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THE AUTHOR

STEPHEN D. BROOKFIELD is Distinguished University Professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For forty years he has taught in the United States and abroad. A four-time winner of the Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education, he is the author of numerous books on teaching, including The Skillful Teacher and Developing Critical Thinkers.

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While notions of what constitutes critical thinking vary, educators, politicians, and employers all agree that critical thinking skills are necessary for well-educated citizens and a key capacity for successful employees. In Teaching for Critical Thinking, Stephen Brookfield explores how students learn to think critically and what methods teachers can use to help.

In his engaging, conversational style, Brookfield establishes a basic protocol of critical thinking that focuses on students uncovering and checking assumptions, exploring alternative perspectives, and taking informed actions. The book fosters a shared understanding of critical thinking and helps all faculty adapt general principles to specific disciplinary contexts.

Drawing on thousands of student testimonies, the book identifies the teaching methods and approaches that are most successful when teaching students to think, read, and write critically. Brookfield explains when to make critical thinking the classroom focus, how to encourage critical discussions, and ways to reach skeptical students. He outlines the basic components required when reviewing a text critically and shows how to give highly specific feedback.

The book also addresses how to foster critical thinking across an institution, beginning with how it can be explained in syllabi and even integrated into strategic plans and institutional missions. Brookfield stresses the importance of teachers modeling critical thinking and demonstrates himself how to do this.

Crammed with activities and techniques, this how-to guide is applicable in face-to-face, online, and hybrid classrooms of all sizes. Each exercise includes detailed instructions, examples from different academic disciplines, and guidance for when and how to best use each activity. Any reader will come away with a pedagogic tool kit of new ideas for classroom exercises, new approaches to designing course assignments, and new ways to assess students’ ability to practice critical analysis.

Aus dem Klappentext

While notions of what constitutes critical thinking vary, educators, politicians, and employers all agree that critical thinking skills are necessary for well-educated citizens and a key capacity for successful employees. In Teaching for Critical Thinking, Stephen Brookfield explores how students learn to think critically and what methods teachers can use to help.

In his engaging, conversational style, Brookfield establishes a basic protocol of critical thinking that focuses on students uncovering and checking assumptions, exploring alternative perspectives, and taking informed actions. The book fosters a shared understanding of critical thinking and helps all faculty adapt general principles to specific disciplinary contexts.

Drawing on thousands of student testimonies, the book identifies the teaching methods and approaches that are most successful when teaching students to think, read, and write critically. Brookfield explains when to make critical thinking the classroom focus, how to encourage critical discussions, and ways to reach skeptical students. He outlines the basic components required when reviewing a text critically and shows how to give highly specific feedback.

The book also addresses how to foster critical thinking across an institution, beginning with how it can be explained in syllabi and even integrated into strategic plans and institu-tional missions. Brookfield stresses the importance of teachers modeling critical thinking and demonstrates himself how to do this.

Crammed with activities and techniques, this how-to guide is applicable in face-to-face, online, and hybrid classrooms of all sizes. Each exercise includes detailed instructions, examples from different academic disciplines, and guidance for when and how to best use each activity. Any reader will come away with a pedagogic tool kit of new ideas for classroom exercises, new approaches to designing course assignments, and new ways to assess students' ability to practice critical analysis.

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Teaching for Critical Thinking

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

As a reader and a working classroom teacher I always appreciate a chapter, or even a book, that starts by telling me what I'm going to be reading in the next few pages. That way, if it's of no interest to me I can skip it and spend my time doing something more useful or pleasurable (hopefully both). So let me begin this introduction by saying that in this chapter I want to introduce what I understand as the basic process of critical thinking. This entails (1) identifying the assumptions that frame our thinking and determine our actions, (2) checking out the degree to which these assumptions are accurate and valid, (3) looking at our ideas and decisions (intellectual, organizational, and personal) from several different perspectives, and (4) on the basis of all this, taking informed actions. I also propose a basic typology of different kinds of assumptions that critical thinking unearths and scrutinizes—paradigmatic, prescriptive, and causal.

