Infusing Critical Thinking Into Your Course: A Concrete, Practical Approach

Critical thinking―every scholar in the literature has defined it, but there is no clearly agreed upon definition. No wonder polls and surveys reveal that few college-level faculty can define critical thinking or know how to teach it. Still, critical thinking keeps appearing in accreditation standards and surveys of the skills employers seek in college graduates.

The good news is that we do know that critical thinking can be taught. But the concept cries out for the simplification, translation into discipline-relevant course outcomes, tangible teaching strategies, and concrete assessment techniques that this book will provide.

Like a course or a workshop, this book proposes learning outcomes for the reader―promises of what the reader will be able to do after reading it. These include:

• explain what critical thinking is in simple terms;
• convincingly explain to students why it is important for them to learn critical thinking, and, if they tune out, what they stand to lose;
• overcome the challenges that teaching critical thinking presents;
• identify the type of course content to which critical thinking can be applied and, therefore, that readers can use to teach critical thinking;
• integrate critical thinking into the design of a new or existing course in any discipline;
• write assessable critical thinking learning outcomes that are compatible with and make sense in any discipline;
• select and adapt activities and assignments that will give students no- or low-stakes practice with feedback in critical thinking using a variety of questions, tasks, and teaching methods.

Linda B. Nilson is founding director emeritus of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation (OTEI) at Clemson University and author of Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors, now in its fourth edition.