Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices

Chapter 4

Are They Ready Yet? Developmental

Issues in Teaching Thinking

Laird R. O. Edman

The differences among students can be one of the great joys of teaching, but these

differences are also probably the most difficult pedagogical problem facing all classroom

teachers, regardless of level of instruction. The issue becomes clear to us fairly quickly,

usually before the first formal assessment. We can tell by the questions students ask, the

answers they give to our questions, and even by the attention they pay and nods of assent

they give to what we are doing. Once we give the first test or students hand in their first

paper, our intuitions are usually confirmed: some students are with us and some aren’t; some

students “get it” and some don’t; we seem to be teaching some students and missing others.

Our classrooms are filled with students of widely differing cognitive abilities, learning

approaches, educational backgrounds, and motivations to learn. The diverse reactions stu-

dents provide are puzzling. The bimodal nature of our teacher–course evaluations bears

this out as we read comments from some students who praise us and others who berate us

for the very same teaching approach. Some students claim our course changed their lives

while others claim it was a waste of time. And our students’ ability to respond to our

attempts to nurture critical thinking is at least as multimodal as their disparate perform-

ances on our tests and other assignments. Trying to teach students to think like psycholo-

gists, rather than simply to memorize what psychologists think, can be a frustrating

enterprise. Perhaps we need a clearer idea of what we are trying to accomplish and the

developmental issues implicated in those goals.

Definitions and Taxonomies

To teach students to be effective critical thinkers requires one to have a clear conception of

critical thinking. The pedagogical need for a clear conception of critical thinking may seem

to be obvious, but many faculty, psychology departments, and colleges and universities

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