Living in a Post-Truth World: Why teaching Critical Thinking is so important?
 |
| Joe McCann |
I want to start with a question.
Why is it that in a world where you literally have access to the entire
collective knowledge of humanity at your fingertips, knowledge that would
thrill some of the greatest minds in history to their very core, do facts and
scientific evidence not seem to matter anymore? Some would argue that we now
live in a post-truth world, where people are more likely to accept an argument
based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than scientific fact and evidence.
Choosing to take a vow of belief when presented with a piece of information, as
opposed to a vow of suspicion.
According to Psychologists like
Diane Halpern (Halpern, 1998), the teaching of students to think critically “is
more important than ever” and is an essential skill for anyone entering the
21st-century workplace. However, one could argue that it is a fundamental skill
for all people living in the information age. Advances in technology and
communications may have put the worlds collective knowledge at our fingertips,
but, it has also created a hotbed for misinformation, where arguments based on
theories and methods erroneously regarded as scientific knowledge are
commonplace.
So, what even is critical
thinking? Many students will be told from the very start of their university
journey that critical thinking is really important and that lecturers will be
looking for evidence of it in all their assignments. Psychology is no different.
It is rather paradoxical then, that for many psychology students they will
receive no explicit form of critical thinking instruction. Leaving many
students wondering what critical thinking is? Let alone how to do it
effectively.
So, what is critical thinking?
Well, that’s an interesting
question, and it really depends on who you ask, and what discipline they study.
There are almost as many definitions of critical thinking as people who study
it. Although, a multitude of different definitions have been offered as to what
critical thinking is, most include the same underlying set of fundamental
principles.
Scholars on the subject seem to
agree critical thinking is a higher order cognitive skill that goes beyond the
memorization and recall of facts. These scholars share a number of assumptions:
there are identifiable critical thinking skills, critical thinking can be
taught and therefore learned, and when students acquire these skills and apply
them to the appropriate context, they become better thinkers. So, to keep it
simple, critical thinking is an analytical thought process aimed at determining
the validity of a specific claim.
In addition, there are also
critical thinking dispositions. Now a disposition, in this case, means an
individual’s inherent mind and character. Critical thinking takes a lot of
mental horsepower, and you can’t critically think about everything, you simple
don’t have the time. So, students also need to be able to recognise when the
skill is needed and when to use their mental horsepower to employ it.
Why is critical thinking
important in Psychology?
Critical thinking is considered imperative
in psychology because it permits you to evaluate, explain, or restructure
thinking, thus decreasing the likelihood of adopting, acting or thinking on
false premises. For example, the study of racial differences, where empirical
methods and research were used to support myths and false ideologies about race
(Teo, 2008).
The media has a tendency when
talking about psychological research to overemphasise the power of the results
and make huge sweeping statements about the researches significance,
particularly when the research is novel. This only serves to propagate further
psychological myths, as opposed to the systematic understanding of
psychological sciences (e.g. Bem’s 2011 Extrasensory perception study).
Students need to be introduced to
the concept of critical thinking before they enter university, we need to teach
them how to recognise if the information they come across is correct,
applicable and unbiased. And, how to know when to accept what someone is saying
and when to question it.
My PhD Research
This is where my PhD research
comes in. When students make the transition from A-level Psychology to undergraduate
level psychology, they often lack the necessary critical thinking skills to
succeed in higher education. Often, many students will have never heard the
phrase “critical thinking”, and find the whole process very alien. This is
because the pre-tertiary education is very binary, there is a right and a wrong
answer. Authenticity of a subject has been sacrificed for standardisation,
meaning in the interest of time many students are only taught one narrative on
a topic; when really in the real-world there might be several schools of
thought on a topic.
When students transition to
higher education, they often find this revelation quite jarring. So, when
students are asked to critically think, they often have no real frame of
reference or real foundation to build from. My PhD aims to address this by
bridging the gap between A-level and university Psychology by designing an
intervention to introduce critical thinking skills to students earlier.
Therefore, hopefully providing a foundation on which they can build on while at
university.
I am currently collecting data
for my 2nd PhD study. So, if you are a psychology student either at A-level or
university (first year to MSc) and you are interested in helping me with my
endeavour, please find a link to my study below:
References
Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the
future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition
and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 1–19.
Halpern, D. 1998. Teaching
Critical Thinking for Transfer Across Domains: Disposition, Skills, Structure
Training, and Metacognitive Monitoring. American
Psychologist, 53(4), 449-455. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.53.4.449.
Stam, H. J. (2015). The
historical boundedness of psychological knowledge and the ethics of shared understandings. Journal Of
Theoretical And Philosophical Psychology, 35(2), 117-127.
doi:10.1037/teo0000018
Teo, T.
(2008). From Speculation to Epistemological Violence in Psychology: A Critical Hermeneutic
Reconstruction. Theory and Psychology,
18, 47–67.
Joe is one of our PhD students. If you'd like to contact him then email him on: Joseph.McCann@uni.cumbria.ac.uk
Comments
Post a Comment