"A Model for Critical Thinking"

Update 2: Emerson, “A Model for Teaching Critical Thinking” 17 Feb. 2014

Emerson, Marnice K. “A Model for Teaching Critical Thinking.” (2013): 1-24. ERIC. ED540588. 15 Feb. 2014. <http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED540588>

Marnice Emerson takes on the pedagogy of critical thinking in this recent publication. Though his text reads more as a catalogue of various theories and definitions, he doers offer pertinent strategies in the instruction of critical thinking today, something that directly informs the thesis question at work in my project. Emerson defines critical thinking in four major ways. In order to be critical, thinking must be reflexive (“metacognitive”), personally invested, contextualized with other thinkers, and suspicious about assumption (3-4, 6-7). The paradox of these skills for instructors is that “the ability to dig deeper and question is not an innate trait in most people” (4). The question then becomes: how do we teach this skill to people disinclined to it? Emerson sees most students as resistant to critical thinking, whether it is an innate trait or not, for a number of reasons: “Some students perceive critical thinking as a difficult process that does not yield benefits that outweigh the effort”, some “do not want to discover information that might make them question their existing beliefs or introduce gray areas in which there is no right answer”, while others “do not have confidence in their ability to critically think and would prefer to rely on the thinking of those whom they perceive as expert or authority figures” (4). Though his tone may be bleak at times, these characterizations address at least some of the reasons students balk at critical thinking. I have had classrooms with each of these personas in one form or another. And it is such personalities that call for a pedagogy of critical thought.

Emerson's solutions to these issues draw on theories of educational motivation and expectancy-value. This means that we must motivate students if we expect them to exercise more effort than they are use to in employing deeper operations of thought and simultaneously display the use critical thinking has within their own lives (6). To do this, Emerson recommends “a mixed approach, in which critical thinking [is] taught as a separate unit within a course of other content” (8). This approach works best when critical thinking is taught explicitly instead of implicitly. Teaching the technique explicitly entails making students fully aware that critical thinking is an outcome and practice of a course, while implicit instruction means that teachers utilize exercises to enhance students' critical contributions without ostensibly stating that such a practice is at work (8-10). What would this look like in the classroom? To take a mixed, explicit approach would ask students to apply deeper levels of thought to a course (unrelated to critical thinking) with the goal of analyzing the ways in which they think about the topic. Emerson advocates the techniques of surprise and equilibrium as keys to this approach. Surprise is evoked when we evince “the tendency to believe statements … about the self when they could easily apply to anyone”, while disequilibrium arises when our “challenging of learners' current beliefs plac[e] them in a conflicted mindset” (11). Above all, critical thinking must be taught incrementally through praxis, offering students the opportunity to concretely utilize the thought processes we discuss in class on a scale of increasing difficulty so that we do not overwhelm them with too much at once, all while we offer feedback on their performance and encourage them to reflect on their habits of thought throughout these exercises (10-14).

There is certainly a good deal of sound advice offered by Emerson. I like the idea of practice, especially when critical thinking is pursued in stages. This would demystify the aura of critical thinking into a practical, achievable skill that can be learned instead of inherited. But I must admit that the article was more troubling for me in its recommendations, raising questions of the ethics behind methods of teaching students to think critically. My largest concern lies with Emerson's framing of emotion and thought as two entities locked in Manichean warfare. Several times throughout the text he puts forward a claim of this order: “emotional thinking quite often blocks the ability to critically think about most topics” (5). But I don't believe that affect can be removed from the thinking process. Our visceral reactions are constitutive of what we think and how we think it. This must be incorporated as part and parcel of the critical process – a different kind of thinking but an essential contemplative reaction no less. Though I understand that emotions can at times be used to mask the thinking process, this does not mean they are divorced from it. It is a matter of attuning students to emotion as a component of thought. And, after all, isn't affect constituent of Emerson's call for “personal investment” in the critical thinking process?

I was also troubled by some of the strategies Emerson recommended, particularly the surprise and disequilibrium techniques. In one example, he explains that a teacher might “think aloud how [the class] would use basic questioning strategies to evaluate a specific credible website, separating factual elements from opinions” and then for homework “[a]ssig[n] the learners a different website – one that appears to be credible but is actually not” (12) in order to show them that their thinking processes were misguided and needed to be reconsidered. Though Emerson claims that his research finds this task to be effective, I am not sure I would be comfortable with this level of manipulation. It almost seems as though I would be proclaiming to teach students something when in fact I was merely setting them up for a hoax, which raises problems of student-teacher trust.

In all, these questions interrogate the consequences of how I teach – through what means and to what end. What methods of teaching critical thought are appropriate to the task? What are the limits? How can I gauge whether students are thinking critically or merely aping the exercises we cover in class? I don't doubt that there are many viable techniques that could be used, but I question their worth if they value chicanery at the expense of the confidence of our students. I prefer to see myself in a partnership with students, not in an autocracy.