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Educational Critique, Critical Thinking and the Critical Philosophical Traditions

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Marianna Papastephanou, Educational Critique, Critical Thinking and the Critical Philosophical Traditions, Journal of Philosophy of Education , Volume 38, Issue 3, August 2004, Pages 369–378, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-8249.2004.00391.x

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Responding to Jan Masschelein’s discussion of critical distance and the trivialisation of critique in his ‘How to Conceive of Critical Educational Theory Today?’, I draw attention to the antinomic character of immanence and transcendence—that is, to the way that it entails both non-circumventible necessity and omnipresent risks. I argue that the discourse of critical thinking in education is exemplary of the tensions generated by such consolidated meanings. Through this prism, I aim to offer a nuanced account of ways in which the trivialisation of critique nurtures narcissistic and conformist tendencies that do not leave unaffected any critical philosophical line of thought. To illustrate my critique of contemporary critical education of all persuasions, I deal with an ethics of reading and writing. I suggest that, rather than encouraging cynicism and an abdication of responsibility, this antinomic character of critique should discourage any complacent and one-sided reliance on one’s own tradition.

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Philosophical Education, An Overview of

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• Bruno Ćurko 2  

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Critical thinking ; Dewey ; Education ; Philosophy in education ; Philosophy of education

Introduction

Education has always been closely related to philosophy. The first serious observation about the purpose and means of education was undertaken by the Pre-Socratic thinkers. Pedagogy, didactics, and other educational disciplines originated from philosophical thinking. In fact, it is impossible to have a serious discussion about education without venturing into the philosophy of education. As Max Black put it nicely, “All serious discussion of educational problems, no matter how specific, soon leads to a consideration of educational aims , and becomes a conversation about the good life, the nature of man, the varieties of experience” (Black 1969 ). It is precisely from this quote that we can interpret philosophy of education as a modern philosophical discipline which aims to determine the purpose and means of education, as well as its influence on life and society. It can range from...

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Bacon, F. (1906). Advancement of learning/The New Atlantis. London: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press.

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Copleston, F.S.J. (1993). A history of philosophy, Volume I - Greece and Rome. New York: Images Books.

Black, M. (1969). A note on “Philosophy of Education”. In C. J. Lucas (Ed.), What is philosophy of education? London: Macmillan.

Dewey, J. (1997). How we think. New York: Courier, Dover Publications.

Diels, H. (1983). Predsokratovci: Fragmenti. Zagreb.

Fisher, A. (2001). Critical thinking: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kant, I. (1970). Kant political writings (Cambridge texts in the history of political thought). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lipman, M. (2003). Thinking in education . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Bruno Ćurko

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Ćurko, B. (2017). Philosophical Education, An Overview of. In: Peters, M.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-588-4_159

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• Introduction

Principal historical figures

• The aims of education
• Clarification of educational concepts
• Rights, power, and authority
• Critical thinking
• Indoctrination
• The individual and society
• Moral education
• Teaching, learning, and curriculum
• Educational research
• Feminist, multiculturalist, and postmodern criticisms

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• How did John Locke influence the design of U.S. government?

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philosophy of education , philosophical reflection on the nature, aims, and problems of education . The philosophy of education is Janus -faced, looking both inward to the parent discipline of philosophy and outward to educational practice. (In this respect it is like other areas of “applied” philosophy, such as the philosophy of law , the philosophy of science , and the philosophy of medicine, including bioethics .) This dual focus requires it to work on both sides of the traditional divide between theory and practice, taking as its subject matter both basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of knowledge) and more specific issues arising from educational practice (e.g., the desirability of standardized testing). These practical issues in turn have implications for a variety of long-standing philosophical problems in epistemology , metaphysics , ethics , and political philosophy . In addressing these many issues and problems, the philosopher of education strives for conceptual clarity, argumentative rigour, and informed valuation.

(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)

The history of philosophy of education is an important source of concerns and issues—as is the history of education itself—for setting the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers of education. Equally relevant is the range of contemporary approaches to the subject. Although it is not possible here to review systematically either that history or those contemporary approaches, brief sketches of several key figures are offered next.

The Western philosophical tradition began in ancient Greece, and philosophy of education began with it. The major historical figures developed philosophical views of education that were embedded in their broader metaphysical , epistemological, ethical , and political theories. The introduction by Socrates of the “Socratic method” of questioning ( see dialectic ) began a tradition in which reasoning and the search for reasons that might justify beliefs, judgments, and actions was (and remains) fundamental; such questioning in turn eventually gave rise to the view that education should encourage in all students and persons, to the greatest extent possible, the pursuit of the life of reason. This view of the central place of reason in education has been shared by most of the major figures in the history of philosophy of education, despite the otherwise substantial differences in their other philosophical views.

