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Have We Demystified Critical Thinking?
Another way to motivate critical thinking is to point out discrepancies between scien-
tific knowledge and students’ own naïve psychology (Halonen, 1986). Pointing out dis-
crepancies should be relatively easy to do, especially at the beginning of a course. One way
to do this is to give students a test of common misconceptions about psychology (e.g.,
Taylor & Kowalski, 2004). Many students will learn that some of their deeply held beliefs
are inaccurate. This experience creates a discrepancy, and discrepancies stimulate critical
thinking. As Halonen (1986) argued, good teachers should exploit discrepancies.
There are many other factors that can increase students’ motivation to engage in critical
thought (e.g., students’ interest in the topic and the instructor’s enthusiasm for the course
material). These factors warrant attention at all stages of the critical thinker’s develop-
ment. Instructors who want to enhance their students’ critical thinking skills must also
nurture their “critical spirit” (Passmore, 1967, p. 25).
Foundation Skills
It is important for instructors to consider the cognitive level of their students when devel-
oping critical thinking objectives. Although as faculty we are often interested in the more
advanced cognitive elements of critical thinking (e.g., generating hypotheses, theory build-
ing), it is important that we do not gloss over the foundation skills that students need.
Research suggests that we are likely to overestimate the critical thinking abilities of our
students (e.g., Chamberlain & Burrough, 1985) as well as the ability of our students to
transfer critical thinking skills from one domain to the next (e.g., Granello, 2001). Thus
it is important to focus on the foundation skills of critical thinking before moving on to
the higher level skills.
It is often the case that students worry more about transcribing everything from the
PowerPoint slides than whether they understand those notes. Likewise, instructors may
rush through lectures in order to get through the material, without attending to what
students are learning. McKeachie (2002) discussed one way of checking for and encourag-
ing student understanding of material—summary writing. Writing summaries of lectures
or reading material requires increased cognitive activity on the part of students, who must
reorganize and synthesize information. It also provides the opportunity for students to put
information into their own words, which they will likely remember better than the instruc-
tor’s words (Davis & Hult, 1997). Research shows that such summary writing can have a
substantial impact on learning (Davis & Hult, 1997; Kobayishi, 2006).
There are several ways that you can incorporate summary writing in your classes. One
is to announce to students at the beginning of a class that you will be asking for a summary
of the main points at the end of the period. Then, at the conclusion of class, allow students
3 to 5 minutes to summarize the lecture’s main points. Alternately, you could ask students
to write for a brief period on one topic during a pause in your lecture (Davis & Hult,
1997; McKeachie, 2002). Finally, you could ask students to attend to the lecture in order
to report the most important thing that they learned from that day’s (or week’s) discussion
(McKeachie, 2002; Zinn, 2003).
McKeachie (2002) gave additional tips on how to use summary writing to shape stu-
dents into better listeners. For example, at the beginning of the class, ask students to write