Development And Motivation In/For Critical Thinking

Abstract

An explicit link between the issues of development and critical thinking is provided by Elder and Paul (1996). In their stage theory of critical thinking, Elder and Paul argued that the first stage beyond unreflective thinking is that of the challenged thinker. The challenged thinker is one who has become aware of the actual role of thinking in life and of significant problems caused by unreflective thinking. This is in accord with our experience, which we will describe and analyze in this article. History and contemporary society are saturated with and driven by thinking, much of which is developmentally immature and disastrous. Scriven and Paul (1987) made the crucial point that shoddy thinking is costly. Our approach to fostering critical thinking deals with the issue of motivation to think critically by focusing on the costs of not doing so. We agree with McPeck (1994) that some course content areas are more suitable than others for fostering critical thinking. In the courses we will describe here, we are able to challenge students to think about issues that have significant impact in the social world. Our goal is to move students to recognize that they can, and should, become critical thinkers and that recognizing meaningful challenges is the first developmental step.