Using critical thinking to conceptualise the ‘skill’ of critical thinking
Critical thinking is a hot topic in higher education at the moment. It’s the skill that all employers want and it’s the skill that higher education is trying to figure out how to teach students, emphasised pretty bluntly by Kocak and others: “critical thinking should be considered an essential skill that needs to be improved in education” (2021, p. 11). Of course, critical thinking isn’t a new skill. Educators have been grappling with how to foster critical thinking for a long time now. However, the digital age has brought with it a renewed urgency for critical thinking, driven by “a diagnosis of a crisis of truth, primarily driven by networked digital technologies and social media” (Kerruish, 2023, p. 2).
But, why is it so difficult for us to teach critical thinking and for us to prove that our students are critical thinkers? If we consider it a ‘skill’ in the traditional sense, like knitting is a skill or snowboarding if you’re more adventurous, it should be fairly easy to do this. But, we’re still fighting the same battle.
What if we’re looking at it the wrong way. Maybe conceptualising it as a tangible ‘skill’ is the mistake we’re making. Zembylas tells us that scholars have “recently turned academic attention to the affective dimensions of critical thinking and the idea that critical thinking is embedded in social, embodied and relational contexts, rather than being a decontextualized and individualized set of skills and competences” (2022, p. 2).
One of these scholars is Danvers, who argues that the term “‘skill’ assumes something tangible, transferable and measurable, whereas in practice, the acquisition of particular skills is complex and contextualised” (2016, p. 283). She goes on to note that critical thinking is often conceptualised as “a cognitive act undertaken by ‘reasoned’ and detached bodies” (2016, p. 283) but that perhaps we should consider it as emerging “both through the web of social, material and discursive knowledge practices that constitute criticality and with the different bodies that enact it” (2016, p. 283).
So, then, before we can figure out how to teach our students to be critical thinkers, we should define what critical thinking actually means in today’s world.
Defining ‘critical thinking’
You might not be surprised to hear that “providing a standard definition of CT is a challenging endeavour due to the complexity of CT as a psychological construct'“ (Liu and Pastor, 2022, p. 2). So, how do we teach something that we cannot even define? Especially as research demonstrates that teachers have different understandings of what critical thinking is (Bezanilla et al., 2018).
Many definitions of critical thinking situate it as a concrete skill, characterised by “reasoned, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Liu and Pasztor, 2022, p. 2) and “the metacognitive process consisting of analysis, evaluation, and inference, which increases the possibility of proposing logical problem solutions” (Gonzalez-Chacho and Abbas, 2022, p. 254). But these definitions fail to highlight the complexity of critical thinking, whereby we need to move it away from a skill that can be clarified through tickbox demonstration and towards a disposition that is contextualised.
Davies and Barnett (2015) consider three different perspectives on critical thinking in higher education. They are:
“The philosophical perspective, which is interested in logical thinking, reasoning skills and epistemic rationality; the educational perspective, which is interested in the broader development of the individual student e.g. how critical thinking can benefit through the development and formation of a critico-social attitude; and, finally, the socially active perspective, which is concerned with how critical thinking and attitudes can transform the society” (Zembylas, 2022, p. 4).
Davies and Barnett argue that any model of critical thinking should combine these three perspectives, focussing not only on direct skills and dispositions, but also a “sense of actual or potential action that is often missing from traditional conceptions of critical thinking (Zembylas, 2022, p. 4). But taking this conceptualisation further, Zembylas notes that the concept of feeling is missing. Thinking and feeling are closely aligned; it’s hard to think about anything without attaching some form of feeling to it. And as Zembylas tells us, “by paying attention to the ways that affects are manifested in specific social conditions, we are able to understand the influence and possibilities under which critical thinking operates, as well as the role of critical thinking (as it is entangled with affects) in fostering such conditions'“ (2022, p. 8).
Critical thinking is more than just a tangible skill. It is a disposition, the application of which changes depending on the context in which it is being used. It is aligned to feeling and consequently, is a subjective formation that pertains to an individual’s circumstances. Teaching critical thinking is, therefore, “a multifaceted and cooperative endeavour. It is local rather than universal, situated rather than abstract, so the focus of critical thinking shifts according to the localities of different higher education institutions” (Kerruish, 2023, p. 13).
Thinking critically is often misconstrued by individuals as criticising — you can see why, the words are very similar. But, of course, criticality is not about negative criticism. It is about questioning assumptions. Danvers explored the conceptualisation of critical thinking amongst students and found:
“Students appeared to be entangled within these mixed, yet intense, feelings: desiring the transformative power of criticality while also wishing to disassociate themselves from its negativity. The affective intensities of critical thinking were therefore not linear or straightforward. It could feel good and bad at the same time and these feelings shifted and were constructed in relation to broader affective investments such as the desire to perform as a successful student” (2016, p. 288).
If we accept this conceptualisation, fostering critical thinking becomes less about doing and more about being. We should move from getting students to do critical thinking in an abstract way, and towards getting them to be critical thinkers in an individual way.
Who is the critical thinker?
If we are to turn our students into critical thinkers, we must first understand who the critical thinker is.
