Teaching Critical Thinking in Social Work Practice Courses

Abstract

Social workers in direct practice rely on critical thinking to apply theories, make informed decisions, and explain their assessments and decisions. This article describes methods for teaching critical thinking to graduate and undergraduate social work students in practice courses. The authors define critical thinking, explore the skills necessary for its development, describe the methods and assignments used to teach these skills, and detail a simple pre/post-test method used to evaluate graduate students’ gains in critical thinking skills.