Noreen C. Facione and Peter A. Facione, “Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment,” from Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning in the Health Sciences: A Teaching Anthology, 2008. Published by Insight Assessment / The California Academic Press: Millbrae CA. pp. 1-13. © 2008 NC Facione & PA Facione, Hermosa Beach, CA. 

Excerpt: "Lives depend on competent clinical reasoning. Thus it is a moral imperative for health care providers to strive to monitor and improve their clinical reasoning and care related judgments. Knowing that this is the agreement owed to the public trust, agencies responsible for the accreditation of professional training programs and for the oversight of health care delivery have mandated the need to demonstrate competence in clinical reasoning in health care clinicians and students."

In this allegorical essay, which appeared in Change: The Magazine of Higher Education, we walk side by side with an academic dean who is preparing to explain to the Board of Trustees the importance of critical thinking.  Between the dean’s office and the Board’s meeting room we encounter members of the faculty, staff professionals, senior administrators and coaches.  Each encounter provides the dean with another insight into critical thinking.  Travel with the dean and reflect on the  progress of our understanding of critical thinking.  Imagine how you would explain critical thinking to people outside of academia. 

Facione, NC, and Facione PA, (2001). International Journal of Applied Philosophy, Volume 15. Number 2, pp. 267-286. [PDF of this article made available with the permission of the publisher. See journal front-matter for information on copy costs.]

Abstract:People make significant decisions in contexts of risk and uncertainty. Some of these decisions seem wise under the circumstances, and others seem like irrational choices. In both cases, people offer reasons as clarifications and explanations of these choices to others and to themselves. Argument analysis, a technique well known in philosophy and more generally in the humanities, can explicate the strands of assumptions, intermediate conclusions, data, warrants, and claims that the person articulates. But alone, argument analysis often falls short of revealing why the person’s decision makes sense to that person. The findings of empirical research into the influences of cognitive heuristics, the mental shortcuts we all use in decision making and problem solving, adds focus to the analysis of these choices. This paper links these two powerful analytic strategies, and provides a much fuller, more fruitful picture of explanations for seemingly irrational choices. Using an example explanation for deciding not to quit smoking, the paper makes both its methodological argument and its implicit argument for the significance of extending this analytical strategy to applied contexts. The implications of extending this analysis of everyday argument to management, health care, and education could be profound.

(12 Pages) Facione, PA. (2000) Paper presented to the American Bible Society, New York. [This PDF download file is being made available with permission of the author and copyright holder.]

Abstract: “Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.” Aristotle. “Reason, however sound, has little weight with ordinary theologians.” Baruch Spinosa. For humans the impetus toward thinking is as natural as is an eagle’s impetus to fly. Birds have wings and no one asks them should they fly. Yet, although humans have minds, we sometimes wonder whether or not we should think. Our research on the aspect of critical thinking called “truthseeking” shows that many endorse the notions that some questions are too frightening to ask and that they actually seek reasons to support their preconceptions rather than evidence to the contrary. Some thoughts are simply too disturbing to be entertained, and some matters too sacred to be scientifically investigated. On the other hand, the overall disposition toward reasoned judgment is strong. Can we reconcile our natural inclination toward reasoning with the risks that cherished beliefs may be discovered to be unfounded? We are all aware that these tensions are no place more evident than in the frequent and bitter clashes between reason and religion.

Facione, PA, Sánchez, (Giancarlo) CA, Facione, NC, & Gainen, J., (1995). Journal of General Education. Volume 44, Number 1, pp. 1-25. [This PDF made available with the permission of the publisher. See journal front-matter for information on copy costs.] (17 pages)

Abstract: There is a set of characterological attributes thought to be associated with developing success at critical thinking (CT). This paper explores the disposition toward CT theoretically, and then as it appears to be manifest in college students. Factor analytic research grounded in a consensus-based conceptual analysis of CT described seven aspects of the overall disposition toward CT: truthseeking, open-mindedness, analyticity, systematicity, CT confidence, inquisitiveness, and cognitive maturity. The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI), developed in 1992, was used to sample college students at two comprehensive universities. Entering college freshman students showed strengths in open-mindedness and inquisitiveness, weaknesses in systematicity and opposition to truthseeking. Additional research indicates the disposition toward CT is highly correlated with the psychological constructs of absorption and openness to experience, and strongly predictive of ego-resiliency. A preliminary study explores the interesting and potentially complex interrelationship between the disposition toward CT and CT abilities. In addition to the significance of this work for psychological studies of human development, empirical research on the disposition toward CT promises important implications for all levels of education.

