experimental and control groups? Ability to concentrate? Intelligence? You can’t measure every characteristic of your subjects, so you’d focus on characteristics that you know are relevant to learning. But knowing which characteristics are “relevant to learning” means knowing the research literature in learning and memory.

Experimental evidence shows that an expert doesn’t think as well outside her area of expertise, even in a closely related domain. She’s still better than a novice, but her skills don’t transfer completely. For example, knowledge of medicine transfers poorly among subspecialties (neurologists do not diagnose cardiac cases well), 23 technical writers can’t write newspaper articles, 24 and even professional philosophers are swayed by irrelevant features of problems like question order or wording. 25

How to Teach Students to Think Critically

So what does all this mean? Is there really no such thing as a “critical thinking skill” if by “skill” we mean something generalizable? Maybe, but it’s hard to be sure. We do know that students who go to school longer score better on intelligence tests, and certainly we think of intelligence as all-purpose. 26 Still, it may be that schooling boosts a collection of fairly specific thinking skills. If it increases general thinking skills, researchers have been unable to identify them.

Although existing data favor the specific skills account, 27 researchers would still say it’s uncertain whether a good critical thinker is someone who has mastered lots of specific skills, or someone with a smaller set of yet-to-be-identified general skills. But educators aren’t researchers, and for educators, one fact ought to be salient. We’re not even sure the general skills exist, but we’re quite sure there’s no proven way to teach them directly. In contrast, we have a pretty good idea of how to teach students the more specific critical thinking skills. I suggest we do so. Here’s a four-step plan.

First, identify what’s meant by critical thinking in each domain. Be specific by focusing on tasks that tap skills, not skills themselves. What tasks showing critical thinking should a high school graduate be able to do in mathematics, history, and other subjects? For example, educators might decide that an important aspect of understanding history is the ability to source historical documents; that is, to interpret them in light of their source—who wrote it, for what purpose, and for what intended audience. Educators might decide that a key critical thinking skill for science is understanding the relationship between a theory and a hypothesis. These skills should be explicitly taught and practiced—there is evidence that simple exposure to this sort of work without explicit instruction is less effective. 28

Second, identify the domain content that students must know. We’ve seen that domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill. What knowledge is essential to the type of thinking you want your students to be able to do? For example, if students are to source documents, they need knowledge of the relevant source; in other words, knowing that they are reading a 1779 letter from General George Clinton written to George Washington with a request for supplies won’t mean much if they don’t have some background knowledge about the American Revolutionary War—that will enable them to make sense of what they read when they look up Clinton and his activities at the time.

The prospect of someone deciding which knowledge students ought to learn—and what they won’t learn—sometimes makes people uneasy because this decision depends on one’s goals for schooling, and goals depend on values. Selection of content is a critical way that values are expressed. 29 Making that choice will lead to uncomfortable tradeoffs. But not choosing is still making a choice. It’s choosing not to plan.

Third, educators must select the best sequence for students to learn the skills. It’s obvious that skills and knowledge build on one another in mathematics and history, and it’s equally true of other domains of skill and knowledge; we interpret new information in light of what we already know.

Fourth, educators must decide which skills should be revisited across years. Studies show that even if content is learned quite well over the course of half of a school year, about half will be forgotten in three years. 30 That doesn’t mean there’s no value in exposing students to content just once; most students will forget much, but they’ll remember something, and for some students, an interest may be kindled. But when considering skills we hope will stick with students for the long term, we should plan on at least three to five years of practice. 31

Some Practical Matters of Teaching Critical Thinking

I’ve outlined a broad, four-step plan. Let’s consider some of the pragmatic decisions educators face as they contemplate the teaching of critical thinking.

Is it all or none ? I’ve suggested that critical thinking be taught in the context of a comprehensive curriculum. Does that mean an individual teacher cannot do anything on his or her own? Is there just no point in trying if the cooperation of the entire school system is not assured?

Obviously that’s not the case; a teacher can still include critical thinking content in his or her courses and students will learn, but it’s quite likely they will learn more, and learn more quickly, if their learning is coordinated across years. It has long been recognized among psychologists that an important factor influencing learning, perhaps the most important factor, is what the student already knows. 32 Teaching will be more effective if the instructor is confident about what his or her students already know.

Student age : When should critical thinking instruction start? There’s not a firm, research-based answer to this question. Researchers interested in thinking skills like problem solving or evidence evaluation in young children (preschool through early elementary ages) have studied how children think in the absence of explicit instruction. They have not studied whether or how young children can be made to think more critically. Still, research over the last 30 years or so has led to an important conclusion: children are more capable than we thought.

The great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget proposed a highly influential theory that suggested children’s cognition moves through a series of four stages, characterized by more and more abstract thought, and better ability to take multiple perspectives. In stage theories, the basic architecture of thought is unchanged for long periods of time, and then rapidly reorganizes as the child moves from one developmental stage to another. 33 A key educational implication is that it’s at least pointless and possibly damaging to ask the child to do cognitive work that is appropriate for a later developmental stage. The last 30 years has shown that, contrary to Piaget’s theory, development is gradual, and does not change abruptly. It has also shown that what children can and cannot do varies depending on the content.

For example, in some circumstances, even toddlers can understand principles of conditional reasoning. For instance, conditional reasoning is required when the relationship of two things is contingent on a third thing. A child may understand that when she visits a friend’s house, she may get a treat like cake or cookies for a snack or she may not. But if her friend is celebrating a birthday, the relation between those two things (a visit and getting cake) becomes very consistent. Yet when conditional reasoning problems are framed in unfamiliar contexts, they confuse even adult physicians. Much depends on the content of the problem. 34

Thus, research tells us that including critical thinking in the schooling of young children is likely to be perfectly appropriate. It does not, however, provide guidance into what types of critical thinking skills to start with. That is a matter to take up with experienced educators, coordinating with colleagues who teach older children in the interests of making the curriculum seamless.

Types of students : Should everyone learn critical thinking skills? The question sounds like a setup, like an excuse for a resounding endorsement of critical thinking for all. But the truth is that, in many systems, less capable students are steered into less challenging coursework, with the hope that by reducing expectations, they will at least achieve “mastery of the basics.” These lower expectations often pervade entire schools that serve students from low-income families. 35

It is worth highlighting that access to challenging content and continuing to postsecondary education is, in nearly every country, associated with socioeconomic status. 36 Children from high socioeconomic status families also have more opportunities to learn at home. If school is the chief or only venue through which low socioeconomic status students are exposed to advanced vocabulary, rich content knowledge, and demands for high-level thinking, it is absolutely vital that those opportunities be enhanced, not reduced.

Assessment : Assessment of critical thinking is, needless to say, a challenge. One difficulty is expense. Claims to the contrary, multiple-choice items do not necessarily require critical thinking, even when items are carefully constructed and vetted, as on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). One researcher 37 administered items from the history NAEP for 12th-graders to college students who had done well on other standardized history exams. Students were asked to think aloud as they chose their answers, and the researchers observed little critical thinking, but a lot of “gaming” of the questions. Assessing critical thinking requires that students answer open-form questions, and that means humans must score the response, an expensive proposition.

On the bright side, the plan for teaching critical thinking that I’ve recommended makes some aspects of assessment more straightforward. If the skills that constitute “critical thinking” in, say, 10th-grade chemistry class are fully defined, then there is no question as to what content ought to appear on the assessment. The predictability ought to make teachers more confident that they can prepare their students for standardized assessments.

A s much as teaching students to think critically is a universal goal of schooling, one might be surprised that student difficulty in this area is such a common complaint. Educators are often frustrated that student thinking seems shallow. This review should offer insight into why that is. The way the mind works, shallow is what you get first. Deep, critical thinking is hard-won.

That means that designers and administrators of a program to improve critical thinking among students must take the long view, both in the time frame over which the program operates and especially in the speed with which one expects to see results. Patience will be a key ingredient in any program that succeeds.

Daniel T. Willingham is a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education and Why Don’t Students Like School? His most recent book is The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads . This article is adapted with permission from his report for the government of New South Wales, “How to Teach Critical Thinking.” Copyright 2019 by Willingham. Readers can pose questions to “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” by sending an email to [email protected] . Future columns will try to address readers’ questions. *For more on the research behind transfer of learning, see “If You Learn A, Will You Be Better Able to Learn B?” in the Spring 2020 issue of American Educator , available here . ( return to article )

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Crowell, “Dialogic Argumentation as a Vehicle for Developing Young Adolescents’ Thinking,” Psychological Science 22, no. 4 (2011): 545–552; and A. Reznitskaya et al., “Examining Transfer Effects from Dialogic Discussions to New Tasks and Contexts,” Contemporary Educational Psychology 37, no. 4 (2012): 288–306. 13. R. Ritchart and D. N. Perkins, “Learning to Think: The Challenges of Teaching Thinking,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning , ed. K. J. Holyoak and R. G. Morrison (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2005), 775–802. 14. R. H. Ennis, “Critical Thinking and the Curriculum,” in Thinking Skills Instruction: Concepts and Techniques , ed. M. Heiman and J. Slomianko (West Haven, CT: NEA Professional Library, 1987), 40–48. 15. C. Jepson, D. H. Krantz, and R. E. Nisbett, “Inductive Reasoning: Competence or Skill?,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6, no. 3 (1983): 494–501. 16. M. Gick and K. Holyoak, “Analogical Problem Solving,” Cognitive Psychology 12, no. 3 (1980): 306–355; and M. Gick and K. Holyoak, “Schema Induction and Analogical Transfer,” Cognitive Psychology 15, no. 1 (1983): 1–38. 17. For example, Z. Chen and L. Mo, “Schema Induction in Problem Solving: A Multidimensional Analysis,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition 30, no. 3 (2004): 583–600. 18. K. J. Kurtz, O. Boukrina, and D. Gentner, “Comparison Promotes Learning and Transfer of Relational Categories,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition 39, no. 4 (2013): 1303–1310. 19. J. Loewenstein, L. Thompson, and D. Gentner, “Analogical Encoding Facilitates Knowledge Transfer in Negotiation,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 6, no. 4 (1999): 586–597. 20. R. Catrambone, “Aiding Subgoal Learning: Effects on Transfer,” Journal of Educational Psychology 87, no. 1 (1995): 5–17; R. Catrambone, “The Subgoal Learning Model: Creating Better Examples to Improve Transfer to Novel Problems,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 127, no. 4 (1998): 355–376; R. Catrambone and K. Holyoak, “Learning Subgoals and Methods for Solving Probability Problems,” Memory & Cognition 18, no. 6 (1990): 593–603; and L. E. Margulieux and R. Catrambone, “Improving Problem Solving with Subgoal Labels in Expository Text and Worked Examples,” Learning and Instruction 42 (2016): 58–71. 21. J. S. North et al., “Mechanisms Underlying Skills Anticipation and Recognition in a Dynamic and Temporally Constrained Domain,” Memory 19, no. 2 (2011): 155–168. 22. K. Koedinger, A. Corbett, and C. Perfetti, “The Knowledge-Learning-Instruction Framework: Bridging the Science-Practice Chasm to Enhance Robust Student Learning,” Cognitive Science 36, no. 5 (2012): 757–798; and N. A. Taatgen, “The Nature and Transfer of Cognitive Skills,” Psychological Review 120, no. 3 (2013): 439–471. 23. R. Rikers, H. Schmidt, and H. Boshuizen, “On the Constraints of Encapsulated Knowledge: Clinical Case Representations by Medical Experts and Subexperts,” Cognition and Instruction 20, no. 1 (2002): 27–45. 24. R. T. Kellogg, “Professional Writing Expertise,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performances , ed. A. Ericsson et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2018). 25. E. Schwitzgebel and F. Cushman, “Philosophers’ Biased Judgments Persist Despite Training, Expertise, and Reflection,” Cognition 141 (2015): 127–137. 26. M. Carlsson et al., “The Effect of Schooling on Cognitive Skills,” Review of Economics and Statistics 97, no. 3 (2015): 533–547; S. Ritchie and E. Tucker-Drob, “How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence? A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Science 29, no. 8 (2018): 1358–1369; and T. Strenze, “Intelligence and Socioeconomic Success: A Meta-Analytic Review of Longitudinal Research,” Intelligence 35, no. 5 (2007): 401–426. 27. S. Ritchie, T. C. Bates, and I. J. Deary, “Is Education Associated with Improvements in General Cognitive Ability, or in Specific Skills?,” Developmental Psychology 51, no. 5 (2015): 573–582. 28. Abrami et al., “Instructional Interventions”; D. F. Halpern, “Teaching Critical Thinking for Transfer across Domains: Disposition, Skills, Structure Training, and Metacognitive Monitoring,” American Psychologist 53, no. 4 (1998): 449–455; A. Heijltjes, T. Van Gog, and F. Paas, “Improving Students’ Critical Thinking: Empirical Support for Explicit Instructions Combined with Practice,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 28, no. 4 (2014): 518–530. 29. D. T. Willingham, When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012). 30. A. Pawl et al., “What Do Seniors Remember from Freshman Physics?,” Physical Review Special Topics—Physics Education Research 8, no. 2 (2012): 020118. 31. H. P. 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[Illustrations by James Yang]

Help Students Think Critically in the Age of AI

Explore more.

