Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines

I have long been fascinated by the process of argument, so it seemed natural to study philosophy and logic at university, then, as a University teacher, to teach them. Since I gradually realised these subjects didn’t help students to reason and argue well, I tried to devise materials which would. This led first to my writing The Logic of Real Arguments and later, Critical Thinking: An Introduction. If you wish to teach thinking skills it is important to assess whether your methods work, and I have developed several tests of critical thinking for different contexts, including a new UK Critical Thinking examination, now taken by thousands of school students. I worked with Richard Paul, Michael Scriven (writing with him Critical Thinking: Its Definition and Assessment), Robert Swartz, Robert Ennis and many others. The emergence of the Informal Logic and Critical Thinking movement was an exciting time and I feel fortunate to have been part of it.

Recently, there have been at least five best sellers critical of religion and religious belief. It seems, at least among readers in the U.S., that there is great interest in questions about the rationality of religious belief. Ironically, critical thinking texts seldom examine the topic. After reviewing a series of previous arguments that people have an ethical duty to think critically, this paper will evaluate a number of arguments intended to exempt religious belief from the sorts of rational critique covered in critical thinking classes. After critiquing each argument, I conclude that the proper scope of critical thinking should include religious beliefs. In summary, if people have an ethical duty to think critically about important beliefs and religious beliefs are indeed important, then people have an obligation to think critically about religious beliefs. Nothing in the paper addresses the question of whether it is or is not rational to endorse a religion.

This study describes the methodology used by Marcos Y. Lopez of the Centro Escolar University in developing and validating The CEU-Lopez Critical Thinking Test. The test is a multi-aspect general-knowledge critical thinking test designed for Filipino students in tertiary level. It uses Ennis’s conception of critical thinking (Ennis 1987, 1996, 2002, 2011a) in the development of test items. The use of verbal reports of thinking to establish validity and fairness of multiple-choice critical thinking test is based on the study by Norris (1992) in validating his co-authored Test on Appraising Observations. Verbal reports of thinking are useful in establishing validity and fairness of multiple-choice critical thinking tests for they provide evidence to judge whether good thinking is in general associated with choosing answers credited by the key as correct and poor thinking is associated with choosing unkeyed answers (Norris, 1988,1990,1992). The eight processes employed in developing and validating this multiple-choice critical thinking test are as follows: (1) test conceptualization, (2) development of a test plan, (3) development of test items, (4) face and content validation of the test, (5) revision of the test items, (6) pre try-out of the test, (7) actual try-out of the test, and (8) construct validation of the test using verbal reports of thinking. The CEU-Lopez Critical Thinking Test consists of 87 items that focus on five aspects of critical thinking: deduction, credibility judgment, assumption identification, induction, and meaning.

In an attempt to reduce dangerous driving behavior of those students enrolled in an upper level course at Sam Houston State University, students performed a series of critical thinking assignments and completed a survey to record their behavior and habits related to driving and the project. The project included a lab experiment, lecture, class discussion, video, and a culminating paper to synthesize the scientific information with real world and classroom experiences. Inspired by the approach to critical thinking put forward by Duron, Limbach, and Waugh, critical thinking for each assignment was implemented through instructions and feedback. Results showed that the critical thinking led to behavior changes in the students’ driving during the semester. It was also determined that the students chose to reduce their distracted driving behaviors based on what they learned and experienced through the project. Within this small sample, using critical thinking to apply conceptual knowledge to real world behaviors led to behavioral changes and real learning.

The HCTA test is a recent addition to the commercially available array of critical-thinking assessment tests in higher education. After an introductory description of the test, I critically review it and conclude that, despite the fact that the HCTA is certainly well-intentioned, it has serious flaws with respect to its affordability, accessibility, and validity.

