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Project METODO - Critical Thinking:
Theoretical Underpinnings and State-of-the-Art

The following is a very succinct summary the theoretical underpinnings of Critical Thinking,
using excerpts from state-of-the-art research reports on Critical Thinking in Education. The
reflections, given as direct quotes, were chosen to answer the question what is critical
thinking and what can teachers do to foster it?

Research on critical thinking in education is a field in and of itself which brings together
full-time researchers and expertise in not only education but also sociology, epistemology,
linguistics etc. and whose research is of interest to scholars as well as educators in all
disciplines, spanning art, literature, history, economics, physics, mathematics etc. This
summary is therefore far from comprehensive but provides the first step in approaching the
research agenda on METODO established by MIUR (ACTXXX). The purpose is to provide a
general guide from which survey questions can be formulated by MIUR-METHODO and thus
analyzed to obtain a profile of how well critical thinking practices are implemented in
Italian compulsory education institutions and, where necessary, how such practices can be
optimized further.

The information contained here is intended for internal use only since detailed citations
have been removed to facilitate reading.


1. Defining CRITICAL THINKING and its core components

[The] definition of critical thinking varies. Nevertheless, the existing literature
shares the consensus that critical thinking involves cognitive, dispositional and
metacognitive components; together they denote good critical thinking
performanceThe cognitive component has been represented by the mental
capability to comprehend a problem as well as the ability to apply cognitive skills
to make sound judgments. Cognitive skills acknowledged as central to critical
thinking range from a few to many; typically these include analyzing arguments,
recognizing logical fallacies, distinguishing warranted and unwarranted claims,
identifying understated assumptions and skills in scientific analytical reasoning (6:
254).

It is not surprising, therefore, that literature search under the phrase Critical Thinking
was often associated with Metacognition:
A critical thinker is one who applies appropriate skills and strategies to achieve a
desirable outcome (Halpern 1998). Critical thinking demands strategic use of
cognitive skills that best suit a particular situation, as well as an active control of
ones own thinking processes for well-justified conclusions (6: pp. 251).

Active control of ones own thinking is at the core of metacognition:
[an] important strand in the discourse on good thinking which helps to unify the
ideas previously outlined is the notion of self-regulation of thinking The
assumption is that this metacognitive ability, for instance, involving perception,
critique, judgment and decision making, allows people to orchestrate and self-
regulate their own learning strategies and those abilities encompassed in the term
critical thinking (2: 241).

Core variables of metacognition undoubtedly underlie critical thinking:
having metacognitive knowledge, such as knowing what factors affect ones
thinking (person variables), how to make sense of a problem or how different
problems demand different cognitions (task variables) and knowing when and why
to use a skill (strategy variables) facilitate metacognitive regulation ... Having only
an awareness for the need to apply metacognitive strategy is not enough for good
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performance; one must also know when, how and which strategy to use at different
contexts (6: 253).

The knowing when, how and which metacognitive strategy to adopt, requires cognitive
control, the strength of which reflects the strength of critical thinking: an individual is
metacognitive as a result of his/her ability to think critically.
Metacognitive strategies are thought to invoke behaviors that enable students to
supervise and control their thinking processes. Thus, it has been argued that
students need to be trained and examined on the use of these strategies. Commonly
suggested metacognitive strategies used in critical thinking fall under three
categories: planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Examples of planning activities
include those aiming at the determination of procedures that direct thinking, the
selection of appropriate strategies, and the allocation of available resources.
Monitoring refers to an ongoing awareness of task comprehension. Monitoring
activities include checking task information to validate comprehension, allocating
attention to important ideas, and pointing out informational
ambiguitiesEvaluating strategies involve the examination and correction of ones
cognitive processes. These include evaluating ones reasoning, goals and
conclusions as well as making revisions when necessary. In sum, a critical thinker
is one who is in charge of his thinking processes, while metacognitive strategies
enable such control to take place (6: 254).

As an educator, it is clear that the two conceptions work hand in hand. I therefore suggest
that the METODO project and discussion on critical thinking also incorporates the construct
of metacognition for three very simple reasons. The first is that the strategies underlying
both constructs overlap (see below). Secondly, since METODO will implement a
quantitative questionnaire-based survey of how well teachers support the development of
students critical thinking skills, it will be much more informative to survey teachers
preference and use of strategies rather than their knowledge of theories. Considering also
metacognition research in a discussion on critical thinking will therefore broaden our
questioning potential and thus provide, hopefully, a more detailed understanding of how
teachers in Italy strive to foster critical thinking.


