why is it so hard to teach critical thinking

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Critical Thinking in the Classroom: A Guide for Teachers

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, teaching students the skill of critical thinking has become a priority. This powerful tool empowers students to evaluate information, make reasoned judgments, and approach problems from a fresh perspective. In this article, we’ll explore the significance of critical thinking and provide effective strategies to nurture this skill in your students.

Why is Fostering Critical Thinking Important?

Strategies to cultivate critical thinking, real-world example, concluding thoughts.

Critical thinking is a key skill that goes far beyond the four walls of a classroom. It equips students to better understand and interact with the world around them. Here are some reasons why fostering critical thinking is important:

• Making Informed Decisions:  Critical thinking enables students to evaluate the pros and cons of a situation, helping them make informed and rational decisions.
• Developing Analytical Skills:  Critical thinking involves analyzing information from different angles, which enhances analytical skills.
• Promoting Independence:  Critical thinking fosters independence by encouraging students to form their own opinions based on their analysis, rather than relying on others.

Creating an environment that encourages critical thinking can be accomplished in various ways. Here are some effective strategies:

• Socratic Questioning:  This method involves asking thought-provoking questions that encourage students to think deeply about a topic. For example, instead of asking, “What is the capital of France?” you might ask, “Why do you think Paris became the capital of France?”
• Debates and Discussions:  Debates and open-ended discussions allow students to explore different viewpoints and challenge their own beliefs. For example, a debate on a current event can engage students in critical analysis of the situation.
• Teaching Metacognition:  Teaching students to think about their own thinking can enhance their critical thinking skills. This can be achieved through activities such as reflective writing or journaling.
• Problem-Solving Activities:  As with developing problem-solving skills , activities that require students to find solutions to complex problems can also foster critical thinking.

As a school leader, I’ve seen the transformative power of critical thinking. During a school competition, I observed a team of students tasked with proposing a solution to reduce our school’s environmental impact. Instead of jumping to obvious solutions, they critically evaluated multiple options, considering the feasibility, cost, and potential impact of each. They ultimately proposed a comprehensive plan that involved water conservation, waste reduction, and energy efficiency measures. This demonstrated their ability to critically analyze a problem and develop an effective solution.

Critical thinking is an essential skill for students in the 21st century. It equips them to understand and navigate the world in a thoughtful and informed manner. As a teacher, incorporating strategies to foster critical thinking in your classroom can make a lasting impact on your students’ educational journey and life beyond school.

1. What is critical thinking? Critical thinking is the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment.

2. Why is critical thinking important for students? Critical thinking helps students make informed decisions, develop analytical skills, and promotes independence.

3. What are some strategies to cultivate critical thinking in students? Strategies can include Socratic questioning, debates and discussions, teaching metacognition, and problem-solving activities.

4. How can I assess my students’ critical thinking skills? You can assess critical thinking skills through essays, presentations, discussions, and problem-solving tasks that require thoughtful analysis.

5. Can critical thinking be taught? Yes, critical thinking can be taught and nurtured through specific teaching strategies and a supportive learning environment.

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Helping Students Hone Their Critical Thinking Skills

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

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

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

Make Time for Metacognitive Reflection

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

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

Teach Reasoning Skills 

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

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

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

Ask Open-Ended Questions 

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

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

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

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

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

Teach Information Literacy 

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

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

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

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

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

Provide Diverse Perspectives 

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

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

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

Practice Makes Perfect 

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

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

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

• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

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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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• DOI: 10.3200/AEPR.109.4.21-32
• Corpus ID: 14502338

Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?

• D. Willingham
• Published 1 March 2008
• Education, Art
• Arts Education Policy Review

794 Citations

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Why is critical thinking difficult?

05 nov why is critical thinking difficult, students struggle to think critically.

85% of teachers thought critical thinking skills were inadequate when students reached post-16 education (TES). Our own qualitative research in schools revealed typical worries that students have such as: losing track of the argument; not planning before starting an essay; including irrelevant information. Examiners’ reports consistently point out the lack of a good argument in exam entries. Moreover, teachers express concern with regards to teaching of critical thinking skills. Students are often much better at learning facts than making a good argument, but there is no time to teach this properly in a content-heavy curriculum. The requirements to think critically have increased, but the textbooks and training have not always kept up.

Arguments are hidden in textbook prose

In school, students are introduced to critical thinking by reading and writing arguments in prose. The textbooks, articles and original sources they read are usually in prose, as are the essays they write. Prose is a very flexible medium, but it is not the optimal way to represent an argument.

Firstly, students cannot look at argumentative prose and immediately find the argument. Prose makes no distinction between the sentences which are part of the argument and those that do other things, such as supporting facts and context. So the argument is hidden amongst other information, much of which is distracting.

Prose is linear, but arguments are branched

Prose is written in a way that makes it hard to understand the structure of the argument. This is a problem, because the whole structure has to be kept in mind when evaluating the argument. For example, if they find a counter-example to one step of an argument, they need to know the structure to realise whether this defeats the whole argument or just a part of it.

Poor critical thinking leads to poor arguments

For these reasons, argumentative prose imposes a heavy cognitive load on the reader. Students are obliged to work hard to discover how an argument works before they can even begin to critique it. This is especially difficult for those who have reading difficulties such as dyslexia.

School students normally create their own arguments by writing essays. Even if they are well-informed they often write a lot of facts without pulling them together into an argument. The very flexibility of prose allows essays to be unrigorous, ambiguous, and irrelevant. Moreover, essays are slow for students to write and slow for teachers to check and mark, limiting the amount of arguments that can be studied in detail. For these reasons, learning critical thinking through school work is difficult and its results are patchy.

At Endoxa Learning, we design resources that make it easier for students to read, understand and create arguments.

What is critical thinking?

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Think Critically Before Thinking Critically

The source of information is often as important as the information itself..

Posted February 11, 2020 | Reviewed by Daniel Lyons M.A.

This post is by Jeffrey A. Greene and Brian M. Cartiff of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Internet’s superabundance of information (Lankshear et al., 2000) has led to a “data smog” (Shenk, 1998) of mis- and dis-information (Wardle, 2019). This vast proliferation of dangerous information is particularly concerning given more and more people are primarily getting their news online (Fedeli & Matsa, 2018).

To help people cut through the smog, policy-makers, educators, and parents have called for a greater focus on teaching critical thinking in schools. But what is critical thinking, and can we really expect people to engage in such thinking consistently and successfully across the many topics they encounter every day? In short, the answer is no.

Concerns about people’s critical thinking, or lack thereof, extend back to the time of Plato and his stories of Socrates as the gadfly of the Athenian state and marketplace, stinging and questioning people to make them aware of their lazy and complacent thought processes. In the early 20th century, the pragmatic philosopher John Dewey pointed out that American schools were not helping students learn how to think deeply and reflectively about ideas; instead, he argued they overemphasized specific content knowledge.

