See also Pedagogy.
Everyone agrees that critical thinking is important: evaluating evidence, checking up on sources, using sound logic, asking questions about dubious claims, and so on. Sometimes it is argued that we should teach critical thinking directly, or that the solution to an educational problem is more critical thinking. However, I am not convinced that “critical thinking” is a single skill that can be meaningfully taught disconnected from a particular domain area.
Willingham, D. T. (2008). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? Arts Education Policy Review, 109(4), 21–32. doi:10.3200/AEPR.109.4.21-32
Narrative summary of critical thinking research. In this interpretation, critical thinking really means looking beyond the surface of a problem to recognize its deeper structure, then identifying appropriate methods to solve it using the deeper structure. Many of those methods are what we’d call critical thinking, like recognizing the need for a control group; in technical problems, this sounds like the famous Chi, Feltovich and Glaser (1981) paper (see Pedagogy). But knowing a strategy doesn’t “supply the knowledge necessary to implement the strategy.” Using a strategy “requires domain knowledge and practice in putting that knowledge to work,” as people cannot recognize problem structure without extensive knowledge of the domain and practice solving problems in it. So while we can teach basic metacognitive skills (such as recognizing and avoiding our own biases), general critical thinking cannot exist without a pool of domain knowledge. Thus:
First, critical thinking (as well as scientific thinking and other domain-based thinking) is not a skill. There is not a set of critical thinking skills that can be acquired and deployed regardless of context. Second, there are metacognitive strategies that, once learned, make critical thinking more likely. Third, the ability to think critically (to actually do what the metacognitive strategies call for) depends on domain knowledge and practice.
Pithers, R., & Soden, R. (2000). Critical thinking in education: A review. Educational Research, 42(3), 237–249. doi:10.1080/001318800440579
Review of critical thinking research in teaching. Again, notes that “such abilities can be developed more effectively in the course of teaching subject-matter content” than in stand-alone courses; that is, critical thinking interventions work best when coupled with the necessary domain knowledge.
Tricot, A., & Sweller, J. (2014). Domain-specific knowledge and why teaching generic skills does not work. Educational Psychology Review, 26(2), 265–283. doi:10.1007/s10648-013-9243-1
Doesn’t use the phrase “critical thinking” anywhere, but still relevant. Argues “that all educationally relevant knowledge acquired during instruction is, and only is, domain-specific”; that is, “domain-specific knowledge held in long-term memory [is] arguably the most important factor, and possibly the only factor, determining acquired cognitive performance”. More specifically,
We are unable to find a domain-general, cognitive strategy that has been described and tested for effectiveness using randomized, controlled trials varying one factor at a time with far transfer test tasks to eliminate the effects of domain-specific knowledge.
Argues instead that human differences in cognitive performance can be explained using expertise theory and cognitive load: that experts learn to reduce problems and represent them in terms of deeper structure, their long experience provide them with a stockpile of examples to quickly recognize particular problems, and that problem memory reduces their cognitive load when approaching and solving a new problem. So again, we’d expect generic “critical thinking” to rely heavily on long practice and domain knowledge to recognize how to apply its strategies to specific cases, rather than being a generic skill that can be applied easily to any problem.