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The Challenge of Assessing Critical Thinking
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Experiencing the appropriate humility that grows from realizing that you can onlyhave an incomplete handle on reality.
Helping our students not become jerks is a justifiable goal for our activities in the
classroom.
One of the controversial aspects of our early FIPSE discussions involved the drive to
craft the perfect definition of critical thinking. The philosophers wanted to talk about the
attributes of the critical thinker, typically expressed in traits. For example, Paul and Elder’s
(2002, p. 18) concept of “critical thinking in the deep sense” exemplifies this approach.
This “all-or-none” approach makes me uncomfortable because I regularly falter in my
ability as a critical thinker. However, I am much more comfortable construing critical
thinking as a set of behaviors, leading us to ...
Big Idea #3: We should regard critical thinking as a “state,” not a “trait.”
A framework that emerged from our FIPSE group (Halonen, 1986) is one that still drives
much of the design of the teaching in my own classroom. This model (see Figure 6.1)
targets the essential characteristics of how to facilitate critical thinking. The model
acknowledges that students do not arrive in psychology classrooms as blank slates with
regard to their understanding of behavior. They have a store of facts, beliefs, assumptions,
and values that serve as the foundation from which they construct “personal theory” about
behavior. As teachers, we present external stimuli that we think and hope will engage
students. It is perhaps easiest to get them to engage critically when the external stimulus
promotes cognitive disequilibrium, a force described long ago by Jean Piaget as a primary
driver of learning. By knocking students cognitively off balance, they will engage in critical
thinking to restore their balance.
In the beginning of the student’s journey in psychology, the external stimulus needs to
be a whopper. For example, in my intro class recently, I introduced something I had
heard on the news the morning of my class that I had confidence would be the perfect
external stimulus to engage discussion. A morning news team had a spirited discussion
about sagging, the art of wearing your pants at half-mast without them falling down. One
newscaster confidently concluded, “The lower the pants, the lower the IQ.” My students
were appalled at the audacity of the claim. Not only did we debate the truthfulness of the
claim, but it was a good way to begin the important discussion about “correlation is not
causation.” The conversation was vigorous and laid the groundwork for the develop-
mental progression predicted within the model. Challenging the truths promulgated by
newscasters in such a personal way should assist students in developing a more critical
orientation. According to the FIPSE model, as students improve in their critical thinking
skills, the external event that triggers critical thinking can become ever more subtle and
nuanced.
This model also launched my personal fascination with the progression of “novice to
expert” in the work articulating outcomes in psychology that would follow (see Bosack,
McCarthy, Halonen, & Clay, 2004; Halonen et al., 2003, as examples). It is profoundly
satisfying to isolate a skill set and describe its evolution from primitive beginnings to