Few people doubt the value of developing students' thinking skills. A focus on critical thinking is common in education. In the Australian Curriculum, critical thinking and creative thinking are known as "general capabilities". The US has a similar focus through their "common core".
Many approaches to developing critical thinking are based on Philosophy for Children. One strategy that has a large impact on students' ability to analyse and evaluate arguments is argument mapping, in which a student's reasoning can be visually displayed by capturing the inferential pathway from assumption to conclusion. This type of argument-based intellectual engagement can show high outcomes in terms of the quality of thinking in any classroom. Research also shows deliberate attention to the practice of reasoning in the context of our everyday lives can be significantly improved through targeted teaching.
Teachers at one high school in Australia, who have much training in critical thinking teaching methods, developed a task that asked students to determine Australia's greatest sports person. Students needed to construct their own criteria for greatness. To do so, they had to analyze the Australian sporting context, create possible evaluative standards, explain and justify why some standards would be more acceptable than others and apply these to their candidates. They then needed to argue their case with their classmates to develop criteria that were solid, defensible, widely applicable and produced a choice that seized significant and relevant aspects of Australian sport.
Researchers looking at the gains made in a single term of teaching critical thinking with argument mapping said the critical thinking gains measured are close to those that could be expected to result from three years of undergraduate education. Students who are taught to think well also do better on subject-based exams and standardized tests than those who do not.
In terms of developing 21st century skills, which includes setting up students for lifelong learning, teaching critical thinking should be core business.