• Artificial Intelligence
• Case Teaching
• Classroom Management
• Student Engagement

A s educators, our mission is to inspire students to engage deeply with the material we teach, equipping them with the critical-thinking skills they’ll need in a world that changes by the minute. With generative AI in the picture, that mission has become more crucial—and we can even use gen AI as a powerful tool to accomplish it.

Doing so requires us to intentionally rethink and renew our assignments and teaching approaches. And if we get it right, by encouraging students to use AI as a thought partner and remain active participants in their own education, we can help them analyze more deeply, solve problems more creatively, and think independently.

The three strategies I share here are ways I’ve adjusted my own courses. They’re specific to the case method of teaching, but the principles behind them can easily be extended to other pedagogies. Each of them aims to make AI an ally in students’ learning, pushing them to draw insights, evaluate complex ideas, and communicate their conclusions effectively.

With these approaches, we can prepare students to think critically and creatively in an AI-integrated world.

1. Design assignments for critical thinking

Making sure assignments require critical thinking has always been important, but it’s become even more so in a world where generative AI can do many simple tasks for us.

Whether for in-class or independent work, the best assignments are multi-layered, requiring students to draw connections between various concepts and use those connections to form independent conclusions. Multi-layered assignments, for example, ask students to connect a case study to other readings, to ideas that emerged during class discussions, and to their own personal experiences. They require students to draw multiple connections and to explain their logic, not just their solution or recommendation. These types of exercises promote the best learning, and it’s a bonus that AI can’t do them for our students.

“As educators, our role is to guide students in harnessing the power of AI as a tool for deeper understanding, rather than a shortcut for superficial answers.”

In one multi-layered assignment I’ve developed, students are given three columns of financials from three companies and asked to figure out which column belongs to which company, what generic competitive strategy each firm is pursuing, and whether one firm might be struggling to position itself effectively. To complete this exercise, students need to understand financial ratios, Porter’s generic strategies framework, and other concepts from strategic management and finance. Students learn how to apply knowledge from multiple class lessons to this exercise. It requires the synthesis of several topics from class, and gen AI can’t do it effectively—I’ve tested it to make sure.

That doesn’t mean AI can’t help, and I do allow students to use gen AI as an aid. Students are free to ask ChatGPT questions about calculating financial ratios or what different types of financial data represent, and, in fact, I encourage them to do so. Again, it’s not about discouraging AI use. It’s about helping students understand how to use AI as a tool without becoming overly dependent on it.

Faculty members can build other types of multi-layered assignments by developing tasks that require students to integrate three types of deep work: data analysis, the application of conceptual frameworks, and the creative development of recommendations based on that critical thinking.

2. Modernize writing assignments for the AI era

Writing assignments are perhaps the most common scenarios in which students need guidance in using AI appropriately and effectively. If students use gen AI to do their writing for them, they don’t hone the analytic thinking skills that writing assignments are meant to teach.

Fortunately, I’ve found ways to develop writing assignments that encourage healthier gen AI use by our students. The key is requiring deep insights that gen AI is incapable of providing.

In the past, I often gave students writing assignments that asked them to summarize basic elements of a case or complete a five forces analysis. However, these are things gen AI can easily do. To guarantee students are working independently, I now ask more involved questions that require students to perform a certain level of independent analysis or to draw connections to class topics.

Tasks I might ask students to do in a more complex writing assignment include the following:

Examine data in an exhibit

Evaluate a firm’s overall strategy

Connect a case analysis to concepts from supplementary readings

Draw on class discussions and their own experiences to support their analysis

Make a recommendation and be prepared to argue in support of that recommendation

Once you’ve developed a writing assignment that requires deeper thinking, I encourage you to run it through ChatGPT or another AI tool yourself. If the AI can complete the assignment adequately, you’ll know that you need to refine the assignment to require even more independent analysis. Having gen AI complete the assignment has the extra benefit of showing you what it might look like if students try to do the same. You might even show students what an analysis by ChatGPT looks like for a particular assignment, and then ask students to improve upon and go beyond that AI-generated content.

3. Update case questions for deeper analysis

If you teach with the case method, you’re likely accustomed to giving students questions to answer after they’ve read a case. Traditionally, these questions were designed to prepare students for class discussion.

In the age of AI, though, straightforward preparatory questions won’t tell you whether students are adequately prepared to contribute analysis come discussion time. Instead, to get them ready for the deeper thinking required of case discussions, create questions that are broader in scope but that push students to analyze more deeply.

For example, for a case I wrote about Viking River Cruises , I might have previously asked students to perform a break-even analysis on a new cruise ship as part of their case preparation. However, ChatGPT can perform a break-even analysis easily—and do it well. So instead, I made the break-even analysis an in-class group activity.

“Making sure assignments require critical thinking has always been important, but it’s become even more so in a world where generative AI can do many simple tasks for us.”

I’ve altered the before-class questions to be much broader, rather than directing students about the precise type of analysis they should undertake. Students must think critically about the context of the case and synthesize that with other topics they may have learned. They need to identify the conceptual frameworks that might be useful, drawing on everything they have learned in the course. Moreover, they must argue why they chose a particular framework to help analyze the case situation. An AI tool will not know precisely how we have been learning to break down complex strategic management challenges; it typically will offer a more generic approach.

This approach needn’t only pertain to cases; you can also use it when you’re designing questions that accompany other types of readings, such as articles or books chapters. For example, you might ask students to revisit a topic from an earlier class discussion and apply ideas from multiple new readings you have assigned since that dialogue in your course.

Broad questions that force deep thinking and original insights are the type that will develop more advanced independent thinking in our students.

Fostering independent thinking alongside AI

Our role as educators is to guide students in harnessing the power of AI as a tool for deeper understanding, rather than a shortcut for superficial answers. Generative AI is here to stay, and many of our students will rely on it now and in their future careers. By integrating it thoughtfully into our teaching, we can prepare them to use it responsibly and effectively.

The key lies in designing assignments and classroom experiences that challenge students to think critically, analyze independently, and engage meaningfully with the material. These are the skills that AI cannot replicate but can help amplify when used purposefully. By fostering these abilities, we equip students to navigate an AI-integrated world—not just as passive users, but as innovative thinkers and creators who can thrive in any context.

With this approach, we can strike a balance that empowers students to think deeply, leverage AI effectively, and lead confidently in their future careers.

Note: The author, Michael Roberto, presented this article’s ideas in an HBP Education webinar entitled “Harnessing Gen AI in the Undergraduate Classroom.” You can view a recording of the webinar here .

Michael Roberto  is the Trustee Professor of Management and the director of the Center for Program Innovation at Bryant University. He joined the tenured faculty at Bryant after serving for six years on the faculty at Harvard Business School.

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Part 2: ai as personal tutor, stop focusing on plagiarism, even though chatgpt is here, how i used gen ai to create a highly engaging assignment.

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ChatGPT for Teachers

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The pervasiveness of social media has significantly changed how people receive and understand information. By steering people to content that’s similar to what they have already read, algorithms create echo chambers that can hinder critical thinking. Consequently, the person may not develop critical thinking skills or be able to refine the abilities they already possess.

Teachers can act as the antidote to the algorithms by strengthening their focus on teaching students to think critically. The following discusses how to teach critical thinking skills and provides resources for teachers to help their students.

What is critical thinking?

Oxford: Learner’s Dictionaries defines critical thinking as “the process of analyzing information in order to make a logical decision about the extent to which you believe something to be true or false.” A critical thinker only forms an opinion on a subject after first understanding the available information and then refining their understanding through:

• Comparisons with other sources of information

A person who is capable of critical thought relies entirely on scientific evidence, rather than guesswork or preconceived notions.

Key critical thinking skills

There isn’t a definitive list of key critical thinking skills, but Bloom’s Taxonomy is often used as a guide and illustration. It starts with base skills, such as remembering and understanding, and rises to optimal skills that include evaluating and creating.

• Remembering: Recalling specific facts
• Understanding: Grasping the information’s meaning
• Applying: Using the information in a new but similar situation
• Analyzing: Identifying connections between different source materials
• Evaluating: Examining the information and making judgments
• Creating: Using the information to create something new

Promoting critical thinking in the classroom

A Stanford Medicine study from 2022 finds that one quarter of children aged 10.7 years have mobile phones. This figure rises to 75% by age 12.6 and almost 100% by age 15. Consequently, children are routinely exposed to powerful algorithms that can dull their critical thinking abilities from a very young age. 

Teaching critical thinking skills to elementary students can help them develop a way of thinking that can temper the social media biases they inevitably encounter. 

At the core of teaching critical thinking skills is encouraging students to ask questions. This can challenge some educators, who may be tempted to respond to the umpteenth question on a single subject with “it just is.” Although that’s a human response when exasperated, it undermines the teacher’s previous good work.

After all, there’s likely little that promotes critical thinking more than feeling safe to ask a question and being encouraged to explore and investigate a subject. Dismissing a question without explanation risks alienating the student and those witnessing the exchange.

How to teach critical thinking skills

Teaching critical thinking skills takes patience and time alongside a combination of instruction and practice. It’s important to routinely create opportunities for children to engage in critical thinking and to guide them through challenges while providing helpful, age-appropriate feedback. 

The following covers several of the most common ways of teaching critical thinking skills to elementary students. Teachers should use an array of resources suitable for middle school and high school students. 

Encourage curiosity

It’s normal for teachers to ask a question and then pick one of the first hands that rise. But waiting a few moments often sees more hands raised, which helps foster an environment where children are comfortable asking questions. It also encourages them to be more curious when engaging with a subject simply because there’s a greater probability of being asked to answer a question.

It’s important to reward students who demonstrate curiosity and a desire to learn. This not only encourages the student but also shows others the benefits of becoming more involved. Some may be happy to learn whatever is put before them, while others may need a subject in which they already have an interest. Using real-world examples develops curiosity as well because children can connect these with existing experiences. 

Model critical thinking

We know children model much of their behavior on what they see and hear in adults. So, one of the best tools in an educator’s toolbox is modeling critical thinking. Sharing their own thoughts as they work through a problem is a good way for teachers to help children see a workable thought process they can mimic. In time, as their confidence and experience grow, they will develop their own strategies.

Encourage debate and discussion

Debating and discussing in a safe space is one of the most effective ways to develop critical thinking skills. Assigning age-appropriate topics, and getting each student to develop arguments for and against a position on that topic, exposes them to different perspectives. 

Breaking classes into small groups where students are encouraged to discuss the topic is also helpful, as small groups often make it easier for shy children to give their opinions. The “think-pair-share” method is another strategy that helps encourage students hiding out in class to come out of their shells.

Provide problem-solving opportunities

Creating tailored problem-solving opportunities helps children discover solutions rather than become frustrated by problems they don’t yet understand. Splitting classes into groups and assigning each an age-appropriate real-world problem they can analyze and solve is a good way of developing critical thinking and team working skills. Role-playing and simulation activities are engaging and fun because the children can pretend to be different people and act out scenarios in a safe environment.

Teach children how to ask the right questions

Learning how to ask the right questions is a vital critical-thinking skill. Questions should be open-ended and thought-provoking. Students should be taught different question stems, such as:

• “What if …?”
• “Can you explain …?”
• “What would happen if …?”
• “What do you think about …?”

Teachers should be aware of students who don’t use these stems. A gentle reminder of how to phrase a question can impact the answer received.

Encourage independent thinking

Critical and independent thinking are partners that are more effective together than either can be apart. To encourage independent thinking, teachers should allow children to pick some of their own topics of study, research, and projects . 

Helping students identify and select different ways to complete an assignment can build their confidence. They should be persuaded to think of as many solutions to problems as possible, as this can open their minds to a wider scope of opportunities.

Provide feedback

Constructive feedback is a crucial part of the learning process. The following list summarizes key strategies that teachers can apply to encourage students through feedback:

• Identify what the child did well and what needs improving.
• Provide feedback as soon as possible after the task or assignment.
• Use positive and encouraging language devoid of criticism or negative language.
• Offer specific suggestions for improvement.
• Provide positive and negative feedback and focus on how to progress without dwelling on mistakes.
• Ensure the feedback is easy to understand and give examples if necessary.
• Be consistent with feedback for all students to avoid being seen as having favorites.
• Listen to the student’s responses to feedback and be open to their perspective.

A mind muscle

Finally, critical thinking is a mind muscle. If it is not exercised, it gets weak, and intellectual laziness takes its place. Teachers might consider asking students to present instances of how they used critical thinking outside of the classroom, which provides practice and reminds the students that these skills aren’t only for the classroom.