Dewey claimed that the major aim of schools should be to teach critical thinking, which he defined as the “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey, 1933, p. 9). Modern scholars including Paul (1992), Facione (1990), and Ennis (1991, 1996) have argued that critical thinking involves dispositions such as being open-minded and intellectually flexible (i.e., being willing to look at ideas from multiple perspectives) and skills such as being able to reflect on ideas and one’s own biases.

Other definitions of critical thinking focus on the “ability to engage in purposeful, self-regulatory judgment” necessary for problem-solving, reasoning, and conceptual understanding (Abrami et al., 2008, p. 1102). Regardless of the definition used, researchers have shown that people struggle to learn how to think critically, particularly when they are taught those skills outside of an academic discipline or setting, such as in “general critical thinking” courses (Abrami et al., 2015; Willingham, 2007).

Why is critical thinking so difficult for people to do well? Perhaps it is because critically evaluating information requires a tremendous amount of prior knowledge and a disposition for questioning the data and oneself, neither of which is easy to acquire. Even relatively knowledgeable people can struggle to think critically. Medical students are prone to start diagnosing themselves with the illnesses they are learning about (i.e., medical student disease; Hunter et al., 1964; Woods et al., 1966). With extensive training and experience, medical students gain knowledge to appropriately contextualize and interpret symptoms and other related health information; that is, they learn to think critically about the evidence to make appropriate diagnoses.

Similarly, the proliferation of medical information sites like WebMD has led people to diagnose themselves in ways similar to medical students (Starcevic & Berle, 2013). However, research has shown that online symptom checkers are accurate only about one-third of the time (Semigran et al., 2015), leading doctors and scholars to recommend that most people avoid using the Internet for researching illness-related information altogether (Doherty-Torstrick et al., 2016). Thus, expecting people to think critically about medical or technical, scientific information is unrealistic because most people are not medical experts; they do not have the appropriate training nor the necessary vast amounts of specific, medical knowledge.

The modern world requires critical thinking about a large variety of topics, ranging from biology (e.g., vaccines) to political science (e.g., constitutional procedures) to psychology (e.g., confirmation bias ). Yet, research has shown that it is difficult to become an expert in even one area, let alone many (Collins, 2014; Ericsson et al., 2018). So, how can we help people successfully deal with all the information they encounter, and often seek out, online and elsewhere?

The answer lies in redefining critical thinking. Good critical thinkers know when they have the disciplinary knowledge necessary to directly evaluate reasoning and evidence (i.e., first-order reasoning; Chinn & Duncan, 2018). Likewise, good critical thinkers have the self-knowledge and metacognitive skills to know when they do not possess the necessary knowledge, skills, or training to directly evaluate the evidence, and instead should shift to determining which experts or sources to believe about the topic (i.e., second-order reasoning; Chinn & Duncan, 2018).

Thus, good critical thinking sometimes requires only first-order reasoning but more often needs both the metacognitive skills to determine when second-order reasoning is required instead (Barzilai & Chinn, 2018), as well as the skills to determine reliable sources (Brante & Strømsø, 2018; Greene, 2016). Second-order reasoning skills can be taught and learned. As but one example, the Stanford History Education Group has developed a Civic Online Reasoning website with tools and curricula.

In sum, many modern scholars, employers, policymakers, and educators (e.g., Tsui, 2002) agree with Dewey that critical thinking should be a “fundamental aim and an overriding ideal of education” (Bailin & Siegel, 2003, p. 188). However, the “data smog” created by the vast amounts of often contradictory information found on the Internet calls for new views of what critical thinking involves. If people happen to have the disciplinary expertise, background knowledge, and skills to competently evaluate information and evidence about a particular topic, then they can engage first-order reasoning, which includes enacting the dispositions and cognitive skills that many critical thinking scholars have discussed in the past.

At the same time, when people do not possess such knowledge and skills, which describes most of us much of the time, apt critical thinking would involve realizing the need to switch to second-order reasoning: comparing and evaluating the sources of the information using these same dispositions and skills (Barzilai & Chinn, 2018; Wineburg & McGrew, 2017). Thus, people should think critically about thinking critically, and in many cases, evaluate the sources of information rather than the information itself.

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Greene, J. A. (2016). Interacting epistemic systems within and beyond the classroom. In J. A. Greene, W. A. Sandoval, & I. Bråten (Eds.). Handbook of epistemic cognition (pp. 265-278). New York: Routledge.

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Willingham, D. T. (2007). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? American Educator , 8-19.

Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2017). Lateral reading: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. SSRN Electronic Journal . doi:10.2139/ssrn.3048994

Woods, S. M., Natterson, J., & Silverman, J. (1966). Medical students’ disease: Hypochondriasis in medical education. Journal of Medical Education, 41 (8), 785-790. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-196608000-00006

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Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?

Critical Thinking

Why Is It So Hard to Teach?

By Daniel T. Willingham irtually everyone would agree that a primary, to think and/or reason critically. The College Board yet insufficiently met, goal of schooling is to recently revamped the SAT to better assess students’ enable students to think critically. In layper- critical thinking. And ACT, Inc. offers a test of critical son’s terms, critical thinking consists of see- thinking for college students. ing both sides of an issue, being open to new These calls are not new. In 1983, A Nation At Risk, Vevidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispas- a report by the National Commission on Excellence in sionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence , Education , found that many 17-year-olds did not pos- deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts , sess the “‘higher-order’ intellectual skills” this coun- solving problems, and so forth. Then too, there are specific try needed. It claimed that nearly 40 percent could not types of critical thinking that are characteristic of differ- draw inferences from written material and only one- ent subject matter: That’s what we mean when we refer to fifth could write a persuasive essay. “thinking like a scientist” or “thinking like a historian.” Following the release of A Nation At Risk, pro- This proper and commonsensical goal has very grams designed to teach students to think critically often been translated into calls to teach “critical think- across the curriculum became extremely popular. By ing skills” and “higher-order thinking skills”—and 1990, most states had initiatives designed to encour- into generic calls for teaching students to make bet- age educators to teach critical thinking, and one of the ter judgments, reason more logically, and so forth. In a most widely used programs, Tactics for Thinking, sold recent survey of human resource officials1 and in testi- 70,000 teacher guides.3 But, for reasons I’ll explain, the mony delivered just a few months ago before the Sen- programs were not very effective—and today we still ate Finance Committee,2 business leaders have repeat- lament students’ lack of critical thinking. edly exhorted schools to do a better job of teaching After more than 20 years of lamentation, exhorta- students to think critically. And they are not alone. tion, and little improvement, maybe it’s time to ask a Organizations and initiatives involved in education fundamental question: Can critical thinking actually reform, such as the National Center on Education and be taught? Decades of cognitive research point to a dis- the Economy, the American Diploma Project, and the appointing answer: not really. People who have sought Aspen Institute, have pointed out the need for students to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once you Daniel T. Willingham is professor of cognitive psychol- learn it, you can apply it in any situation. Research from ogy at the University of Virginia and author of Cognition : cognitive science shows that thinking is not that sort The Thinking Animal as well as over 50 articles. With Bar- of skill. The processes of thinking are intertwined with bara Spellman, he edited Current Directions in Cognitive the content of thought (that is, domain knowledge ). Science. He regularly contributes to American Educator Thus, if you remind a student to “look at an issue from by writing the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column. His multiple perspectives” often enough, he will learn that

research focuses on the role of consciousness in learning. he ought to do so, but if he doesn’t know much about and Sonja Lamut Illustrated by Nenad Jakesevic