2. CRITICAL THINKING: a necessary goal for 21
st
century education

So, why is Critical Thinking
1
an important issue for MIUR to consider?

The demands of the twenty-first century require students to know more than
content knowledge; they must know how to learn. Learning is an active process
that requires students to think about their thinking, or be metacognitive.
Metacognition is a persons knowledge about the cognitive processes necessary for
understanding and learning (1: 269). A person who is metacognitive knows how
to learn because he/she is aware of what he/she knows and what he/she must do
in order to gain new knowledge (1: 270).

National governments and employers have argued that it is important for all
sectors of education to prepare individuals who are able to think well and for
themselves. Good thinking and thinking well are commonly used terms bound up
with what is called critical thinking in the research literature. Evidence is
presented in this paper, however, which suggests that not all students may be good
at critical thinking; nor do some teachers appear to teach students good thinking
skills (2).

In fact, more than a decade ago, at the doorsteps of the 21
st
century, Richard Paul, in an
article entitled Why critical thinking is essential in the post-industrial world, foresaw how
essential it would be for education to cultivate critically thinking citizens:


1
and metacognition henceforth incorporated into the terminology of critical thinking
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Traditionally our thinking has been designed for routine, for habit, for
automation and fixed procedure.learning meant becoming habituated[Today],
our children and students can no longer anticipate the knowledge or data that they
will need on the job, because they can no longer predict the kinds of jobs that will
be available or what they will entail The complexity and speed of change means
that we shall always have to make unpredictable adjustments[Todays education
must teach] our managers as well as our teachers and administrators how to create
these higher order workplaces and classrooms, and then to expect them to do so in
the ordinary course of their professional obligations

In 1993, Paul already warned that we are adrift in a stormy sea of information and, almost
20 years hence, in 2010, the editor of Science, one of the most prestigious scientific research
journals, warned, once again, that we are living in an information everywhere society.
While memorized facts and details made good sense when information was difficult to come
by in the early 1900s when mass education was introduce, in the 21
st
century reality where
we are inundated with information following a Googling click (Ting, 2010), memorizing
facts and details is totally insufficient: 21
st
century education must empower learners to
discern treasure from trash, facts from fiction. As students cannot acquire encyclopaedic
amounts of knowledge, if there is only one thing that 21
st
education must provide its
learners, it is a set of skills for CRITICAL THINKING.

What are some such skills? As regards the CRITICAL THINKING competencies sought by
21
st
century employers:

These competencies are represented, for example, by knowledge and skills relating
to: collecting, analysing and organizing information; planning activities; problem-
solving; communicating information; working with others; and using technology
(Mayer, 1992).Future national and global success in business and industry, or so
it is said by government in these places, is dependent on the ability of teachers,
lecturers and tutors to teach knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant to these
generic competencies, as well as those more specific to their own subject-matter
content domain or discipline area (2: 238).

As it is conceived, critical thinking involves abilities in addition to certain
dispositions. They are brought to bear in identifying a problem and its associated
assumptions; clarifying and focusing the problem; and analysing, understanding
and making use of inferences, inductive and deductive logic, as well as judging the
validity and reliability of the assumptions, sources of data or information available
. Evaluation is seen as a core ability. Attitudes or dispositions such as a spirit of
inquiry are also seen by some writers in the field as very importantFor instance,
Enniss view of critical thinking involves broad dispositions, transferable over
various domains such as being open-minded, drawing unwarranted assumptions
cautiously and weighing the credibility of evidence. These abilities and
dispositions occur within a global perspective in which thinking is conceptualized
as a type of reasoned argument with an explicitly social dimension (2: 239).


In addition to these analytical inferential skills, critical thinking involves another three
interrelated components:

1) the ability to engage in reasoned discourse;
2) the ability to reason through seven intellectual standards:
clarity
accuracy
precision
relevance
depth
breadth
logic;
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3) engagement with seven value-oriented traits and dispositions:
intellectual humility
intellectual courage
intellectual empathy
intellectual integrity
intellectual perseverance
faith in reason
fair-mindedness (5: 1).


Moreover,
Since metacognition (and thus critical thinking) is the key to comprehension, it
must be a valued component in literacy instruction (1: 271, my addition in
brackets).

In a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized world, critical thinking guarantees
interdisciplinary thinking, trans-disciplinary flexibility and intercultural insightfulness.

