Lesson 5: Critical Thinking as a Teaching Method

• Critical thinking


  A careful and deliberate determination of whether to accept, reject, or suspend judgement on a claim
• Critical thinking


  • It is an activity both practical and reflective that has reasonable belief or action as its goal
  • It is the process of assessing conclusions based on evidence
• Assessing conclusions with evidence

  1. Confirming conclusions with facts

  2. Identifying bias, stereotypes, clichés, and propaganda

  3. Identifying unstated assumptions

  4. Recognizing overgeneralizations and undergeneralizations

  5. Identifying relevant and irrelevant information
• Logical reasoning


  A complex weaves of abilities that helps one to get someone's point, explain a complicated idea, generate reasons for your viewpoints, evaluate the reason given by others, decide what or what not to do, decide what information to accept or reject, see the pros as well as the cons and so forth
• Importance of critical thinking


  • Solving problems
  • Making decisions
  • Evaluating learner's statements/action/behavior
  • Assessing the information/data gathered
  • Arguing about issues
  • Judging
  • Making predictions/projections
  • Acting/reading/proacting
• Learners who have developed a high degree of competence in critical thinking


  • Can make judgements about information related to personal, social, economic, political, and other related issues affecting their lives
• Approaches to improve student's ability to think

  1. Teaching for thinking - creating conditions at the school and classroom level conductive to thinking

  2. Teaching of thinking - direct instruction of thinking skills and strategies

  3. Teaching about thinking - making the learner aware of their own and other's thinking processes and their use in real life situations
• Three general skills in critical thinking

  • Evaluating - making judgements about something by measuring it against a standard
  • Analyzing - separating a whole entity into its meaningful parts and understanding the relationships among those parts
  • Connecting - determining or imposing relationships between the wholes that are being analyzed
• The concern with critical thinking is itself not new. Educators have long advocated that the students be able to organize ideas, analyze problems, demonstrate creavity, and think logically; but success in these areas has been limited.
• Trends in critical thinking

  • David Perkins' "thinking frames" approach
  • Reuven Feuerstein's instrumental enrichment curriculum
  • Edward de Bono's approach to teaching thinking skills
  • Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence
  • Matthew Lipman's philosophy for children program
• Step-by-step approach to critical thinking

  1. Format the question

  2. Gather the information

  3. Apply the information

  4. Consider the implications
• Ten dynamic strategies for cultivating critical thinking

  • Socratic questioning
  • Real-world problem-solving
  • Debate and discussions
  • Case studies
  • Critical reading and writing
  • Problem-based learning
  • Concept mapping
  • Cognitive dissonance activities
  • Metacognition development
  • Role-playing scenarios