(17 pages) Facione, PA, Facione NC, and Giancarlo (Gittens), CA. This essay was originally published by the California Academic Press in 1996. An abbreviated form appears in Jones, E (Ed.) Preparing Competent College Graduates: Setting New and Higher Expectations for Student Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. 67-79. This material is used with the permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Consult their website for information and permission to make copies.

Abstract: How can we habituate learners and workers to engage in thoughtful, fair-minded problem solving, decision making, and professional judgment? Demands for skillful and fair-minded thinkers arise today in every professional field and in our civic and personal lives. The pace of change accelerates, multiple sources of information saturate our senses, the rules are rewritten, and problems arise daily that defy predetermined solutions. At a minimum, to be effective learners and successful workers we must be willing and able to make informed, fair-minded, judgments in contexts of relative uncertainty about what to believe and what to do in a wide variety of situations. To go beyond the minimum, workers, learners, and citizens must be willing and able to critique intelligently and amend judiciously the methods, conceptualizations, contexts, evidence, and standards applied in any given problem situation. In short, we must habitually, not just skillfully, engage in critical thinking in a world that is so dynamic that today’s verities are yesterday's misconceptions. Thus the driving question: how is the consistent internal motivation to think critically identified, measured, and nurtured?

(17 Pages) This essay is an earlier version of a paper published in 1999 in French. Facione, PA, Facione, NC, Giancarlo, CA, Ferguson, N, (1999). Le jugement professionnel et la disposition à la pensée critique. Guilbert, L, Boisvert, J., and Ferguson, N (Eds.) Enseigner et compredre: le développement d´une pensée critique. Quebec, Canada: Les Presses de l´Université Laval. 307-26.

Abstract: Professionals are expected to exercise sound, unbiased judgment in interpreting and analyzing information, determining the nature of problems, identifying and evaluating alternative courses of action, making decisions, and, throughout, monitoring the process and impact of their problem solving activity so as to amend, revise, correct, or alter their decisions, or any element that led up to those decisions, as deemed necessary. Judgment in professional practice, correctly exercised, is a reflective, self-corrective, purposeful thinking process which requires the professional to take into account content knowledge, context, evidence, methods, conceptualizations, and a variety of criteria and standards of adequacy. Professional judgment is what educators have called “critical thinking” but exercised in a practical, professional setting. The exercise of sound judgment requires both a willingness and the ability to think critically. The multiplicity of parameters affecting professional judgment has direct implications for the education of novice and more advanced practitioners. Given the relationship between professional judgment and the disposition toward critical thinking, scientific investigations of that disposition have direct implications for educating and evaluating professionals.

(15 Pages),Facione, NC, Facione, PA, (1996). Nursing Outlook, Volume 44, pages 129-36 [This PDF download file is being made available here with the permission of the journal editor and publisher.]

Abstract: Critical thinking, defined as purposeful, self-regulatory judgment, is centrally evident in nursing knowledge development and expert clinical judgment. A holistic critical thinking scoring rubric, a framework for critical thinking individual and group presentations, and a case study strategy for training and nurturing critical thinking in students illustrate that the critical thinking in nursing knowledge development and clinical judgment an be externalized, taught, modeled, and measured. The approaches suggested here can be adapted to other professional practice programs and fields.

Facione, PA, Sánchez, (Giancarlo) CA, Facione, NC, & Gainen, J., (1995). Journal of General Education. Volume 44, Number 1, pp. 1-25. [This PDF made available with the permission of the publisher. See journal front-matter for information on copy costs.] (17 pages)

Abstract: There is a set of characterological attributes thought to be associated with developing success at critical thinking (CT). This paper explores the disposition toward CT theoretically, and then as it appears to be manifest in college students. Factor analytic research grounded in a consensus-based conceptual analysis of CT described seven aspects of the overall disposition toward CT: truthseeking, open-mindedness, analyticity, systematicity, CT confidence, inquisitiveness, and cognitive maturity. The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI), developed in 1992, was used to sample college students at two comprehensive universities. Entering college freshman students showed strengths in open-mindedness and inquisitiveness, weaknesses in systematicity and opposition to truthseeking. Additional research indicates the disposition toward CT is highly correlated with the psychological constructs of absorption and openness to experience, and strongly predictive of ego-resiliency. A preliminary study explores the interesting and potentially complex interrelationship between the disposition toward CT and CT abilities. In addition to the significance of this work for psychological studies of human development, empirical research on the disposition toward CT promises important implications for all levels of education.

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