Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices

Report 6

The Critical Thinking Lab: Developing

Student Skills Through Practical

Application

Todd J. Wilkinson, Bryan J. Dik, and Andrew P. Tix

The development of critical thinking skills is widely regarded as a valued outcome of

undergraduate learning. Encouraging critical thinking is a particularly important compo-

nent of teaching an introductory psychology course (e.g., Matlin, 1997; Myers, 1997) and

critical thinking skills often are described as highly desirable by potential employers. In

short, critical thinking is “worth its weight in gold” (Furedy, 1988, p. 42).

In actual practice, however, the teaching of these skills often is short-changed within

traditional curricula (e.g., Barber, 2002). The following in-class experiential exercise rep-

resents an explicit effort to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills in an intro-

ductory psychology course. The premise of the Critical Thinking Lab, adapted from Fink

(2003), emphasizes the development of student skills in analyzing and evaluating course-

related content from secondary sources. The primary goal of this exercise is to provide a

structured, collaborative learning environment in which students can refine and apply

their critical thinking skills by analyzing and evaluating a specific psychological claim. In

addition, the exercise provides an opportunity for students to develop their communica-

tion skills by working collaboratively toward a shared goal and by orally presenting their

evaluation of the claim to the class.

During the week prior to the critical thinking lab, the instructor requires students to

find a brief article presented in the news media that presents a specific claim about human

behavior or health. Students may find this claim in topical or news magazines, news papers,

or in various online news outlets. On the day of the lab, students bring their articles to

class and divide into groups (we recommend a maximum of eight groups total, with five

members in each group). Each student briefly presents her or his psychological claim to

the group. Each group must then choose one claim to collectively evaluate. The instructor

then informs groups that they will be constructing a poster that describes their evaluation

of the claim, and that at the end of class, they will briefly present the claim itself, their

evaluation of its validity, and their conclusions. Each group works collaboratively to evalu-

ate the claim in a manner that, at minimum, follows these instructions:

Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices Edited by D. S. Dunn, J. S. Halonen, and R. A. Smith