Critical thinking in practice: The priorities and practices of instructors teaching in higher education

Abstract

Critical thinking features in university syllabi, programmes, and classes both in the UK and US and is considered one of the primary learning outcomes of higher education. Yet empirically we still know very little about how critical thinking is taught or the extent to which teaching practice is informed by academic research. Further work is needed to understand teaching practice across disciplines through the light of critical thinking research. In the present study, we surveyed 176 UK and US university instructors from a range of humanities and social sciences subjects about their teaching practices. The instructors ranked ten critical thinking skills drawn from the research literature and they identified the approaches and learning activities that they used to teach critical thinking. The key findings showed that there was broad consensus in the critical thinking skills that instructors considered most important (analysis, evaluation, and interpretation) and the skills that they considered least important (creativity, deductive reasoning, description, and problem-solving). The findings were similar irrespective of subject taught or country of instruction. We also found that instructors were more likely to report teaching critical thinking with an implicit approach as opposed to an explicit approach, and that instructors reported using dialogue-based activities to develop critical thinking. We use these findings to consider how we can further ‘close the gap’ between critical thinking research and teaching practice.