Socrates’ student Plato endorsed that view and held that a fundamental task of education is that of helping students to value reason and to be reasonable, which for him involved valuing wisdom above pleasure, honour, and other less-worthy pursuits. In his dialogue Republic he set out a vision of education in which different groups of students would receive different sorts of education, depending on their abilities, interests, and stations in life. His utopian vision has been seen by many to be a precursor of what has come to be called educational “sorting.” Millennia later, the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) argued that education should be tailored to the individual child, though he rejected Plato’s hierarchical sorting of students into categories.

Plato’s student Aristotle also took the highest aim of education to be the fostering of good judgment or wisdom, but he was more optimistic than Plato about the ability of the typical student to achieve it. He also emphasized the fostering of moral virtue and the development of character; his emphasis on virtue and his insistence that virtues develop in the context of community-guided practice—and that the rights and interests of individual citizens do not always outweigh those of the community—are reflected in contemporary interest in “virtue theory” in ethics and “communitarianism” in political philosophy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) famously insisted that formal education, like society itself, is inevitably corrupting; he argued that education should enable the “natural” and “free” development of children, a view that eventually led to the modern movement known as “open education.” These ideas are in some ways reflected in 20th-century “progressivism,” a movement often (but not always accurately) associated with Dewey. Unlike Plato, Rousseau also prescribed fundamentally distinct educations for boys and girls, and in doing so he raised issues concerning gender and its place in education that are of central concern today. Dewey emphasized the educational centrality of experience and held that experience is genuinely educational only when it leads to “growth.” But the idea that the aim of education is growth has proved to be a problematic and controversial one, and even the meaning of the slogan is unclear. Dewey also emphasized the importance of the student’s own interests in determining appropriate educational activities and ends-in-view; in this respect he is usually seen as a proponent of “child-centred” education, though he also stressed the importance of students’ understanding of traditional subject matter. While these Deweyan themes are strongly reminiscent of Rousseau, Dewey placed them in a far more sophisticated—albeit philosophically contentious—context. He emphasized the central importance of education for the health of democratic social and political institutions, and he developed his educational and political views from a foundation of systematic metaphysics and epistemology.

Of course, the history of philosophy of education includes many more figures than Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Dewey. Other major philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas , Augustine , Thomas Hobbes , René Descartes , John Locke , David Hume , Immanuel Kant , John Stuart Mill , Karl Marx , Bertrand Russell , and, more recently, R.S. Peters in Britain and Israel Scheffler in the United States , have also made substantial contributions to educational thought. It is worth noting again that virtually all these figures, despite their many philosophical differences and with various qualifications and differences of emphasis, take the fundamental aim of education to be the fostering of rationality ( see reason ). No other proposed aim of education has enjoyed the positive endorsement of so many historically important philosophers—although, as will be seen below, this aim has come under increasing scrutiny in recent decades.

8. Philosophy and Critical Thinking: The Value of Asking the Deep Questions

Although we’ve emphasized in this guide that critical thinking skills cannot be taught in isolation from subject matter, there is a great deal of critical thinking to be learned from a subject that studies thinking itself: namely, philosophy. Philosophy and critical thinking are a natural pair.

American schools, unlike schools in some other parts of the world, have been hesitant to adopt philosophy courses into the curriculum. (One exception is the International Baccalaureate curriculum which includes a course called “Theory of Knowledge.”) One reason for this is that philosophical texts are often thought of as too dense and difficult for primary and secondary school students. 

Philosophy does, of course, involve a corpus of often quite difficult texts from different traditions, but philosophical reasoning itself is not at all outside the reach of even young children. Indeed, children show an interest in philosophical questions at a very young age. 

Philosophical reasoning itself is not at all outside the reach of even young children. Indeed, children show an interest in philosophical questions at a very young age.

And older students, especially those who might be demotivated or struggle in other subjects, can be stimulated by the more open-ended, argumentative, and profound nature of philosophical thinking. Philosophical thinking also has a unique, interdisciplinary character that makes it ideal for helping students see connections across disciplines.

Philosophy for Kids

Philosophical reasoning is not something foreign to kids that needs to be forced on them from the outside. They all naturally ask philosophical questions like : 

• “How can we be sure that everything is not a dream?”
• “When Dad tells me to be good, what does he mean?”
• “Why is time so slow sometimes?”

Philosophy for kids programs and courses can help encourage this inquisitiveness and help kids to learn to channel it into a reflective frame of mind.

Many philosophy for kids programs attempt to initiate this type of thinking through narrative. For example, the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children ( IAPC ) at Montclair State University, which goes back to the work of Matthew Lipman in the 1970s, uses stories to stimulate discussion of a philosophical topic. Children then discuss the topic in a “community of inquiry” where the teacher acts as a facilitator, who “both guides the children and models for them — by asking open-ended questions, posing alternative views, seeking clarification, questioning reasons, and by demonstrating self-correcting behavior.”

Other philosophy for kids initiatives use other stimuli, like visuals, thought experiments, or simply probing questions. But they share the goal of building a “community of inquiry,” where students get a chance to discuss and refine their ideas with one another, undertake to understand outside perspectives, and consider big questions outside the scope of more standard learning.

There is evidence that these kinds of philosophical activities can have a positive impact on student achievement . The Education Endowment Foundation in the UK found in an initial study of Philosophy for Children for 8-10 year olds that the program was promising: students made gains in math and reading compared to those who did not participate.

Teaching Philosophy to Middle and High School Students

As they get older, students are ready for more complex philosophical reasoning as well as instruction in formal logic. Philosophy can, moreover, be a driver of interdisciplinarity during middle and high school, since reflecting on the state of knowledge in other disciplines is one of the core tasks of philosophy.

Philosophy can, moreover, be a driver of interdisciplinarity during middle and high school, since reflecting on the state of knowledge in other disciplines is one of the core tasks of philosophy.

This kind of interdisciplinarity may help address one of the thorniest problems with critical thinking instruction: namely, transferability. As we’ve noted, critical thinking skills in one domain do not easily transfer to other domains. Teaching general critical thinking skills without any context is thus generally not effective . But that doesn’t mean students shouldn’t spend time thinking about how the skills and knowledge they’ve gained in one domain relate to those gained in another. Philosophical reasoning is a perfect complement here. 

One way teachers can get middle and high school students to start thinking more philosophically in an interdisciplinary context is through epistemology, or the study of knowledge.

Idea for Discussion : What Is Knowledge?

Philosophy is concerned, more than many other disciplines, with definitions. It takes concepts that we might take for granted, like knowledge, and problematizes them, by asking questions like:

• How do we know something?
• Are there general principles for what counts as knowledge or does it depend on the discipline?
• How do we come to know things in science? In our daily lives? In religion or aesthetic experiences?

It’s easy for these conversations to become too abstract so it’s best to start with something concrete. Break students up and assign them each a particular subject matter: art, science, religion, and morality, for example. Ask them to define knowledge in each of these domains?

• How do you know a piece of artwork is good?
• How is a scientific theory known to be true?
• How do people know a religious belief they have is true?
• How do we know the difference between right and wrong moral actions?

Ask students to come up with a definition. As they discuss, circulate to make sure students are using examples from their own study and experiences and trying to develop a list of criteria for knowledge in these different domains.

Bring the class back together to evaluate the definitions. Ask students from other groups to scrutinize each others’ definitions. The teacher might raise certain objections to try and deepen discussion:

• In science, for example, a group might say a theory is known to be true because it is verified in experimental results. But Isaac Newton’s physics were eventually shown to be inaccurate in certain cases. Is it right to say that before Albert Einstein came along, with a new, more experimentally accurate theory, people knew Newton’s theory was true? Or did they only think they knew?

Then, ask students to reflect on whether there is anything shared among these different kinds of “knowledge.” Questions that might come up include:

• Are there any general shared principles of inquiry common to these different domains: for example, experimentation or learning from one’s predecessors?
• Is it just happenstance that we happen to apply the words “know” and “knowledge” to these very different activities?
• Can we draw a clean distinction between practical knowledge (“knowing how”) and theoretical knowledge (“knowing that”)?

Download our

 teachers’ guide.

(please click here)

Sources and Resources

Goering, Sara, Nicholas J. Shudak, and Thomas E. Wartenberg, eds (2013). Philosophy in schools: An introduction for philosophers and teachers . Routledge. Collection of essays on different aspects of pre-college philosophy education.

Lone, J. M. & Burroughs, M.D. (2016). Philosophy in education: Questioning and dialogue in schools . Rowman & Littlefield. Argument for introducing philosophy in the K-12 context, with lesson ideas for elementary, middle, and high school. 

Millett, S., & Tapper, A. (2012). Benefits of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools. Educational Philosophy and Theory , 44(5), 546-567. Overview on research into philosophy for kids and collaborative philosophical inquiry more broadly. 

Pritchard, Michael (2018). Philosophy for children . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Encyclopedia entry on the history of rationale for philosophy for children. Also offers details on different approaches and more resources.

