Natalie Kerr Lawrence et al.
24
questions for class, and evaluating case studies. Students’ top five activities also included
critiquing a journal article, engaging in debates, and evaluating case studies. For the most
part, students and faculty agreed on which activities were most likely to encourage critical
thinking, r
s
(19) = .84, p < .01. Interestingly, students were more likely to say that a class
activity “always” or “often” helped develop critical thinking, whereas faculty often reported
that the activities “could” encourage critical thinking. Faculty responses acknowledged
that the way an instructor conducts certain class activities is vital to whether that activity
encourages critical thinking.
Our results showed that activities that encourage critical thinking were more likely to occur
in higher level classes. To our surprise, we also found a negative correlation between how likely
an activity was to encourage critical thinking and how likely instructors were to use it in class,
r
s
(19) = −.47, p = .03. This finding may be because activities that encourage critical thinking
can be more difficult to design, implement, and grade than other activities. Indeed, instruc-
tors may be reluctant to incorporate critical thinking activities into their courses because they
perceive the investment to be too costly. In this chapter, we describe specific activities and
techniques that instructors can easily incorporate into any psychology course.
Critical Thinking Framework
Halonen (1995) urged faculty to focus on critical thinking skills and proposed a frame-
work to help “demystify” critical thinking. We used Halonen’s framework to help identify
best practices for fostering critical thinking (see Figure 3.1). The framework includes both
the cognitive and propensity elements of critical thinking. Halpern (2002, 2003) pre-
sented a similar model for teaching critical thinking skills. Halpern recommended learn-
ing activities that:
(a) explicitly teach the skills of critical thinking, (b) develop the disposition for effortful
thinking and learning, (c) direct learning activities in ways that increase the probability of
transcontextual transfer (structure training), and (d) make metacognitive monitoring explicit
and overt. (Halpern, 2003, p. 14)
Like Halonen’s framework, Halpern’s model recognized the importance of both cognitive
and propensity (i.e., dispositional) factors in critical thinking. In addition, both authors
identified metacognition as integral to the development of critical thinking. In the remain-
der of this chapter, we discuss activities designed to address the propensity, cognitive, and
metacognitive components of critical thinking.
Propensity Components
Students who have the skills to think critically do not always use those skills. Like all
thinkers, students are “cognitive misers” (Taylor, 1981) who have neither the ability nor
the motivation to think critically about every issue. Critical thinking takes effort, and