 AMERICAN EDUCATOR SUMMER 2007 calculates the components of a compound without notic- Critical thinking is not a set of ing that his estimates sum to more than 100 percent. And a student who has learned to thoughtfully discuss the causes skills that can be deployed at any of the American Revolution from both the British and American perspectives doesn’t even think to question how time, in any context. It is a type of the Germans viewed World War II. Why are students able to think critically in one situation, but not in another? The thought that even 3-year-olds can brief answer is: Thought processes are intertwined with what is being thought about. Let’s explore this in depth engage in—and even trained by looking at a particular kind of critical thinking that has been studied extensively: problem solving . scientists can fail in. Imagine a seventh-grade math class immersed in word problems. How is it that students will be able to answer one problem, but not the next, even though mathemati- cally both word problems are the same, that is, they rely on the same mathematical knowledge? Typically, the stu- dents are focusing on the scenario that the word problem describes (its surface structure) instead of on the math- ematics required to solve it (its deep structure). So even though students have been taught how to solve a partic- ular type of word problem, when the teacher or textbook changes the scenario, students still struggle to apply the solution because they don’t recognize that the problems are mathematically the same.

Thinking Tends to Focus on a Problem’s “Surface Structure” To understand why the surface structure of a problem is so distracting and, as a result, why it’s so hard to apply famil- an issue, he can’t think about it from multiple perspec- iar solutions to problems that appear new, let’s first con- tives. You can teach students maxims about how they sider how you understand what’s being asked when you ought to think, but without background knowledge are given a problem. Anything you hear or read is automat- and practice, they probably will not be able to imple- ically interpreted in light of what you already know about ment the advice they memorize. Just as it makes no similar subjects. For example, suppose you read these two sense to try to teach factual content without giving stu- sentences: “After years of pressure from the film and tele- dents opportunities to practice using it, it also makes vision industry, the President has filed a formal complaint no sense to try to teach critical thinking devoid of fac- with China over what U.S. firms say is copyright infringe- tual content. ment. These firms assert that the Chinese government sets In this article, I will describe the nature of critical stringent trade restrictions for U.S. entertainment prod- thinking, explain why it is so hard to do and to teach, ucts, even as it turns a blind eye to Chinese companies and explore how students acquire a specific type of that copy American movies and television shows and sell critical thinking: thinking scientifically. Along the way, them on the black market.” Background knowledge not we’ll see that critical thinking is not a set of skills that only allows you to comprehend the sentences, it also has can be deployed at any time, in any context. It is a type a powerful effect as you continue to read because it nar- of thought that even 3-year-olds can engage in—and rows the interpretations of new text that you will entertain. even trained scientists can fail in. And it is very much For example, if you later read the word “Bush,” it would not dependent on domain knowledge and practice. make you think of a small shrub, nor would you wonder whether it referred to the former President Bush, the rock band, or a term for rural hinterlands. If you read “piracy,” Why Is Thinking Critically So Hard? you would not think of eye-patched swabbies shouting Educators have long noted that school attendance and “shiver me timbers!” The cognitive system gambles that even academic success are no guarantee that a student will incoming information will be related to what you’ve just graduate an effective thinker in all situations. There is an been thinking about. Thus, it significantly narrows the odd tendency for rigorous thinking to cling to particular scope of possible interpretations of words, sentences, and examples or types of problems. Thus, a student may have ideas. The benefit is that comprehension proceeds faster learned to estimate the answer to a math problem before and more smoothly; the cost is that the deep structure of a beginning calculations as a way of checking the accuracy problem is harder to recognize. of his answer, but in the chemistry lab, the same student The narrowing of ideas that occurs while you read (or

10 AMERICAN EDUCATOR SUMMER 2007 How Do Cognitive Scientists Define Critical Thinking? From the cognitive scientist’s point soning, decision making, and prob- situation that is similar enough to of view, the mental activities that lem solving—which, for brevity’s guide you. For example, solving a are typically called critical thinking sake, I will refer to as critical think- complex but familiar physics prob- are actually a subset of three types of ing—have three key features: effec- lem by applying a multi-step algo- thinking: reasoning, making judg- tiveness, novelty, and self-direc- rithm isn’t critical thinking because ments and decisions, and problem tion. Critical thinking is effective you are really drawing on memory solving. I say that critical thinking is in that it avoids common pitfalls, to solve the problem. But devising a subset of these because we think such as seeing only one side of an a new algorithm is critical thinking. in these ways all the time, but only issue, discounting new evidence Critical thinking is self-directed in sometimes in a critical way. Decid- that disconfirms your ideas, rea- that the thinker must be calling the ing to read this article, for example, soning from passion rather than shots: We wouldn’t give a student is not critical thinking. But carefully logic , failing to support statements much credit for critical thinking if weighing the evidence it presents with evidence, and so on. Critical the teacher were prompting each in order to decide whether or not to thinking is novel in that you don’t step he took. believe what it says is. Critical rea- simply remember a solution or a —D.W. listen) means that you tend to focus on the surface struc- lem to help them solve the second: In their minds , the ture, rather than on the underlying structure of the prob- first was about vegetables in a garden and the second was lem. For example, in one experiment,4 subjects saw a prob- about rows of band marchers. lem like this one: Members of the West High School Band were hard at With Deep Knowledge, Thinking Can work practicing for the annual Homecoming Parade. Penetrate Beyond Surface Structure First they tried marching in rows of 12, but Andrew was If knowledge of how to solve a problem never transferred left by himself to bring up the rear. Then the director to problems with new surface structures, schooling would told the band members to march in columns of eight, be inefficient or even futile—but of course, such transfer but Andrew was still left to march alone. Even when the does occur. When and why is complex,5 but two factors are band marched in rows of three, Andrew was left out. especially relevant for educators: familiarity with a prob- Finally, in exasperation, Andrew told the band director lem’s deep structure and the knowledge that one should that they should march in rows of five in order to have look for a deep structure. I’ll address each in turn. all the rows filled. He was right. Given that there were at When one is very familiar with a problem’s deep-struc- least 45 musicians on the field but fewer than 200 musi- ture, knowledge about how to solve it transfers well. That cians, how many students were there in the West High familiarity can come from long-term, repeated experience School Band? with one problem, or with various manifestations of one type of problem (i.e., many problems that have different Earlier in the experiment, subjects had read four problems surface structures, but the same deep structure). After along with detailed explanations of how to solve each one, repeated exposure to either or both, the subject simply per- ostensibly to rate them for the clarity of the writing. One of ceives the deep structure as part of the problem descrip- the four problems concerned the number of vegetables to tion. Here’s an example: buy for a garden, and it relied on the same type of solution necessary for the band problem—calculation of the least A treasure hunter is going to explore a cave up on a hill common multiple. Yet, few subjects—just 19 percent—saw near a beach. He suspected there might be many paths that the band problem was similar and that they could use inside the cave so he was afraid he might get lost. Obvi- the garden problem solution. Why? ously, he did not have a map of the cave; all he had with When a student reads a word problem, her mind inter- him were some common items such as a flashlight and prets the problem in light of her prior knowledge, as hap- a bag. What could he do to make sure he did not get lost pened when you read the two sentences about copyrights trying to get back out of the cave later? and China. The difficulty is that the knowledge that seems relevant relates to the surface structure—in this prob- The solution is to carry some sand with you in the bag, lem, the reader dredges up knowledge about bands, high and leave a trail as you go, so you can trace your path school, musicians, and so forth. The student is unlikely back when you’re ready to leave the cave. About 75 per- to read the problem and think of it in terms of its deep cent of American college students thought of this solu- structure—using the least common multiple. The surface tion—but only 25 percent of Chinese students solved it.6 structure of the problem is overt, but the deep structure of The experimenters suggested that Americans solved it the problem is not. Thus, people fail to use the first prob- because most grew up hearing the story of Hansel and Gre-

