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activities that promote critical thinking, and consider the unique role of American
Psychological Association (APA) style (APA, 2001) as a method for teaching and learning
critical thinking in psychology.
Critical Reading for Critical Writing
Students need to read and write, and so do faculty. We believe that learning to write criti-
cally in psychology goes hand in hand with learning to read critically. We like to expose
our students to high quality readings from psychology and the wider social science litera-
ture. The goal of such exposure is to teach them to evaluate both the quantitative and the
qualitative nature of experimental and nonexperimental research.
The term “evaluate” can be a loaded one for students as they often assume that pub-
lished ideas are not only already vetted by experts (which is often true, at least where
publications in top-flight journals are concerned) but that their content is also somehow
sacred and not to be challenged (which is patently untrue, as knowledge evolves through
replication, revision, and refinement). Critical evaluation of the psychological literature
depends on a working understanding of the scientific method, familiarity with data analy-
sis and statistical inference, and exposure to particular research methods used within the
discipline. Our assumption, then, is that students should take—or be enrolled in—some
sequence of courses in research methods and statistics (e.g., Brewer et al., 1993; Dunn,
Smith, & Beins, 2007). Beyond teaching these basic skills to students or presuming they
already have them, teachers must ensure that students can search the literature, interpret
claims and arguments, learn from exemplars, and evaluate what they read by writing about
it. We begin with literature searches.
Searching the Literature
Learning to search the psychological literature—online databases (e.g., PsycINFO),
online library catalogs, and printed periodicals, among other sources—is an excellent
way for students to develop an analytical perspective on research. In research methods
classes and topical seminars, for example, faculty members can point to strengths, weak-
nesses, shortcomings, and unknowns in available research. The best learning is associated
with the virtual and physical search of resources, tracking them down, and carefully
reading them to learn what was done, why, and what was found. Faculty guidance is
important here, if only to teach students about the nature of primary and secondary
sources, why journals are important to the discipline, and how to evaluate quality therein
(e.g., Dunn, 2008).
We also believe that students stand to learn a great deal when they work closely with
reference library professionals, either by seeking the help of a librarian to track down per-
tinent information or through a tutorial designed to reveal a library’s resources. If nothing
else, such collaborations can help students learn to discern science from pseudoscience as
they sort through sources (e.g., Toedter & Glew, 2007). Many students do not take