Critical thinking is viewed as an important outcome of undergraduate education by higher education institutions and potential employees of graduates. However, the lack of clarity and inadequate assessment of critical thinking development in higher education is problematic. The purpose of this study was to develop instruments to assess the competence of faculty to develop critical thinking of undergraduate students as perceived by students and by faculty themselves. The measures of critical thinking teaching were developed in two phases. Phase I focused on development of critical thinking items while Phase II focused on initial validation of the critical thinking inventories. Six brief instruments were developed, all with high reliability and validity. Scale length ranged from 10 to 13 items. Four measures captured students’ perceptions of learning critical thinking and constituted the Learning Critical Thinking Inventory (LCTI). Two scales were intended for faculty to assess their perceptions of the extent they facilitated learning critical thinking in their teaching, and these constituted the Teaching Critical Thinking Inventory (TCTI). The psychometric characteristics of the inventories meet high standards, the measures are sufficiently brief to make them suitable for repeated administration, and different parallel forms are of great value for multiple administrations.

This autobiographical piece is in response to Frank Fair’s kind invitation to write a reflective piece on my involvement over the last 30 years in the critical thinking movement, with special attention given to 18 years of assessment data as I assessed students’ critical thinking (CT) outcomes at Baker University. The first section of the paper deals with my intellectual history and how I came to a specific understanding of CT. The second deals with the Baker Experiment (1988 to 2009) in combining instruction in CT with written composition, with a special focus on Deductive Reconstruction. The third section goes over our attempts at assessment and what we discovered by using three separate tests. The final section of the paper presents my conclusions about the challenges of teaching CT based on the Baker Experiment.

Discussions of critical thinking across the curriculum typically make and explain points and distinctions that bear on one or a few standard issues. In this article Robert Ennis takes a different approach, starting with a fairly comprehensive concrete proposal (called “The Wisdom CTAC Program”) for a four-year higher-education curriculum incorporating critical-thinking at hypothetical Wisdom University. Aspects of the Program include a one-year critical thinking freshman course with practical everyday-life and academic critical thinking goals; extensive infusion of critical thinking in other courses; a senior project; attention to both critical thinking dispositions and skills; a glossary of critical thinking terms; emphasis on teaching (interactive discussion, using multiple varied examples, teaching for transfer, and making principles explicit); communication at all levels; and last, but definitely not least, assessment. Advantages and disadvantages will be noted. Subsequently, Ennis takes and defends a position on each of several relevant controversial issues, including: 1) having a separate critical thinking course, or embedding critical thinking in existing subject matter courses, or doing both (the last being the position he takes here); 2) the meaning of “critical thinking”; 3) the importance of teaching critical thinking because of its role in our everyday vocational, civic, and personal lives, as well as in our academic experiences; 4) the degree of subject-specificity of critical thinking; 5) the importance of making critical thinking principles explicit; and 6) the possible threat to subject matter coverage from the addition of critical thinking to the curriculum.

Three Associate Editors of INQUIRY raise several critical issues for Robert Ennis’ vision as proposed in his “Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum: The Wisdom CTAC Program.” Ennis gives specific responses (in italics) to each of the issues they raise, thereby clarifying the intent of the proposed CTAC program and several of its particular features.

Literary analysis offers English instructors an ideal vehicle for modeling, practicing, and teaching critical thinking skills. In Part I of this paper (Hiner 2013a), I argued that, because literature students must master the skills of analysis, reasoning, evaluation, and argumentation, they can benefit from deliberate and explicit instruction in the concepts and practices of critical thinking in the classroom, including instruction in the elements of reasoning and the standards of critical thinking described by critical thinking experts Richard Paul, Linda Elder, and Gerald Nosich. In Part II of this paper (Hiner 2013b), a demonstration is given of how protagonists in literary works such as Pip from Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860-61/1996) can be understood and interpreted as literary representations of an individual’s transition from a first-order, unreflective thinker to a second-order, reflective, metacognitive critical thinker, further illuminating the literary texts and further reinforcing students’ understanding of the concepts of critical thinking.