For a long time, whenever I heard the phrase “teaching critical thinking,” I got something like what the kids call “the ick.”
First, it seemed redundant to me. If you’re not teaching critical thinking, then what exactly are you teaching, I wondered?
As I’ve matured both as an educator and person (hopefully), I’ve realized that in fields other than writing, there can be a tendency to lean toward rote memorization assignments that avoid critical thinking. I’ve also seen that there are certain times when critical thinking lessons seem extremely necessary. The rise in "fake news" has been one such era, and our current AI age is another.
Here are some of the critical thinking writing techniques I try and stress all the time but am putting particular emphasis on now. These broad strategies range from good-old-fashioned writing and rhetoric advice to some basic science literacy.
1. Critical Thinking and Writing: Source Evaluation
Most of us intuitively realize that a reputable news source is more likely to have correct information than a social media post, but that’s just the start.
I encourage my students to look up the publication and authors they are reading and citing. Then I have them examine what bias the publication or author might have? For example, what reasons they’d be putting out this story, and what narratives, sources, and aspects of the story/subject are not included.
Then we take things a level deeper and interrogate the info in the story. If it’s a story about a new medical study, let’s find the actual study, see how it was performed, and how participants were included.
Finally, let’s examine our own biases. Do we find the study convincing? If so, why, and is it because we want to believe it? In other words, is it a form of confirmation bias?
2. Writing Not Regurgitating
When it comes to actually writing, I try to structure all my assignments in a way that encourages, and in some cases even requires, students to say something new about a topic.
Instead of a book report, which always seems to me to be about proving that you’ve done the work, I want students to produce a unique response to the book through something such as a related research project, or a more critical response to a reading. This not only makes the assignment more engaging, it forces them to exercise their critical thinking muscles as they explore the concept.
Proving what you know is never fun, but discovering and saying something new can be both fun and rewarding educationally. Additionally, with the rise of AI writing, originality is an even more important criterion in student work.
3. Learning To Steelman
One of the best ways to think about different perspectives is to “steelman” the opposing arguments. By learning and thinking about the best version of an opposing argument, students get a better understanding of where others are coming from and learn more about the issues being debated.
This is also ultimately a more persuasive rhetorical strategy than the more common strawman arguments. Arguing against strawmen doesn’t really engage with the issue or move the conversation further.
On the other hand, building strong steelman counter arguments can help students clarify their own thinking and recognize where they might have common ground with those who disagree with them.
4. Difference Between Causation and Correlation
Learning the difference between causation and correlation is such a big step to becoming a more logical thinker, I believe. Issues around this are common in debates about everything from healthcare to education and more.
The way this was taught to me in my freshman psychology class always stuck with me. The instructor told us that a city’s crime rate had increased as its number of schools increased and asked us if that meant that schools were causing the crime rate to spike. The answer is, as is easy to guess, of course not. Instead, the increase in schools was likely due to an increase in the city’s population that also led to an increase in crime. Though assigning causation is very difficult, and we shouldn’t even assume population increases alone was to blame.
This may be an obvious idea in this type of example, but it tends to be forgotten too often in everyday life, especially in more subtle instances or when the correlation tends to agree with what we want to believe. For instance, if more schools were correlated with a decrease in crime, we should still question whether that was the cause, though many people wouldn't because schools lowering crime rates sounds good to us.
5. Asking The Right Questions
I try not to tell my students what, or even how, to think. Listening to anyone’s advice on that can often be the opposite of critical thinking. But I do encourage them to learn to ask the right questions.
Research suggests this type of critical thinking can be taught. For instance, currently, the debate around the dangers of AI has intensified. How dangerous is AI to the future of humanity? I’m not sure anyone knows the answer to that for certain, but if students can ask the right questions, they can get closer to that. Who is arguing that AI is safe and shouldn’t be regulated? Who is arguing it should be regulated? What do both sides stand to gain or lose? And, perhaps even more importantly, what is the content behind the headlines of each side’s arguments?
I find asking these types of questions and giving students space and time to investigate their answers can be a productive way to explore these and many other issues.
