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Interview with Roy van den Brink-Budgen (2007)
People who teach
Critical Thinking come from a wide variety of academic backgrounds.
What, originally, was your academic discipline and how did you become
interested in teaching and writing about Critical Thinking?
My first degree was in Politics and Social
Policy. In doing that, I was particularly interested in Political Philosophy and
so went on to do a doctorate in that subject, looking at the way in which the
term ‘self-determination’ is used in social welfare. In doing this work, I was
very much concerned with the issue of definition. The term ‘freedom’ is
notoriously grabbed by any political movement and commentator as if its meaning
can be fitted into anything that anyone wants. This concern with the importance
of definition, with the way in which contradictions and inconsistencies can
infect arguments, with the importance of looking
at ambiguities in language very much fitted with my subsequent involvement in
Critical Thinking.
I first got involved with the assessment of
Critical Thinking when I responded to an advert for people to write what was
then called the Law Studies Test. This was in 1987 and I had the pleasure of
working with both Alec Fisher and Anne Thomson on this project. I was then
centrally involved in what was called the MENO project at the University of
Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES). This was an attempt to construct
a coherent set of assessments of various thinking skills some time before the
term ‘thinking skills’ became part of the everyday vocabulary of education. I
subsequently worked with Alec Fisher in constructing the pilot of the AS in
Critical Thinking. Once this was established, I was appointed Chief Examiner and
remained in this position until 2005.
I wrote my first books on Critical Thinking in
the mid-1990s. I was very concerned that, though we were seeking to bring the
subject to those in the 16-18 year old bracket, there was nothing written for
this group. The books that were available were written with undergraduates in
mind. It has been hugely gratifying that one of these books ‘Critical Thinking
for Students’ has remained very popular with both students and teachers, with
the current (third) edition having gone though twelve reprints. I am still very
much concerned with writing material that will be useful for both teachers and
students.
How did you end up
teaching young offenders? How
receptive were they to learning skills of Critical Thinking?
This
was one of those odd paths that one takes in life. For a few years, I had been
working full-time on the MENO project. Then it was decided by UCLES to scale
down the project and so, when a post was advertised working with young
offenders, I applied for it. Having got the job, I fairly quickly introduced the
teaching of Critical Thinking into the prison. At this time (1996), it had made
no inroads in schools and colleges let alone prison education. Whilst working in
the prison, I was appointed to set up and run the education programme for a new
unit dealing with young offenders who had committed very serious offences,
including murder and rape. These were young men who would have fairly long
sentences, in some cases with a minimum tariff of twelve or sixteen years. Not
surprisingly, I saw Critical Thinking as having a central role to play in this
education programme.
We were the only prison in the country to offer
this subject as part of the normal education programme. It was very successful
for two reasons. These were young men who had, almost without exception, been
excluded from school and who had a very negative attitude to education. However,
they came to the subject of Critical Thinking without any preconceptions. They
didn’t know what it was, so didn’t ‘know’ that they’d fail at it. Secondly,
because the subject is concerned with the development of skills rather than the
learning of information, they found it something that they were more than happy
to have a go at. And they were very often very good at it. Their biggest problem
was the written part of the exam, especially the part that required them to
write at some length in response to an argument. But their ability to analyse
and evaluate arguments was considerable. It is a great pity that no prison now
runs Critical Thinking as part of its curriculum.
AS Level Critical
Thinking results seem to be very low compared to those of other subjects.
What factors do you think explain that?
This
has been an issue from the very start. In looking to explain it, we need to
remember that there are more variables to consider than with most or all
content-based subjects.
There is the perennial issue of
time-allocation. Centres will teach this with anything from six hours a year to
six hours a week. I have met teachers who represent both of these extremes. Most
teachers will probably have something like two hours a week. So is this enough
to achieve success? The answer, in large part, brings in the other variables.
But there is the concern that the very small time-allocations might have the
effect of both teachers and students seeing the subject as having little or no
importance. In addition, it might well have the effect of getting students to
think that the subject makes very few demands (working on the entirely
understandable hypothesis that, if it did make intellectual demands, the school
or college would have given it more time). If you look at what students say
about Critical Thinking in the various chat rooms, you’ll see this theme being
commonly rehearsed: ‘it can’t be that important because we have it only for one
lesson a week.’