You may also like to read

• Critical Thinking Resources for Middle School Teachers
• Critical Thinking Resources for High School Teachers
• Teaching Critical Thinking Through Debate
• Build Critical Thinking Skills With Believing and Doubting Games
• Try These Tips to Improve Students' Critical Thinking Skills
• Teaching Styles That Require Abstract Thinking

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Effective Strategies to Foster Critical Thinking in Students

Article 13 Dec 2024 277

Have you ever wondered how some students excel at problem-solving while others struggle to think beyond the surface? Developing critical thinking skills is a game-changer for students. It's not just about memorizing facts or formulas—it's about equipping learners with the ability to analyze, evaluate, and create solutions to real-life problems. 

Critical thinking gives students a solid foundation for success, whether planning a project, dissecting a complex issue, or deciding on a career path.

In this article, we'll explore practical strategies to foster critical thinking in students. We'll examine research-backed methods, share real-life examples, and provide actionable tips for educators and parents. By the end, you'll have a toolbox of ideas to help students think critically, solve problems, and thrive in their learning journeys.

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking means going beyond surface-level understanding. It involves analyzing information, asking the right questions, and evaluating evidence to make reasoned decisions. According to a study by the American Philosophical Association, critical thinking is a hardworking process of actively conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, and evaluating information.

Why is Critical Thinking Essential?

Research by the Reboot Foundation found that 94% of teachers believe critical thinking is more important now than ever, especially in a world where information overload makes it hard to discern fact from fiction. Yet, only 8% of educators feel confident that their students possess strong critical thinking skills. This gap highlights the need for targeted strategies to develop these skills.

Key Theories of Critical Thinking in Education

1. bloom's taxonomy.

Bloom's framework emphasizes higher-order thinking skills , including analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Teachers can use this structure to design lessons that challenge students to think critically.

2. Socratic Questioning

The Socratic method poses thought-provoking, open-ended questions that prompt students to examine their ideas and underlying assumptions more deeply. Questions like "Why do you think that?" or "What evidence supports your opinion?" promote deeper thinking.

3. Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework

This model focuses on intellectual standards like clarity, precision, relevance, and logic. It helps students assess the quality of their thoughts systematically.

4. Constructivist Learning Theory

Constructivism suggests that learners build knowledge through experience and reflection. Teachers can create activities where students tackle problems, experiment with their ideas, and derive conclusions based on their observations and results.

Strategies to Foster Critical Thinking in Students

1. Encourage Inquiry-Based Learning

Inquiry-based learning puts students in the driver's seat. Instead of passively receiving information, they independently ask questions, research, and discover answers. For example:

A science teacher might start a lesson by asking, "Why do plants grow faster in sunlight than in shade?"

Students can then investigate this question through experiments, analyzing results, and drawing conclusions.

A 2018 study published in Science Education found that inquiry-based approaches improved students' understanding of scientific concepts by 20% compared to traditional methods.

2. Use Socratic Questioning

Integrate Socratic questioning into classroom discussions. For instance, during a history lesson on World War II, you could ask:

"What were the main causes of the war?"

"How might events have unfolded differently under other circumstances?"

These questions engage students and encourage them to think critically about historical events.

3. Implement Problem-Based Learning (PBL)

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) involves presenting students with real-world problems to solve. For example:

In a math class, challenge students to create a budget for a school event.

In an environmental science class, please encourage students to develop innovative solutions to reduce plastic waste in their community.

A 2020 study in Educational Psychology Review found that PBL improves problem-solving skills and increases student motivation.

4. Promote Collaborative Learning

Group activities encourage students to share perspectives, debate ideas, and refine their thinking. For instance:

Assign a group project where students analyze a local issue and propose solutions.

Encourage group discussions where students present and defend their viewpoints.

To ensure active participation, set clear roles for each group member (e.g., researcher, presenter, note-taker).

6. Incorporate Reflective Thinking

Reflection helps students evaluate their learning experiences and identify areas for improvement. Simple practices like journaling or group discussions can foster reflective thinking.

Ask students to write about what they learned after a lesson and how they can apply it.

Please encourage them to identify mistakes and explore how to address them.

7. Leverage Technology for Critical Thinking

Tools like Google Scholar, online simulations, and interactive apps can help students access diverse perspectives and practice critical thinking. For example:

Use platforms like Debate.org for structured debates.

Introduce coding challenges to develop logical thinking.

A report by EdTech Magazine noted that 78% of educators believe technology enhances critical thinking skills when integrated effectively.

Challenges in Fostering Critical Thinking

While the benefits of fostering critical thinking in students are well-recognized, significant challenges must be overcome to integrate this skill fully into educational practices. These challenges stem from systemic, instructional, and student-centered barriers that require innovative solutions.

Standardized Testing

A primary obstacle lies in the pervasive reliance on standardized testing within educational systems. These assessments often emphasize memorization and the recall of facts over more profound analytical skills. Students are encouraged to focus on producing correct answers rather than engaging in critical evaluation or problem-solving. 

As a result, critical thinking is sidelined in favor of test preparation, reinforcing surface-level learning rather than fostering intellectual curiosity or creative problem-solving. This challenge persists globally, as educators face pressure to meet benchmarks set by education boards, leaving little room for practices prioritizing critical engagement.

Teacher Preparedness

Another critical challenge is educators' limited training in teaching critical thinking skills. Many teachers are well-versed in delivering content knowledge but may need more strategies to encourage students to analyze, evaluate, and create. A 2020 study published in Teaching and Teacher Education highlighted that less than 30% of educators felt adequately trained to teach critical thinking. With specific professional development opportunities, teachers can implement practices that actively develop these skills in students. Additionally, educators often need more resources and more resources, which further hinders their ability to adopt innovative methods for nurturing critical thinking.

Student Engagement

Low student engagement poses another hurdle in fostering critical thinking. Some students may need more confidence to voice their opinions or participate in discussions that require higher-order thinking. Others might find essential activities of thinking intimidating or irrelevant to their interests. This disengagement can be particularly evident in classrooms where traditional lecture-style teaching dominates. 

For critical thinking to flourish, students must feel enhanced and motivated to participate actively in their learning. Solutions such as gamified learning environments, where educational content should integrated with interactive, game-like elements, and peer mentorship programs, where students collaborate and learn from one another, can help address these engagement issues.

Recommendations for Educators

To effectively address these challenges, educators must adopt targeted strategies that build their capacity to teach critical thinking while creating supportive student environments.

Professional Development

Investments in professional development are essential. Workshops and training programs emphasizing critical thinking strategies can equip educators with the tools to implement these practices effectively. 

For instance, organizations such as the National Education Association and the International Critical Thinking Society offer tailored resources and frameworks to help teachers incorporate critical thinking into their classrooms. These training sessions can also provide educators with techniques to balance curriculum demands with opportunities for deeper, analytical learning.

Redesign Curricula

Another effective strategy is to embed critical thinking into curricula by seamlessly incorporating group discussions, group projects, and inquiry-based tasks into lesson plans across all subjects.

For example:

In English classes, students can debate the motivations of literary characters, fostering analytical discussions.

In STEM subjects, design thinking challenges can encourage students to brainstorm, prototype, and test solutions for real-world problems.

This redesign ensures that critical thinking becomes a natural part of the learning process rather than an isolated skill taught in specific subjects.

Revise Assessments

Traditional assessment methods rely heavily on multiple-choice tests and often fail to evaluate a student's ability to think critically. Revising these assessments to include essays, case studies, and project-based evaluations can better measure students' analytical and problem-solving skills. 

For instance, a social studies class might require students to develop policy proposals based on historical events, encouraging them to apply their knowledge critically rather than regurgitating information.

Real-Life Examples

A Student-Led Debate

In a high school economics class, students engaged in a structured debate on universal basic income. To prepare, each team conducted research, evaluated data, and developed arguments to support their positions. During the discussion, students presented their cases and responded to counterarguments, which sharpened their ability to think on their feet and critically evaluate opposing viewpoints. Feedback from the teacher emphasized the importance of evidence-based reasoning, reinforcing the value of critical thinking.

Solving a Community Problem

A middle school science class addressed the issue of waste management in their school cafeteria. Students worked collaboratively to design a composting system, integrating biology, environmental science, and engineering knowledge. After presenting their proposal to the school board, they successfully implemented the system, demonstrating their critical thinking skills and ability to apply them practically. This project enhanced their problem-solving skills and instilled a sense of responsibility and achievement.

Addressing the challenges in fostering critical thinking requires a multifaceted approach that includes systemic changes, teacher empowerment, and student-centered strategies. By shifting away from traditional practices that prioritize rote learning, educators can create classrooms that inspire curiosity, encourage analytical thinking, and prepare students for the complexities of the modern world.

Professional development, curriculum redesign, and innovative assessment methods can overcome the obstacles to teaching critical thinking. Real-life examples like student-led debates and community problem-solving illustrate the transformative potential of critical thinking in action, offering a blueprint for meaningful and lasting educational reform.

Fostering critical thinking in students requires intentional effort, but the rewards are immense. By integrating strategies like inquiry-based learning, Socratic questioning, and problem-based learning, educators can prepare students to tackle challenges with confidence and creativity. Let's commit to nurturing thinkers who question, analyze, and innovate—not just for academic success but for a brighter future.

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Inside a Class Teaching Teens to Stop Scrolling and Think Critically

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Clarification : This article has been updated to better describe the work of Media Literacy Now.

On a chilly November morning here, Brie Wattier’s 8th graders at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration School had their eyes trained on the slides projected at the front of the class.

“What are the good things about social media?” the slides read. “What are the bad things?”

A bunch of hands shot up. Some students were confident that social media helps connect them with like-minded people and learn new skills, like cooking. Others were less sure of its benefits. Social media can spread rumors or make you compare yourself constantly to others, they said.

This opening gave Wattier, who is piloting a year-long course to teach students skills to determine what’s true online so they can be more informed citizens, a chance to pose a harder question: “Is social media more helpful or harmful to a democracy?”

This time, the class was more united in their response, with the presidential election results still fresh on their minds—social media, they said, can influence how you vote, and what goes viral may not be the most accurate information.

Wattier finally asked the question at the heart of the class: “How can we trust the information we get on social media?”

Training a critical lens on information, whether online or offline, has become an essential skill for students, she said in an interview before the class.

“Some of my students in middle school may be eligible to vote in the next election cycle,” she said. “It’s never too early to teach them these skills.”

The misinformation and “fear mongering” before the election has made it even more important to rely on credible sources of information, Wattier added: “Students were asking me stuff like if Trump could run for a third term, or if slavery might come back.”

A growing emphasis on digital citizenship education

The University of Maryland created this course on “digital civic inquiry” and trained a cohort of 15 Washington social studies teachers—including Wattier—over the summer on how to teach it. The course is based on the city’s newly adopted social studies standards released in 2023, which emphasize that students need to learn how to “gather diverse perspectives” to evaluate information they see online.

Ninteen states have taken legislative action to include digital citizenship and media literacy in their schools. How these standards are developed and implemented varies between states, according to a 2023 report by Media Literacy Now, nonprofit that advocates to ensure all K-12 students are taught media literacy. The largely bipartisan efforts are in response to a growing need in schools—helping students identify credible information and use social media safely, a task that’s getting harder with the explosion of artificial intelligence-generated content and “ deepfakes .”

This training, though, must be consistent to be effective, said Sarah McGrew, an assistant professor at the university’s college of education who helped create the course that Wattier’s now teaching. The training can’t just kick in when “students bring in random [misinformation] to the class or if they are doing a research project,” she said.

“We then try to quickly teach them how to evaluate sources so that they don’t end up with crazy things on their reference pages,” McGrew said. “But the process of inquiry needs to be embedded in the [ongoing] curriculum.”

This work is supported in part by a U.S. Department of Education grant. McGrew and her team also partnered with Washington’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education and the civics education nonprofit Close Up Foundation.

To meet lofty goals, teachers need to start with the basics

The course is broadly divided into a few steps. Students must find evidence for claims or information they find online and evaluate if it’s coming from a credible and unbiased source. But even before they do this, there’s a crucial step that’s currently missing from the way students digest information.

“Students, for the most part, aren’t thinking about the source at all. They’re just scrolling through social media feeds,” McGrew said. “That’s the way the internet is designed. We need kids to stop and think about trustworthiness and expertise behind the information they’re reading.”

That’s why “lateral reading” is one of the key skills taught in the course. For example, if a student sees information on one website, they need to go to multiple other websites to corroborate it. The same principles apply to TikTok or Instagram, McGrew said, although the course doesn’t focus on those apps specifically.

Once that “restraint” is built, the next step is to evaluate the information based on the source’s trustworthiness and expertise. Students explore questions about the source’s background, if the sources are experts in that subject, or if they’ve conferred with other experts in coming up with their viewpoint.

For instance, the first unit of the course exposes students to the concept of affordable housing in the nation’s capital. Wattier shared source documents from the Urban Institute, a non-profit think tank, and a luxury real estate firm.

“The students concluded that the Urban Institute is a credible source. Even if they aren’t experts themselves, they have consulted experts,” Wattier said. “On the other hand, [the real estate firm] may be experts on housing, but students questioned what’s in it for them to talk about affordable housing.”

The class decided that they could trust the Urban Institute more than the real estate company.

These aren’t straightforward tasks for students, though. Wattier also had to teach the meaning and significance behind words like think tanks, liberal versus conservative, and revenue. Wattier wanted her students to look out for those words to establish a source’s credibility and realized she had to be “a lot more explicit” about the connection.

Some of the teachers in the training cohort are teaching this course in bilingual classes, meaning they have to collect sources in both English and Spanish.

“I use Newsela to find Spanish language sources, which are usually articles taken from outlets like the Associated Press,” said Sonija Parson, a middle and high school studies teacher at the Sojourner Truth Montessori School in Washington.

In civics education now, it’s important to deal with the barrage of both useful and harmful information students are now exposed to, said Eric Soto-Shed, an education lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, while speaking with Education Week this fall on civics courses that tackle misinformation and political participation.

Critically analyzing this information is only step one, though. The next step is for students to understand the kind of information ecosystem they live in, he added.

“What is it about sensational media ... that can attract us [as] a viewer?” he asked.

Students have to be critical about the larger environment in which they receive information, to—ideally—burst out of their social media bubbles, he added.

Students pick up lateral reading quickly, but need to hone their skills

In 2022, a study by researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Education showed that high school students who received only six 50-minute lessons in digital literacy were twice as likely to “spot questionable websites as they were before the instruction took place.”

Two modules into the digital civic inquiry course, middle schoolers at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration School feel confident about their ability to spot fake information online and question its sources.

“When I used to scroll on social media, every single piece of information that I saw, I would automatically believe it. And I would judge, like, whether I believe it based off of the look of it,” said Kaitlyn Saunders, an 8th grader in Wattier’s class. “But now I can look at something, and I can be, like, this looks professional, but the information might not be true, or it might not be fact-checked, and I might want to check the sources before I go telling my family members and friends about it.”

A website would seem professional—and by extension, trustworthy—to Kaitlyn if the information in it was well-organized, if it had a color scheme, and if it linked to multiple other sites.

Kimore Philips, Caitlin’s classmate, said she’d learned to “question herself” when looking at videos or websites online: “Who made this? Are those people experts on the topic? Are they biased or promoting a business? Why should I trust them?”

The lessons have given students an easy way to conduct background research, said James Aument, another 8th grader in Wattier’s class who plans to talk to his family and friends about trusting information online.

The students emphasized the need to teach their parents to understand what’s real and fake. “They didn’t have AI, they didn’t have the types of cell phones and social media that we have now,” said Kaitlyn.

Teacher training is key

Wattier is happy with her students’ progress. They’ve grasped the idea of lateral reading, but they still need help to parse through biased and unbiased sources.

When Wattier asked them to find out if an environmental coalition was a credible source for an article that challenged research on global warming, students saw that it was a nonprofit advocacy organization and deemed it credible. “They missed that the group is made up of climate change denialists,” Wattier said.

As Wattier works through students’ own biases, she will introduce concepts like “click restraint,” the idea that websites pay to be placed at certain spots on Google, and how that can impact their credibility. By the end of the year, Wattier hopes students will be able to verify the credibility of sources they find on their own.

“These skills should translate to critically analyzing any media they consume, whether it’s for school or entertainment,” Wattier said.

Teachers, like other adults, can also lack the skills to do a credibility check on information they see online. A common mistake, said McGrew, is to think that a website with a .org or .edu domain will always give credible information.

The University of Maryland trainers will issue participating teachers a pre- and post-course survey to check to see if their evaluation skills get better, alongside their students’.

There are other skills being captured, too, said McGrew: “We’re interested in seeing if they facilitate deliberations in these classes better.”

Next year, McGrew hopes to increase the number of teachers who have been trained in this course to 50. Beyond that, she’ll rely on the educators who have gone through training to then serve as master trainers for other teachers in their schools.

“To the extent that there’s money available, hopefully, we’ll be able to more explicitly support teachers,” she said. “But I feel good that at least the teacher leader piece is there, and that there’ll be teachers across the city who are experts in teaching this.”

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Teach Critical Thinking with These Action Writing Strategies: Part Two

Ready for more action writing strategies that encourage critical thinking in an AI world? In the first part of this blog entry , you saw three powerful action strategies. Those strategies included collaborative writing workshop, structured debate blogs, and reflective journaling with metacognitive prompts. In this follow-up to part one, you will see two more action writing strategies. These two strategies, just like the first three, are designed to engage student writers and improve their analytical skills.

4. Multi-Draft Writing with Peer and Teacher Feedback

In my fifth grade writing workshop, modeled after Nanci Atwell’s, I had one on one mini-conferences with students. Meeting with them frequently allowed me to gain insight into their writing progress on self-chosen topics of interest to them. During the class period, I delivered mini-lessons addressing specific areas I had noticed in previous conferences. Then, after mini-lessons, I invited students to review their writing to address a particular area of growth. This allowed both the student(s) and I to focus on one component that needed work, rather than a laundry list of issues.

This often resulted in nosy teacher neighbors, red pens in hand, reading student work on the walls with a critical eye. “Can’t your students write?” I would have to explain that their efforts in a particular piece focused on a particular issue, while ignoring others. Over time, their writing improved dramatically as did our relationship, enabling them to take even more ownership of their writing and correcting issues.

This is my understanding of multi-draft writing that incorporates elements such as strategic feedback. Each draft of a piece of writing is improved with a focus on a specific area, eventually until a piece achieves the level desired by the writer. One way to assist students in thinking through their writing involves the use of success criteria or rubrics.

When offering feedback, it’s important to focus on feedback focused on tasks, process, and/or self-regulation. Avoid praise ( effect size is 0.14 ) as feedback. The chart below clarifies the types of feedback to provide (read more):

Adapted from David Perkins (2003) The Ladder of Feedback and John Hattie (2014) The Power of Feedback.  You can also: Get Your Own Copy in Google Slides format

Feedback is information provided by an agent (e.g., teacher, peer, book, parent, self/experience) regarding aspects of one’s performance or understanding that reduces the discrepancy between what is understood, what is aimed to be understood, and where to move next in their learning.( source )

As you might imagine, Feedback (effect size is 0.51) and “Writing programs” (effect size 0.45) are powerful strategies at play here. In fact, effective feedback answers three questions:

• Where am I going?
• How am I going?
• Where to next? ( source )

The approach to use that is quite effective with feedback involves cues and reinforcement ( effect size 1.01 ). That’s whopping big effect size. Reinforcement and cues let students know how to take their next steps in learning, or writing to learn in this case. Let’s look at each in turn below.

Cues that guide the writer towards a desired performance, or help direct attention to important aspects of a task. Think of one on one writing conference or writing circle feedback. This type of feedback often focuses on where and how writing is progressing. Cues can be structured as hints, prompts, or guiding questions.

In regards to reinforcements, encouraging repetition of correct behaviors or offering constructive criticism can be helpful. With multiple conversations about their drafts focused on cues and reinforcement, students engage in iterative revision and analysis. This has the effect of improving critical thinking.

Classroom Application

You can focus on multi-draft essays with the WRITE model for multi-draft writing. It’s pretty easy, as you can see below, and helps keep the focus where it needs to be:

• W – Workshop mini-lesson
• R – Revise with focus
• I – Individual conference
• T – Target one element
• E – Exhibit and evaluate

This model is designed to assist the writing workshop teacher during one on one writing conferences. It’s less useful for students unless they are older and are curious about the process you are following.

5. Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis

A lot of learning takes place at the Surface Learning phase of learning. That is, when new ideas and concepts are being introduced. Most of the writing I most enjoy connects concepts from multiple subjects. It analyzes how those connections are made, and explores the juxtaposition of ideas and information. When the writer makes those connections, the reader in me marvels at the skills and thinking in those hypertext connections.

A component of critical thinking means making visible how authors bridge the distance between diverse concepts. These interdisciplinary connections are the equivalent of poems like Jacob Bronowski’s The Abacus and the Rose . The part of the poem that uncovers for the reader the connection of natural science and emotion for me is this excerpt:

The force that makes the winter grow Its feathered hexagons of snow, and drives the bee to match at home Their calculated honeycomb, Is abacus and rose combined.

When I first read it in 1984, my mind struggled to see the connections. It was unable to encompass how all the pieces fit together. It’s only now, forty years later, that I see how these connections are made in writing. Making those connections visible is what cross-disciplinary synthesis is about. It is juxtaposing contradictory (on the surface) ideas and seeing what the connection is.

To do this, we have to take what we have learned, have come to understand, and apply it in a way that is new or novel. And that experience shifts our learning from Surface to Deep (where connections are made) to Transfer Learning. It is the last that proves, yes, we see and understand at the deeper level how abacus and rose combine. For this, Transfer Strategies (0.86) and Summarization (0.79) are in effect.

Classroom Applications

One way to approach this is to use the MIX model ( view | get a copy ). That is, to encourage openness to seeing ideas from different subjects and how they connect to one another. The MIX model includes:

• M – Match ideas from different subjects or disciplines
• I – Imagine new connections
• X – eXplain your thinking

Here’s an example of what that might look like from the perspective of a fifth grader:

Here’s the updated markdown table with a merged row at the end containing a sample narrative in a fifth-grader’s voice:

A MIX Example: Force and Motion

“Hey guys, watch this!” I yelled as I ran up to kick the bright red ball. My foot connected with a satisfying thud, and the ball soared through the air. As it arced across the sky, I couldn’t help but think about our science lesson. “Whoa, nice kick!” my friend Jess shouted. “How’d you do that?” I grinned, feeling proud. “It’s all about force and motion,” I explained. “Remember what Ms. Rodriguez taught us? The harder I kick, the more force I use, and the farther the ball goes.” Jess’s eyes lit up. “Oh yeah! So when I catch it, I’m stopping its motion, right?” “Exactly!” I nodded enthusiastically. “And when we run bases, we’re changing our own motion. It’s like we’re doing a science experiment while we play!” As we continued our game, I saw force and motion everywhere. The bounce of the ball, the sprint to first base, the arc of a throw – it was all science in action. Who knew our neighborhood kickball game could teach us so much?

Turning the Page

When I turned twenty something, I switched from handwriting notes to typing. I had been writing with a word processor since age thirteen, and it made sense to type, not write, my notes. Then, when I read the research, newly presented a few years ago, I switched back to handwritten notes. What a difference! This quote founds its way to my inbox:

“When we measure the brain activity of people who write by hand, we see that they form more connections in the brain than when they write using a computer,” says brain researcher . Audrey van der Meer, a professor of neuropsychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) as cited in Futurity .

More connections is good, right? I can’t imagine writing this blog series by hand, though. Not with all the links and edits I’ve made. Instead, I write my notes by hand, then put them into a word processor as an article. When I see technology, now AI, short-circuiting the brain activity made possible by handwriting, I do worry a little. But we need to do the hard work. We need to model writing by hand, note-taking, concept mapping, and more with students in the classroom. In my classrooms in Texas K-12 public schools, I did that. But the writing workshop remains a contentious time sink for some educators, administrators, and legislators. The arrival of AI on the scene underscores the importance of NOT ignoring the research any more. Even if it means saying, “AI may not be right for our children to use until after they have activated their brains more.”

Get a Copy of These Action Writing Strategies

Want a copy of the action writing strategies featured in this blog entry? Get a copy via Canva , and/or view full-size . All images, including the feature image, were created by the author and are freely shared to spur learning and inspire your creativity, AI-assisted or otherwise. What’s more, you are free to use these. To generate the ideas for these models, I wrote each section, then fed that into Perplexity.ai. I asked it to give me a model appropriate for grades 3-12 that would match my writing. Then, after reviewing it, I fine-tuned the model in Canva for the posters.

The Inspiration Behind These Action Writing Strategies

This blog entry on action writing strategies was inspired by two articles I read about the despair teachers are experiencing surrounding AI. The two articles are ChatGPT Can Make English Teachers Feel Doomed: Here’s How I’m Adapting by David Nurenberg (Education Week, 10/16/2024) and I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT by Victoria Livingstone (Time, 09/30/2024).

How are you coping with AI? Let us know in the comments below!

Miguel Guhlin

Transforming teaching, learning and leadership through the strategic application of technology has been Miguel Guhlin’s motto. Learn more about his work online at blog.tcea.org , mguhlin.org , and mglead.org /mglead2.org. Catch him on Mastodon @[email protected] Areas of interest flow from his experiences as a district technology administrator, regional education specialist, and classroom educator in bilingual/ESL situations. Learn more about his credentials online at mguhlin.net.

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Learning to Improve: Using Writing to Increase Critical Thinking Performance in General Education Biology

Ian j quitadamo, martha j kurtz.

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Address correspondence to: Ian J. Quitadamo ( [email protected] )

Corresponding author.

Received 2006 Nov 27; Revised 2007 Feb 16; Accepted 2007 Feb 19.

