Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices

Chapter 8

A Process Approach to Thinking

Critically About Complex Concepts

Stacie M. Spencer and Marin Gillis

As instructors, we spend considerable time defining concepts and discussing how everyday

words are used to represent complex concepts within our discipline. Students are good at

memorizing definitions for exams, and many can generate examples of concepts from

their own experiences; however, students struggle when asked to apply new concepts, and

through application exercises, it becomes clear that the understanding of concepts is super-

ficial. One of the challenges of teaching psychological concepts is that many of the con-

cepts we use in psychology are used differently in everyday language. Another challenge is

that in the psychology literature a concept may have multiple definitions or, in many

cases, may be used without being defined. In order for students to learn a new concept in

psychology, it is essential that they understand how that concept is used by the instructor

and incorporate that definition into their concept schemas. The purpose of this chapter is

to describe a methodology that we have found to be successful in overcoming these chal-

lenges and in developing critical thinking skills. Our methodology employs concept mea-

surement as the vehicle through which students develop deeper comprehension of a

concept as well as develop the cognitive skills of a critical thinker.

Like many of the concepts we teach in psychology, critical thinking can be understood

in a variety of ways (Appleby, 2006; Halonen, 1995). For the purposes of this discussion,

Appleby’s definition of critical thinking, which focuses on the cognitive skills used to

make decisions, will be employed (Appleby, 2006). Appleby’s six skills of a critical thinker

are based on the Cognitive Domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (as

cited in Appleby, 2006) and comprise retention (the ability to remember), comprehension

(the ability to understand meaning), application (the ability to solve problems with the

information learned), analysis (the ability to examine and understand the organization of

the component parts of a whole), synthesis (the ability to create new wholes using separate

component parts), and evaluation (the ability to critique information in order to assess

validity), which reflect a progression of skills that move from a superficial to a deep level

of thinking and knowledge.

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