Another variable is the teachers. I have met
many, many teachers who have been asked to teach the subject without any proper
preparation for the task. I can remember very clearly one NQT who had been
appointed to teach Geography and to fill up her timetable was told to teach
Critical Thinking. She felt completely inadequate for this task. Would we ask a
History teacher to teach AS Geography to fill up their timetable? Having said
that, as each year goes on, we are finding many experienced and enthusiastic
teachers of the subject. It is to be hoped that such teachers will raise the
general level of teaching of the subject, and so enable more students to perform
at higher levels. Interestingly, we are now finding a few full-time teachers who
teach nothing but Critical Thinking.
A third variable is the students themselves. We
find centres in which the subject is taken by only ‘the Oxbridge group’. We find
centres in which every sixth form student is required to take it (or to choose
between it and General Studies). We find lots of variations between these two
positions. Neither of these two positions would apply to any other subject
(except General Studies for the second position). So is the student-group an
important variable? In many ways it is, especially if it is combined with the
previous two variables.
A fourth variable is the nature of the
assessment. Teachers need to be very clear about how the papers are assessed.
There are lots of issues here that centre on the problem that it is not always
clear how marks are allocated, even when the markscheme is published. Losing a
few marks here and there because of uncertainty as to how they are earned (or
lost) can make a big difference to the grade that is awarded. I have a personal
dislike of levels marking because I see that method as a fudge, as a substitute
for thinking carefully about how to award specific marks. Unfortunately OCR’s
assessment now includes levels marking in three of the four papers, and I see
this as potentially causing problems for teachers in showing candidates how to
focus on specific marks. (For those of you who like levels marking, perhaps you
can persuade me of their value!)
If we put all these variables into the
equation, then we have a problem that merits attention. Critical Thinking makes
intellectual demands on us, and these demands need to be reflected in both the
teaching and the time-allocation. I worry less about the students. If you can
get the first two variables sorted, then I think the issue of which students
should take it is less important. Having taught my young offenders the subject
in only two to three hours a week and having got some very good grades from them
(even though this was normally the first public examination that many of them
had ever taken), I think that the competent and enthusiastic teacher can get
their students to achieve good grades.
There seems to be a
very wide variety of approaches to teaching Critical Thinking in Sixth Forms
around the country, in terms of curriculum time and timetabling.
What would be your favoured approach?
I
have already covered much of this in my previous answer. However, I would like
to stress the point that, though OCR says that Critical Thinking should be
treated like any other A-level in terms of time-allocation, I don’t think that
we need to be restricted in this way. In that we know of centres that can teach
the subject with considerable success in much less than five or six hours a
week, we shouldn’t seek to hold a line that is unachievable. Of course, I worry
about a time-allocation of less than one hour a week, but I could be happy with
two or preferably three hours a week. Looking at the other side of things, with
an inexperienced, unhappy teacher, five hours a week could be a disaster. The
lack of content can reinforce the inexperienced teacher’s bewilderment as to
what to do with the time available.
The other point is that we should be much more
active in working with teachers of other subjects in looking together at how
Critical Thinking can be of value in these subjects. We can work with the
historians in looking at the nature of historical evidence; we can work with the
science teachers on looking at hypotheses; we can work with the English teachers
at examining arguments in drama (for example, Iago’s persuasiveness with
Othello). All these are examples of how the curriculum as a whole can be seen as
supporting and developing Critical Thinking.
On the Skeptic
Express Forum, you recently wrote about the “Heinemannisation” of Critical
Thinking and in the preface to your recent books, you seemed to want to take a
different approach to delivering the subject in print.
Is this more than just a design consideration?
My
concern about how Critical Thinking is presented to students lies at the heart
of this difference in approach. I find it odd if a book on Critical Thinking
does not make intellectual demands on a student. In the search to make material
‘student-friendly’ we need to ensure that we have not tipped into making it
‘student-patronising’. I always have the student in mind when I write my books.
