Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices

Critical thinking is not one strategy, but many strategies. It involves the exercise and

development of various skills aimed at bridging the gap between a current and a desired

state (Halonen & Gray, 2000; Sternberg, Roediger, & Halpern, 2007). In psychology, the

aim of teaching critical thinking is often to refine students’ abilities to describe, predict,

explain, and control behavior. But what about writing? How do psychology students’

abilities to express themselves in text form represent critical thinking? Writing is similar to

critical thinking in that it requires the integration and execution of various skills, including

argument, organization, and planning, as well as a working comprehension of grammar

and punctuation rules. Some authors even claim that writing is a form of problem solving

(Flower, 1998; see also Hayes, 2006; Hayes & Flower, 1980), one of the tools in the

critical thinking arsenal.

We believe that writing is simply another form of critical thinking, perhaps a higher

form, because most writers in psychology—both students and professionals—write with

the goal of sharing their ideas with others. That is, they export the transactional nature of

their critical thinking beyond themselves to others. To inform others effectively, writers

must transform their thoughts into prose form, a process requiring not only the aforemen-

tioned skills but a bit of social intelligence, notably the ability to adopt readers’ perspec-

tives to anticipate their questions as well as learning needs.

When developing course activities and assignments, we urge teachers to consider the

scientific reasoning level of their students: An introductory psychology student has a differ-

ent understanding of the discipline than one enrolled in research methods or an advanced

topical seminar (Halonen et al., 2003). The same holds true for the effective teaching and

learning of discipline-related writing skills. Writing activities for first-year students in psy-

chology should be more expressive and exploratory, whereas those aimed at advanced

undergraduates, most often majors, can be more transactional and scientifically grounded.

Our goal in this chapter is to offer a point of view on writing as critical thinking. To do

so, we will discuss the role of critical reading in writing, identify some practical writing

Chapter 14

Writing as Critical Thinking

Dana S. Dunn and Randolph A. Smith

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