Critical Thinking as a Crucial Issue in Education: The Effect of the Teacher`s Performance and Cross-Culture Response

Abstract

The movement to the information age has focused attention on good thinking as an important element of life success (Huitt, 1995; Thomas & Smoot, 1994). These changing conditions require new outcomes, such as critical thinking, to be included as a focus of schooling. Old standards of simply being able to score well on a standardized test of basic skills, though still appropriate, cannot be the sole means by which we judge the academic success or failure of our students.The purpose of this brief overview is to review what we know about critical thinking, how it might be differentiated from creative thinking, and to suggest future research and implementation activities.