I work with at least a thousand each year, so I do know something about what
they want. Perhaps fancifully, I see each book as a sort of journey together in
which the student and I look at things and I frequently ask them what they think
of these things. The other approach is more like seeing the exercise as the
supervised use of a very limited playground in which there’s nothing that’s
going to threaten them. But as the student goes around the playground
unsuccessfully looking for adventure and excitement, they find neither of these
things. What they do find, however, are shrill reminders such as ‘Don’t forget
to read the question’ or ‘Don’t forget that a conclusion doesn’t always have the
word “therefore” in front of it.’ A thinking student in such an environment is
likely to come away unsatisfied.
Critical Thinking should never play down the
fact that at some point the student should have to think for themselves, should
have to apply the skills to unfamiliar material. Some textbooks barely prepare
the student for this. If the purpose of a textbook is to get a student through
an examination with a good grade, that does not mean that we cannot make the
material such that it will encourage them to think beyond the examination. The
golden mean is available to do both. The idea that an exam board-endorsed
product must in various ways be better than one that isn’t is one that is very
troublesome (as the TES discussed earlier this year).
Is there any
evidence that we can offer to support the view that studying Critical Thinking
can have a positive impact on a student’s performance in other subjects at A
Level and beyond?
There
is plenty of anecdotal evidence around. For a few years until 2006, the
top-performing state school for A-levels was Colyton Grammar School
in Devon. The headteacher was, for each year
that was the case, always quoted by The
Times as putting the success down to (at least in part) the fact that all
their A-level students took Critical Thinking. This is a claim that is
encouraging, but without any Colyton control group, it is one that we have to
take as highly suggestive but not necessarily significant.
In the summer 2006 edition of ‘OCR News’, the
claim that Critical Thinking improves performance in other subjects is made
twice in the space of a third of a page. It is first of all given as Critical
Thinking ‘enhances the performance of students in their other A Levels.’ The
second one is that, as a result of being taught Critical Thinking, ‘students are
now asking questions about statistics and information that previously they would
have taken at face value. This is having a beneficial impact on
all their A Level studies’ (emphasis
added). Both of these claims are important but, as Critical Thinkers, we should
retain some scepticism until the evidence is more than anecdotal. As the paper
on credibility of evidence would remind us, OCR has a vested interest in these
claims being accepted!
Having expressed the need for some caution
here, I would be surprised if there was not some beneficial effect of Critical
Thinking on performance in other subjects (with the caveat, of course, that the
student has been taught and has learned well enough). If there is significant
evidence of this effect, I should be very pleased to see it.
Why is it important
that Critical Thinking should be taken as a discrete subject, rather than being
delivered through other subjects?
This
is a very big debate. The simple answer to the question you have asked is that
it should be taught as a discrete subject because it isn’t necessarily delivered
through other subjects. I can remember working with students at a school which
has a very impressive academic record and features at the top end of any
national league table for examination success. After a morning of Critical
thinking, one of the students (who like the others had a bagful of A and A*
GCSEs) came up to me and said ‘I really enjoyed that. We’d never had to think
like that before.’ That is something of the worry. Students can do very well
(certainly at GCSE) without having to do much thinking.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
(QCA) have a long-term plan to ensure that ‘thinking skills’ are delivered
throughout the curriculum. This will take many years to plan and to implement
and should see me well into retirement. If we could be sure that students could
analyse and evaluate and produce arguments via the teaching of these skills in
an embedded way, then at one level I can happily walk away into this retirement.
But, at another level, I might want to stay.
There seems to be some virtue in developing the skills in a way that is not
always embedded. When Peter Abelard was being celebrated for his teaching of
logic, it was a celebration of the intellectual demands that he was making of
his students. They came to him from across Europe
to listen and learn about logic. Now I don’t advocate that we return to the
teaching of formal logic. After all, the frustration that students could be
taught formal logic without thereby creating good logical thinkers was the
impetus behind the development of informal logic or Critical Thinking. But I do
think that we should take Abelard’s point that students will be able to think
more clearly about areas such as theology and the law if they have a grounding
in how to think clearly.
Do you think there
is any danger that students who have taken Critical Thinking can apply their
skills outside the Critical Thinking classroom?
Won’t students lose the skills after they have finished the course?
