Critical thinking is a high priority outcome of higher education – critical thinking skills are crucial for independent thinking and problem solving in both our students’ professional and personal lives. But, what does it mean to be a critical thinker and how do we promote and assess it in our students? Critical thinking can be defined as being able to examine an issue by breaking it down, and evaluating it in a conscious manner, while providing arguments/evidence to support the evaluation. Below are some suggestions for promoting and assessing critical thinking in our students.
Thinking through inquiry
Asking questions and using the answers to understand the world around us is what drives critical thinking. In inquiry-based instruction, the teacher asks students leading questions to draw from them information, inferences, and predictions about a topic. Below are some example generic question stems that can serve as prompts to aid in generating critical thinking questions. Consider providing prompts such as these to students to facilitate their ability to also ask these questions of themselves and others. If we want students to generate good questions on their own, we need to teach them how to do so by providing them with the structure and guidance of example questions, whether in written form, or by our use of questions in the classroom.
Generic question stems
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of …?
- What is the difference between … and …?
- Explain why/how …?
- What would happen if …?
- What is the nature of …?
- Why is … happening?
- What is a new example of …?
- How could … be used to …?
- What are the implications of …?
- What is … analogous to?
- What do we already know about …?
- How does … affect …?
- How does … tie in with what we have learned before?
- What does … mean?
- Why is … important?
- How are … and … similar/different?
- How does … apply to everyday life?
- What is a counterarguement for …?
- What is the best …and why?
- What is a solution to the problem of …?
- Compare … and … with regard to …?
- What do you think causes …? Why?
- Do you agree or disagree with this statement? What evidence is there to support your answer?
- What is another way to look at …?
Critical thinking through writing
Another essential ingredient in critical thinking instruction is the use of writing. Writing converts students from passive to active learners and requires them to identify issues and formulate hypotheses and arguments. The act of writing requires students to focus and clarify their thoughts before putting them down on paper, hence taking them through the critical thinking process. Writing requires that students make important critical choices and ask themselves (Gocsik, 2002):
- What information is most important?
- What might be left out?
- What is it that I think about this subject?
- How did I arrive at what I think?
- What are my assumptions? Are they valid?
- How can I work with facts, observations, and so on, in order to convince others of what I think?
- What do I not yet understand?
Consider providing the above questions to students so that they can evaluate their own writing as well. Some suggestions for critical thinking writing activities include:
- Give students raw data and ask them to write an argument or analysis based on the data.
- Have students explore and write about unfamiliar points of view or “what if” situations.
- Think of a controversy in your field, and have the students write a dialogue between characters with different points of view.
- Select important articles in your field and ask the students to write summaries or abstracts of them. Alternately, you could ask students to write an abstract of your lecture.
- Develop a scenario that place students in realistic situations relevant to your discipline, where they must reach a decision to resolve a conflict.
See the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) teaching tip “Low-Stakes Writing Assignments” for critical thinking writing assignments.
Critical thinking through group collaboration
Opportunities for group collaboration could include discussions, case studies, task-related group work, peer review, or debates. Group collaboration is effective for promoting critical thought because:
- An effective team has the potential to produce better results than any individual,
- Students are exposed to different perspectives while clarifying their own ideas,
- Collaborating on a project or studying with a group for an exam generally stimulates interest and increases the understanding and knowledge of the topic.
See the CTE teaching tip “Group Work in the Classroom: Types of Small Groups” for suggestions for forming small groups in your classroom.
Assessing critical thinking skills
You can also use the students’ responses from the activities that promote critical thinking to assess whether they are, indeed, reaching your critical thinking goals. It is important to establish clear criteria for evaluating critical thinking. Even though many of us may be able to identify critical thinking when we see it, explicitly stated criteria help both students and teachers know the goal toward which they are working. An effective criterion measures which skills are present, to what extent, and which skills require further development. The following are characteristics of work that may demonstrate effective critical thinking:
- Accurately and thoroughly interprets evidence, statements, graphics, questions, literary elements, etc.
- Asks relevant questions.
- Analyses and evaluates key information, and alternative points of view clearly and precisely.
- Fair-mindedly examines beliefs, assumptions, and opinions and weighs them against facts.
- Draws insightful, reasonable conclusions.
- Justifies inferences and opinions.
- Thoughtfully addresses and evaluates major alternative points of view.
- Thoroughly explains assumptions and reasons.
It is also important to note that assessment is a tool that can be used throughout a course, not just at the end. It is more useful to assess students throughout a course, so you can see if criteria require further clarification and students can test out their understanding of your criteria and receive feedback. Also consider distributing your criteria with your assignments so that students receive guidance about your expectations. This will help them to reflect on their own work and improve the quality of their thinking and writing.
See the CTE teaching tip sheets “Rubrics” and “Responding to Writing Assignments: Managing the Paper Load” for more information on rubrics.
Support
If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help. View the CTE Support page to find the most relevant staff member to contact.
Resources
- Gocsik, K. (2002). Teaching Critical Thinking Skills. UTS Newsletter, 11(2):1-4
- Facione, P.A. and Facione, N.C. (1994). Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric. Millbrae, CA: California Academic Press. www.calpress.com/rubric.html (retrieved September 2003)
- King, A. (1995). Inquiring minds really do want to know: using questioning to teach critical thinking.
Teaching of Psychology, 22(1): 13-17 - Wade, C. and Tavris, C. (1987). Psychology (1st ed.) New York: Harper. IN: Wade, C. (1995). Using Writing to Develop and Assess Critical Thinking. Teaching of Psychology, 22(1): 24-28.
This Creative Commons license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and indicate if changes were made. Use this citation format: Promoting and Assessing Critical Thinking. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo.