Education and Critical Thinking

Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #94

It’s been a tumultuous week in world politics. I’m not qualified to analyse the US elections, but it’s hard to view democratic processes across the world today without pondering on the nature of critical thinking.

The notion of critical thinking is complex. I can’t get too deep into it without tackling the broader discussion over skills vs. knowledge in education (something that’s on my agenda to tackle soon!).

However, it’s clear that just as with creativity (see update #28), critical thinking can’t be considered a stand-alone skill. A student can’t think critically about science, for example, or economics, or public policy, without a certain level of knowledge.

There’s more to thinking critically than just knowing things, though. The learner needs some capacity to apply this knowledge flexibly, and in unfamiliar contexts.

As an analogy, there’s a difference between knowing about your subject as an educator, and knowing how to plan classes or explain concepts, what examples to use, etc.

Thinking. Image via Pixabay

Teaching techniques

Together, the points above suggest two things – we need a knowledge-rich curriculum, but we also need to support the skills and heuristics involved in thinking critically.

In a study informed by cognitive load theory, van Peppen et al. (2021) explored the latter issue.

They presented both worked examples and practice problems to students in various orders. The study supported the idea that these activities were useful, with benefits to transfer, and the benefits persisted after a 9-month delay. To their surprise, though, the findings didn’t support the worked-example effect, in that worked examples weren’t superior to problem solving. It also didn’t suggest that contrasting correct and flawed solutions was especially useful.

Here’s the study:

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Van Peppen, L. M., Verkoeijen, P. P., Heijltjes, A. E., Janssen, E. M., & van Gog, T. (2021). Enhancing students’ critical thinking skills: is comparing correct and erroneous examples beneficial?. Instructional Science, 49, 747–777.

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In their Discussion section the authors consider the unexpected nature of their findings, and this is well worth reading.

To me, the contrast that they tried is reminiscent of interleaving (see update #14). With interleaved practice, contrast only helps if it highlights subtle differences that students would otherwise overlook; that might not have been the case here.

All in all, it feels like cognitive science is starting to make some valuable inroads into the question of how to support critical thinking among students.

All the best,

Jonathan

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