Critical thinking is not just another educational option. Rather it is n indispensable
part of education, because being able to think critically is a necessary condition for
being educated, and because teaching with the spirit of critical thinking is the only
way to satisfy the moral injunction of respect for individuals, which must apply to
students as well as to anyone else. According to this reasoning, students have the
moral right to teaching that embodies the spirit of critical thinking and a moral
right to be taught how to think critically (4: 1).


3. CRITICAL THINKING must become an integral part of the individual

As illustrated from the aforementioned list of abilities and traits, being able to think
critically is clearly an integral characteristic of an individual with a critical mind.

Education thus has the mission of cultivating individuals with a critical spirit (4:
5) which must also be used to turn upon itself such that the individual is able to
think critically about his/her own thinking: without this, critical thinking becomes
mere criticism instead of an honest and open search for truthto avoid this,
teachers must explain the value of the critical spirit and display it in their own
dealings with students.

Teachers have the responsibility of providing not only the teaching of critical
thinking but must also model the critical spirit. Clearly, one cannot conceive of a
course in critical thinking as the cultivation of a critical spirit cannot be a discipline-
bound process:

Indeed there is sound empirical evidence that good knowledge and good thinking
are inextricably bound up... It seems important therefore that critical thinking is
taught in the course of teaching discipline knowledge. Blending these ideas with
the descriptions of critical thinking one straightforward and effective measure
teachers could deploy in their teaching is to put more emphasis on the particular
forms of reasoning within their own discipline area and to give examples of how
these forms of reasoning can be applied both within and outside of that discipline
(2: 241).

Critical thinking must therefore become an innate way of being.

...the basic concepts of critical thinking [used] as a bridge between all
disciplinesirrespective of the subject students are studying, they should be able
to ask basic questions about their thinking they must routinely ask themselves:
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What is the purpose of my thinking?
What am I taking for granted; what assumptions am I making?
What precise question am I trying to answer? What problem am I trying to
solve?
What concepts or ideas are central to my thinking?
What information am I using?
How am I interpreting that information?
Within what point of view am I thinking?
What conclusions am I coming to?
If I accept the conclusions, what are the implications?
What would the consequences be if I put my thought into action? (5: 90).

It is therefore erroneous to conceptualize critical thinking as a taught subject: how
can students learn to think critically if there is nothing to think critically about? In
fact,
Critical thinking skills are no substitute for experience, common sense, and sound
knowledge of subject mattercritical thinking should therefore be taught within
the traditional subject areas rather than as a separate subject nobody really
knows which approach is betterThere is good reason to believe, however, that
principles of critical thinking taught without any view to their application to real
world problems will not be beneficial (4:5).


4. What teachers must do to cultivate CRITICAL THINKING

Clearly, before teachers can help students develop their ability to think critically,
teachers themselves must be critical thinkers.

A necessary condition for teaching students to be metacognitive is a pedagogical
understanding of metacognition. Pedagogical understanding refers to teachers
knowledge regarding effective instruction for helping students achieve a goal, in
this case becoming metacognitive (1: 270).Teachers understanding of what is
necessary for teaching and learning has a strong impact on their practice. This
impact affects students learning (1: 272).

In a state-wide survey of how well teacher-trainers across California understood the
construct of critical thinking, Paul et al., (1997) found that a surprisingly low
number of university faculty members responsible for teacher-education had an
operational understanding of this age-old concept.

Researchers conducted interviews with education and subject matter faculty in
private and public colleges and universities. Results indicated that few faculty
members in teacher preparation had in-depth exposure to research on the concept,
and most only had a vague understanding of what critical thinking was and what
was involved in bringing it successfully into instruction(5)

This finding is surprising considering that critical thinking has probably been the
core purpose of education since the conception of education. Despite its 2500 year
history, starting with Aristotle (5), critical thinking, although very well-known and
undeniably important, is not very well-understood:
despite the recognition of the role of metacognition in student success, limited
research has been done to explore teachers explicit awareness of their
metacognition and their ability to think about, talk about, and write about their
thinkingThis kind of instruction is complex and requires that teachers make
metacognition the goal for literacy instruction ... [unfortunately, most] teachers are
more likely to test comprehension than teach comprehension. These tests require
that students process text after reading rather than being metacognitive during
reading. The assumption of the teachers seemed to be that if their students simply
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read, read, and read, and then were tested, tested, and tested, they would become
good comprehendersthey would become self-regulated readers who used
comprehension strategies (Pressley, 2002, p. 303). The disconnection between
the research which clearly indentifies the instructional models that make students
metacognitive and the instruction in classrooms [must question whether] teachers
understand the pedagogical issues surrounding the teaching of metacognition
(1:271).