This
is another very big question and one that sits in the same problematic area as
the previous one. We often try to sell Critical Thinking in terms of
‘transferable skills’. I can remember one student in a chat room making the
point that he had been told that ‘Critical Thinking is important because it
gives transferable skills’ but went on to add ‘whatever they are’. If we suppose
that, unlike the student, we know what these skills are (and perhaps we should
get together to agree on them), then what do we mean when we say that these are
‘transferable’?
We mean, of course, that students will apply
them to material and situations beyond the Critical Thinking classroom. They
will apply them to their History, to their English Literature, to their Biology.
But they also apply them whenever they pick up
The Daily Mail (please!). I should
like to think of the question you asked the other way round. Why wouldn’t the
student who works well in Critical Thinking make this transfer? I find it
difficult to think why they won’t. One of the great virtues of Critical Thinking
is that it deals with ‘real’ arguments, rather than the ‘Socrates is a bishop’
type. They will find these real arguments everywhere if they’re encouraged to
look for them. And I’m talking about real
arguments not the sort you can find in a current A2 textbook: ‘It’s seven
o’clock in the evening. I am hungry. Therefore it’s time for dinner.’ (Oh dear…)
This takes us back to an earlier point about
Critical Thinking being an important part of the overall teaching strategy. As
Critical Thinking teachers, we should ensure that our colleagues who teach other
subjects are familiar with what we’re doing. This will achieve two things. They
will be able to identify areas in their teaching where these skills can be
highlighted. They will also be able to look for evidence of these skills being
demonstrated (such as well-organised essays or carefully evaluated hypotheses).
This
question obviously fits with the earlier one about whether there are any
beneficial effects of Critical Thinking on performance in other subjects.
However, it has got an extra dimension to it. This is whether Critical Thinking
has behavioural consequences. This was certainly an interest of mine when I
worked in the special unit for young offenders. Given the nature of their
crimes, this was once described by The
Daily Mail as ‘the place that houses the most dangerous young criminals in
the country’. However, their behaviour was generally very good, with very few
fights, and they were by and large very well-behaved young men. It is difficult
to separate out all the factors that contributed to the behaviour of these young
men, but I believe that Critical Thinking had a beneficial effect on it. It gave
them the opportunity to consider options, to make connections between decisions
and consequences, to consider things from different points of view (including,
crucially, each others).
Is there anything we
can do to develop the Critical Thinking skills of children younger than sixth
form age?
Critical
Thinking has been unusual in being an AS subject that is taken by students
younger than sixth form age. A few years ago, it was very much a novelty that
Year 10 and 11 students were taking the AS. Now it is much more common.
Obviously these are a highly selected group in each case. But this does show
that we can work with this age-group in developing Critical Thinking.
In my experience of working in various schools,
younger students find no difficulty in understanding the subject. If QCA
approves a GCSE in Critical Thinking, then we will see it being taught routinely
to Years 10 and 11 (and some students younger than this). The skills can be
taught to younger students using material that is appropriate to their language
level. As we know, younger students (including primary) are comfortable with
explanations, hypotheses, inferences, evidence, and so on.
The QCA proposal to ensure that thinking skills
(including Critical Thinking) are embedded in the Key Stage 3 curriculum should
ensure (if it works) that children are familiar with the language and skills of
Critical Thinking long before they enter the sixth form.
How can we respond
to the allegation that Critical Thinking is a “soft” A Level option?
This
is an interesting question. An earlier one was concerned with why the results
for Critical Thinking were not as good as those for other subjects. There’s
obviously a curious disjunction here. One could say that the low percentage of
students getting an A for AS in summer 2006 (a little over 6 per cent) indicates
that it’s not a ‘soft’ subject, if we measure ‘softness’ in terms of ease of
achieving a good result in the examination. But that would be to invite some
Critical Thinking in response. It might be retorted that the assessment is
insufficiently responsive to good performances. It might be that it’s generally
not well taught. And so on.
One could respond to the allegation by pointing
out that the student is expected to develop a range of skills that they will
need to apply to any material that’s thrown at them in the examination. This
makes it a much more difficult activity than being able to fall back on the
memory of content. A Cambridge History admissions tutor once gave a very good
example of that at a seminar looking at the value of Critical Thinking. As he
explained, no specification in History covered the Korean War so a candidate for
interview would be given a passage on this war and asked to evaluate it. There
were some students who found this very difficult (even using the justification
that they hadn’t covered the Korean War), whereas the Critical Thinking student
would have been much more comfortable with the task.
Perhaps one of the best responses we can make about the
apparent ‘softness’ of Critical Thinking is to stress its emphasis on rigour and
its demand for productive thinking. It seems better in many ways to place it
amongst the sciences, given the emphasis and demand. It asks students to
dismantle often complex reasoning; it asks them to look out for inconsistencies
and ambiguities; it asks them to look at alternative explanations for evidence;
it asks them to examine the significance of evidence. Hardly soft stuff.
Are Critical
Thinkers born or made?
If
we take Critical Thinking to be a certain type of cognitive functioning, then we
might say that virtually everybody is capable of Critical Thinking but that the
necessary cognitive development has not always happened. However, if I can go
back to my young offenders, I find them a very relevant example here.
In introducing the subject to them, it felt
more like a process of unlocking something that was already there. They saw
education as a passive activity, and were delighted by the necessary interaction
that Critical Thinking involved. If we were looking at an author’s argument in
which some evidence had been presented, we would obviously look at how the
author interpreted the significance of this evidence. The question ‘But how else
could we see this evidence’ always produced a very good range of responses. Many
times I was able to say that ‘I’d not thought of it like that before’.
This example leads me to see the question as an
example of a false dilemma. I would think that Critical Thinkers are both born
and made. In other words, we can use the skills to unlock and then develop
what’s already there.
I am reminded here of the comment by Jeremy
Paxman who, in a Radio 5 Live programme, poured scorn on the idea of teaching
Critical Thinking. His point was that these skills are ‘no more than native
wit’, and one would expect all teenagers to have it. Even if this is true, it
does not mean that all students practise Critical Thinking. It is rather like
saying that all people have a sense of rhythm so we don’t need to teach people
how to dance. The skills of dance can be seen to be building on the innate sense
of rhythm to create techniques which use it.
What in
your view are the major stumbling blocks to mastering critical thought
encountered by new students and how can we overcome them?
In some ways we keep rediscovering themes that we’ve looked
at before. The fact that students can get something like ten high grade GCSEs
without having to do very much Critical Thinking is a problem that is central to
this question. It is an oddity that we normally introduce the subject in an
explicit form only in the sixth form. It’s giving a curious message to students,
many of whom had (with some justification) thought that they’d demonstrated a
good intellectual performance by now. So part of the problem is that we’re
introducing these skills at an odd time.
There’s also the issue of encouraging students to question
what’s presented to them. This can be a difficult thing for students to learn.
If evidence is given, there can be a reluctance to see it as having any
significance other than that given by the author. I can remember when the MENO
project used students in
Singapore
as part of the development of Critical Thinking assessments. At that time
(1993), these students did not appear to see that such thinking involved
questioning the way an author had argued their case. They were obviously unhappy
with the task of suggesting that the author might, for example, have used
evidence which did not necessarily have the significance the author had given
it.
But we also have to be careful that we don’t
end up with a complete scepticism. Our students might well want to consider
Abelard’s advice that ‘by doubting we come to inquiry and by inquiry we perceive
the truth.’ Though this advice raises all sorts of issues, not least with the
notion of ‘truth’, it does remind us that we should at some point want to say
‘yes, that seems a reasonable enough position to adopt.’
You have
been quoted as saying that ‘we need to think creatively when evaluating
arguments’. What do you mean when you say this?
When
we are evaluating an argument we need to ask lots of questions about it. If, for
example, an author uses a piece of statistical evidence to support their
argument, then we need to consider what this evidence actually means. The range
of things that it might mean will normally go way beyond what meaning the author
has given it. A very good example appeared in
The Economist in 2005. This was in an
article about why the British are so fond of wild birds (unlike the French who,
as the article points out, are very keen on shooting them). The article included
a graph which showed both the decline in the wild bird population between 1975
and 2003 and the increase in membership of the Royal Society for the Protection
of Birds (RSPB) during the same period. There is an interesting inverse
correlation between the two graphs, enabling the author to infer that the
decline in bird numbers could have caused the increase in RSPB membership. Of
course, this is an entirely acceptable inference. But, if we think beyond this
inference, we can come up with other possible explanations for the correlation.
