argumentive essay outline

argumentive essay outline

The Importance of Critical Thinking in Higher Education

1. Introduction

The importance of critical thinking has been well established for nearly a century. Unfortunately, much of the instruction in higher education fails to adequately nurture these habits in students, as the majority of courses and assignments do not demand attitudes, skills, and values representative of a critical thinking education. Furthermore, efforts to assess these abilities have not been able to keep pace with the need. Despite a robust and timely need to assess critical thinking in higher education, very few measurement tools have been developed or evaluated. This validation study develops the Critical Thinking Assessment Instrument, a general critical thinking skills instrument especially designed for higher education, and assesses validity evidence supporting its use. Implications for institutional effectiveness and cultivating critical thinking are discussed.

2. The Benefits of Critical Thinking in Education

As a consequence, students who develop strong critical thinking skills become more effective readers, writers, speakers, and problem solvers. They become more engaged in their education and more engaged citizens. They learn to become a person who initiates internalized dialogue with knowledge. And they learn to reason from evidence in a process of problem solving or being confronted in challenges.

The Socratic method and other teaching practices that help students develop critical thinking skills have a variety of well-documented benefits. In particular, students that are forced to analyze and synthesize information from a variety of sources become better independent thinkers. They use their own powers of analysis and assessment rather than automatically believing information. They provoke new thought in other students and are provoked in turn by others. They become more conscientious about self-assessment, expressing doubt, and questioning the status quo. They use information in a constructive and not just a reactive way. This makes students better thinkers and writers, able to critically understand a course’s purview. It gets students to question an author’s perspective and how this influences what an author says. Finally, it provokes similar critical consideration of any new ideas students may encounter.

3. Challenges to Critical Thinking in Higher Education

Experts generally agree that critical thinking (CT) skills are essential for the workplace and now more than ever due to the information age. Although experts in the field agree on the general public’s low level of CT skills, there is a dearth of empirical data on college students’ proficiency in CT. Although experts generally agree that institutions of higher education should foster critical thinking, there is a lack of consideration on how college educators value student CT skills in their own classroom and assessment of that skill, which may have negative implications for student learning. This study can provide insight into what instructors of a wide range of courses do in the way of assessing students’ critical thinking skills. With this information, a professional development initiative aimed at fostering the development of students’ CT skills, supported by resources tailored with critical thinking support literature, can be developed. We believe that by sharing the assessment practices of each program or department, more will strive to implement tools and resources suitable for their related disciplines. Despite the reported effort to improve critical thinking skills, evidence on how to foster and assess critical thinking across various disciplines and the resultant student skill level is lacking. This study aimed to generate a composite of assessment practices conducted at our college for program evaluation and the development of a professional development initiative.

The increasing significance of higher education has been a frequent topic of public policy debate since the late 1980s in countries all around the world. One of the arguments supporting the continuing expansion of higher education is that it enhances critical thinking. Many educators believe that higher education should help students develop critical thinking skills to prepare them for leadership positions in both their professional and personal lives. Despite consensus on the skills students should develop, many instructors offer assessment processes that do not encourage independent thought. Faculty members involved in professional programs especially may prefer traditional assessment methods, which cannot measure critical thinking, reasoning, or content applied to real-world problems. There is general agreement about the nature of critical thinking, but those who do not employ any of the well-defined critical thinking assessment methodologies to assess college student learning outcomes appear to undermine the collective belief in the use of critical thinking to foster said outcomes.

4. Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills in Students

Numerous mechanisms have been brought to bear in an effort to enhance undergraduates’ critical thinking skills. Major communication technologies, from print to broadcasting, to the internet, mobile digitalization and interactive media have developed rapidly during this period. These tools have been harnessed for instructional and edutainment applications with the main focus of assisting college students in developing their critical thinking skills. Despite large investments of financial, human and intellectual resources, a growing body of academic research now casts doubt as to the actual success of efforts to enhance students’ critical thinking, digital literacy, and ability to critique and evaluate resources once they have been identified. These bottom line considerations give rise to two questions that form the basis of this investigation. First, to what extent is the function of fostering critical thinking by those who teach in a higher education context achieved? Second, and assuming heterogeneity in the teaching of critical thinking, what are the optimal critical thinking enhancement strategies that need to be put in place?

Critical thinking is one of the most highly valued and most taken-for-granted skills in the higher education curriculum. There has been a longstanding concern that the knowledge deficit within a discipline does not prepare graduates to be effective future workers and members of a democratic society. Because knowledge itself is so vast and changes very rapidly, it is the higher order thinking skills that are of increasing importance. While away from the tedium of committing to memory myriad content, lecturers often encourage students to be critical in their assessment of the breadth and depth of material on offer to them. Lecturers believe that the fostering of critical thinking in their students is a rich reward for their training efforts and they view this as a headline objective of tertiary level teaching.

5. Conclusion

Our times are of rapid change. In an era of exponential technological growth and the widespread adoption of automation and artificial intelligence, many jobs will disappear and new ones will appear. Continuous adaptability and lifelong learning are a must for the professionals of the future. The critical skills that must be trained in order to prepare these professionals can be grouped together under the label of “21st-century skills.” Among them, this paper shall argue, is critical thinking. Universities must revamp the way that skills are taught in order to ensure that they are taken on board throughout the university curriculum. In this task, it is essential to provide practical guidance to educators so they can adopt specific teaching strategies both explicitly through tutorials and case-specific situations and through implicit learning through the curriculum. Only then will we prepare our graduates to respond to the ever-changing challenges they face in life.

This paper is focused on the question of how to include critical thinking as a 21st-century skill in higher education. It first reviews the main characteristics of critical thinking, including the development of proficiency in critical thinking skills, the disposition of the thinker, and the ability to observe and correct failures in critical thinking. The discussion focuses on why critical thinking should be included as a skill in higher education and addresses the training of critical thinking, both explicitly and through implicit learning in the context of the university. The paper ends with a call for universities to reconsider the training they provide and for ongoing work to embed critical thinking. Only then can we prepare graduates for the challenges they will face in a time of rapid change, both in the context of their work at the beginning of their working life and as citizens in a complex society.