Critical thinking: knowledge, skill, or disposition?

Jos Antonio Espinoza Critical thinking, like leadership, competencies management, motivation, and so on, looks like to belong to a modern version of the lapis philosophorum, the philosopher's stone. Those are elusive concepts that if achieved will transform persons, organization or even nations. Numerous and huge studies have been done around critical thinking, including an alert that a nation was at risk if this topic was not considered as a supreme need to be resolved (United States. National Commission on Excellence in, 1983). And that was because at that time it happen that many 17-years-olds do not possess the higher order intellectual skills we should expect from them. Nearly 40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material (p. 9). Like the alchemy, there is in those concepts much to learn and use, and excellent intentions, but after we separate the wheat from the chaff. It seems USA authorities did not make the separation because more than 25 years after that call for action the infamous situation there still persists. Twenty-five years later, it's time to review the progress we have made since the report's release. We remain a nation at risk (United States. Department of Education, n.d., para. 3). And the situation now is more demanding: If we were at risk in 1983, we are at even greater risk now. The rising demands of our global economy, together with demographic shifts, require that we educate more students to higher levels than ever before. Yet, our education system is not keeping pace with these growing demands. Of 20 children born in 1983, six did not graduate from high school on time in 2001. Of the 14 who did, 10 started

college that fall, but only five earned a bachelor's degree by spring 2007. (para. 45) To separate the wheat, common sense demands to begin a discussion defining terms. If you wish to converse with me, define your terms is a quote attributed to Voltaire. This recommendation is not always feasible in social sciences and we can accept fuzzy borders of the concept to host diverse opinions and points of view. But at least some key points ought to be clarified. In that vein there is not a consensus definition of critical thinking but there are well accepted descriptions of what it is when we got it. For instance Critical thinking is reflective and reasonable thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do (Ennis, 1989, p. 45). So is a very practical activity oriented to action. Other were more descriptive but still incomplete: In laypersons terms critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth [emphasis addeded] It is a type of thought that even a 3-year-olds can engage in and even trained scientist can fail in (Willingham, 2008, p.22). More specifically In terms of abilities or skills Ennis (1989) identified four general set of abilities: (a) related to clarity, (b) related to inference, (b) related to establishing a sound base for inference, and (d) and abilities involving decision making. Always inside the fuzzy borders of this concept some authors ascribed to critical thinking the category of higher order thinking and a conceptualization of what it means

was offered by Ennis (1985) using the Blooms taxonomy. This classification sustains six cognitive objectives of any learning process: knowledge (in the sense of memorize), comprehension (describe the concept in our own words), application (use the concept in a new situation), analysis (understand the structure of the components), synthesis (create a new meaning or structure), and evaluation (make judgments about the values). Lower thinking level comprises knowledge, comprehension and application. Higher thinking level, that is critical thinking, then means to analyze, synthesize and judge concepts (Athanassiou, McNett, & Harvey, 2003). But others authors consider the use of Blooms taxonomy also incomplete to characterize the critical thinking because it doesnt take into consideration the quality of those levels. For instance it is not enough to judge something to be a critical thinker, because that action can be done egocentrically and critical thinking occurs when several relevant points of views are considered. So the attitudes, that is, the dispositions of a person must be considered. The Delphi Committee of the American Philosophical Association (Facione, 1990) identified six skills (interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation), 16 subskills, and also 19 dispositions (including inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, understanding others, and so on) associated with critical thinking. Ennis (1991) offered a precise description of 12 dispositions or attitudes that has to characterize an ideal thinker. They are: to communicate clearly; to maintain the focus; to consider the whole situation; to look for and offer reasons; to be well informed; to seek alternatives; to try to get as much precision as needed; to recognize our own beliefs; to consider others points of view; to resist to jump to conclusions without enough evidences and reasons; to take a position when evidences and reasons are enough to, but be flexible to change if needed; and to use her/his