Increasingly, national stakeholders express concern that U.S. college graduates cannot adequately solve problems and think critically. As a set of cognitive abilities, critical thinking skills provide students with tangible academic, personal, and professional benefits that may ultimately address these concerns. As an instructional method, writing has long been perceived as a way to improve critical thinking. In the current study, the researchers compared critical thinking performance of students who experienced a laboratory writing treatment with those who experienced traditional quiz-based laboratory in a general education biology course. The effects of writing were determined within the context of multiple covariables. Results indicated that the writing group significantly improved critical thinking skills whereas the nonwriting group did not. Specifically, analysis and inference skills increased significantly in the writing group but not the nonwriting group. Writing students also showed greater gains in evaluation skills; however, these were not significant. In addition to writing, prior critical thinking skill and instructor significantly affected critical thinking performance, whereas other covariables such as gender, ethnicity, and age were not significant. With improved critical thinking skill, general education biology students will be better prepared to solve problems as engaged and productive citizens.

INTRODUCTION

A national call to improve critical thinking in science.

In the past several years, an increasing number of national reports indicate a growing concern over the effectiveness of higher education teaching practices and the decreased science (and math) performance of U.S. students relative to other industrialized countries ( Project Kaleidoscope, 2006 ). A variety of national stakeholders, including business and educational leaders, politicians, parents, and public agencies, have called for long-term transformation of the K–20 educational system to produce graduates who are well trained in science, can engage intelligently in global issues that require local action, and in general are better able to solve problems and think critically. Specifically, business leaders are calling for graduates who possess advanced analysis and communication skills, for instructional methods that improve lifelong learning, and ultimately for an educational system that builds a nation of innovative and effective thinkers ( Business-Higher Education Forum and American Council on Education, 2003 ). Education leaders are similarly calling for institutions of higher education to produce graduates who think critically, communicate effectively, and who employ lifelong learning skills to address important scientific and civic issues ( Association of American Colleges and Universities, [AACU] 2005 ).

Many college faculty consider critical thinking to be one of the most important indicators of student learning quality. In its 2005 national report, the AACU indicated that 93% of higher education faculty perceived analytical and critical thinking to be an essential learning outcome (AACU, 2005) whereas 87% of undergraduate students indicated that college experiences contributed to their ability to think analytically and creatively. This same AACU report showed that only 6% of undergraduate seniors demonstrated critical thinking proficiency based on Educational Testing Services standardized assessments from 2003 to 2004. During the same time frame, data from the ACT Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency test showed a similar trend, with undergraduates improving their critical thinking less than 1 SD from freshman to senior year. Thus, it appears a discrepancy exists between faculty expectations of critical thinking and students' ability to perceive and demonstrate critical thinking proficiency using standardized assessments (AACU, 2005).

Teaching that supports the development of critical thinking skills has become a cornerstone of nearly every major educational objective since the Department of Education released its six goals for the nation's schools in 1990. In particular, goal three of the National Goals for Education stated that more students should be able to reason, solve problems, and apply knowledge. Goal six specifically stated that college graduates must be able to think critically ( Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1991 ). Since 1990, American education has tried—with some success—to make a fundamental shift from traditional teacher-focused instruction to more student-centered constructivist learning that encourages discovery, reflection, and in general is thought to improve student critical thinking skill. National science organizations have supported this trend with recommendations to improve the advanced thinking skills that support scientific literacy ( American Association for Higher Education, 1989 ; National Research Council, 1995 ; National Science Foundation, 1996 ).

More recent reports describe the need for improved biological literacy as well as international competitiveness ( Bybee and Fuchs, 2006 ; Klymkowsky, 2006 ). Despite the collective call for enhanced problem solving and critical thinking, educators, researchers, and policymakers are discovering a lack of evidence in existing literature for methods that measurably improve critical thinking skills ( Tsui, 1998 , 2002 ). As more reports call for improved K–20 student performance, it is essential that research-supported teaching and learning practices be used to better help students develop the cognitive skills that underlie effective science learning ( Malcom et al., 2005 ; Bybee and Fuchs, 2006 ).

Critical Thinking

Although they are not always transparent to many college students, the academic and personal benefits of critical thinking are well established; students who can think critically tend to get better grades, are often better able to use reasoning in daily decisions ( U.S. Department of Education, 1990 ), and are generally more employable ( Carnevale and American Society for Training and Development, 1990 ; Holmes and Clizbe, 1997 ; National Academy of Sciences, 2005 ). By focusing on instructional efforts that develop critical thinking skills, it may be possible to increase student performance while satisfying national stakeholder calls for educational improvement and increased ability to solve problems as engaged and productive citizens.

Although academics and business professionals consider critical thinking skill to be a crucial outcome of higher education, many would have difficulty defining exactly what critical thinking is. Historically, there has been little agreement on how to conceptualize critical thinking. Of the literally dozens of definitions that exist, one of the most organized efforts to define (and measure) critical thinking emerged from research done by Peter Facione and others in the early 1990s. Their consensus work, referred to as the Delphi report, was accomplished by a group of 46 leading theorists, teachers, and critical thinking assessment specialists from a variety of academic and business disciplines ( Facione and American Philosophical Association, 1990 ). Initial results from the Delphi report were later confirmed in a national survey and replication study ( Jones et al., 1995 ). In short, the Delphi panel expert consensus describes critical thinking as a “process of purposeful self-regulatory judgment that drives problem-solving and decision-making” ( Facione and American Philosophical Association, 1990 ). This definition implies that critical thinking is an intentional, self-regulated process that provides a mechanism for solving problems and making decisions based on reasoning and logic, which is particularly useful when dealing with issues of national and global significance.

The Delphi conceptualization of critical thinking encompasses several cognitive skills that include: 1) analysis (the ability to break a concept or idea into component pieces in order to understand its structure and inherent relationships), 2) inference (the skills used to arrive at a conclusion by reconciling what is known with what is unknown), and 3) evaluation (the ability to weigh and consider evidence and make reasoned judgments within a given context). Other critical thinking skills that are similarly relevant to science include interpretation, explanation, and self-regulation ( Facione and American Philosophical Association, 1990 ). The concept of critical thinking includes behavioral tendencies or dispositions as well as cognitive skills ( Ennis, 1985 ); these include the tendency to seek truth, to be open-minded, to be analytical, to be orderly and systematic, and to be inquisitive ( Facione and American Philosophical Association, 1990 ). These behavioral tendencies also align closely with behaviors considered to be important in science. Thus, an increased focus on teaching critical thinking may directly benefit students who are engaged in science.

Prior research on critical thinking indicates that students' behavioral dispositions do not change in the short term ( Giancarlo and Facione, 2001 ), but cognitive skills can be developed over a relatively short period of time (Quitadamo, Brahler, and Crouch, unpublished results). In their longitudinal study of behavioral disposition toward critical thinking, Giancarlo and Facione (2001) discovered that undergraduate critical thinking disposition changed significantly after two years. Specifically, significant changes in student tendency to seek truth and confidence in thinking critically occurred during the junior and senior years. Also, females tended to be more open-minded and have more mature judgment than males ( Giancarlo and Facione, 2001 ). Although additional studies are necessary to confirm results from the Giancarlo study, existing research seems to indicate that changes in undergraduate critical thinking disposition are measured in years, not weeks.

In contrast to behavioral disposition, prior research indicates that critical thinking skills can be measurably changed in weeks. In their study of undergraduate critical thinking skill in university science and math courses, Quitadamo, Brahler, and Crouch (unpublished results) showed that critical thinking skills changed within 15 wk in response to Peer Led Team Learning (a national best practice for small group learning). This preliminary study provided some evidence that undergraduate critical thinking skills could be measurably improved within an academic semester, but provided no information about whether critical thinking skills could be changed during a shorter academic quarter. It was also unclear whether the development of critical thinking skills was a function of chronological time or whether it was related to instructional time.

Numerous studies provide anecdotal evidence for pedagogies that improve critical thinking, but much of existing research relies on student self-report, which limits the scope of interpretation. From the literature it is clear that, although critical thinking skills are some of the most valued outcomes of a quality education, additional research investigating the effects of instructional factors on critical thinking performance is necessary ( Tsui, 1998 , 2002 ).

Writing and Critical Thinking

Writing has been widely used as a tool for communicating ideas, but less is known about how writing can improve the thinking process itself ( Rivard, 1994 ; Klein, 2004 ). Writing is thought to be a vehicle for improving student learning ( Champagne and Kouba, 1999 ; Kelly and Chen, 1999 ; Keys, 1999 ; Hand and Prain, 2002 ), but too often is used as a means to regurgitate content knowledge and derive prescribed outcomes ( Keys, 1999 ; Keys et al., 1999 ). Historically, writing is thought to contribute to the development of critical thinking skills ( Kurfiss, and Association for the Study of Higher Education, 1988 ). Applebee (1984) suggested that writing improves thinking because it requires an individual to make his or her ideas explicit and to evaluate and choose among tools necessary for effective discourse. Resnick (1987) stressed that writing should provide an opportunity to think through arguments and that, if used in such a way, could serve as a “cultivator and an enabler of higher order thinking.” Marzano (1991) suggested that writing used as a means to restructure knowledge improves higher-order thinking. In this context, writing may provide opportunity for students to think through arguments and use higher-order thinking skills to respond to complex problems ( Marzano, 1991 ).

Writing has also been used as a strategy to improve conceptual learning. Initial work focused on how the recursive and reflective nature of the writing process contributes to student learning ( Applebee, 1984 ; Langer and Applebee, 1985 , 1987 ; Ackerman, 1993 ). However, conclusions from early writing to learn studies were limited by confounding research designs and mismatches between writing activities and measures of student learning ( Ackerman, 1993 ). Subsequent work has focused on how writing within disciplines helps students to learn content and how to think. Specifically, writing within disciplines is thought to require deeper analytical thinking ( Langer and Applebee, 1987 ), which is closely aligned with critical thinking.

The influence of writing on critical thinking is less defined in science. Researchers have repeatedly called for more empirical investigations of writing in science; however, few provide such evidence ( Rivard, 1994 ; Tsui, 1998 ; Daempfle, 2002 ; Klein, 2004 ). In his extensive review of writing research, Rivard (1994) indicated that gaps in writing research limit its inferential scope, particularly within the sciences. Specifically, Rivard and others indicate that, despite the volume of writing students are asked to produce during their education, they are not learning to use writing to improve their awareness of thinking processes ( Resnick, 1987 ; Howard, 1990 ). Existing studies are limited because writing has been used either in isolation or outside authentic classroom contexts. Factors like gender, ethnicity, and academic ability that are not directly associated with writing but may nonetheless influence its effectiveness have also not been sufficiently accounted for in previous work ( Rivard, 1994 ).

A more recent review by Daempfle (2002) similarly indicates the need for additional research to clarify relationships between writing and critical thinking in science. In his review, Daempfle identified nine empirical studies that generally support the hypothesis that students who experience writing (and other nontraditional teaching methods) have higher reasoning skills than students who experience traditional science instruction. Of the relatively few noninstructional variables identified in those studies, gender and major did not affect critical thinking performance; however, the amount of time spent on and the explicitness of instruction to teach reasoning skills did affect overall critical thinking performance. Furthermore, the use of writing and other nontraditional teaching methods did not appear to negatively affect content knowledge acquisition ( Daempfle, 2002 ). Daempfle justified his conclusions by systematically describing the methodological inconsistencies for each study. Specifically, incomplete sample descriptions, the use of instruments with insufficient validity and reliability, the absence of suitable comparison groups, and the lack of statistical covariate analyses limit the scope and generalizability of existing studies of writing and critical thinking ( Daempfle, 2002 ).

Writing in the Biological Sciences

The conceptual nature and reliance on the scientific method as a means of understanding make the field of biology a natural place to teach critical thinking through writing. Some work has been done in this area, with literature describing various approaches to writing in the biological sciences that range from linked biology and English courses, writing across the biology curriculum, and directed use of writing to improve reasoning in biology courses ( Ebert-May et al., 1997 ; Holyoak, 1998 ; Taylor and Sobota, 1998 ; Steglich, 2000 ; Lawson, 2001 ; Kokkala and Gessell, 2003 ; Tessier, 2006 ). In their work on integrated biology and English, Taylor and Sobota (1998) discussed several problem areas that affected both biology and English students, including anxiety and frustration associated with writing, difficulty expressing thoughts clearly and succinctly, and a tendency to have strong negative responses to writing critique. Although the authors delineate the usefulness of several composition strategies for writing in biology ( Taylor and Sobota, 1998 ), it was unclear whether student data were used to support their recommendations. Kokkala and Gessell (2003) used English students to evaluate articles written by biology students. Biology students first reflected on initial editorial comments made by English students, and then resubmitted their work for an improved grade. In turn, English students had to justify their editorial comments with written work of their own. Qualitative results generated from a list of reflective questions at the end of the writing experience seemed to indicate that both groups of students improved editorial skills and writing logic. However, no formal measures of student editorial skill were collected before biology-English student collaboration, so no definitive conclusions on the usefulness of this strategy could be made.