Given appropriate teacher-training workshops and courses, it is possible to provide
teachers with the pedagogical expertise for incorporating thinking in their
classroom, model and thus foster a critical thinking spirit in their students (5).

Project METODO will develop a questionnaire to obtain a quantitative profile which
answers the question how well are teachers in Italy cultivating CRITICAL
THINKING in their learners? The answer to this question will first of all, provide a
nationwide profile of how teachers in Italy conceive of critical thinking and thus go
about fostering the critical thinking spirit in their learners. The questionnaire will
also seek to identify any lacunae, if any, exist in teachers beliefs in how they should
cultivate critical thinking in their learners.

In order to produce a realistic profile, the METODO questionnaire will contain two
types of questions: First, questions which directly query teachers of their
understanding, application and consideration of critical thinking and secondly, the
questionnaire will identify lacunae in teachers thinking by considering research
which have identified common teaching fallacies and misconceptions which are not
conducive to cultivating critical thinking. As such misconceptions and fallacies have
been identified from international research projects, incorporating these into the
METODO questionnaire will ensure that the findings address international concerns.

What then, are some common misconceived practices which teachers use in the
belief that they are cultivating critical thinking but which do not actually do so? One
error may be teachers insensitivity to context: it is not useful to use complex
problem-solving strategies when less complex strategies may suffice. This can be
seen when comparing how experts think with how novices approach problems:
experts possess far more information than novices and have automated many of
the sequences in a problem solution; they are capable of arriving at a correct
solution in far less time than novicesThe possession of more information and
more automated problem-solving techniques is, however, only part of what
distinguishes the expert from the novice. Another difference involves the
heuristics (problem-solving methods) employed by both groups. Typically, novices
solve problems by working backward from the unknown solution to the facts that
are given in the statement of the problem. Working backward in this way is usually
thought to be a sophisticated strategy. Experts are more discriminating in their
approach. When problems seem amenable to relatively straightforward solution,
experts work forward from the given facts without any particular planning, except
to generate as much information about the problem situation as possible with the
facts provided. Their thinking is that the solution will turn up among this
information. Working backward strategies are employed by experts only for more
difficult problems.the expert physicist approaches a problem by first making
decisions about the overall strategy to be used before getting down to the actual
process of solving the problem. The novice, on the other hand, gets immediately to
work at the problem-solving process. The time the expert spends in initial
planning pays off at the endbetter thinkers concentrate initially on identifying the
correct problem they are to solve. Poorer thinkers usually fail to identify the
correct problem, may simply repeat details of the item as their response to the
problem, and often become embroiled in irrelevant details of the astray line, which
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lead them on tangents away from the real problem they are to solvewithout
recognizing they are going astray(4:4).

Along the lines of going astray, some teachers mistakenly believe that asking
totally open-ended questions foster critical thinking when in fact such questions
may not. This can be demonstrated from an excerpt taken from research on
classroom discourse:

T: if you have a quick look at the plan cellwhere is the difference
S: the plant cell has a bigger nucleus.
T: ah thats not the nucleusconcerning the outside and the shape of the cell
S: ithas aahm.
T: ait has a stronger membrane yes a cell wall/ and what about the shapethe
shape of the plant cell is much more
S: ahregular
T: regular exactly. So why do you think that is sowhy do plant cells have a regular
shape and a cell wall and animal cells just have a membranewhat are animals
able to do compared to plants?... (7: 82-82).

The striking feature of such a dialogue, which is probably rather typical of many
classrooms, is the fact that it is really a monologue with student interjections. In
fact, the teacher readily overrides students injections and the process becomes one
in which the teacher asks and answers the questions him/herself: The error is
that the teacher is asking questions which are far too open-ended for the students
content knowledge. Simply using questions such as these is clearly no better at
cultivating critical thinking than traditional information-transfer lectures.
Unfortunately, teachers often believe that simply engaging students in this type of
dialogue and not lecturing automatically cultivates critical thinking: the content
covered in a frontal lecture may actually be more well-delineated and thus effective.

Likewise when teachers model critical thinking but not as a global transferable skill
but as a way to solve single delimited problems:
The school teacher, like those at other educational levels, can only facilitate this
individual process [i.e. cultivating critical thinking]. Nevertheless, too often it
seems to be the teacher or lecturer who sets the problem(s) and shows the student
how to pose it and solve it and then leaves the student to solve similar problems,
often with model answers provided as feedback (2:243).