SUMMER 2007 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 11 tel, which includes the idea of leaving a trail as you travel Looking for a Deep Structure Helps, but It Cognitive scientists refer to these maxims as metacogni- ously think “I should look at both sides of this issue” when to an unknown place in order to find your way back. The Only Takes You So Far tive strategies. They are little chunks of knowledge—like working on a problem. experimenters also gave subjects another puzzle based on Now let’s turn to the second factor that aids in trans- “look for a problem’s deep structure” or “consider both Unfortunately, metacognitive strategies can only take a common Chinese folk tale, and the percentage of solvers fer despite distracting differences in surface structure— sides of an issue”—that students can learn and then use to you so far. Although they suggest what you ought to do, from each culture reversed. (To read the puzzle based on knowing to look for a deep structure. Consider what would steer their thoughts in more productive directions. they don’t provide the knowledge necessary to implement the Chinese folk tale, and the tale itself, go to www.aft.org/ happen if I said to a student working on the band prob- Helping students become better at regulating their the strategy. For example, when experimenters told sub- pubs-reports/american_educator/index.htm.) lem, “this one is similar to the garden problem.” The stu- thoughts was one of the goals of the critical thinking pro- jects working on the band problem that it was similar to It takes a good deal of practice with a problem type dent would understand that the problems must share a grams that were popular 20 years ago. As the sidebar below the garden problem, more subjects solved the problem before students know it well enough to immediately rec- deep structure and would try to figure out what it is. Stu- explains, these programs are not very effective. Their mod- (35 percent compared to 19 percent without the hint), but ognize its deep structure, irrespective of the surface struc- dents can do something similar without the hint. A student est benefit is likely due to teaching students to effectively most subjects, even when told what to do, weren’t able to ture, as Americans did for the Hansel and Gretel problem. might think “I’m seeing this problem in a math class, so use metacognitive strategies. Students learn to avoid biases do it. Likewise, you may know that you ought not accept American subjects didn’t think of the problem in terms there must be a math formula that will solve this problem.” that most of us are prey to when we think, such as settling the first reasonable-sounding solution to a problem, but of sand, caves, and treasure; they thought of it in terms of Then he could scan his memory (or textbook) for candi- on the first conclusion that seems reasonable, only seeking that doesn’t mean you know how to come up with alter- finding something with which to leave a trail. The deep dates, and see if one of them helps. This is an example of evidence that confirms one’s beliefs, ignoring countervail- ative solutions or weigh how reasonable each one is. That structure of the problem is so well represented in their what psychologists call metacognition , or regulating one’s ing evidence, overconfidence, and others.7 Thus, a student requires domain knowledge and practice in putting that memory, that they immediately saw that structure when thoughts. In the introduction, I mentioned that you can who has been encouraged many times to see both sides of knowledge to work. they read the problem. teach students maxims about how they ought to think. an issue, for example, is probably more likely to spontane- Since critical thinking relies so heavily on domain

Critical Thinking Programs: Lots of Time, Modest Benefit ince the ability to think criti- some features in common. They are to answer that question, but their cally is a primary goal of edu- premised on the idea that there is studies tend to have methodologi- Scation, it’s no surprise that a set of critical thinking skills that cal problems.2 Four limitations of people have tried to develop pro- can be applied and practiced across these studies are especially typical, grams that could directly teach content domains. They are designed and they make any effects suspect: students to think critically without to supplement regular curricula, not 1) students are evaluated just once immersing them in any particular to replace them, and so they are not after the program, so it’s not known academic content. But the evidence tied to particular content areas such whether any observed effects are shows that such programs primarily as language arts, science, or social enduring; 2) there is not a control improve students’ thinking with the studies. Many programs are intended group, leaving it unclear whether sort of problems they practiced in to last about three years, with sev- gains are due to the thinking pro- the program—not with other types eral hours of instruction (delivered gram, to other aspects of schooling, of problems. More generally, it’s in one or two lessons) per week. The or to experiences outside the class- doubtful that a program that effec- programs vary in how they deliver room; 3) the control group does not tively teaches students to think criti- this instruction and practice. Some have a comparison intervention, so cally in a variety of situations will use abstract problems such as find- any positive effects found may be ever be developed. ing patterns in meaningless figures due, for example, to the teacher’s As the main article explains, the (Reuven Feuerstein’s Instrumental enthusiasm for something new, not ability to think critically depends Enrichment), some use mystery sto- the program itself; and 4) there is no on having adequate content knowl- ries (Martin Covington’s Productive measure of whether or not students edge; you can’t think critically about Thinking), some use group discus- can transfer their new thinking abil- topics you know little about or solve sion of interesting problems that one ity to materials that differ from those problems that you don’t know well might encounter in daily life (Edward used in the program. In addition, enough to recognize and execute the de Bono’s Cognitive Research Trust, only a small fraction of the studies type of solutions they call for. or CoRT), and so on. However it is have undergone peer review (mean- Nonetheless, these programs do implemented, each program intro- ing that they have been impartially help us better understand what can duces students to examples of criti- evaluated by independent experts). be taught, so they are worth review- cal thinking and then requires that Peer review is crucial because it ing briefly. the students practice such thinking is known that researchers uncon- A large number of programs1 themselves. sciously bias the design and analysis designed to make students better How well do these programs of their research to favor the conclu- thinkers are available, and they have work? Many researchers have tried sions they hope to see.3

