The Australian Curriculum acknowledges that developing thinking skills is a primary purpose of education, and identifies critical thinking as an important capability for the 21st century. Critical thinking has, of course, long been a valuable skill for young people to master, though its importance is expected to increase
as the world becomes ever more augmented
by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Despite consensus on the need for critical thinking, there is still considerable debate over how it is learned and, subsequently, how education can best support students to develop critical thinking capabilities. Some believe that critical thinking can be taught as a generic skill independently from subject content, while others contend that content mastery is pivotal
to the development of thinking capabilities.
This paper considers what cognitive science can tell us about how critical thinking is acquired, and the implications for how education might best develop young people’s critical thinking capabilities in light of this evidence.
Via John Evans