Critical Thinking

[Dogan Kokdemir]

First, I wish thank to Annette taylor and Jeff Ricker for their comments on my previous post. In this post, I am going to cite deail information about critical thinking education. The information below was largely published elsewhere (in Turkish). Ref: Kokdemir, D. (1999). Psikolojiye giris ve genel psikoloji derslerinin iceriginin degistirilmesi hakkinda elestirel bir yaklasim (A critical approach about changimg the content of introductory and general psychology lectures.) Turkish Psychological Bulletin, 5(13), 28-39.   What is critical thinking? Although there a lots of definitions about critical thinking, I prefer this one - critical thinking is a complete set of some cognitive tools including: the ability to distinguish evidence from post-hoc explanations. to test source reliability be aware of cognitive shortcuts and our own prejeduicies ability to ask effective questions effective use of language and the skill of meta cognition Why critical thinking is hard to achieve? I. Educators Educators themselves came from the educational system in which CT is absent or in low levels. Crowded class size affects CT negatively Textbooks are away from supporting CT Students are evaluated on a True - or False basis The belief that we do not need CT; everything was going fine, wasn't it? II. Students Students do not know the principles of CT CT is a tool for student-centered education and this education wants to students to be more active Inadequate language skills Computer illeteracy The belief that "If I do everything, why do I need for you?" I belived that General Psychology courses shoul change their structure to include CT exercises. Psychology is very important to obtain this goal because naturally Psychology needs CT.   However, when I was an undergraduate student, I experienced that except for 1-2 instructor, psychology lectures were given in all-none fassion. Most of the instructors did believe that there is only one true and we as a student should memorize that. There was no room for critical thinking. Of course this is not education.   Now as an instructor, I apply the principles of CT to my lectures and I realized that with this method I can gvie much more information to students and more importantly students found lectures interesting and challenging. One of my students reported that "Now, I rethink my believes, views, attitudes, etc. In the beginning it was an irritating experince for myself but now I am happy to find that I have a brain!" :)   Finally, CT is against all dogmatic rules and belief systems and therefore there is dangerous part of it but at the end I believe that next century's person should have CT skills to survive.   Dogan Kokdemir, M.Sc. Baskent University - IIBF Faculty of Economics & Business Admin. Ankara - Turkey [EMAIL PROTECTED]