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Critical Thinking in Critical Courses
Providing the framework to students will make salient the CT abilities that the course
seeks to help them develop and help them better understand the reasons they are asked to
demonstrate particular academic skills. Students generally expect their courses to require
listening, reading, writing, and occasionally, speaking. However, they are not generally
aware of the degree to which these skills reflect the capacity for critical thought. The
framework can be used to explicitly point out the connection between the instructional
methods of the course and the development of these important critical thinking abilities.
Furthermore, it can help students see the connection between these critical thinking abilities
and the various activities and skill assessments of the course. Thus the framework can
support students’ navigation between the instruction and the assessment in the course.
At the program level, various courses can be ordered according to the level of critical
thinking abilities that are emphasized. Typically, lower level courses in the program, which
emphasize breadth of exposure, tend to require one or more basic levels of critical thinking
abilities (e.g., remembering, comprehension). In general psychology, for example, simply
introducing the critical thinking abilities, thereby giving students a vocabulary for thinking
about critical thinking, may be the essential objective. Teachers may then inform students
that their job is to demonstrate their ability to recall and comprehend each of the critical
thinking abilities. Assignments in courses immediately following general psychology may
emphasize developing students’ capacities for a single critical thinking ability (e.g., analysis
or inferring). The highest level courses, which typically emphasize depth, can require
relatively more complex and sophisticated critical thinking abilities (e.g., evaluation,
synthesis), often in combination.
Curriculum-mapping techniques (e.g., Harden, 2001) help track critical thinking instruc-
tion across classes in the major. Courses can be programmed according to the complexity of
critical thought involved and assessed. Programmatically mapping CT in this way has
multiple advantages. First, CT instruction can be deliberately sequenced in a more develop-
mentally meaningful and appropriate fashion. For example, we put the cart before the horse
if we direct students to evaluate and synthesize knowledge claims before they are able to
comprehend or analyze those same claims. Mapping also reveals gaps and duplications in CT
instruction across courses. Thus instructors who require critical analysis and inference may
mistakenly assume that their colleagues are teaching the other critical thinking abilities of
evaluation and synthesis. In the absence of programmatic assessment of CT, we may not
recognize that certain critical thinking abilities are neglected in our curriculum. Coordinating
CT instruction across classes can also permit instructors to reinforce each other’s teaching.
We can help students understand how CT exercises in lower level classes were designed to
transfer to or contribute to more demanding assignments in higher level classes.
Ideas for CT Teaching in Two Different Kinds of Courses
Teaching CT in Social Psychology
Social psychology is a mid-level course within the psychology curriculum at our institution
and regularly taught by one of us (Harvey). Right from the start, students are explicitly