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Educating Reason: Critical Thinking, Informal logic, and the Philosophy of Education

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A Brief History of the Idea of Critical Thinking

Philosophy Behind Critical Thinking: A Concise Overview

The philosophy behind critical thinking delves into the deeper understanding of what it means to think critically and to develop the ability to reason, analyze, and evaluate information in a structured and systematic manner. Critical thinking has intricate connections with philosophy, mainly because it originated from ancient philosophical teachings. At its core, the concept of critical thinking is rooted in the Socratic method of questioning, which emphasizes the importance of inquiry and rational thinking as a means to achieve knowledge.

Key Takeaways

Understanding critical thinking, definition and process.

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It involves engaging in reflective and independent thinking . To understand the logical connections between ideas, one needs to identify, construct, and evaluate arguments.

Logic, Reason, Rationality

Logic, reason, and rationality are essential components of critical thinking. Logic refers to the systematic approach to reasoning and validating claims through principles and rules. Reasoning, on the other hand, is the process of drawing conclusions based on logic, evidence, and assumptions. Rationality encompasses the use of logic and reason to make well-informed decisions, judgments, and evaluations.

Strategies and Patterns

Justification and argumentation.

Justification and argumentation play a crucial role in critical thinking. Justification refers to providing reasons or evidence in support of a claim, while argumentation involves constructing and evaluating arguments . Both justification and argumentation require logical reasoning, analysis of evidence, and clear communication of ideas.

Clarity and Reflection

Clarity is essential for effective critical thinking. This entails expressing ideas and arguments in a clear, concise, and organized manner. Furthermore, critical thinkers must also engage in reflection — the process of examining their own thought processes, assumptions, and biases. Reflecting on one’s beliefs and values helps individuals refine their thinking and develop a more nuanced understanding of the world around them.

In conclusion, understanding critical thinking involves exploring its definition, process, and key components, such as logic, reason, rationality, strategies, patterns, justification, argumentation, clarity, and reflection. By cultivating a strong foundation in these areas, individuals can develop their ability to think critically and make well-informed decisions in various aspects of life.

Psychological Approach to Critical Thinking

Cognition and Pattern Recognition

Bias and judgments.

Another aspect of the psychological approach to critical thinking is the examination of biases and judgments. Bias refers to the systematic errors or distortions in human reasoning that can arise from emotions, beliefs, or external factors. When individuals possess a strong bias, it can impede their ability to think critically and accurately evaluate information. By being aware of these biases and actively seeking to minimize their influence, one can improve their critical thinking skills and make more accurate judgments.

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

Philosophical groundings, roots of critical thought.

The roots of critical thought can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy, particularly the ideas developed by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In their teachings, these philosophers emphasized the importance of questioning and examining beliefs, seeking evidence, and evaluating arguments logically. Through these pursuits, they laid a strong foundation for the development of critical thinking in modern times.

Major Philosophers and Approaches

Informal logic and its importance.

Informal logic plays a crucial role in critical thinking as it concerns the principles and methods used to analyze everyday arguments and reasoning beyond the scope of formal logic. It complements formal logic, which deals strictly with logical systems and symbols. Informal logic helps individuals assess the validity, soundness, and context of arguments encountered in daily life. By honing their skills in informal logic, individuals can become better critical thinkers and more adept at navigating complex situations and decision-making processes.

Critical Thinking in Cultural and Social Context

Race and gender perspectives.

Critical thinking is a universal skill that transcends cultural and social boundaries. However, it is essential to consider the impact of race and gender on the development and exercise of critical thinking skills. People from marginalized groups may experience unique challenges and perspectives that influence their critical thinking abilities. For example, in a cross-cultural study examining critical thinking among nurse scholars in Thailand and the United States, distinctive perspectives on critical thinking were observed due to cultural differences. Understanding the intersections of race, gender, and critical thinking can help create more inclusive education and workplace environments that foster critical thinking for everyone.

Critical Thinking in a Democratic Society

In a democratic society, critical thinking plays a crucial role in informed decision-making, civic engagement, and open discussion. The healthy functioning of a democracy relies on the citizens’ capacity to discern reliable information, assess arguments, and make rational choices. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , critical thinking includes abilities and dispositions that lead individuals to think critically when appropriate. Developing these skills allows members of democratic societies to engage in productive debates, evaluate policies, and hold leaders accountable.

Culture, Society, and Critical Thinking

Role of critical thinking in education, aims of education.

The primary aim of education is to foster the development of individuals’ cognitive capabilities, empowering them to grow into confident, knowledgeable and discerning adults. Critical thinking plays a significant role in education as it helps students acquire and apply knowledge more effectively, by analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information from diverse sources in a systematic manner, leading to more accurate and informed decisions.

Skills Development

Classroom activities focused on critical thinking are essential to help students develop a systematic approach to problem-solving and sharpen their analytical skills. Practical tasks, like debates, group discussions, case studies, or role plays, can be employed to engage students in active learning, thus enhancing their critical thought processes.