12 AMERICAN EDUCATOR SUMMER 2007 tel, which includes the idea of leaving a trail as you travel Looking for a Deep Structure Helps, but It Cognitive scientists refer to these maxims as metacogni- ously think “I should look at both sides of this issue” when to an unknown place in order to find your way back. The Only Takes You So Far tive strategies. They are little chunks of knowledge—like working on a problem. experimenters also gave subjects another puzzle based on Now let’s turn to the second factor that aids in trans- “look for a problem’s deep structure” or “consider both Unfortunately, metacognitive strategies can only take a common Chinese folk tale, and the percentage of solvers fer despite distracting differences in surface structure— sides of an issue”—that students can learn and then use to you so far. Although they suggest what you ought to do, from each culture reversed. (To read the puzzle based on knowing to look for a deep structure. Consider what would steer their thoughts in more productive directions. they don’t provide the knowledge necessary to implement the Chinese folk tale, and the tale itself, go to www.aft.org/ happen if I said to a student working on the band prob- Helping students become better at regulating their the strategy. For example, when experimenters told sub- pubs-reports/american_educator/index.htm.) lem, “this one is similar to the garden problem.” The stu- thoughts was one of the goals of the critical thinking pro- jects working on the band problem that it was similar to It takes a good deal of practice with a problem type dent would understand that the problems must share a grams that were popular 20 years ago. As the sidebar below the garden problem, more subjects solved the problem before students know it well enough to immediately rec- deep structure and would try to figure out what it is. Stu- explains, these programs are not very effective. Their mod- (35 percent compared to 19 percent without the hint), but ognize its deep structure, irrespective of the surface struc- dents can do something similar without the hint. A student est benefit is likely due to teaching students to effectively most subjects, even when told what to do, weren’t able to ture, as Americans did for the Hansel and Gretel problem. might think “I’m seeing this problem in a math class, so use metacognitive strategies. Students learn to avoid biases do it. Likewise, you may know that you ought not accept American subjects didn’t think of the problem in terms there must be a math formula that will solve this problem.” that most of us are prey to when we think, such as settling the first reasonable-sounding solution to a problem, but of sand, caves, and treasure; they thought of it in terms of Then he could scan his memory (or textbook) for candi- on the first conclusion that seems reasonable, only seeking that doesn’t mean you know how to come up with alter- finding something with which to leave a trail. The deep dates, and see if one of them helps. This is an example of evidence that confirms one’s beliefs, ignoring countervail- ative solutions or weigh how reasonable each one is. That structure of the problem is so well represented in their what psychologists call metacognition, or regulating one’s ing evidence, overconfidence, and others.7 Thus, a student requires domain knowledge and practice in putting that memory, that they immediately saw that structure when thoughts. In the introduction, I mentioned that you can who has been encouraged many times to see both sides of knowledge to work. they read the problem. teach students maxims about how they ought to think. an issue, for example, is probably more likely to spontane- Since critical thinking relies so heavily on domain

Studies of the Philosophy for The programs that include - puz Children program may be taken as Knowing that zles like those found on IQ tests, for typical. Two researchers4 identified instance, report gains in IQ scores. eight studies that evaluated aca- one should think In an earlier column,* I described a demic outcomes and met minimal bedrock principle of memory: You research-design criteria. (Of these critically is not the remember what you think about. eight, only one had been subjected The same goes for critical thinking: to peer review.) Still, they concluded same as being able to You learn to think critically in the that three of the eight had identi- ways in which you practice think- fiable problems that clouded the do so. That requires ing critically. If you practice logic researchers’ conclusions. Among puzzles with an effective teacher, the remaining five studies, three domain knowledge you are likely to get better at solv- measured reading ability, and one ing logic puzzles. But substantial of these reported a significant gain. and practice. improvement requires a great deal Three studies measured reason- of practice. Unfortunately, because ing ability, and two reported signif- critical thinking curricula include icant gains. And, two studies took many different types of problems, more impressionistic measures of students typically don’t get enough student’s participation in class (e.g., practice with any one type of prob- generating ideas, providing reasons), lem. As explained in the main arti- and both reported a positive effect. rapidly drops. cle, the modest benefits that these Despite the difficulties and gen- Both the conclusion and the programs seem to produce are likely eral lack of rigor in evaluation, most caveats make sense from the cog- due to teaching students metacog- researchers reviewing the literature nitive scientist’s point of view. It is nitive strategies—like “look at both conclude that some critical think- not surprising that the success of sides of an issue”—that cue them ing programs do have some posi- the program depends on the skill of to try to think critically. But know- tive effect.5 But these reviewers offer the teacher. The developers of the ing that one should think critically two important caveats. First, as with programs cannot anticipate all of is not the same as being able to do almost any educational endeavor, the ideas—right or wrong—that stu- so. That requires domain knowledge the success of the program depends dents will generate as they practice and practice. on the skill of the teacher. Second, thinking critically, so it is up to the —D.W. thinking programs look good when teacher to provide the all-important the outcome measure is quite sim- feedback to the students. *See “Students Remember … What They ilar to the material in the program. It is also reasonable that the pro- Think About” in the Summer 2003 issue of American Educator; online at www.aft. As one tests for transfer to more and grams should lead to gains in abili- org/pubs-reports/american_educator/ more dissimilar material, the appar- ties that are measured with materials summer2003/cogsci.html. ent effectiveness of the program similar to those used in the program. (Endnotes on page 19)

