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Simple Strategies for Teaching
As the academic term moves along, consistently inject critical thinking into your weekly
coverage of your subject matter and give your students plenty of practice in critical think-
ing through the use of well-crafted exercises, which may be completed in class or assigned
as homework. The key to teaching students to become adept at critical thinking is provid-
ing them consistent opportunities to practice what they are learning, including critical
thinking problems on graded activities such as examinations.
Although students’ intellectual abilities vary tremendously, all students should be able
to learn to think critically to some degree about the class material as well as about decisions
to be made in everyday life. A primary responsibility of college and university teachers
is to help students achieve whatever potential they might possess for becoming better
thinkers and decision makers. In this chapter, we have outlined a general strategy for meet-
ing this responsibility in any psychology course—from the introductory psychology
through the capstone course. Of course, adopting this strategy will not guarantee that
your students will become better critical thinkers, but it does increase the likelihood of
such an outcome. And that likelihood, after all, is the best that any teacher can hope
for—that we increase our students’ chances of becoming educated citizens.
References
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