Just because students can repeat a single critical thinking process is no
guarantee that the student is indeed gaining critical thinking skills:
teachers should not limit themselves to the do-after-me way of
cultivating critical thinking.

In addition,
Raths et al., (1996) has identified eight behavioural patterns and [rather]
permanent and immutable student attributes that indicate deficits in good
thinking. These were learners who:
(1) act without thinking (impulsive);
(2) need help at each step (over-dependent);
(3) use goal-incompatible strategies (do not perceive causeeffect
relationships);
(4) have difficulty with comprehension (miss meaning);
(5) are convinced of the rightness of their beliefs (dogmatism);
(6) operate within narrow rule sets (rigidity/inflexibility);
(7) are fearful (not con. dent);
(8) condemn good thinking as a waste of time (anti-intellectual).

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Raths et al. went on to discuss the types of teacher behaviour which they argued
inhibit good thinking. For example, any teacher, no matter at what level, who:
(1) simply agrees or disagrees,
(2) just demonstrates and explains,
(3) cuts off student responses,
(4) uses reproof rather than praise,
(5) shakes the learners confidence in the value of new ideas or
(6) uses basically only retrieval or recall types of questions (2:242).

inhibits thinking.

Sternberg has identified eight fallacies in teachers ways of being and
beliefs that obstruct the cultivation of critical thinking in their students.
Teacher believe:
(1) they have nothing to learn from students: in the area of critical thinking, the
teacher is also a learner who needs to be receptive to new ideas.
(2) critical thinking is solely the lecturers job: this is a belief that they must think
out the responses and these should be presented smoothly and slickly, using
the best available technology. The point to be made here which resonates with
the current advocacy of problem-based learning as a means of enhancing
students thinking is that the teacher needs to be involved in this process
sometimes more as a facilitator than as an instructor.
(3) there is a correct programme for the delivery of critical thinking. Sternberg
(1987) made the useful point that there is no one correct thinking programme:
it depends on the programme goals and the content. It also depends, of course,
on the context or culture in which the learners thinking is to be situated.
(4) the choice of a critical thinking programme is based on a number of binary
choices (e.g. holistic or process-based, flexible delivery vs face-to-face); usually
what will be effective is a combination of approaches from a wide range.
(5) what really is important is the right answer, when plainly it is the thinking
behind the answer which is important.
(6) discussion is a means to an end. Critical thinking may prove to be an end in
itself.
(7) the notion of mastery-learning (e.g. the student is expected to be 90 per cent
correct, 90 per cent of the time) which implies (unreasonably) some ceiling on
good thinking: usually thinking and performance can be further improved.
(8) the role of a course in critical thinking is to teach critical thinking. (2:242-243)

There appears to be little doubt that Sternbergs eight obstructive fallacies about
critical thinking are worthy of considerationaction at the curriculum design stage
[is needed] to ensure planned changes that enhance rather than inhibit critical
thinking (2: 243).


5. Summary

Critical thinking is therefore not a skill that should come through separate add-on
courses but must come through teachers presenting content mindfully (2:243) so
that students assume a critical spirit and way of being. Learners will develop
critical thinking skills through well-designed problem-based courses which
encourage learners to think critically about contentwith courses that start with
problems rather than lectures and tutorials aimed at teaching students a body of
knowledge (2:247). Teachers must realize that their subject matter content is not
the focus but the vehicle that carries the skills of critical thinking (Swartz & Perkins,
1990). The content provide something to think about, but cognitive instruction
provides the ways to engage students in dealing with that content in a thoughtful
manner (3: 161).

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We know that metacognitive students are successful in school (1). Unfortunately,
teachers tend to reward quiet non-thinkers. These researchers argued that school-
based educational programmes that advocated more effective instructional courses
rarely provided the means by which students could learn good thinking practices.
It seems as we reach the 21
st
century, that for many students, education in these
respects has not changed a lot (2:242). In addition, teachers who do not think
critically cannot effectively foster the critical thinking of their students. However, it
does not follow that a teacher who thinks critically will automatically be effective in
cultivating his or her students critical thinking (5:94). Teachers must have a rich
understanding of metacognition teaching students to be metacognitive requires a
complex understanding of both the concept of metacognition and metacognitive
thinking strategies (1). To work smoothly through a rapidly changing information-
everywhere society, 21
st
century education must prepare students for a new
millennium in which the ability to think well is a premium (2: 247). I say it is not a
premium but as essential a skill as turning on a computer.

Thus the importance of this METODO Project which will focus on how