I have often heard it said that one of our missions here at SUNY Oneonta is
to get students to think critically. As a topic for discussion at our next
Teaching Breakfast I would like to know what tips and techniques you think
work toward this goal.

Below is a recent posting about this to get your brains working on the
topic.  Please join us on Oct. 2 at 8AM for the next Teaching Breakfast
where we will discuss this important topic.

Jim Greenberg

                      RETHINKING CRITICAL THINKING - VALUES AND ATTITUDES

by Richard A. Lynch

Posted here with permission...

"What is the mark of a liberally educated person?" Many of the
answers to this question converge upon a common theme: critical
thinking.  One 1981 study, for example, notes that "Critical thinking
is perhaps the most general term for the intellectual abilities that
are supposed to be characteristic of the liberally educated person."
The problem, however, is that-like the term "liberal education"
itself-"critical thinking" is understood to mean a wide variety of
more or less closely related things.  Winter, McClelland and Stewart,
analyzing the different senses of the term in higher education
literature, identify seven distinct qualities that are characterized
as "critical thinking" (including "differentiation and discrimination
within a broad range of particular phenomena" and "articulation and
communication of abstract concepts"), that cluster around what they
describe as "the skill of advanced concept formation" (pp. 12, 27).
Another (undated, but post-1995) study employs a "mimimalist" concept
of critical thinking:  "The critical thinking tradition seeks ways of
understanding the mind and then training the intellect so that such
'errors', 'blunders', and 'distortions' of thought are minimized.Š
[T]hose who think critically characteristically strive, for such
intellectual ends as clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth,
breadth, and logicalness."

Something is lost when "critical thinking"-which we so often claim is
one of the most important things students should learn-becomes
reduced to these kinds of cognitive, often more precisely logical,
functions.  (Most university courses on "critical thinking," for
example, are typically courses in informal logic.)  This is
unfortunate because, despite this tendency to reduce critical
thinking to such a least common denominator, the term remains-and the
activity is-both rich and provocative.  Critical thinking is, to put
it bluntly, much more than the ability to recognize a fallacy when
you see one.  But the hard part is to move beyond this and spell out
what that "something more" is.  I want to suggest two important
aspects of a fuller understanding of critical thinking, which may
inform how we approach our teaching:  Good critical thinking is not
value-neutral, nor is it merely instrumental; it is intimately
connected with both values and attitudes.

How is critical thinking connected with values?  In at least two
ways.  First of all, critical thinking presupposes values at the
heart of its activity.  How can one make a good judgment or
assessment of virtually any of the problems and dilemmas that call
for critical thinking, without an evaluative basis for that decision?
But by itself, that is not enough:  good critical thinking does not
just accept a set of values "uncritically."  So the second important
way in which critical thinking is connected to values-without which,
the first connection becomes a sham-is in challenging and
reevaluating the very values that it takes as its basis for judgment.
One important component of critical thinking, then, is some
understanding of one's starting points-who one is, what one believes,
and why.  Critical thinking is thus both reflective and
evaluative-and raises the possibility that both the critical thinker
and her milieu will be challenged, unsettled, and perhaps changed.

This reflexive-and potentially disruptive-feature reveals how
critical thinking is intimately connected with attitudes.  For
Immanuel Kant, "Enlightenment," or "emergence from a self-incurred
immaturity," meant the willingness to think for oneself, to think
critically.   This willingness is an attitude that opens things up to
challenge.  Perhaps most fundamentally, good critical thinking
entails what we might describe as an attitude of "reflective openness
and challenge."  What I mean here is a willingness to genuinely
consider new perspectives-to try to understand them from the
inside-and, at least for a little while, to step outside of one's own
views and acknowledge that one's perspectives, assumptions, and
outlook are vulnerable, perhaps even mistaken or incomplete.  A
critical thinker is willing to turn that criticism upon both these
new approaches and herself, and sometimes even to change what she's
doing or what she believes in light of these critical insights.  This
core attitude may in fact be what makes critical thinking
"critical"-without it, critical thinking becomes a hollow shell, a
mere analytic tool applied to externally determined ends.

Warren Nord offers a compelling redefinition of critical thinking,
that moves it, I think, closer to these deepening relationships with
values and attitudes:  " Critical thinking is not just a matter of
applying the rules of logic (much less scientific method).  It is a
matter of thinking and feeling empathetically with others, of
engaging one's imagination, of having access to a wealth of facts
about the possible effects of alternative actions, of discerning
patterns of meaning in experience, of looking at the world from
different perspectives."   Scientific method and logical reasoning
can be good examples of critical thinking, and are important aspects
of it, but are not adequate in themselves-both can be done in rote,
unreflective ways, ways that aren't really open.  For students to
develop as critical thinkers, they must be willing to reflect upon
and articulate their own starting beliefs and assumptions (whether
these are scientific, moral, cultural, etc.), genuinely open
themselves to other approaches or worldviews, to new ways of
understanding what they took for granted, and then carefully consider
the consequences of this reflection.

Critical thinking, then, is not a merely logical exercise, but is a
practice richly imbued with a set of values and attitudes.  Nord
notes that, "Of course, all of this makes critical moral thinking
difficult and controversial."  It also underscores the need to begin
rethinking, and deepening, the ways in which we teach "critical
thinking."  We should not be content to teach logical reasoning
skills but must also work to encourage self-reflective, challenging,
yet open attitudes on the part of our students.  Helping students to
develop these attitudes ought not be the province of "critical
thinking" courses, but should be an aim of just about any course in
the undergraduate curriculum.  "Teaching attitudes" like this must
not be confused with "indoctrination."  For we will not be telling
our students that they must subscribe to any particular outcome or
belief; rather we will help them to develop a full set of tools for
drawing their own conclusions, for what Kant called "Enlightenment."
The task may be difficult and controversial, but in a diverse and
complex society, it seems essential.

(1)  D. Winter, D. McClelland, and A. Stewart, A New Case for the
Liberal Arts (Jossey-Bass, 1981), p. 27
(2) R. Paul, L. Elder, T. Bartell, " Study of 38 Public Universities
and 28 Private Universities To Determine Faculty   Emphasis on
Critical Thinking In Instruction: Executive Summary"
http://www.criticalthinking.org/schoolstudy.htm
(3) I. Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" (1784)
(4) W. Nord, Religion & American Education (University of North
Carolina Press, 1995), p. 346.