Standardized Tests vs. Critical Thought

While standardized tests have dominated the contemporary education system, there is growing concern regarding their effectiveness in promoting critical thinking. Some argue that standardized tests prioritize the acquisition of specific knowledge over the development of essential skills and abilities, leading to an education that is more focused on rote memorization than meaningful learning.

Importance of Open-Mindedness and Skepticism

Being skeptical vs. being cynical.

It is essential to understand the difference between being skeptical and being cynical. Skepticism in critical thinking involves questioning assertions and assumptions, seeking evidence, and evaluating arguments from a neutral, objective viewpoint. On the other hand, cynicism is a distrustful attitude, where one assumes negative intentions or outcomes.

Traits of an Open-Minded Thinker

Open-mindedness is an essential trait for critical thinkers. Some key characteristics of an open-minded thinker include:

Role of Curiosity and Empathy in Critical Thinking

Empathy, on the other hand, permits critical thinkers to comprehend and appreciate different perspectives by placing themselves in others’ shoes. An empathetic approach contributes to open-mindedness and cultivates a sense of humility, recognizing that individuals may hold contrasting opinions based on personal experiences or beliefs. The combination of curiosity and empathy enhances critical thinking by promoting a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of complex issues and scenarios.

Critical thinking equips individuals with the tools necessary to think carefully with clarity, depth, precision, accuracy, and logic 3 . It has applications across various domains, such as science, where great scientists like Albert Einstein have benefited from critical thinking skills to discover groundbreaking concepts.

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5 critical thinking techniques for better problem-solving in everyday life, effective argumentation techniques: mastering persuasive communication, critical thinking in leadership, evaluate evidence: strategies for objective analysis in research, download this free ebook.

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Supplement to Critical Thinking

This supplement elaborates on the history of the articulation, promotion and adoption of critical thinking as an educational goal.

John Dewey (1910: 74, 82) introduced the term ‘critical thinking’ as the name of an educational goal, which he identified with a scientific attitude of mind. More commonly, he called the goal ‘reflective thought’, ‘reflective thinking’, ‘reflection’, or just ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’. He describes his book as written for two purposes. The first was to help people to appreciate the kinship of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry to the scientific attitude. The second was to help people to consider how recognizing this kinship in educational practice “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (iii). He notes that the ideas in the book obtained concreteness in the Laboratory School in Chicago.

Dewey’s ideas were put into practice by some of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study in the 1930s sponsored by the Progressive Education Association in the United States. For this study, 300 colleges agreed to consider for admission graduates of 30 selected secondary schools or school systems from around the country who experimented with the content and methods of teaching, even if the graduates had not completed the then-prescribed secondary school curriculum. One purpose of the study was to discover through exploration and experimentation how secondary schools in the United States could serve youth more effectively (Aikin 1942). Each experimental school was free to change the curriculum as it saw fit, but the schools agreed that teaching methods and the life of the school should conform to the idea (previously advocated by Dewey) that people develop through doing things that are meaningful to them, and that the main purpose of the secondary school was to lead young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18). In particular, school officials believed that young people in a democracy should develop the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems (Aikin 1942: 81). Students’ work in the classroom thus consisted more often of a problem to be solved than a lesson to be learned. Especially in mathematics and science, the schools made a point of giving students experience in clear, logical thinking as they solved problems. The report of one experimental school, the University School of Ohio State University, articulated this goal of improving students’ thinking:

Critical or reflective thinking originates with the sensing of a problem. It is a quality of thought operating in an effort to solve the problem and to reach a tentative conclusion which is supported by all available data. It is really a process of problem solving requiring the use of creative insight, intellectual honesty, and sound judgment. It is the basis of the method of scientific inquiry. The success of democracy depends to a large extent on the disposition and ability of citizens to think critically and reflectively about the problems which must of necessity confront them, and to improve the quality of their thinking is one of the major goals of education. (Commission on the Relation of School and College of the Progressive Education Association 1943: 745–746)

The Eight-Year Study had an evaluation staff, which developed, in consultation with the schools, tests to measure aspects of student progress that fell outside the focus of the traditional curriculum. The evaluation staff classified many of the schools’ stated objectives under the generic heading “clear thinking” or “critical thinking” (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942: 35–36). To develop tests of achievement of this broad goal, they distinguished five overlapping aspects of it: ability to interpret data, abilities associated with an understanding of the nature of proof, and the abilities to apply principles of science, of social studies and of logical reasoning. The Eight-Year Study also had a college staff, directed by a committee of college administrators, whose task was to determine how well the experimental schools had prepared their graduates for college. The college staff compared the performance of 1,475 college students from the experimental schools with an equal number of graduates from conventional schools, matched in pairs by sex, age, race, scholastic aptitude scores, home and community background, interests, and probable future. They concluded that, on 18 measures of student success, the graduates of the experimental schools did a somewhat better job than the comparison group. The graduates from the six most traditional of the experimental schools showed no large or consistent differences. The graduates from the six most experimental schools, on the other hand, had much greater differences in their favour. The graduates of the two most experimental schools, the college staff reported:

… surpassed their comparison groups by wide margins in academic achievement, intellectual curiosity, scientific approach to problems, and interest in contemporary affairs. The differences in their favor were even greater in general resourcefulness, in enjoyment of reading, [in] participation in the arts, in winning non-academic honors, and in all aspects of college life except possibly participation in sports and social activities. (Aikin 1942: 114)

One of these schools was a private school with students from privileged families and the other the experimental section of a public school with students from non-privileged families. The college staff reported that the graduates of the two schools were indistinguishable from each other in terms of college success.

In 1933 Dewey issued an extensively rewritten edition of his How We Think (Dewey 1910), with the sub-title “A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process”. Although the restatement retains the basic structure and content of the original book, Dewey made a number of changes. He rewrote and simplified his logical analysis of the process of reflection, made his ideas clearer and more definite, replaced the terms ‘induction’ and ‘deduction’ by the phrases ‘control of data and evidence’ and ‘control of reasoning and concepts’, added more illustrations, rearranged chapters, and revised the parts on teaching to reflect changes in schools since 1910. In particular, he objected to one-sided practices of some “experimental” and “progressive” schools that allowed children freedom but gave them no guidance, citing as objectionable practices novelty and variety for their own sake, experiences and activities with real materials but of no educational significance, treating random and disconnected activity as if it were an experiment, failure to summarize net accomplishment at the end of an inquiry, non-educative projects, and treatment of the teacher as a negligible factor rather than as “the intellectual leader of a social group” (Dewey 1933: 273). Without explaining his reasons, Dewey eliminated the previous edition’s uses of the words ‘critical’ and ‘uncritical’, thus settling firmly on ‘reflection’ or ‘reflective thinking’ as the preferred term for his subject-matter. In the revised edition, the word ‘critical’ occurs only once, where Dewey writes that “a person may not be sufficiently critical about the ideas that occur to him” (1933: 16, italics in original); being critical is thus a component of reflection, not the whole of it. In contrast, the Eight-Year Study by the Progressive Education Association treated ‘critical thinking’ and ‘reflective thinking’ as synonyms.

In the same period, Dewey collaborated on a history of the Laboratory School in Chicago with two former teachers from the school (Mayhew & Edwards 1936). The history describes the school’s curriculum and organization, activities aimed at developing skills, parents’ involvement, and the habits of mind that the children acquired. A concluding chapter evaluates the school’s achievements, counting as a success its staging of the curriculum to correspond to the natural development of the growing child. In two appendices, the authors describe the evolution of Dewey’s principles of education and Dewey himself describes the theory of the Chicago experiment (Dewey 1936).

Glaser (1941) reports in his doctoral dissertation the method and results of an experiment in the development of critical thinking conducted in the fall of 1938. He defines critical thinking as Dewey defined reflective thinking:

Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Glaser 1941: 6; cf. Dewey 1910: 6; Dewey 1933: 9)

In the experiment, eight lesson units directed at improving critical thinking abilities were taught to four grade 12 high school classes, with pre-test and post-test of the students using the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test and the Watson-Glaser Tests of Critical Thinking (developed in collaboration with Glaser’s dissertation sponsor, Goodwin Watson). The average gain in scores on these tests was greater to a statistically significant degree among the students who received the lessons in critical thinking than among the students in a control group of four grade 12 high school classes taking the usual curriculum in English. Glaser concludes:

The aspect of critical thinking which appears most susceptible to general improvement is the attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experience. An attitude of wanting evidence for beliefs is more subject to general transfer. Development of skill in applying the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, however, appears to be specifically related to, and in fact limited by, the acquisition of pertinent knowledge and facts concerning the problem or subject matter toward which the thinking is to be directed. (Glaser 1941: 175)

Retest scores and observable behaviour indicated that students in the intervention group retained their growth in ability to think critically for at least six months after the special instruction.

In 1948 a group of U.S. college examiners decided to develop taxonomies of educational objectives with a common vocabulary that they could use for communicating with each other about test items. The first of these taxonomies, for the cognitive domain, appeared in 1956 (Bloom et al. 1956), and included critical thinking objectives. It has become known as Bloom’s taxonomy. A second taxonomy, for the affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia 1964), and a third taxonomy, for the psychomotor domain (Simpson 1966–67), appeared later. Each of the taxonomies is hierarchical, with achievement of a higher educational objective alleged to require achievement of corresponding lower educational objectives.

Bloom’s taxonomy has six major categories. From lowest to highest, they are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Within each category, there are sub-categories, also arranged hierarchically from the educationally prior to the educationally posterior. The lowest category, though called ‘knowledge’, is confined to objectives of remembering information and being able to recall or recognize it, without much transformation beyond organizing it (Bloom et al. 1956: 28–29). The five higher categories are collectively termed “intellectual abilities and skills” (Bloom et al. 1956: 204). The term is simply another name for critical thinking abilities and skills:

Although information or knowledge is recognized as an important outcome of education, very few teachers would be satisfied to regard this as the primary or the sole outcome of instruction. What is needed is some evidence that the students can do something with their knowledge, that is, that they can apply the information to new situations and problems. It is also expected that students will acquire generalized techniques for dealing with new problems and new materials. Thus, it is expected that when the student encounters a new problem or situation, he will select an appropriate technique for attacking it and will bring to bear the necessary information, both facts and principles. This has been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others. In the taxonomy, we have used the term “intellectual abilities and skills”. (Bloom et al. 1956: 38)

Comprehension and application objectives, as their names imply, involve understanding and applying information. Critical thinking abilities and skills show up in the three highest categories of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The condensed version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956: 201–207) gives the following examples of objectives at these levels:

• analysis objectives : ability to recognize unstated assumptions, ability to check the consistency of hypotheses with given information and assumptions, ability to recognize the general techniques used in advertising, propaganda and other persuasive materials
• synthesis objectives : organizing ideas and statements in writing, ability to propose ways of testing a hypothesis, ability to formulate and modify hypotheses
• evaluation objectives : ability to indicate logical fallacies, comparison of major theories about particular cultures

The analysis, synthesis and evaluation objectives in Bloom’s taxonomy collectively came to be called the “higher-order thinking skills” (Tankersley 2005: chap. 5). Although the analysis-synthesis-evaluation sequence mimics phases in Dewey’s (1933) logical analysis of the reflective thinking process, it has not generally been adopted as a model of a critical thinking process. While commending the inspirational value of its ratio of five categories of thinking objectives to one category of recall objectives, Ennis (1981b) points out that the categories lack criteria applicable across topics and domains. For example, analysis in chemistry is so different from analysis in literature that there is not much point in teaching analysis as a general type of thinking. Further, the postulated hierarchy seems questionable at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. For example, ability to indicate logical fallacies hardly seems more complex than the ability to organize statements and ideas in writing.

A revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) distinguishes the intended cognitive process in an educational objective (such as being able to recall, to compare or to check) from the objective’s informational content (“knowledge”), which may be factual, conceptual, procedural, or metacognitive. The result is a so-called “Taxonomy Table” with four rows for the kinds of informational content and six columns for the six main types of cognitive process. The authors name the types of cognitive process by verbs, to indicate their status as mental activities. They change the name of the ‘comprehension’ category to ‘understand’ and of the ‘synthesis’ category to ’create’, and switch the order of synthesis and evaluation. The result is a list of six main types of cognitive process aimed at by teachers: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The authors retain the idea of a hierarchy of increasing complexity, but acknowledge some overlap, for example between understanding and applying. And they retain the idea that critical thinking and problem solving cut across the more complex cognitive processes. The terms ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’, they write:

are widely used and tend to become touchstones of curriculum emphasis. Both generally include a variety of activities that might be classified in disparate cells of the Taxonomy Table. That is, in any given instance, objectives that involve problem solving and critical thinking most likely call for cognitive processes in several categories on the process dimension. For example, to think critically about an issue probably involves some Conceptual knowledge to Analyze the issue. Then, one can Evaluate different perspectives in terms of the criteria and, perhaps, Create a novel, yet defensible perspective on this issue. (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270; italics in original)

In the revised taxonomy, only a few sub-categories, such as inferring, have enough commonality to be treated as a distinct critical thinking ability that could be taught and assessed as a general ability.

