A Critical Need to Develop 21st Century Skills

Knowledge. Comprehension. Application. Analysis. Synthesis. Evaluation.

The familiar Bloom's Taxonomy outlines the steps of cognitive domain, and provides a roadmap to the skills required for critical thinking. Providing a foundation for students to employ logic, reasoning, classification and critique is vital if those students are to acquire the problem-solving skills necessary in the 21st century workforce.

Critical thinking separates truth from opinion, and challenges the thinker to draw independent conclusions based on an unbiased assessment of information.

Educators are in favor of the practice: in a survey, 89 percent of teachers polled said they should be teaching critical thinking, while only 9 percent said that they had a clear method to do so. But with students bombarded by information from the Internet and pressured to achieve high scores on standardized tests, higher-level thinking is increasingly harder to find in many classrooms.

"Most of us are not what we could be," say Richard Paul and Linda Elder. The authors of Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life are leaders in the International Critical Thinking movement. Writing in Critical Thinking Community, Paul and Elder note that "we have great capacity. But most of it is dormant; most is undeveloped. Improvement in thinking is like improvement in basketball, in ballet, or in playing the saxophone. It is unlikely to take place in the absence of a conscious commitment to learn. As long as we take our thinking for granted, we don’t do the work required for improvement."

How does a critical thinker develop? Paul and Elder list these stages:

• Stage One: The Unreflective Thinker (we are unaware of significant problems in our thinking)
• Stage Two: The Challenged Thinker (we become aware of problems in our thinking)
• Stage Three: The Beginning Thinker (we try to improve but without regular practice)
• Stage Four: The Practicing Thinker (we recognize the necessity of regular practice)
• Stage Five: The Advanced Thinker (we advance in accordance with our practice)
• Stage Six: The Master Thinker (skilled & insightful thinking become second nature to us)

Beyond memorization and multiple choice

Some testing experts, according to Education Daily, "say states are relying more heavily on multiple-choice questions because of the No Child Left Behind Act." It's easier and faster (and, with optical scanners to do the grading, even cheaper) to rely on multiple-choice and rote memorization to deal with standardized tests, educators note.

Another fear, according to the article, stems from the idea that "any narrowing of tests to low-level skills would spill over into teacher instruction."

In 1991, Steven D. Schafersman was sounding a warning about the decline of critical thinking in the schools. "The purpose of specifically teaching critical thinking in the sciences or any other discipline is to improve the thinking skills of students and thus better prepare them to succeed in the world," he wrote in a paper posted at FreeInquiry. "But, you may ask, don't we automatically teach critical thinking when we teach our subjects, especially mathematics and science, the two disciplines which supposedly epitomize correct and logical thinking? The answer, sadly, is often no."

Schafersman cites two thought-provoking quotations:

"It is strange that we expect students to learn, yet seldom teach them anything about learning." Donald Norman, 1980, "Cognitive engineering and education," in Problem Solving and Education: Issues in Teaching and Research, edited by D.T. Tuna and F. Reif, Erlbaum Publishers.

"We should be teaching students how to think. Instead, we are teaching them what to think." Clement and Lochhead, 1980, Cognitive Process Instruction.

Can they co-exist?

"Although experts are concerned that states are taking the easy way out with multiple-choice exams," says Education Daily, "multiple choice may provide states with the most cost-effective shot at increasing [intellectual] rigor."

That would occur "by constructing multiple-choice questions that require students to exercise higher-level skills. On a reading test, for example students could analyze and draw conclusions from two pieces of writing by determining one author's likely critique of the other's argument."

Some schools are integrating critical-thinking skills in the everyday routine. Logan Bonebrake-Barriger and David Saunders related in Science and Children their work with second- and third-graders, using a "mystery" theme. The young students "eagerly solved The Case of the Disappearing Snack," Bonebrake-Barriger and Saunders write. "As they investigated the 'crime,' students developed critical-thinking skills and practiced using a microscope. The activity was a great way to help students hone their reasoning skills and feel comfortable with microscopes, a tool they will use often as they progress to more in-depth science explorations."

And the Detroit public schools sponsored a competitive chess club. "Chess sharpens critical thinking and analytical skills, and interscholastic tournaments open new vistas for students," reports the Detroit Free Press. "This is the kind of program [the school system] must preserve to attract and retain the city's best and brightest young people."