When we refer to someone as 'well educated' we are often focusing on their display of relevant content knowledge. Yet owning content knowledge is a trivial pursuit if one cannot retrieve appropriate knowledge in the context of well analyzed problems or use it to draw critical inferences in emergency situations. For this reason, "Education is nothing more, nor less, than learning to think." Peter Facione

Everyone can learn to think better. Training someone to attend to their own thinking process, and teaching them about how they evaluate information, draw inferences, and avoid thinking errors, is a lifelong gift.

On this page we have included a number of resources for those engaged in teaching for and about thinking. Many of the strategies that have proven valuable for training excellence in reasoning and judgment can be applied across disciplines and settings, in teaching and training people of all ages, in all nations around the world. The external expression of thought differs culturally, as governments and families determine who can speak aloud. But the human reasoning process is universal.

Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning in the Health Sciences: An International Multidisciplinary Teaching Anthology. This collection of favorite lessons, shared by teaching experts in the health sciences, provide examples of effective classroom and workplace strategies to train critical thinking and clinical reasoning.

"Teaching for and about Thinking" includes a number of classroom tips and suggestions about teaching for thinking. Using silence is one; expecting and rewarding virtue is another. Be creative and be practical. The idea is to model and to engage thinking. The PDF file suggests team testing, the metacognitive fishbowl strategy, and distinguishing between rote and reflective problem solving.

The Reflective Log gives structure and focus to the journal assignment many teachers use. Coach and guide meta-cognition, to develop students' self-monitoring and self-correction skills. And yet, regardless of the clever strategies one may build into one's class, a very big part of teaching thinking, or anything else, is remembering that no matter what you say is important, you will get only what you test.

Learning Through Discussion strategy offers a smart approach to encourage students to read assigned material and come to class more prepared. The steps to this process along with some valuable suggestions for practical ways to prepare student discussion leaders are contained in the four-page PDF file.

Levels of cognitive development describes how students think about authority and the sources of knowledge. Peg your teaching about one level higher than your students'. Challenge them to come up to that level, and nurture their efforts.

Developing a campus culture of learning will reinforce your teaching and support your students and your colleagues in their work. Be sure to survey and focus students' attention on the core learning goals of your courses.

Course Evaluation  You get only what you test. If you want students to think, they must know that you will test their thinking and problem solving skills as explicit elements that go into determining their grades. Any course assignment that can be used to engage students' thinking can be used to test students' thinking.

The CT Course Evaluation Form is a tool for aligning learning, teaching, and evaluation. Have you thought of using a course evaluation form based on learning outcomes as a pedagogical tool? Why not include the same outcomes in your syllabus and reinforce to students all the times and places in your course where they should be acquiring the skills, knowledge, and habits of learning which build toward those outcomes. More on course evaluation forms -- validity, reliability, and how your department can design a set which speaks directly to the learning outcomes and teaching methodologies of your discipline.

Sample exercises help you think about how you can build your own assignments for your own students. Remember in this process to use the language of thinking by asking students to interpret, analyze, evaluate, infer, and explain. Encourage them to be systematic, objective, fair-minded, mature, and truthseeking in judging what to believe or what to do. Don't just ask them to take a position and defend it; critical thinking is not about winning an argument it's about making a reasoned judgment. To evaluate student work, and to help students to internalize the language and standards of good thinking, teach them to evaluate their own work and the work of their classmates.

The Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric is ideal for classroom assessment. Use it developmentally to help students internalize the language of critical thinking and understand the difference between excellent, acceptable, substandard, and poor critical thinking.

Peer evaluation example standards You can use our professionally developed and validated reasoning and critical thinking skills tests, like The Test of Everyday Reasoning, and measures of learning and thinking motivation, like the CM3, to assess students and evaluate programs.

See how to combine multiple choice and short answer questions.

Some questions to ask yourself to facilitate personal and student reflection on teaching and learning about critical thinking.

Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts Download for your students (or create a link in your course's webpage) the latest update of this popular essay. CT - What and Why takes a Socratic approach to explaining the idea behind critical thinking and its value to life and living. You might enjoy some of the other essays on higher education topics we have gathered for you to download free.

  

In the end, nothing substitutes for reflective practice: Improve Thinking by Reflecting on Actual Examples of Successful and Unsuccessful Decision-Making and Problem-Solving! Teach groups and individuals to reflect upon and critically analyze their problem solving and decision-making processes by asking themselves systematic and tough questions about their own assumptions, methodologies, standards, and theoretical frames of references. "Step-Back" and be sure that you understand the problem before you try to solve it. Be sure you know what success would really look like before you set about making things right. Too often we, and our students, do things just to be doing something, without knowing what what the problem really is, why we are doing it, or how we will know when to declare victory.