In part, we accomplish this aim by presenting our students with interesting reading material, lectures, and class discussions. As students read more and hear more, we reason, they will gain knowledge and discover new contexts for their ideas. However, reading assignments and lectures by themselves do not insure that our students will improve their critical thinking skills.
Many students read and listen passively, simply absorbing information.
Nor do they reliably use the material they read to challenge their own ideas. However, when students write, they cannot remain passive players in the learning game. In order to help students answer these questions for themselves, professors might want to employ critical thinking pedagogy in their classrooms. When we talk about critical thinking pedagogy, we are not referring simply to pedagogy that challenges our students to think and reason more carefully than they do. Nor are we referring to instruction in the fundamentals of argument.