Taking a slightly different tack, Steglich (2000) informally assessed student attitudes in nonmajors biology courses, and noted that writing produced positive changes in student attitudes toward biology. However, the author acknowledged that this work was not a research study. Finally, Tessier (2006) showed that students enrolled in a nonmajors ecology course significantly improved writing technical skills and committed fewer errors of fact regarding environmental issues in response to a writing treatment. Attitudes toward environmental issues also improved ( Tessier, 2006 ). Although this study surveyed students at the beginning and the end of the academic term and also tracked student progress during the quarter, instrument validity and reliability were not provided. The generalizability of results was further limited because of an overreliance on student self-reports and small sample size.

Each of the studies described above peripherally supports a relationship between writing and critical thinking. Although not explicitly an investigation of critical thinking, results from a relatively recent study support a stronger connection between writing and reasoning ability ( Daempfle, 2002 ). Ebert-May et al. (1997) used a modified learning cycle instructional method and small group collaboration to increase reasoning ability in general education biology students. A quasi-experimental pretest/posttest control group design was used on a comparatively large sample of students, and considerable thought was given to controlling extraneous variables across the treatment and comparison groups. A multifaceted assessment strategy based on writing, standardized tests, and student interviews was used to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate student content knowledge and thinking skill. Results indicated that students in the treatment group significantly outperformed control group students on reasoning and process skills as indicated by the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) content exam. Coincidentally, student content knowledge did not differ significantly between the treatment and control sections, indicating that development of thinking skill did not occur at the expense of content knowledge ( Ebert-May et al., 1997 ). Interview data indicated that students experiencing the writing and collaboration-based instruction changed how they perceived the construction of biological knowledge and how they applied their reasoning skills. Although the Ebert-May study is one of the more complete investigations of writing and critical thinking to date, several questions remain. Supporting validity and reliability data for the NABT test was not included in the study, making interpretation of results somewhat less certain. In addition, the NABT exam is designed to assess high school biology performance, not college performance ( Daempfle, 2002 ). Perhaps more importantly, the NABT exam does not explicitly measure critical thinking skills.

Collectively, it appears that additional research is necessary to establish a more defined relationship between writing and critical thinking in science ( Rivard, 1994 ; Tsui, 1998 , 2002 ; Daempfle, 2002 ). The current study addresses some of the gaps in previous work by evaluating the effects of writing on critical thinking performance using relatively large numbers of students, suitable comparison groups, valid and reliable instruments, a sizable cadre of covariables, and statistical analyses of covariance. This study uses an experimental design similar to that of the Ebert-May et al. (1997) study but incorporates valid and reliable test measures of critical thinking that can be used both within and across different science disciplines.

Purpose of the Study

Currently there is much national discussion about increasing the numbers of students majoring in various science fields ( National Research Council, 2003 ; National Academy of Sciences, 2005 ). Although this is a necessary and worthwhile goal, attention should also be focused on improving student performance in general education science because these students will far outnumber science majors for the foreseeable future. If college instructors want general education students to think critically about science, they will need to use teaching methods that improve student critical thinking performance. In many traditional general education biology courses, students are not expected to work collaboratively, to think about concepts as much as memorize facts, or to develop and support a written thesis or argument. This presents a large problem when one considers the societal role that general education students will play as voters, community members, and global citizens. By improving their critical thinking skills in science, general education students will be better able to deal with the broad scientific, economic, social, and political issues they will face in the future.

The problem addressed by this study was to discover whether writing could improve student critical thinking performance in general education biology courses. How might writing in general education biology affect the analysis, inference, and evaluation skills that are inherent to critical thinking? What level of critical thinking skill do students bring to nonmajors biology courses? Can their critical thinking skills be measurably improved using writing? What other factors affect development of critical thinking skills? When do student critical thinking skills begin to change, and how much? In this study, the effect of writing on critical thinking performance was investigated using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) at the beginning (pretest) and end (posttest) of 10 sections of general education biology at a regional comprehensive university in the Pacific Northwest. Several research questions framed this investigation:

Does writing in laboratory affect critical thinking performance in general education biology? Does the development of analysis, inference, and evaluation skills differ between students who experience writing versus those who experience traditional laboratory instruction? What measurable effect do factors like gender, ethnicity, and prior thinking skill have on changes in critical thinking in general education biology? If critical thinking skills change during an academic quarter, when does that take place?

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study context.

The study took place at a state-funded regional comprehensive university in the Pacific Northwest. All participants were nonmajor undergraduates who were taking biology to satisfy their general education science requirement. Ten total sections of general education biology offered over three academic quarters (one academic year) were included in the study. Four of the 10 sections implemented a writing component during weekly laboratory meetings (N = 158); six traditional quiz-based laboratory sections served as a nonwriting control group (N = 152). Only scores from students who had completed both the initial (pretest) and end-of-quarter (posttest) critical thinking assessments were included in the data analysis. A breakdown of participant demographics for the writing and nonwriting groups is provided in Table 1 .

Demographics for the writing and nonwriting groups

Demographics profile for the study sample. n values in parentheses.

a Other includes the ″choose not to answer″ response.

Each course section included a lecture component offered four times per week for 50 min and a laboratory component that met once a week for 2 h. Course lecture sections were limited to a maximum enrollment of 48 students, with two concurrent lab sections of 24 students. Two different instructors taught five writing sections and five other instructors taught 11 traditional sections over three consecutive quarters. Each course instructor materially participated in teaching laboratory with the help of one graduate assistant per lab section (two graduate students per course section). None of the instructors from treatment sections had implemented writing in the laboratory before the start of this study. Writing instructors were chosen on the basis of personal dissatisfaction with traditional laboratory teaching methods and willingness to try something new.

Strong efforts were made to establish equivalency between writing and nonwriting course sections a priori. Course elements that were highly similar included common lecture rooms, the use of similar (in most cases identical) textbooks, and a lab facility coordinated by a single faculty member. More specifically, three similarly appointed lecture rooms outfitted with contemporary instructional technology including dry erase boards, media cabinets, a networked computer, and digital projection were used to teach the nonmajors biology courses. The same nonmajors biology textbook was used across the writing and most of the nonwriting sections. All laboratory sections used a common lab facility and were taught on the same day of the week. Although the order in which specific labs were taught differed among sections, a common laboratory manual containing prescriptive exercises covering the main themes of biology (scientific method, cellular biology and genetics, natural selection and evolution, kingdoms of life, and a mammalian dissection) was used across all writing and nonwriting lab sections.

Primary course differences included a writing component in the laboratory, and how much time was devoted to laboratory activities. Those sections that experienced the writing treatment completed the prescriptive lab exercises in the first hour and engaged in writing during the second hour of the lab. Nonwriting sections allocated 2 h for the prescriptive lab exercises and included a traditional laboratory quiz rather than a writing assignment. The degree to which the writing and nonwriting sections included small group collaboration in laboratory varied and all course sections differed with regards to individual instructor teaching style. Although all course sections used traditional lecture exams during the quarter to assess content knowledge, the degree to which rote memorization-based exam questions were used to evaluate student learning varied.

Description of the Writing Treatment

On the first day of lecture, students in the writing treatment group were told that their laboratory performance would be evaluated using collaborative essays instead of traditional quizzes. A brief overview of the writing assignments was included in associated course syllabi. During the first laboratory session of the quarter, students were grouped into teams of three or four individuals, and the criteria for completing weekly writing assignments were further explained.

The decision to use collaborative groups to support writing in the laboratory was partly based on existing literature ( Collier, 1980 ; Bruffee, 1984 ; Tobin et al., 1994 ; Jones and Carter, 1998 ; Springer et al., 1999 ) and prior research by Quitadamo, Brahler, and Crouch (unpublished results), who showed that Peer Led Team Learning (one form of collaborative learning) helped to measurably improve undergraduate critical thinking skills. Small group learning was also used in the nonwriting treatment groups to a greater or lesser extent depending on individual instructor preference.

Baseline critical thinking performance was established in the academic quarters preceding the writing experiment to more specifically attribute changes in critical thinking to the writing treatment. Concurrent nonwriting course sections were also used as comparison groups. The historical baseline provided a way to determine what student performance had been before experiencing the writing treatment, whereas the concurrent nonwriting groups allowed for a direct comparison of critical thinking performance during the writing treatment. Pretest scores indicating prior critical thinking skill were also used to further establish comparability between the writing and nonwriting groups.

Laboratory activities were coordinated for all sections by a single faculty member who taught in the nonwriting group. All faculty and graduate assistants met regularly to discuss course progress, laboratory procedure, and coordinate resources. Nonwriting faculty drafted quizzes that addressed laboratory content knowledge. Writing faculty collaboratively crafted a consensus essay, or thought question, designed to elicit student critical thinking and ability to apply content knowledge. Each thought question was designed so that students had to apply lecture concepts and build on their conceptual understanding by integrating actual laboratory experiences (see Supplemental Appendix 1 , available online) for thought question examples). Weekly thought questions became progressively more difficult as the term progressed. Initial planning meetings took place just before the beginning of the academic quarter and included graduate assistant training to help them learn to consistently evaluate student writing using a modified thesis-based essay rubric (see Supplemental Appendix 2 ; Beers et al., 1994 ). A range of sample essays from poor to high quality was used to calibrate graduate assistant scoring and ensure consistency between assistants from different laboratory sections within the writing group. All graduate assistants and course instructors applied the thesis-based rubric to sample essays and worked toward consensus. Initial training ended when all graduate assistants scored within 0.5 points of each other on at least two sample essays.

Students were given weekly thought questions before beginning laboratory to help them frame their efforts during laboratory exercises. Students completed the prescriptive lab activities during the first hour, and then each student group relocated to an assigned computer lab in the same building and worked around a common computer terminal to draft a collective response to the weekly thought question. Students were allowed to use any suitable information or materials (laboratory observations, laboratory manuals, lecture notes, textbooks, the Internet, etc.) to help them address their thought question. Internal group discussions allowed students to argue individual viewpoints as they worked toward group agreement on each thought question. Essay responses to thought questions were answered using a standard five-paragraph format. Each essay included an introduction with a group-generated thesis statement, two to three body paragraphs that provided sufficient detail to support the thesis statement, and a summary paragraph that concluded the essay. Students were not allowed to work on essays outside of the laboratory environment.

Initial essay drafts were composed in Microsoft Word and submitted to the graduate assistant by the end of the laboratory period using the campus e-mail system. Graduate assistants evaluated each group's essay (typically six per lab section) and assigned an initial grade based on the thesis-based essay rubric. Graduate assistants made comments and suggestions electronically using Microsoft Word revising and track changes tools. Evaluated essays were e-mailed back to each student group, which addressed comments and suggestions during the subsequent week's laboratory writing time. Each student group submitted a final draft that was re-evaluated and assigned a final grade. During the second week, students both revised their essay from the previous week and then generated an initial draft for the current week's thought question, all within the lab writing hour. This was done to help students become more proficient writers within a short period of time. Overall, students in the writing group completed eight essays that, along with lab book scores, constituted 25% of their overall course grade. An identical percentage was used to calculate traditional quiz and lab book scores in all nonwriting course sections.

At the end of the quarter, each writing group member completed a peer evaluation for all group members, including themselves (see Supplemental Appendix 3 ). This was done to help students reflect on and evaluate their own performance, maximize individual accountability within the group, and make sure students received credit proportional to their contributions. The average peer evaluation score for each student was included as 5% of the final course grade.

Collectively, this approach to writing and evaluation was used to 1) help students reflect on and discuss deficiencies in their collective and written work, 2) provide an opportunity for students to explicitly address deficiencies in thesis development and general writing skill, 3) provide a suitable reward for student efforts to revise their work relative to established performance benchmarks, 4) improve individual accountability within each group, and 5) help students develop more efficient and effective writing skills that collectively might lead to improved critical thinking skill.

Assessment of Critical Thinking

Using critical thinking to indicate student learning performance is particularly useful because it can be measured within and across disciplines. Various instruments are available to assess critical thinking ( Watson and Glaser, 1980 ; Ennis and Weir, 1985 ; Facione, 1990b ; Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique, 1996 ); however, only the CCTST measures cognitive and meta-cognitive skills associated with critical thinking, is based on a consensus definition of critical thinking, and has been evaluated for validity and reliability for measuring critical thinking at the college level ( Facione, 1990a ; Facione et al., 1992 , 2004 ). The CCTST measures cognitive skills of analysis, inference, evaluation, induction, and deduction, with results expressed as raw scores or national percentile equivalents based on a national norming sample of students from 4-yr colleges and universities. Construct validity for the CCTST is high as indicated by greater than 95% consensus of the Delphi panel experts on the component skills of critical thinking. Test reliability (calculated using the KR–20 internal consistency method) is 0.78–0.84 for the form used in this study, a value considered to be within the recommended range for tests that measure a wide range of critical thinking skills ( Facione, 1991 ). The CCTST norming sample for 4-yr colleges and universities is based on a stratified sample of 2000 students from various disciplines, with approximately 30% of the norming sample comprised of science and math students. Approximately 20,000 college students complete the CCTST each year ( Insight Assessment and Blohm, 2005 ).