critical thinking abilities. These dispositions added to the four sets of skills or abilities mentioned before, are the base for the critical thinking actions. Notwithstanding some researchers consider there is something lacking in the previous elaboration, and the question arising from them is: are there specific knowledge to be acquired to be an effective critical thinker, besides the skills and attitudes? Is it useful or necessary to handle somr precise terms and process? Most of them think that the answer is yes. In order to express his or her thinking and sustain the process, the thinker must use terms like premises, evidences, inference, inductive, deductive, post hoc ergo procter hoc, refutacion, falsation, etc. So a critical thinker must master several processes, procedures and the precise vocabulary to be understood. Then we arrive to a position where skills, attitudes/dispositions and knowledge are part of a definition and conceptualization of critical thinking. And we are at home again because that is a classic definition of competency! Surprisingly some authors discuss if critical thinking is a set of skills or dispositions or knowledge instead of considering it as the sum of all that, that critical thinking should be considered as competency. Accepting it is a competency or a set of competencies, now the question is, how hard is it to develop critical thinking competencies? It is very hard. We, humans, have not evolved to be more critical in our judgments. Our brains mission is surviving, not to think critically, not to be skeptical about arguments. For example in problem solving tasks our thinking tends to focus on a problems surface structure, not to penetrate beyond that level, our brain is comfortable detecting and using patterns. It takes less energy (Willingham, 2008). Majority of people cannot, even when adequately prompted, reliably exhibit basic skills of sound general reasoning and argumentation (Kuhn 1991). Acquiring expertise in critical thinking is hard because is not enough to practice to enhance skills but we have to transfer those skills to the specific context where the decision must be taken, and apply

some theoretical knowledge.. Critical thinking is a complex activity, a higher-order skill. The problem is that an insight or skill picked up, in one situation is not or cannot be applied in another situation. We must teach for transfer (Halper,1998; Van Gelder, 2005; Shermer 2002). Literature shows three, many times competing, approaches to teach this competency. The so called general approach, that means that there are specific and isolated interventions (courses, workshops, etc) to teach the critical thinking knowledge, skills and attitudes. It assumes critical thinking, once you learn it, can be applied anytime, anywhere. The other approach is the infusion of critical thinking components into specific subject-matter areas. Critical thinking is a skill whose raw material and its outcomes are thought (domain knowledge). If a person doesnt know about the subject of the problem or argument that person cant think about it from multiple perspectives, wont be able to implement the advice they memorize (Willingham, 2008, p. 21). So the advice is not to try to teach critical thinking devoid of factual content; instead teaching students to think critically probably lies in small part in showing them new ways of thinking, and in large part in enabling them to display the right type of thinking at the right time (p. 24). One think is to know the metacognitives strategies that tells us what we should do and another is to have the knowledge that is needed to actually do it. So Willingham is very strong Background knowledge is necessary to engage in CT. Ones judgment about the plausibility of a factor being important is based on ones knowledge of the domain. You can only recognize the outcome of an experiment as anomalous if you had some expectation of how it would turn out. And that expectation would be based on domain knowledge(p. 26). This is achieved making explicit, since the begin, the general principles (knowledge) of critical thinking, and using it to discuss the subject-matter. For instance in an macroeconomy course, in a leadership course, a tax regulations course, etc. A third one is the immersion approach; in this one

the critical thinking principles are not made explicit, but there are intensive discussions of the subject-matter so leading to think critically about it. The logical mix of them makes a lot of sense but not much institutions put this in place. For instance a mix approach would be to teach a general course in Critical Thinking at the beginning of the curriculum and also infuse critical think challenges and applications in subject-matter courses. This seems to be the future (present?) of how to teach critical think competency so our nation is not at risk.

References Athanassiou, N., McNett, J., & Harvey, C. (2003). Critical Thinking in the Management Classroom: Bloom's Taxonomy as a Learning Tool. Journal of Management Education, 27, 533-555. Ennis, R. H. (1985). A Logical Basis for Measuring Critical Thinking Skills. [Article]. Educational Leadership, 43(2), 44. Ennis, R. H. (1989). Critical thinking and subject specificity: Clarification and needed research. American Educational Research Association, 18(3), 4-10. Facione, P. (1990). Critical thinking: A statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction. Report of the Delphi Group of the American Philosophical Association. Retrieved from http://Assessment.aas.duke.edu/documents/Delphi_Report.pdf Halpern, D. F. (1998). Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains: Disposition, skills, structure training, and metacognitive monitoring. American Psychologist, 53(4), 449-455. doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.53.4.449 Kuhn, D. (1991). The skills of argument. Retrived from http://books.google.com.pe/books? id=q0ra0DxRTNEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v =onepage&q&f=false

United States. Department of Education (n.d.). A Nation Accountable: Twenty-five Years after A Nation at Risk. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/accountable/index.html United States. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk : the imperative for educational reform : a report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education / by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Washington, D.C. : The Commission [Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O. distributor]. Shermer, M. (2002). Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our mind. New York, NY: Freeman. Van Gelder, T. (2005). Teaching critical thinking. College Teaching, 53(1), 41-46. Willingham, D. T. (2008). Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach? Arts Education Policy Review, 109(4), 21-32.