SUMMER 2007 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 13 use the proper reasoning processes on problems that seem Teaching students to think similar. For example, consider a type of reasoning about cause and effect that is very important in science: condi- critically probably lies in large tional probabilities . If two things go together, it’s possible that one causes the other. Suppose you start a new med- part in enabling them to deploy icine and notice that you seem to be getting headaches more often than usual. You would infer that the medica- the right type of thinking at the tion influenced your chances of getting a headache. But it could also be that the medication increases your chances of right time. getting a headache only in certain circumstances or condi- tions. In conditional probability , the relationship between two things (e.g., medication and headaches) is depen- dent on a third factor. For example, the medication might increase the probability of a headache only when you’ve had a cup of coffee. The relationship of the medication and headaches is conditional on the presence of coffee. Understanding and using conditional probabilities is essential to scientific thinking because it is so important in reasoning about what causes what. But people’s success in thinking this way depends on the particulars of how the question is presented. Studies show that adults sometimes use conditional probabilities successfully,9 but fail to do so with many problems that call for it.10 Even trained scientists are open to pitfalls in reasoning about conditional proba- bilities (as well as other types of reasoning). Physicians are known to discount or misinterpret new patient data that conflict with a diagnosis they have in mind,11 and Ph.D.- level scientists are prey to faulty reasoning when faced with a problem embedded in an unfamiliar context.12 And yet, young children are sometimes able to reason about conditional probabilities. In one experiment,13 the knowledge, educators may wonder if thinking critically in researchers showed 3-year-olds a box and told them it a particular domain is easier to learn. The quick answer is was a “blicket detector” that would play music if a blicket yes, it’s a little easier. To understand why, let’s focus on one were placed on top. The child then saw one of the two domain, science, and examine the development of scien- sequences shown below in which blocks are placed on the tific thinking. blicket detector. At the end of the sequence, the child was asked whether each block was a blicket. In other words, Is Thinking Like a Scientist Easier? the child was to use conditional reasoning to infer which Teaching science has been the focus of intensive study for block caused the music to play. decades, and the research can be usefully categorized into Note that the relationship between each individual block two strands. The first examines how children acquire sci- (yellow cube and blue cylinder) and the music is the same entific concepts; for example, how they come to forgo naive in sequences 1 and 2. In either sequence, the child sees conceptions of motion and replace them with an under- the yellow cube associated with music three times, and the standing of physics. The second strand is what we would blue cylinder associated with the absence of music once call thinking scientifically, that is, the mental procedures and the presence of music twice. What differs between by which science is conducted: developing a model, deriv- the first and second sequence is the relationship between ing a hypothesis from the model, designing an experiment the blue and yellow blocks, and therefore, the conditional to test the hypothesis, gathering data from the experiment, probability of each block being a blicket. Three-year-olds interpreting the data in light of the model, and so forth.† understood the importance of conditional probabilities. Most researchers believe that scientific thinking is really a subset of reasoning that is not different in kind from other † These two strands are the most often studied, but these two 8 approaches—content and process of science—are incomplete. Under- types of reasoning that children and adults do. What emphasized in U.S. classrooms are the many methods of scientific study, makes it scientific thinking is knowing when to engage in and the role of theories and models in advancing scientific thought. such reasoning, and having accumulated enough relevant ‡ Although this is not highly relevant for K-12 teachers, it is important knowledge and spent enough time practicing to do so. to note that for people with extensive training, such as Ph.D.-level sci- Recognizing when to engage in scientific reasoning is so entists, critical thinking does have some skill-like characteristics. In particular, they are better able to deploy critical reasoning with a wide important because the evidence shows that being able to variety of content, even that with which they are not very familiar. But, reason is not enough; children and adults use and fail to of course, this does not mean that they will never make mistakes.

14 AMERICAN EDUCATOR SUMMER 2007 What’s going on? One issue is that the common concep- “Teaching content alone is not tion of critical thinking or scientific thinking (or historical thinking) as a set of skills is not accurate. Critical thinking likely to lead to proficiency in does not have certain characteristics normally associated with skills—in particular, being able to use that skill at any science, nor is engaging in inquiry time. If I told you that I learned to read music, for example, you would expect, correctly, that I could use my new skill experiences devoid of meaningful (i.e., read music) whenever I wanted. But critical thinking is very different. As we saw in the discussion of conditional science content.” probabilities, people can engage in some types of critical thinking without training, but even with extensive train- —National Research Council ing, they will sometimes fail to think critically. This under- standing that critical thinking is not a skill is vital.‡ It tells us that teaching students to think critically probably lies in small part in showing them new ways of thinking, and in large part in enabling them to deploy the right type of thinking at the right time. Returning to our focus on science, we’re ready to address a key question: Can students be taught when to engage in scientific thinking? Sort of. It is easier than try- ing to teach general critical thinking, but not as easy as we would like. Recall that when we were discussing problem solving, we found that students can learn metacognitive strategies that help them look past the surface structure of a problem and identify its deep structure, thereby get- ting them a step closer to figuring out a solution. Essen- tially the same thing can happen with scientific thinking. Students can learn certain metacognitive strategies that will cue them to think scientifically. But, as with problem For sequence 1, they said the yellow cube was a blicket, solving, the metacognitive strategies only tell the students but the blue cylinder was not; for sequence 2, they chose what they should do—they do not provide the knowledge equally between the two blocks. that students need to actually do it. The good news is that This body of studies has been summarized simply: Chil- within a content area like science, students have more dren are not as dumb as you might think, and adults (even context cues to help them figure out which metacognitive trained scientists) are not as smart as you might think. strategy to use, and teachers have a clearer idea of what

Source: Gopnik, A. and Schulz, L.E. (2004). “Mechanisms of theory formation in young children,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, p 373, Elsevier.

SUMMER 2007 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 15 domain knowledge they must teach to enable students to reasoning be taught in the context of rich subject matter do what the strategy calls for. knowledge. A committee of prominent science educators For example, two researchers14 taught second-, third-, brought together by the National Research Council15 put it and fourth-graders the scientific concept behind control- plainly: “Teaching content alone is not likely to lead to pro- ling variables; that is, of keeping everything in two compar- ficiency in science, nor is engaging in inquiry experiences ison conditions the same, except for the one variable that is devoid of meaningful science content.” the focus of investigation. The experimenters gave explicit The committee drew this conclusion based on evidence instruction about this strategy for conducting experiments that background knowledge is necessary to engage in sci- and then had students practice with a set of materials (e.g., entific thinking. For example, knowing that one needs springs) to answer a specific question (e.g., which of these a control group in an experiment is important. Like hav- factors determine how far a spring will stretch: length, coil ing two comparison conditions, having a control group in diameter, wire diameter, or weight?). The experiment- addition to an experimental group helps you focus on the ers found that students not only understood the concept variable you want to study. But knowing that you need a of controlling variables, they were able to apply it seven control group is not the same as being able to create one. months later with different materials and a different exper- Since it’s not always possible to have two groups that are imenter, although the older children showed more robust exactly alike, knowing which factors can vary between transfer than the younger children. In this case, the stu- groups and which must not vary is one example of nec- dents recognized that they were designing an experiment essary background knowledge. In experiments measur- and that cued them to recall the metacognitive strategy, ing how quickly subjects can respond, for example, con- “When I design experiments, I should try to control vari- trol groups must be matched for age, because age affects ables.” Of course, succeeding in controlling all of the rele- response speed, but they need not be perfectly matched vant variables is another matter—that depends on knowing for gender. which variables may matter and how they could vary. More formal experimental work verifies that background knowledge is necessary to reason scientifically. For exam- Why Scientific Thinking ple, consider devising a research hypothesis. One could Depends on Scientific Knowledge generate multiple hypotheses for any given situation. Sup- Experts in teaching science recommend that scientific pose you know that car A gets better gas mileage than car B and you’d like to know why. There are many differences between the cars, so which will you investigate Did Sherlock Holmes Take a Course first? Engine size? Tire pressure? A key determinant of the hypothesis in Critical Thinking? you select is plausibility. You won’t No one better exemplifies the power of broad, deep knowledge in driving choose to investigate a difference critical thinking than Sherlock Holmes. In his famous first encounter with between cars A and B that you think Dr. Watson, Holmes greets him with this observation: “You have been in is unlikely to contribute to gas mile- Afghanistan, I perceive.” Watson is astonished—how could Holmes have age (e.g., paint color), but if some- known? Eventually Holmes explains his insight, which turns not on incred- one provides a reason to make this ible intelligence or creativity or wild guessing, but on having relevant knowl- factor more plausible (e.g., the way edge. Holmes is told that Watson is a doctor; everything else he deduces your teenage son’s driving hab- by drawing on his knowledge of, among other things, the military, geogra- its changed after he painted his car phy, how injuries heal, and current events. Here’s how Holmes explains his red), you are more likely to say that thought process: this now-plausible factor should be investigated.16 One’s judgment I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts about the plausibility of a factor ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being important is based on one’s being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The knowledge of the domain. train of reasoning ran, “Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the Other data indicate that familiar- air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from ity with the domain makes it easier the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for to juggle different factors simul- his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard taneously, which in turn allows face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and you to construct experiments that unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have simultaneously control for more seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.” factors. For example, in one experi- The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that ment,17 eighth-graders completed you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished. two tasks. In one, they were to Source: A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. —Editors manipulate conditions in a com-