The CCTST contains 34 questions and is a 45-min timed assessment of critical thinking. An online version of the CCTST was administered in this study, which allowed the researchers to collect student demographics data including gender, ethnicity, age, and several others at the same time critical thinking skill was measured. Total critical thinking skill as well as analysis, inference, and evaluation component critical thinking skills ( Facione, 1990c ) were determined for each CCTST administration and compared across the writing and nonwriting groups.

Research Design

A quasi-experimental pretest/posttest control group design was used for this study to determine whether critical thinking performance in the writing group differed significantly from the nonwriting group. This design was chosen in order to compare critical thinking performance between intact groups, and because it was not feasible to randomly assign students from one course section to another within the sample. Frequency distributions of pretest/posttest changes in total critical thinking skill and analysis, inference, and evaluation component critical thinking skills were constructed to provide some indication of sample randomness and to inform assumptions for subsequent statistical analyses of covariance (see Figure 1 , A–D).

(A–D) Frequency distribution of change in critical thinking skills. Distribution of change in critical thinking skill for the experimental sample. Changes are indicated using raw scores from CCTST pre- and posttests for total critical thinking skill (A) as well as analysis (B), inference (C), and evaluation (D) component critical thinking skills.

The pretest/posttest control group design was also used in order to minimize internal validity threats that could potentially compete with the effects of the writing treatment on student critical thinking performance. This design is widely used in educational research, and generally controls for most threats to internal validity ( Campbell and Stanley, 1963 ). Internal threats that remain a concern include history, maturation, pretest sensitization, selection, and statistical regression toward the mean. In the current study, history and maturation threats were minimized to the extent that the CCTST pretest and posttest were administered only 9 wk apart, and class standing and age covariables that indicate maturation were included in the statistical analysis. Pretest sensitization and selection are larger concerns for this design. Pretest sensitization was minimized in several ways: 1) prior critical thinking skill indicated by the CCTST pretest was used as a covariable in statistical analyses, 2) pretest/posttest to posttest only comparison studies conducted by Insight Assessment indicate CCTST pretest sensitization is minimized ( Facione, 1990a ), and 3) neither the students, instructors, nor the test administrators have access to the correct answers on the CCTST, so repeat performance on the posttest is less likely. Selection threats were also reduced by using CCTST pretest scores in the statistical analyses, thereby making it more difficult to detect statistically significant differences in critical thinking performance between the writing and nonwriting groups. Statistical regression toward the mean, which was observed to some extent in this study, was minimized because this study used a valid and reliable instrument to assess critical thinking ( Facione, 1990a ). Regression threats were also minimized to the extent that students with higher initial scores regressed much less than students with lower initial scores.

The generalizability of study results is limited because all data were collected at a single university. Specific threats to external validity include selection-treatment interaction and treatment diffusion. These threats were minimized because writing was mandatory for all treatment group participants, thereby minimizing volunteer effects. Because the writing also took considerable student effort, it is less likely that treatment diffusion occurred. In summary, the pretest/posttest control group design was used to minimize internal and external validity threats and maximize the ability to determine the effects of writing on student critical thinking performance.

Study Variables and Data Analysis

Effect of writing on critical thinking performance..

General education biology students were divided into writing and nonwriting groups (independent variable). Changes in CCTST pretest/posttest scores (dependent variable) were determined to discover whether writing influenced student critical thinking performance. Two CCTST outcome measures were used to statistically test for writing effect: 1) raw scores for total critical thinking skill, and 2) raw scores for analysis, inference, and evaluation component skills. Results were reported using raw scores and corresponding national percentile rank so that critical thinking performance outcomes would be more meaningful and intuitive. Conversion of CCTST raw scores to national percentile ranking was done using SPSS (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL) statistical software and a linear estimation conversion script based on an equivalency scale from Insight Assessment (Millbrae, CA).

Several covariables were included in the analysis to increase statistical accuracy and precision, and to more specifically isolate the effects of writing on critical thinking performance. CCTST pretest scores were used to indicate initial critical thinking skill. Gender and ethnicity helped to account for male/female or race-specific changes in critical thinking performance and were also used to identify potential sources of performance bias. Academic term and time of day were used to account for critical thinking differences due to the time of year each course was offered and the time of day each student took the course, respectively. Class standing and age were used to indicate maturation related to time in college and chronological age, respectively. Finally, the instructor covariable was used to account for performance differences due to individual teaching styles.

Statistical Analysis of Effect of Writing.

Several statistical analyses were conducted to determine the effects of writing on critical thinking performance in general education biology. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) test provided insight regarding differences in overall critical thinking performance between the writing and nonwriting groups. Change in CCTST total raw scores and national percentile ranking was used as composite measures of critical thinking ( Facione, 1990c ) in this initial analysis. Second, changes in particular component critical thinking skills (analysis, inference, and evaluation) were evaluated using a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) test because of the three dependent variables. The ANCOVA and MANCOVA tests also provided some insight into the effect the covariables had on critical thinking performance in general education biology. Collectively, these statistical tests allowed for a more accurate and precise analysis because variance associated with the covariables could be more specifically isolated from the writing treatment. Mean, SE, and effect size were also compared between the writing and nonwriting groups. Effect size, represented in standard units, was used to compare the magnitude of writing effect in the study.

Analysis of Thought Question Performance.

Performance on weekly thought questions was analyzed to discover specifically when and how much student critical thinking skills changed during the academic term. This analysis also provided context for CCTST critical thinking performance measures. Specifically, average scores from a representative sample of writing course sections (approximately 100 students) were used to compare initial essay drafts across the weeks of the term to discover when students began to show changes in their first attempt at each essay. Weekly performance on final revised essays was also compared to determine how student final submissions changed over time. Finally, the weekly difference between each initial essay and each final essay was compared to determine how much the revision process changed during the term. These calculations collectively helped to provide a profile of critical thinking performance over time.

Participant Demographics

Student demographics provided in Table 1 indicated an overall distribution of approximately 49% freshmen, 31% sophomores, 11% juniors, and 9% seniors. Approximately 74% of the writing group students were freshmen and sophomores, whereas 82% of the nonwriting group was underclassmen. Overall, 61% of the sample was female and 39% male, with near identical gender distribution across the writing and nonwriting groups. The predominant ethnicity in the sample was Caucasian (>83%), with Asian American (5%), Latino/Hispanic (3%), African American (2%), and Native American (1%) students comprising the remainder of the sample. About 6% of the sample classified themselves as having some other ethnicity or chose not to identify their ethnic heritage.

Statistical Assumptions

Analysis of covariance and multivariate analysis of covariance tests were used to compare critical thinking performance between the writing and nonwriting groups. The evaluated assumptions for the ANCOVA and MANCOVA tests were homogeneity of slopes, homogeneity of covariances, and normality. An analysis evaluating the homogeneity of slopes assumption indicated that the relationship between the covariables and the critical thinking performance dependent variable did not differ significantly by the writing/nonwriting independent variable for the ANCOVA test, F(2, 307) = 1.642, p = 0.195, power = 0.346, partial η 2 = 0.011, or the MANCOVA test, F(6, 610) = 1.685, p = 0.122, power = 0.645, partial η 2 = 0.016. These results confirmed that both analyses of covariance met the homogeneity of slopes assumption. The homogeneity of covariance assumption was tested using Levene's and Box's tests. Levene's test results for the ANCOVA indicated that error variances were not equal across writing and nonwriting groups, F(1,308) = 7.139, p = 0.008. Similarly, Box's test results indicated that covariance was not equal for the writing and nonwriting groups, F(6, 684,530) = 4.628, p = 0.000. These results indicated that the ANCOVA/MANCOVA tests did not meet the homogeneity of covariance assumption. To more fully evaluate this assumption, distributions of total and component critical thinking skill were constructed (see Figure 1 , A–D). Furthermore, the writing and nonwriting groups were highly similar in size and no post hoc tests were conducted. On the basis of these data, it was determined that the ANCOVA and MANCOVA tests were the best statistical measures to answer the research questions. Finally, the normality assumption was evaluated using the previously constructed frequency distributions for total change in critical thinking ( Figure 1 A) as well as change in analysis ( Figure 1 B), inference ( Figure 1 C), and evaluation ( Figure 1 D) critical thinking skills. Frequency distributions of total and component critical thinking dependent variables indicated that each approximated a standard normal curve.

Effect of Writing on Total Critical Thinking Performance

The ANCOVA test of total critical thinking performance showed that writing and nonwriting groups differed significantly, F(1, 300) = 19.357, p < 0.0001, power = 0.992, partial η 2 = 0.061 (see Table 2 ). The strength of the relationship between the writing/nonwriting groups and critical thinking performance was modest but significant, accounting for more than 6% of the variance in critical thinking performance.

ANCOVA results for total critical thinking performance

Analysis of covariance for the writing and nonwriting groups. Tested covariables included gender, ethnicity, class standing, age, prior critical thinking skill (CCTST pre-test), academic term, time of day, and instructor.

a Significance tested at 0.05 level.

Descriptive statistics of total critical thinking performance in the writing and nonwriting groups were also calculated (see Table 3 ). The writing group showed an average CCTST raw score change of 1.18 compared with the nonwriting group, which showed an average raw score change of −0.51. These critical thinking raw scores equated to gains in national percentile rank of 7.47 (45th to 53rd percentile) for the writing group and −2.09 (42nd to 40th percentile) for the nonwriting group. Critical thinking improvement in the writing group was approximately nine times greater than the nonwriting group (see Figure 2 ).

Writing effect on total critical thinking performance: CCTST raw scores

Comparison of writing and nonwriting group performance based on CCTST raw scores. CCTST raw score range was 0–34; n values in parentheses.

Effect of writing on total critical thinking national percentile rank. Comparison of total critical thinking national percentile gains between writing and nonwriting groups. Percentile ranking was computed using CCTST raw scores, an equivalency scale from Insight Assessment, and a linear conversion script in SPSS.

The ANCOVA test of total critical thinking skill indicated that gender, ethnicity, age, class standing, and academic term did not significantly affect critical thinking performance (see Table 2 ). Covariables that significantly affected total critical thinking performance included 1) CCTST pretest score, F(1, 300) = 19.713, p < 0.0001, power = 0.993, partial η 2 = 0.062, 2) instructor, F(1, 300) = 7.745, p < 0.006, power = 0.792, partial η 2 = 0.025, and 3) time of day, F(1300) = 6.291, p < 0.013, power = 0.705, partial η 2 = 0.021. The effect of prior critical thinking skill (CCTST pretest) was moderately strong, accounting for more than 6% of the variance in total critical thinking performance. The effect of instructor and time of day were smaller, accounting for 2.5 and 2%, respectively, of total critical thinking performance variance. Critical thinking improvement associated with CCTST pretest score was approximately 2.5 times greater than for instructor and nearly three times greater than for time of day.

Effect of Writing on Component Critical Thinking Performance

The MANCOVA test indicated that analysis, inference, and evaluation critical thinking skills differed significantly between the writing and nonwriting groups, Wilks λ = 0.919, F(3, 296) = 8.746, p < 0.0001, power = 0.995, partial η 2 = 0.081 (see Table 4 ). The strength of the relationship between writing and component critical thinking performance was modest but significant, accounting for more than 8% of the variance in critical thinking performance.

MANCOVA results for component critical thinking performance

Multivariate analysis of covariance for the writing and nonwriting groups. Tested covariables included gender, ethnicity, class standing, age, prior critical thinking skill (CCTST pretest), academic term, time of day, and instructor.

Specifically, significant gains in analysis and inference skills were observed in the writing group but not the nonwriting group. No statistically significant gains in evaluation skill were observed in either group (see Table 5 ). National percentile rank equivalents for CCTST component raw scores indicated the writing group gained 10.51 percentile in analysis skill (42nd to 52nd percentile), 6.05 percentile in inference skill (45th to 52nd percentile), and 5.16 percentile in evaluation skill (46th to 52nd percentile). The nonwriting group showed a national percentile rank change of −4.43 percentile in analysis skill (47th to 42nd percentile), −2.23 percentile in inference skill (42nd to 40th percentile), and 1.37 percentile in evaluation (44th to 45th percentile; see Figure 3 ). Critical thinking performance for the writing group was 15 times greater for analysis and 8 times greater for inference skills than for the nonwriting group. Although neither the writing nor the nonwriting group showed significant gains in evaluation skill, the writing group showed more than 3 times greater improvement than did the nonwriting group.

Effect of writing on component critical thinking performance

Comparison of writing and nonwriting group performance based on critical thinking component skill raw scores (CCTST subscales). Score range was 0–7 (analysis), 0–16 (inference), and 0–11 (evaluation).

