The art of critical thinking must be seen as a fundamental part of English B, within the Diploma programme - it is vital to educate students in the fundamental transferable skill of thinking critically.

But what do we mean by 'critical thinking'? (Actually, that question is critical thinking!)

To think critically, in essence, is to ask questions which strive to understand the topic under discussion in more detail and in more depth. In a sense, such a procedure should be neutral or objective - or at least it should start from an open willingness to understand more and better.

However, there is a further level of 'critical thinking' which is based on the associations of the word 'critical' - that the questions asked should be sceptical, in order to test how valid or reliable are the statements that we are analysing. This means assuming that any statement we consider could be mistaken, or plain wrong, or stupid, or a lie.

The basic approach

The essential concept of critical thinking is easy enough to teach - "Just ask questions!" - but this simple instruction needs to be developed in order to form an effective technique. Students need to understand clearly all of the following key points; and practise them through the simple classroom exercises that I suggest (in italics).

> Ask questions … You can, and should, ask questions about any statement you come across.

• Students should be taught to develop the asking of questions as a natural and automatic response to statements – practised by thinking up as many questions as possible to any statement.

> Choose types of questions … Language teaching naturally includes the grammar of forming questions. This should then extend into the semantics of questions – what meanings do questions address? Students should be made aware of the following differences between types of questions:

1. Yes/No questions versus question-word questions (e.g. "Are you hungry?" versus "What would you like to eat?"). The question-word type is more likely to promote useful critical thinking than the Yes/No type - because the question-word type is more 'open' and so likely to elicit varied answers, while the Yes/No type is more 'closed' and thus limited.

2. Distinction between questions which address facts, and questions which address logic. I assume that this basic distinction applies in all languages (?), but in English it works like this:

Factual = what, who, when, where, etc

Logical = why, how, to what extent, how important, etc

Both factual questions and logical questions are significant in critical thinking, but the logical ones are perhaps the most fertile, complex and challenging.

• Students should be taught this basic semantic distinction – and then practise handling it by devising as many questions as possible within each category.

> Ask searching questions … Questions can be more, or less, useful in exploring any given statement. ‘Searching’ questions are those which address the value, or significance, or reliability of a statement. For example, “What exactly did Boris Johnson say about his birthday party?” is more searching than “What did Boris Johnson have for breakfast that day?”

Whether questions are ‘searching’ or not will evidently depend on how much the students know about the subject in discussion. If you’re discussing biochemistry, you can only be really searching if you know something about biochemistry. For the purposes of Group 2, the level of ‘searching’ means ‘applying common sense to what you understand about the stimulus text’ (although this can be developed by carrying out detailed research).

• Students can be taught the idea of ‘searching’ or ‘useful’ by (i) producing a range of questions (see above); then (ii) pooling / collecting the various questions; and (iii) discussing which are the most interesting i.e. ‘searching’

> Use chains of questions … Single, isolated questions are unlikely to produce true critical thinking, since the truth of any statement is unlikely to be established with one simple answer. Every answer should be seen as a statement which then requires another critical question – the approach that students should learn is to be persistent with their asking of questions, to always ask follow-up questions.

A sophistication of this is to think strategically – to plan questions which lead to the key, central issue. The analogy is with the court-room lawyer cross-examining: a string of questions which start with easy, basic ones but gradually focus in on the important question, having eliminated the easy alternatives. (There are dozens of court-room drama films to establish this point: classic examples being ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, and the jury-room drama 'Twelve Angry Men'.)

• Students can, again, be set the task of writing a series of questions developing from basic to subtle / challenging / deep. This can then be shared, and discussed.

Tools: procedure & purpose

Critical thinking is a habit of mind, which is reinforced by applying a methodical approach based on disciplined techniques. As such, it is an intellectual skill which can be taught, and should be taught through practice. But what precise tools and techniques should we teach?

I would suggest that critical thinking means that we use a procedure (to think methodically and effectively) for a purpose - to confirm the meaning of some idea(s). In teaching critical thinking to the students, we should make sure they understand how they should go about doing it (procedure), and what the point of it is (purpose). Let's look at these in more detail (project them using Presentation mode?)...

Procedure

... Critical thinking should be applied to any subject area - but because subjects structure knowledge in different ways, critical thinking may need to be applied in different ways, with different emphases. I propose that critical thinking may be focused on three overlapping fields of ideas within any subject area; thus:-

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Facts ... the basic information on which any argument is constructed

...this involves questioning the sources of scientific data, historical documentation, etc ... how reliable / thorough / representative / accurate / complete is the information ?

Language ... the words that are used to express the ideas

... this involves defining the terms used ... what meanings do the words have? Are there multiple meanings? If so, are the most appropriate meanings being used, and/or used correctly?

Logic ... the logic that is used to link words and information together

... is logic used correctly? Convincingly? Methodically? Thoroughly? Does the argument hang together?

In short, we use critical thinking to check how reliable ideas are. Note that this may, or may not, mean that an idea is 'correct' - not least because we would have to explain what we mean by 'correct', and by which criteria we decide correctness.

Purpose

...I suggest that there are two complementary approaches to critical thinking, a primary purpose and a secondary one. The primary one is concerned, as mentioned already, with checking the reliability of ideas :-

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testing ideas - questioning statements so as to check how precise or convincing or valuable they are

This is the 'quality control' purpose of critical thinking.

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However, critical thinking necessarily involves thinking of alternative ideas and explanations: if we are checking how good an idea is, we may very well think about whether there are better ideas. The process of asking questions may very well throw up unexpected answers which then lead to novel solutions :-

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exploring ideas - questioning statements in order to expand them and see where they lead

This is the 'thinking outside the box' purpose of critical thinking.

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In short, the point of critical thinking is to check the quality of statements, which may in turn lead to new and creative ideas.

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Critical thinking: using thinking frames

If critical thinking requires "a methodical approach based on disciplined techniques", what does this involve? I suggest that, if we accept the usefulness of writing frames, we can surely recommend the use of 'thinking frames' - standard methods of approaching the thinking-through of any issue or problem. These should not be seen as some kind of mechanical process, used in a rigid order, but more of a check-list to ensure that you have looked at the issue methodically, from all sides.

The obvious thinking frame is to encourage students to apply the 'Procedure' outlined above, which we could label like this...

The FALALO tool

Facts ... the basic information on which any argument is constructed

Language ... the words that are used to express the ideas

Logic ... the logic that is used to link words and information together

You could propose the following alternative thinking frame for critical thinking, which has the advantage of being based on 'action verbs' rather than big abstract nouns :-

The UPA tool

Understand & summarise ... detect and study the key elements of the text & express them in clear, precise, simple terms

Probe & clarify ... ask questions of the text, in order to grasp in more depth & more precisely what the text proposes

(You could use the FALALO tool here, to guide the construction of questions)

Assess & compare values ... consider the value judgements made, both by the text and by the reader, & then weigh up which value judgements are the most convincing - and why

Now, you will notice that the two Tools or thinking frames cover more or less the same areas, but not precisely. The first (FALALO) covers more the content of a statement, while the second (UPA) concentrates more on how we understand the statement. The first, then, may be more appropriate for assessing 'hard fact' statements (e.g. physical sciences), while the second may be more useful when assessing 'value-judgement' statements (e.g. human sciences). Possibly, really good critical thinking will deploy both !

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