William Buskist & Jessica G. Irons
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means that teachers may wish to think carefully about how to build critical thinking into
their courses long before the academic term starts.
Before the Academic Term Begins
As you start to piece together your syllabus, think about how you will build critical think-
ing into your course. Choose a textbook and other supportive materials (e.g., print media,
video) that reflect the kind of approach to critical thinking that you wish to adopt. Do the
text and the other media include built-in critical thinking pedagogy (i.e., exercises that tap
students’ understanding, analysis, and application of the subject matter)? If so, does it
reflect the depth or level of critical thinking you wish your students to acquire? As you
review the reading material, look for any particular places that lend themselves especially
well to infusing critical thinking and make a note of them. These notes will remind you to
look for interesting examples of critical thinking or the lack of critical thinking in your
reading of everyday material (e.g., newspapers, magazines).
Research on master teachers has found that students appreciate teachers who tie class-
room learning to everyday life (Buskist et al., 2002). Depending on how much advance
planning you have done, you should have a good size stock of everyday examples that you
can use in the classroom to teach critical thinking. This approach also will enhance your
ability to apply psychological principles to everyday life.
Finally, prior to the academic term, you should also be creating a collection of problem-
based scenarios for students to solve as they work their way through the course (e.g.,
Connor-Greene, 2006). These scenarios should be directly relevant to your subject matter
and engage students in interesting but challenging problems, dilemmas, even mysteries.
You can use these scenarios with individual students or groups of students. We like to
combine these approaches by first giving individuals a few minutes to solve a problem and
then organizing them into groups of two or three to talk about differences in their indi-
vidual solutions to the problem. We then bring the whole class together to discuss the
scenario and its potential solutions.
Thus, when the academic term begins, you will have done your homework and know
full well the kinds of critical thinking exercises available to you in your text and supporting
media. You also will have a large handful of compelling scenarios to share with your stu-
dents as critical thinking activities. Such planning will also compel you to find ways to
model critical thinking processes in your teaching, which is a major benefit in honing your
teaching skills. From your students’ perspective, as the teacher, you become the exemplar
par excellence of how to think critically.
The First Week of Class
You should introduce the concept of critical thinking to your students during the first
week of class and let them know that a central part of your course will focus on helping
them develop their powers of critical thinking. You may safely assume that most stu-
dents, even many in upper division courses, will not know what critical thinking is or