Effect of writing on component critical thinking national percentile rank. Comparison of component critical thinking national percentile gains between writing and nonwriting groups. Percentile ranking was computed using CCTST raw scores, an equivalency scale from Insight Assessment, and a linear conversion script in SPSS.

The MANCOVA test of analysis, inference, and evaluation skills indicated that gender, ethnicity, age, class standing, academic term, and time of day did not significantly affect critical thinking performance. Critical thinking performance was affected by prior analysis, inference, and evaluation skill (CCTST component pretest scores) and instructor (see Table 4 ). Specifically, component pretest scores had a large effect on critical thinking, accounting for 38% (analysis), 32% (inference), and 39% (evaluation) of critical thinking performance variance. The effect of instructor was smaller, accounting for 4.4% of variation in critical thinking skill. The effect of prior component critical thinking skill was approximately 4.5 times greater than the effect of writing, and nearly 9 times greater than the effect of instructor.

Student Thought Question Performance

Critical thinking performance on student essays was evaluated by applying a thesis-based essay rubric (see Supplemental Appendix 2 ) on initial submissions and final revised essays. Average weekly performance during the academic term is shown in Figure 4 . A comparison of initial essays indicated that students improved 53.3% from week 1 (average score of 27.9%) to week 7 (average score of 81.2%). A similar comparison of final essays showed that students improved 32.5% from week 1 (average score of 54.1%) to week 7 (average score of 86.6%). The largest changes between initial and final essays occurred in week 1 (change of 26.2%), and decreased each week thereafter (24.8, 23.9, 18.8, 8, 7.8, and 5.4% for weeks 2 through 7, respectively). These results showed that students produced little evidence of critical thinking skill in their writing early in the term, but improved dramatically on both initial and revised essay submissions by the end of the term.

Profile of change in critical thinking performance in writing group. Comparison of student writing performance on weekly initial and revised essays. Essay scores were derived using a thesis-based critical thinking rubric (see Supplemental Appendix 2 ). Average essay scores were computed across writing sections.

The purpose of this study was to discover whether writing could measurably influence critical thinking performance in general education biology. Results indicated that students from the writing group significantly outperformed their nonwriting peers in both total critical thinking skill and the component critical thinking skills of analysis and inference. The writing and nonwriting groups were highly similar initially and began the academic term with comparable critical thinking ability (45th and 42nd national percentile for writing and nonwriting, respectively). By the end of the term, writing students had improved their critical thinking skill to above the 52nd percentile whereas nonwriting students decreased to below the 40th percentile. In addition to writing, prior critical thinking skill and course instructor significantly affected critical thinking performance, with prior critical thinking skill having the largest effect on critical thinking gains of any variable tested. Further analysis of the writing group showed that the largest gains in critical thinking occurred during the first few weeks of the term, with graduated improvement during the remainder of the term. A comparison of average critical thinking performance on initial essays and revised essays showed that thinking skills improvement was greater on initial essays (53%) than on final essays (33%). Collectively, the results of this study indicated that students who experienced writing in general education biology significantly improved their critical thinking skills.

The covariance analysis that was conducted provided a partial means to separate out the effects of writing, prior critical thinking skill, instructor, and multiple covariables from total and component critical thinking gains. The analysis of total critical thinking skill indicated that writing students changed their critical thinking skill from below the national average to above the national average within an academic quarter, whereas nonwriting students remained below the national average. This observation is important because it shows that students can develop critical thinking skills within a fairly short 9-wk period of time, and that writing can play a role in that process. A similar study showed critical thinking skills improve over 15 wk (Quitadamo, Brahler, and Crouch, unpublished results); however, this study provided no insight into whether critical thinking skills could be changed over a shorter period of time, in a different academic setting, or in response to instructional variables such as writing.

Although critical thinking gains were influenced by writing, they did not appear to be affected by gender, ethnicity, class standing, or age. In fact, statistical results indicated that these variables collectively had a very small effect on critical thinking performance. Gender distribution was nearly identical across the writing and nonwriting groups, and was predominantly female (nearly 62%). Ethnic distribution was also highly similar across the writing and nonwriting groups, but the sampling was largely Caucasian (>84%). Class standing varied a little more across the writing and nonwriting groups, with the sample largely comprised of underclassmen (70%). Although nearly three-quarters of the sample was between 18 and 21 years of age, nearly 10% was over 21, with a fair number of older nontraditional students represented. It is possible that a more diverse sample would have produced different results, or it may be that the individuals participating in this study responded particularly well to writing. Although further investigation of these variables is necessary and important, it was beyond the scope of the current study.

The analysis of component skills provided greater insight into the particular critical thinking skills that students changed in response to writing. Specifically, writing students significantly improved their analysis and inference skills whereas nonwriting students did not. Writing students also improved their evaluation skills much more than nonwriting students, although not significantly. These results indicate that the process of writing helps students develop improved analytical and inference skills. Prior research indicates that the writing to learn strategy is effective because students must conceptually organize and structure their thoughts as well as their awareness of thinking processes ( Langer and Applebee, 1987 ; Ackerman, 1993 ; Holliday, 1994 ; Rivard, 1994 ). More specifically, as students begin to shape their thoughts at the point of construction and continually analyze, review, and clarify meaning through the processes of drafting and revision, they necessarily engage and apply analysis and inference skills ( Klein, 1999 ; Hand and Prain, 2002 ). In this study, the process of writing appears to have influenced critical thinking gains. It also seems likely that writing students experienced a greater cognitive demand than nonwriting students simply because the writing act required them to hypothesize, debate, and persuade ( Rivard, 1994 ; Hand and Prain, 2002 ) rather than memorize as was the case in nonwriting control courses.

Conversely, the lack of any significant change in analysis, inference, or evaluation skills in the nonwriting group indicated that the traditional lab instruction used in the general education biology control courses did not help students develop critical thinking skills. Based on the results of this study, it could be argued that traditional lab instruction actually prevents the development of critical thinking skills, which presents a rather large problem when one considers how frequently these traditional methods are used in general education biology courses. One also has to consider that the critical thinking gains seen in the writing group might also have resulted from the relative absence of traditional lab instruction rather than writing alone. Additional research will be necessary to gain further insight into this question. Either way, changes to the traditional model of lab instruction will be necessary if the goal is to enhance the critical thinking abilities of general education biology students.

The variable that had the largest impact on critical thinking performance gains was prior critical thinking skill. This phenomenon was previously observed by Quitadamo, Brahler, and Crouch (unpublished results) in a related study that investigated the effect of Peer Led Team Learning on critical thinking performance. That study focused on science and math major undergraduate critical thinking performance at a major research university, and found that, in addition to Peer Led Team Learning, prior critical thinking skill significantly influenced critical thinking performance (Quitadamo, Brahler, and Crouch, unpublished results). Specifically, students with the highest prior critical thinking skill showed the largest performance gains, whereas students with low initial skill were at a comparative disadvantage. The fact that prior critical thinking skill also had a large effect on critical thinking performance in this study increases the generalizability of the observation and underscores its importance. Simply put, students who have not been explicitly taught how to think critically may not reach the same potential as peers who have been taught these skills, not because they lack the cognitive hard-wiring to perform but because they lack the tools to build their knowledge. Is it reasonable or just to expect otherwise comparable students to perform at similar levels when only some of them have the keys for success? If we hope to improve the perception of science in this country, we need to educate people on how to think about important scientific issues, and not simply argue a position based on one school of thought. By helping general education students to develop critical thinking skills, it is hoped that they will be better able to think rationally about science.

The observation that students who come to general education biology with greater critical thinking skills leave with the largest skill gains has important implications for the K–12 school system as well. If a high proportion of students are coming to institutions of higher education lacking critical thinking skills, why are these skills not being explicitly taught in the K–12 system? Ideally, students would learn the foundational tenets of critical thinking at an earlier age, and be able to refine and hone these skills as they progress through the K–20 education system. The results of this study reinforce the idea that students should be explicitly taught critical thinking skills and be expected to practice them as early and often as possible.

Although its effect was smaller than writing or prior critical thinking skill, the instructor variable also played a significant role in student critical thinking performance, accounting for 2.5% of the total variance in critical thinking gains. Determining the particular qualities of each instructor that contributed to student critical thinking success and further separating instructor and writing effects will require additional research. Previous research indicates that teaching style positively influences certain aspects of student learning ( Grasha, 1994 ; Hativa et al., 2001 ; Bain, 2004 ), but the qualities that specifically influence student critical thinking gains have not been sufficiently investigated. Additional research in this area is necessary.

Faculty considering whether to use writing in the laboratory may wonder about how much time and energy it takes to implement, if efforts to change will translate into improved student learning, and how these changes affect disciplinary content. From a practical perspective, implementing writing did not take more time and effort per se; rather, it required faculty to reconceptualize how they spent their instructional time. Instead of individually developing course materials, writing faculty collaborated to a greater extent than nonwriting faculty on course design and assessments that required students to demonstrate their critical thinking skill. Interviews of faculty from the writing and nonwriting groups indicated that writing faculty felt the course was less work because they collaborated with colleagues and because students demonstrated improved thinking skill. Writing faculty generally became more comfortable with the new model after ∼2–3 wk when students began to show observable changes in writing proficiency and critical thinking. Together, collaboration with colleagues and observed gains in critical thinking tended to create a positive feedback loop that helped to sustain writing faculty efforts. In contrast, nonwriting faculty similarly wanted their students to think better but were convinced that traditional methods would be more effective, and so remained closed to change. There were some logistical challenges with writing, like scheduling computer labs where students could draft and revise their weekly essay responses under instructor and teaching assistant supervision. Teaching assistants (and faculty) also needed to be trained on how to evaluate writing using a rubric. Finally, with regards to content coverage, no lecture or laboratory content was killed in order to implement writing because writing and nonwriting students both performed the same lab activities. Collectively, the benefits of using writing in laboratory should encourage faculty who want their students to learn to think critically to give it a try.

Future Directions

This study showed that writing affects student critical thinking skill in a nonmajors biology course, but the results have generated more questions than have been answered. How does writing specifically produce gains in critical thinking performance? What factors influence student prior critical thinking skill? How do instructors specifically influence student gains in critical thinking? Future studies that analyze student essays in more detail would provide greater insight into how writing influences critical thinking skill. Using writing in other nonmajor science courses such as chemistry, geology, or physics could also be done to determine the transferability of this method. Additional studies that investigate student prior critical thinking skill and instructor variables are also necessary. These future studies would further contribute to the knowledge base in this area, and also address some of its identified limitations ( Ebert-May et al., 1997 ; Daempfle, 2002 ). Results from these studies would also increase the generalizability of the results from this study.

CONCLUSIONS

Building on existing research and on the basis of several lines of evidence presented in this study, we conclude that writing positively influences critical thinking performance for general education biology students. Those students with prior critical thinking skill may have a comparative advantage over other general education biology students who have not developed these same skills. To rectify that inequity critical thinking skills should be explicitly taught early and used often during the K–20 academic process. As it appears that particular instructors improve student critical thinking skills more than others, students should be discerning in their choice of instructors if they want to improve their critical thinking skills. Whether writing as a method to improve critical thinking skills will prove useful in other general education science courses will likely depend on a host of factors, but it has potential. Further study of writing in general education science will be necessary to verify these results and discover the breadth and depth of how writing affects critical thinking skill.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Drs. Holly Pinkart, Roberta Soltz, Phil Mattocks, and James Johnson and undergraduate researchers Matthew Brewer, Dayrk Flaugh, Adam Wallace, Colette Watson, Kelly Vincent, and Christine Weller for their valuable contributions to this study. The authors also acknowledge the generous financial support provided by the Central Washington University Office of the Provost and the Office of the Associate Vice President for Undergraduate Studies.

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Participants will acquire the knowledge, the know-how, and the confidence to insert the 4Cs skills into their curriculum and school environment. They will also learn to design practical activities using ICT resources, which are more efficient at developing the 4Cs in students.

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Creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration, the 4Cs, are envisioned as key competencies for nowadays’ learners . Despite the fact that educators understand their importance, they may struggle in implementing them into the actual teaching . This course aims at showing participants how to incorporate the 4Cs into school activities, especially through the use of appropriate digital tools . The 4Cs can be learned, taught, and implemented in any classroom, and the availability of technological devices and platforms nowadays can be of great help in designing student-centered activities that shape the learners’ ability to live, connect with others, and have a successful professional career in the future. During this course, participants will not only explore the deep meaning and implications of the 4Cs, but they will also have the opportunity to design practical activities using ICT resources , which are more efficient at developing the 4Cs in students. By the end of the course, attendees will have acquired the knowledge, the know-how, and the confidence to insert these stimulating skills into their curriculum and school environment. What's more, they will have drawn inspiration from a variety of examples showing how technologies can guide the students in the development of their Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration skills. In addition to that, course attendees will take away their own ready-to-use ideas, strategies, materials, and lesson plans which effectively incorporate the use of digital tools to boost their students’ 4Cs .

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