I'm also using this chapter to make some strong claims about critical thinking. I argue that if you can't think critically your survival is in peril because you risk living a life that—without your being aware of it—hurts you and serves the interests of those who wish you harm. If you can't think critically you have no chance of recognizing, let alone pushing back on, those times you are being manipulated. And if you can't think critically you will behave in ways that have less chance of achieving the results you want. So critical thinking is not just an academic process that leads to good scores on SATs, elegantly argued essays, or experimental hypotheses that can stand the toughest scrutiny. It is a way of living that helps you stay intact when any number of organizations (corporate, political, educational, and cultural) are trying to get you to think and act in ways that serve their purposes.

How Critical Thinking Saved My Life

As a way of leading into these ideas I want to begin on a personal note by showing how critical thinking saved my life. A few years ago I was at rock bottom emotionally. I was one of the 20 million Americans diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety, convinced most days that I was on the verge of death and feeling worthless and ashamed about my inability to control my state of mind. I spent a great deal of energy hiding my depression as best I could from family, friends, and colleagues, and steadfastly refused to seek medical help. Since, objectively, I had nothing to be depressed about (I had a job I loved and a loving family) my response to my depression was to tell myself to snap out of it. I believed the way to beat depression was to reason my way through it, to tell myself that since there was no earthly reason I should be depressed, I ought to just stop being that way. My depression's persistence and debilitating effect were heightened dramatically because I wasn't thinking critically about it. Once I started to do this, things improved dramatically. So, I begin this chapter with a bold statement; the ability to think critically about one's assumptions, beliefs, and actions is a survival necessity.

I've written about this period of depression in much greater detail elsewhere (Brookfield, 2011) and this may be entirely too much information about me for you to digest so early! If that's the case, then skip this introductory section and go to the next section, Hunting Assumptions. If you're still with me I want to focus on just one point—what was getting in the way of my dealing with my depression was my inability to think critically about it. What I mean by that is that I refused to consider the possibility that any of my assumptions regarding my depression were wrong. For example, I assumed that the right way to deal with depression was to think your way out of it. I assumed that depression was a sign of weakness, unless external circumstances (such as divorce, being fired, or the death of a loved one) warranted it. Because I assumed I was weak, I assumed I needed to hide my condition from peers and colleagues. More fundamentally, I assumed that if I was a real man I would be able just to stare this condition down and force myself out of it by an act of will. I assumed it was up to me to "dig deep" (as the sports cliché has it) and dredge up the mental strength to beat it.

Some of the assumptions I've just outlined were on the surface and were reasonably easy to identify. These mostly had to do with how I understand cause and effect. For example, I reasoned that depression was caused by external circumstances and therefore, since my circumstances were good, it was a mistake to be depressed. The assumption that by engaging in intentional self-talk ("come on now, don't be ridiculous, it's all in your head, you are in great shape, there's no reason at all to feel the way you do") I could move beyond depression was also causal. Causal assumptions can always be stated as cause and effect linkages, as in "if I do A, then B will happen." Hence, they are both explanatory and predictive. They explain why the past happened by establishing the causes of particular events. They predict the future by positing what will be the consequences and effects of certain decisions.

Some of the assumptions about depression I reviewed were more about how good professionals (which is how I thought of myself) are supposed to behave. These were prescriptive assumptions. Prescriptive assumptions are assumptions we hold about what are desirable ways of thinking or acting. They can usually be recognized by their inclusion of the word should, as in "a good professional should be able to respond to cultural diversity," or "a good marriage is one in which partners can be totally honest with each other." Prescriptive assumptions state what a good friendship or relationship looks like, what should be the characteristics of a truly democratic decision, or how social resources should be allocated. I held a prescriptive assumption that a normal, fully functioning person copes well with life and doesn't get depressed. I believed that good professionals don't let irrational feelings of depression, worthlessness, or shame dominate their lives.

The third type of assumptions I held about depression was harder for me to uncover and challenge. These assumptions lay deeper within my mental structures and were not immediately apparent to me. They were so much a part of my outlook, and so central to my self-identity, that when they were pointed out to me as being assumptions I was tempted to reply, "that's not an assumption, that's reality." Specifically, I assumed that a fully functioning man is logical, clear-headed, and determined, a sort of steely-jawed, no nonsense mental equivalent of an early Clint Eastwood character, or Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Although I would have strenuously denied it at the time, I had assumed that the ideology of patriarchy—the belief that men are governed by reason, women by emotion, and therefore that men's powers of rationality equip them to be natural leaders—was correct. As I say, this was not an assumption I held consciously. It was much more subtle than that; it had wormed its way into my consciousness, so to speak. I call this kind of assumption a paradigmatic...