According to Danvers, “the figure of the critical thinker is rarely subject to analyses of difference that attend to who these critical beings are, how they came to be seen as critical and how critical bodies are unequally positioned and reproduced in higher education” (2016, p. 283). Danvers uses the lens of feminist theory to address “the ways in which becoming a critical thinker is entangled within unequal gendered, classed and racialised hierarchies of knowledge production and circulation” (2016, p. 283). Building on her conceptualisation of critical thinking as a complex and embodied disposition, she argues that what it means to be a critical thinker is different for different people.
Females, for example, are more hesitant to express criticality for fear of being “the feminist killjoy — one who disrupts the comfortable and who refuses to abide by conventions of happiness in an acceptable way” (Danvers, 2016, p. 291).
In a similar vein to Zembylas, Danvers argues for more attention to be paid to the connection between thinking and feeling, which will move us away from “masculinist conceptions of the rational knowing subject and towards imaginaries which pay more attention to the role of the sense in higher education pedagogies” (2016, p. 283). Indeed, critical thinking is often conceptualised through objectivity and disconnection from emotional thought and feeling. But, by drawing on the work of Holma, Zembylas argues that “critical thinking skills, disconnected from their moral and emotional basis, can lead to self-deception or morally wrong action […] an individualized or psychologized perspective of critical thinking fails to capture the social and political complexities involved in thinking and making a judgment” (2022, p. 5). There is a need to conceptualise critical thinking through multiple lenses, to understand how it feels to be a critical thinker, and how and why these feelings are produced or reproduced within certain bodies, cultures, and relations of power.
Becoming a critical thinker, then, is far from a simple ‘skill’.
So, how do we teach critical thinking?
If only there were a simple answer, but I imagine you have realised by this point that there isn’t.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. Even though it would be incorrect for me to provide a checklist of methods that are guaranteed to foster critical thinking, there are certain markers that we can consider. According to Ostendorf and Thoma (2021), there are indicators for specific dispositions of a critical literate individual:
Disrupting the commonplace
Interrogating multiple viewpoints
Focusing on sociopolitical issues
Taking action and promoting social justice
So, if we consider critical thinking to be about being rather than doing, the above indicators form part of a student’s overall disposition throughout their time in higher education. Higher education is not just about providing students with knowledge and a degree certificate, it is about cultivating their humanity and citizenship.
By this view, we can encourage students to think critically throughout all parts of their learning journey. We don’t need specific methods or tasks because everything they learn and everything they experience should be considered through the lens of criticality. This isn’t just about questioning authority of knowledge (although it’s a good start to get students to realise that knowledge isn’t “truth” just because it’s been published), it’s about getting them to question all of it.
It means questioning, and disrupting, normativity — Why are certain voices listened to more than others? Why are certain practices accepted above others? Who decides?
It means looking at things from all angles — How can different perspectives show us different nuances? Which lens do we look at the world through, and why?
It means thinking about the wider context — How are social and political structures and ideologies showing up? What does that tell us about the “truth” of the knowledge we accept? Who does it serve and who does it harm?
It means trying to change it — How we can promote justice and equality? What can we change in order to make a positive difference? Who is in control of “making a difference” and why?
All and every part of a student’s learning can be overlayed with the above. But, if we want to foster critical thinking in this way, we need to do it ourselves as well. As educators, we must exercise criticality towards our own practices, our own assumptions, our own preferences, and our own ideologies.
Critical thinking should be a collaborative and connected experience between students and educators. This is not something we are imposing on students, it is not another learning outcome for them to demonstrate. It is arrogant to assume that we have done it, we’ve demonstrated critical thinking, and now it’s their turn to prove they have as well. Critical thinking is a continually developed disposition that we should all exercise, and reflect on, throughout our lives. And higher education has the potential to be one of the most productive spaces for exercising the freedom to wonder, to reflect, to question, and to change.
REFERENCES
Bezanilla, M. et al. (2019). Methodologies for teaching-learning critical thinking in higher education - the teacher's view. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1-10.
Danvers, E. C. (2016). Criticality's affective entanglements - rethinking emotion and critical thinking in higher education. Gender and Education, 28(2), 282-297.
Davies, M., and Barnett, R. (2015). “Introduction” In M. Davies, and R. Barnett (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education, pp. 1–29. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gonzalez-Cacho, T. and Abbas, A. (2022). Impact of interactivity and active collaborative learning on students' critical thinking in higher education. IEEE, 17(3).
Kerruish, E. (2023). Critical thinking in higher education - taking Stiegler's counsel on the digital milieu. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1-17.
Kocak, O., Coban, M., Aydin, A. and Cakmak, N. (2021). The mediating role of critical thinking and cooperativity in the 21st century skills of higher education students. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1-15.
Liu, Y. and Pasztor, A. (2022). Effects of problem-based learning instructional intervention on critical thinking in higher education - a meta-analysis. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1-21.
Ostendorf, A. and Thoma, M. (2021). Demands and design principles of a 'heterodox' didactics for promoting critical thinking in higher education. Higher Education, 84, 33-50.
Zembylas, M. (2022). Revisiting the notion of critical thinking in higher education: theorizing the thinking-feeling entanglement using affect theory. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-15.