16 AMERICAN EDUCATOR SUMMER Subjects who started with They tell you that your understanding is incomplete, and they guide the development of new hypotheses. But you more and better integrated could only recognize the outcome of an experiment as anomalous if you had some expectation of how it would knowledge planned more turn out. And that expectation would be based on domain knowledge, as would your ability to create a new hypoth- informative experiments and esis that takes the anomalous outcome into account. The idea that scientific thinking must be taught hand made better use of experimental in hand with scientific content is further supported by research on scientific problem solving; that is, when stu- outcomes. dents calculate an answer to a textbook-like problem, rather than design their own experiment. A meta-analysis20 of 40 experiments investigating methods for teaching sci- entific problem solving showed that effective approaches were those that focused on building complex, integrated knowledge bases as part of problem solving, for exam- ple by including exercises like concept mapping. Ineffec- tive approaches focused exclusively on the strategies to be used in problem solving while ignoring the knowledge necessary for the solution.

hat do all these studies boil down to? puter simulation to keep imaginary creatures alive. In the First, critical thinking (as well as scien- other, they were told that they had been hired by a swim- tific thinking and other domain-based ming pool company to evaluate how the surface area of thinking) is not a skill. There is not a swimming pools was related to the cooling rate of its water. set of critical thinking skills that can be Students were more adept at designing experiments for acquired and deployed regardless of context. Second, there the first task than the second, which the researchers inter- W are metacognitive strategies that, once learned, make criti- preted as being due to students’ familiarity with the rele- cal thinking more likely. Third, the ability to think critically vant variables. Students are used to thinking about factors (to actually do what the metacognitive strategies call for) that might influence creatures’ health (e.g., food, preda- depends on domain knowledge and practice. For teachers, tors), but have less experience working with factors that the situation is not hopeless, but no one should underesti- might influence water temperature (e.g., volume, surface mate the difficulty of teaching students to think critically. area). Hence, it is not the case that “controlling variables ☐ in an experiment” is a pure process that is not affected by subjects’ knowledge of those variables. Endnotes Prior knowledge and beliefs not only influence which 1Borja, R.R. (2006). “Work Skills of Graduates Seen Lacking,” Education Week, 26, 9, 10. hypotheses one chooses to test, they influence how one interprets data from an experiment. In one experiment,18 2Green, W.D. (2007). “Accenture Chairman and CEO William D. Green Addresses Senate Finance Committee,” Accenture, www.accenture.com. undergraduates were evaluated for their knowledge of electrical circuits. Then they participated in three weekly, 3Viadero, D. (1991). “Parents in S.C. Attack Alleged ‘New Age’ Program.” Education Week, www.edweek.org. 1.5-hour sessions during which they designed and con- ducted experiments using a computer simulation of cir- 4Novick, L.R. and Holyoak, K.J. (1991). “Mathematical problem-solving by analogy,” Journal of Experimental Psychology : Learning, Memory cuitry, with the goal of learning how circuitry works. The and Cognition, 17, 398-415. results showed a strong relationship between subjects’ ini- 5For reviews see: Reeves, L.M. and Weisberg, R.W. (1994), “The role of con- tial knowledge and how much subjects learned in future tent and abstract information in analogical transfer,” Psychological Bul- sessions, in part due to how the subjects interpreted the letin, 115, 381-400; Barnett, S.M. and Ceci, S.J. (2002), “When and where data from the experiments they had conducted. Subjects do we apply what we learn? A taxonomy for far transfer,” Psychological Bulletin, 128 (4), 612-637. who started with more and better integrated knowledge planned more informative experiments and made better 6Chen, Z., Mo, L., and Honomichl, R. (2004). “Having the memory of an elephant: Long-term retrieval and the use of analogues in problem use of experimental outcomes. solving,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 415-433. Other studies have found similar results, and have 7For a readable review see: Baron, J. (2000). Thinking and Deciding, Cam- found that anomalous, or unexpected, outcomes may be bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. particularly important in creating new knowledge—and 8 19 For example see: Klahr, D. (2000). Exploring science: The cognition and particularly dependent upon prior knowledge. Data that development of discovery processes, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press. seem odd because they don’t fit one’s mental model of the 9Spellman, B. A. (1996). “Acting as intuitive scientists: Contingency judg- phenomenon under investigation are highly informative. ments are made while controlling for alternative potential causes,”

SUMMER 2007 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 17 Teaching Critical Thinking eaching students to think ■ Critical thinking is not just for critically is high on any advanced students. I have some- Knowing that a letter Tteacher’s to-do list. So what times heard teachers and adminis- strategies are consistent with the trators suggest that critical thinking was written by a research? exercises make a good enrichment activity for the best students, but Confederate private ■ Special programs aren’t worth it. struggling students should just be In the sidebar on page 12, I’ve men- expected to understand and master to his wife in New tioned a few of the better known more basic material. This argument programs. Despite their widespread sells short the less advanced stu- Orleans just after availability, the evidence that these dents and conflicts with what cog- programs succeed in teaching stu- nitive scientists know about think- the Battle of Vicks- dents to think critically, especially ing. Virtually everyone is capable of in novel situations, is very lim- critical thinking and uses it all the burg won’t help the ited. The modest boost that such time—and, as the conditional prob- programs may provide should be abilities research demonstrated (see student interpret viewed, as should all claims of edu- p. 15), has been capable of doing cational effectiveness, in light of so since they were very young. The the letter—unless he their opportunity costs. Every hour difficulty lies not in thinking criti- students spend on the program is an cally, but in recognizing when to do knows something of hour they won’t be learning some- so, and in knowing enough to do so thing else. successfully. Civil War history.