A landmark contribution to philosophical scholarship on the concept of critical thinking was a 1962 article in the Harvard Educational Review by Robert H. Ennis, with the title “A concept of critical thinking: A proposed basis for research in the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability” (Ennis 1962). Ennis took as his starting-point a conception of critical thinking put forward by B. Othanel Smith:

We shall consider thinking in terms of the operations involved in the examination of statements which we, or others, may believe. A speaker declares, for example, that “Freedom means that the decisions in America’s productive effort are made not in the minds of a bureaucracy but in the free market”. Now if we set about to find out what this statement means and to determine whether to accept or reject it, we would be engaged in thinking which, for lack of a better term, we shall call critical thinking. If one wishes to say that this is only a form of problem-solving in which the purpose is to decide whether or not what is said is dependable, we shall not object. But for our purposes we choose to call it critical thinking. (Smith 1953: 130)

Adding a normative component to this conception, Ennis defined critical thinking as “the correct assessing of statements” (Ennis 1962: 83). On the basis of this definition, he distinguished 12 “aspects” of critical thinking corresponding to types or aspects of statements, such as judging whether an observation statement is reliable and grasping the meaning of a statement. He noted that he did not include judging value statements. Cutting across the 12 aspects, he distinguished three dimensions of critical thinking: logical (judging relationships between meanings of words and statements), criterial (knowledge of the criteria for judging statements), and pragmatic (the impression of the background purpose). For each aspect, Ennis described the applicable dimensions, including criteria. He proposed the resulting construct as a basis for developing specifications for critical thinking tests and for research on instructional methods and levels.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was an upsurge of attention to the development of thinking skills. The annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform has attracted since its start in 1980 tens of thousands of educators from all levels. In 1983 the College Entrance Examination Board proclaimed reasoning as one of six basic academic competencies needed by college students (College Board 1983). Departments of education in the United States and around the world began to include thinking objectives in their curriculum guidelines for school subjects. For example, Ontario’s social sciences and humanities curriculum guideline for secondary schools requires “the use of critical and creative thinking skills and/or processes” as a goal of instruction and assessment in each subject and course (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 30). The document describes critical thinking as follows:

Critical thinking is the process of thinking about ideas or situations in order to understand them fully, identify their implications, make a judgement, and/or guide decision making. Critical thinking includes skills such as questioning, predicting, analysing, synthesizing, examining opinions, identifying values and issues, detecting bias, and distinguishing between alternatives. Students who are taught these skills become critical thinkers who can move beyond superficial conclusions to a deeper understanding of the issues they are examining. They are able to engage in an inquiry process in which they explore complex and multifaceted issues, and questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 46).

Sweden makes schools responsible for ensuring that each pupil who completes compulsory school “can make use of critical thinking and independently formulate standpoints based on knowledge and ethical considerations” (Skolverket 2011: 15). Subject syllabi incorporate this requirement, and items testing critical thinking skills appear on national tests in history, Swedish, mathematics and physics that are a required step toward university admission. For example, the physics syllabus emphasizes the importance of “critical examination of information and arguments which students meet in sources and social discussions related to physics” (Skolverket 2011: 124). Correspondingly, the 2013 national test on physics included a question asking students to provide arguments for a recommendation to the Swedish minister of energy on what energy sources to use for electricity production. Other jurisdictions similarly embed critical thinking objectives in curriculum guidelines.

At the college level, a new wave of introductory logic textbooks, pioneered by Kahane (1971), applied the tools of logic to contemporary social and political issues. In their wake, colleges and universities in North America transformed their introductory logic course into a general education service course with a title like ‘critical thinking’ or ‘reasoning’. In 1980, the trustees of California’s state university and colleges approved as a general education requirement a course in critical thinking, described as follows:

Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful conclusion of instruction in critical thinking should be the ability to distinguish fact from judgment, belief from knowledge, and skills in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought. (Dumke 1980)

Since December 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions at the three annual divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association. In December 1987, the Committee on Pre-College Philosophy of the American Philosophical Association invited Peter Facione to make a systematic inquiry into the current state of critical thinking and critical thinking assessment. Facione assembled a group of 46 other academic philosophers and psychologists to participate in a multi-round Delphi process, whose product was entitled Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction (Facione 1990a). The statement listed abilities and dispositions that should be the goals of a lower-level undergraduate course in critical thinking.

Contemporary political and business leaders express support for critical thinking as an educational goal. In his 2014 State of the Union address (Obama 2014), U.S. President Barack Obama listed critical thinking as one of six skills for the new economy targeted with his Race to the Top program. An article in the business magazine Forbes reported that the number one job skill, found in nine out of 10 of the most in-demand jobs, was critical thinking, defined as “using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems” (Casserly 2012). In response to such claims, the European Commission has funded “Critical Thinking across the European Higher Education Curricula”, a nine-country research project to develop guidelines for quality in critical thinking instruction in European institutions of higher education, on the basis of the researchers’ findings of the critical thinking skills and dispositions that employers expect of recent graduates (Dominguez 2018a; 2018b). The Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the Organization for Economic Development (OECD) in early 2018 issued a call for institutions of higher education to participate in a two-year study, with control groups, of interventions in undergraduate or teacher education designed to improve creative and critical thinking (OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation 2018).

Copyright © 2018 by David Hitchcock < hitchckd @ mcmaster . ca >

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