One is, of course, the opposite one: the increase in RSPB membership has caused
the decline in birds. To consider this one requires some creative thinking. How
could it? Students might come up with the scenario of lots of RSPB members
tramping across the countryside disturbing nesting sites or whatever. One
student that I gave this to suggested that, since the RSPB members might well
have saved lots of birds of prey (kestrels, buzzards, and so on), they would
have thereby contributed to the decline of other birds on which the birds of
prey had feasted. This is a good example of thinking creatively, of thinking
beyond what would be expected.
One
of the many joys of Critical Thinking is being able to say to a student ‘I’d
never thought of that.’ This is not to say that we encourage students to come up
with utterly implausible possibilities. So what would you do with this one
offered by a student for the RSPB evidence? ‘The RSPB might have been
infiltrated by lots of people who want to gain access to their reserves to kill
birds.’
In an article I wrote on ‘The creativity of Critical Thinking’ (Teaching
Thinking, Spring 2002), I argue that ‘Critical Thinking requires creativity
because it has evaluation at its centre.’ We might want to stress that students
have to learn how to analyse arguments but in the end what we’re wanting is that
students can evaluate them. In doing this, they are going to be encouraged to
consider alternative scenarios and explanations which the author might not have
considered. They might raise hypotheses; they might offer analogies; they might
consider the impact of further evidence, and so on. All of these activities
encourage (indeed require) creative thinking.
What
would you consider to be earliest age to begin introducing elements of critical
thinking to a child and by what approach? What advice would you give to parents
hoping to encourage young minds to begin to think critically?
Matthew Lipman is the obvious big name here. The Philosophy for Children
(P4C) movement (also called Philosophical Inquiry or PI) is based on the idea
that children can think philosophically from a very young age. Indeed, in the UK, it is most
active in primary (and nursery) education. I have been trained in this work and
have used it with my young offenders to very useful effect.
There are two books that are worth mentioning
here. The first is John Burningham’s ‘Would you rather…’ This is a picture book
with very little text but the questions in the text provide a striking way of
considering alternative scenarios and thus arguments. An example is ‘Would you
rather help…a fairy make magic…gnomes dig for treasure…an imp be naughty…a witch
make a stew…or Santa Claus deliver presents?’ It is easy to see how such an
approach can encourage very young children to both construct and evaluate
arguments. Another excellent picture book is ‘Where the Wild Things are’ by
Maurice Sendak. In this story, the hero Max goes off to an island ‘where the
wild things are’ after he’s been sent to bed without any supper. The book has so
many wonderfully troublesome issues for a child. For example, how can Max be
away for over two years and yet when he gets home his supper is still warm (as
would happen after a trip to Narnia)? Doe the wild things really exist? And so
on. The book can be used with both children of all ages to develop thinking.
Thus the brief answer to the second question is
that critical thinking (lower case) can be taught (indeed should be developed)
from a very early age. One of the methods is through picture books through which
the child can practise the construction of hypotheses (what if Max hadn’t worn
his wolf suit?), the rehearsal of explanations (perhaps Max simply had a dream),
and the development of arguments (I’d rather help Santa Claus deliver presents
because then I could see how he gets round some many children).
It has been
said that “No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to
such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to
such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion.”
US National Council for Excellence in
Critical Thinking Instruction. What is the blueprint for a well
cultivated critical thinker? What particular skills should we aspire to attain?
This
question in some ways looks ahead to a later one on emotional thinking. The idea
of producing someone who thinks in ways that are nothing but critical is a
curious one. It raises so many issues. Is thinking uncritically always to be
avoided? Is there always a congruence between critical and other valued types of
thinking, such as aesthetic thinking? For example, I can remember an
accomplished musician once explaining to me that, though a particular
performance of the Bach cello suites was entirely note-perfect, it lacked
passion so was less good than another rendition which made the occasional
mistake but was passionate in its delivery. What does the Critical Thinker make
of this? Would Bach have preferred the first or the second performance?