■ Thinking critically should be ■ Student experiences offer entrée taught in the context of subject mat- to complex concepts. Although crit- ter. The foregoing does not mean that ical thinking needs to be nested teachers shouldn’t teach students to in subject matter, when students think critically—it means that criti- don’t have much subject matter cause crime, but high temperatures cal thinking shouldn’t be taught on knowledge, introducing a concept might cause increases in both. its own. People do not spontane- by drawing on student experiences ously examine assumptions that can help. For example, the impor- ■ To teach critical thinking strate- underlie their thinking, try to con- tance of a source in evaluating a his- gies, make them explicit and prac- sider all sides of an issue, question torical document is familiar to even tice them. Critical thinking strate- what they know, etc. These things young children; deepening their gies are abstractions. A plausible must be modeled for students, and understanding is a matter of asking approach to teaching them is to students must be given opportuni- questions that they have the knowl- make them explicit, and to proceed ties to practice—preferably in the edge to grapple with. Elementary in stages. The first time (or several context of normal classroom activ- school teachers could ask: Would times) the concept is introduced, ity. This is true not only for science a letter to a newspaper editor that explain it with at least two different (as discussed in the main article), criticized the abolishment of recess examples (possibly examples based but for other subject matter. For be viewed differently if written by on students’ experiences, as dis- example, an important part of think- a school principal versus a third- cussed above), label it so as to iden- ing like a historian is considering the grader? Various concepts that are tify it as a strategy that can be applied source of a document—who wrote central to scientific thinking can also in various contexts, and show how it, when, and why. But teaching stu- be taught with examples that draw it applies to the course content at dents to ask that question, indepen- on students’ everyday knowledge hand. In future instances, try nam- dent of subject matter knowledge, and experience. For example, “cor- ing the appropriate critical thinking won’t do much good. Knowing that relation does not imply causation” is strategy to see if students remember a letter was written by a Confederate often illustrated by the robust asso- it and can figure out how it applies to private to his wife in New Orleans ciation between the consumption of the material under discussion. With just after the Battle of Vicksburg ice cream and the number of crimes still more practice, students may see won’t help the student interpret the committed on a given day. With a which strategy applies without a cue letter unless he knows something of little prodding, students soon realize from you. Civil War history. that ice cream consumption doesn’t —D.W.

18 AMERICAN EDUCATOR SUMMER 2007 Psychological Science, 7, 337-342. 10For example see: Kuhn, D., Garcia-Mila, M., and Zohar, A. (1995). “Strategies of knowledge acquisition,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 60, 1-128. 11Groopman, J. (2007). How Doctors Think, New York: Houghton Mifflin. 12 Tweney, R. D. and Yachanin, S. A. (1985), “Can scientists rationally assess conditional inferences?” Social Studies of Science, 15, 155-173; Mahoney, M.J. and DeMonbreun, B.G. (1981), “Problem-solving bias in scientists,” in R. D. Tweney, M. E. Doherty, and C. R. Mynatt (eds.) On Scientific Thinking,139-144, New York:Columbia University Press. 13Gopnik, A., Sobel, D.M., Schulz, L.E., and Glymour, C. (2001). “Causal learning mechanisms in very young children: Two-, three-, and four- year-olds infer causal relations from patterns of variation and covaria- tion,” Developmental Psychology, 37(5), 620-629. 14Chen, Z. and Klahr, D. (1999). “All Other Things Being Equal: Acquisition and Transfer of the Control of Variables Strategy,” Child Development, 70 (5), 1098-1120. 15National Research Council (2007). Taking Science to School, Washing- ton, D.C.: National Academies Press. 16Koslowski, B. (1996). Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 17Friedler, Y., Nachmias, R., and Linn, M. C. (1990). “Learning scientific reasoning skills in microcomputer-based laboratories,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27, 173-191. 18Schauble, L., Glaser, R., Raghavan, K., and Reiner, M. (1991). “Causal models and experimentation strategies in scientific reasoning,” The Journal of Learning Sciences, 1, 201-238. 19For example see: Dunbar, K. N. and Fugelsang, J. A. (2005), “Causal thinking in science: How scientists and students interpret the unex- pected,” in M. E. Gorman, R. D. Tweney, D. C. Gooding, and A. P. Kincannon (eds.) Scientific and Technological Thinking, 57-79, Mah- wah, N.J.: Erlbaum; Echevarria, M. (2003), “Anomalies as a catalyst for middle school students’ knowledge construction and scientific reasoning during science inquiry,” Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 357-374. 20Taconis, R., Ferguson-Hessler, M.G.M., and Broekkamp, H., (2001). “Teaching science problem solving: An overview of experimental work,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(4), 442-468.

Sidebar Endnotes (p. 12) 1Adams, M. J. (1989), “Thinking skills curricula: Their promise and prog- ress,” Educational Psychologist, 24, 25-77; Nickerson, R. S., Perkins, D. N., and Smith, E. E. (1985), The Teaching of Thinking, Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum; Ritchart, R. and Perkins, D. N. (2005), “Learning to think: The challenges of teaching thinking,” in K. J. Holyoak and R. G. Mor- rison (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2Sternberg, R. J. and Bhana, K. (1986). “Synthesis of research on the effec- tiveness of intellectual skills programs: Snake-oil remedies or miracle cures?” Educational Leadership , 44, 60-67. 3Mahoney, M.J. and DeMonbreun, B.G. (1981). “Problem-solving bias in scientists,” in R. D. Tweney, M. E. Doherty, and C. R. Mynatt (eds.) On Scientific Thinking,139-144, New York:Columbia University Press. 4Trickey, S. and Topping, K. J. (2004). “ Philosophy for Children : A System- atic Review,” Research Papers in Education 19, 365-380. 5Adams, M. J. (1989). “Thinking skills curricula: Their promise and prog- ress.” Educational Psychologist, 24, 25-77; Nickerson, R. S., Perkins, D. N., and Smith, E. E. (1985), The Teaching of Thinking, Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum; Ritchart, R. and Perkins, D. N. (2005), “Learning to think: The challenges of teaching thinking,” in K. J. Holyoak and R. G. Mor- rison (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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