{"id":1202,"date":"2025-10-01T10:05:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2025-10-02T11:14:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:14:05","slug":"critical-thinking-note-35-what-the-research-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/2025\/10\/01\/critical-thinking-note-35-what-the-research-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Thinking Note 35: What the Research says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There is research on Critical Thinking, notably on how it can be taught effectively. Several key findings are reported in Jonathan Haber&#8217;s <em>Critical Thinking<\/em> (published by the MIT Press, several copies are available to check out in our Faculty Commons). In 1989 Robert Ennis outlined 4 possible approaches to teaching critical thinking as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The general approach, where Critical Thinking is taught as a set of general reasoning skills and dispositions in a dedicated course.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Infusion, where Critical Thinking is taught across disciplines and Critical Thinking principles, skills and dispositions are made explicit.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Immersion, where students are immersed in Critical Thinking through subject matter across disciplines but where Critical Thinking Principles, skills and dispositions are not made explicit.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A mixed approach which includes dedicated instruction as in the general approach plus infusion or immersion across disciplines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Two and a half decades later, a team of researchers led by Philip Abrami conducted a meta-analysis of subsequent research utilizing. This analysis of the substantial body of research conducted in the intervening two and a half decades produced some clear findings concerning how to most effectively teach critical thinking. Not surprisingly, the mixed approach, combining dedicated instruction in Critical Thinking as a set of general skills and dispositions is the most effective of improving student&#8217;s critical thinking. And the immersion approach is least effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While we have always thought of our approach to critical thinking in our legacy General Education program as the infusion approach, the lack of collaboration and professional development around critical thinking strongly suggests that what we have in fact been doing is closer to the immersion approach. No doubt this varies from instructor to instructor. But while the concept of infusion appears to presuppose that there is something that gets infused, we have never paid much attention to Ennis&#8217; distinction between infusion and immersion. Given this lack of coordination, I suspect we have by and large defaulted to the later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our current effort at building a new program of Institutional Learning has aimed to bring us more in alignment with what Ennis calls an infusion approach. This is still not the most effective way to teach critical thinking skills, but it seems to be the best we are capable of given the remoteness of the prospect of adopting a Critical Thinking course requirement at the institutional level. While well short of ideal in terms of critical thinking education, adopting a well-developed infusion model would be a big step for us in terms of making critical thinking a meaningful part of a BC education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A further unsurprising finding of the meta-analysis led by Abrami is that student mastery of critical thinking skills is substantially enhanced when faculty engage in significant professional and curriculum development focused on Critical Thinking. From the report,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>When instructors receive special advanced training in preparation for teaching CT skill, or when extensive observations on course administration and instructor&#8217;s CT teaching practices were reported, the impacts of the interventions were greatest. By contrast, the impacts of CT were smallest when the intention to improve students&#8217; CT was only listed among course objectives and there were no efforts at professional development or elaboration of course design and implementation.<\/p><cite>Abrami et al. quoted in Haber<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As we reimagine our approach to teaching Critical Thinking across the college, I hope we will develop more deliberate and collaborative efforts at professional and curriculum development in Critical Thinking. It would be great to see the occasional Campus Community Day feature some outside expertise on Critical Thinking in a keynote role (Professional development efforts like this, by the way, would help to address our accreditation recommendation concerning resource allocation based on the results of assessment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I should say something about how Abrami <em>et al<\/em>. understand critical thinking. While critical thinking experts and educators do employ a variety of definitions of critical thinking, these typically don&#8217;t so much embody points of dispute as differences in detail and emphasis. The definition employed in the meta-analysis led by Abrami is the widely cited definition produced by the Delphi panel (organized by the American Philosophical Association):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>We Understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgement which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. . . . The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgements, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeing results which are as precise as thee subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit.<\/p><cite>Delphi Report<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This very involved definition lists a robust range of Critical Thinking skills and dispositions involved in inquiry. Of course, there is little hope of expecting students to recall all of this or for faculty to address all of this in the context of our program of Institutional Learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Critical thinking Working group here at BC has opted for something a bit more manageable and memorable:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Critical Thinking is the careful assessment of any position by clarifying and evaluating reasons for and against the position.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>A careful reading of the articulation we have offered for our Critical Thinking ILO will reveal that much of the Delphi Report&#8217;s definition is invoked in the critical clarification, analysis, and evaluation of reasoning. More here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/gened\/2025\/03\/05\/articulating-our-ilos\/\">Articulating Critical Thinking: \u2013 General Education Reform at BC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is research on Critical Thinking, notably on how it can be taught effectively. Several key findings are reported in Jonathan Haber&#8217;s Critical Thinking (published by the MIT Press, several copies are available to check out in our Faculty Commons). In 1989 Robert Ennis outlined 4 possible approaches to teaching critical thinking as follows: Two &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/2025\/10\/01\/critical-thinking-note-35-what-the-research-says\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Critical Thinking Note 35: What the Research says<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1209,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}