Critical
Thinking earns its keep by giving us a range of skills which are important for
various tasks in various contexts. The blueprint should therefore include not
only these skills but also the contexts in which they are to be valued. If I
were to develop this further, then I would want to look at the value of Critical
Thinking in making judgements on claims that are made. These can be any claims:
statistical evidence, historical ‘facts’, predictions, principles, and anything
where someone is saying ‘such and such is the case’. In this way, Critical
Thinking helps us to make judgements between competing claims by helping us to
make judgements as to the truth or significance of claims. Is this the case? Is
this explanation more or less likely than any other?
In
consequence, Critical Thinking becomes a set of skills of analysis and
evaluation (especially the latter) that enables us to make judgements in
whatever subject we are studying in education. It should enable us to evaluate
historical and scientific claims; it should enable us to make judgements of the
nature of evidence wherever that appears; it should enable us to produce better
arguments ourselves.
The
person who can do these things well and consistently in contexts where they
should be valued is what we strive to produce (and, with greater force, to be).
In what way do you
think the forthcoming AQA A Level in Critical Thinking might differ from that
offered by OCR?
I’m
not in a position to answer this question at this stage, since I haven’t been
involved in producing the AQA specification. From the conversations that I’ve
had, all I know is that the assessment will be in a different form than the one
offered by OCR. This is a requirement that QCA made. It might be that there is
more pictorial information or that material such as poetry will be the stimulus
for evaluation. Hopefully we’ll find out very soon if QCA gives the
specification their approval.
Now that Critical
Thinking is offered as a full A Level, what do you think is the place of the
AEA?
The
AEA in Critical Thinking has always occupied a difficult position. For most of
its existence, it sat strangely with the subject having an AS assessment but no
A2. This strangeness was emphasised by the QCA general instruction that AEAs
should not be taught courses (in that they were for the high-performing A2
students). So how could one have an AEA in Critical Thinking that didn’t require
any special teaching? The point was given further emphasis by the fact that some
of the AEA candidates had not even taken the AS (I know this because I have
worked with many such students over the past few years).
There were attempts to make the AEA in Critical
Thinking open to those who had not been taught the subject by providing a guide
to candidates in which some of the language of the subject is explained. But now
that there’s an A2 assessment, what should be done? Do we cater for those who
might have done two years’ study of Critical Thinking or continue to see the AEA
as for those who’ve done none?
So the answer to the question is that I cannot
fully understand what the AEA in its present form is doing. Its previously
strange position is now even stranger. Perhaps the issue will be resolved soon
anyway, with the proposed disappearance of all AEAs.
How can the
emotional thinker be helped to become a more Critical Thinker?
It
is interesting that a contrast is being drawn between the emotional and the
Critical Thinker. Obviously we need both and we are both. A study published a
few years ago showed that when we are faced with a difficult moral decision, we
are likely to solve it emotionally rather than what we might call logically.
(You can find the detail of the study in my book ‘Critical Thinking for A2’ page
77.) As a result, we are likely to move in and out of being emotional and
Critical Thinkers. Indeed, the person who is nothing but a Critical Thinker is
perhaps rather a scary prospect.
If we take the question to mean ‘how can people
be helped to be Critical Thinkers when emotional responses are less useful?’
then we enter a huge area of work. If we are dealing with people whose
emotionally-based decision making is causing problems, we could look at
encouraging such people to look at clarifying their options, to then look at how
each option has consequences, to make judgements as to degree of desirability of
these consequences, and then to make decisions accordingly.
In the end, what we’re trying to do in Critical
Thinking is to develop skills that will enable us to make better judgements
about the world, where such judgements can be informed by the intellectual
apparatus of such thinking. In doing so, we leave plenty of scope for emotional
thinking in lots of areas. Music and art are obvious ones. When I weep with King
Lear at the death of Cordelia, should I dry my eyes and say ‘it’s no more than
he deserved, because he made faulty judgements’? I think not. I will continue to
weep, because the primitive part of my brain encourages me to do so.
Roy's website is:
http://www.ifthen.co.uk/
