School Improvement in Maryland Teachers who develop critical thinking through direct instruction in appropriate skills, modeling of relevant dispositions, and practice with content applications promote learning since thinking critically about experience is integral to meaningful knowledge acquisition. The development of critical, or reflective, thinking is an important educational goal. Unfortunately, commitment to this goal is frequently unsupported by classroom practice. The gap between intent and practice may be due in part to confusion over what critical thinking is and how it is developed.
Recent research offers some insights into both.
Current views hold that critical thinking includes a set of skills, such as the ability to recognize bias, distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, and establishing criteria. Such attitudes or dispositions include the willingness to seek evidence for claims, consider opposing points of view, and change one's position when persuaded by evidence and reasons. Critical thinking and its associated reasoning skills and dispositions are not likely to develop spontaneously. On the contrary, teachers must take a directive role in initiating and guiding critical thinking. Teachers can model critical thinking, then, by deliberately raising questions, drawing inferences, making observations, noting contradictions, proposing alternatives, and validating claims and by prodding students to do likewise.