Introduction
5
may well have been abandoned as part of the emergence of the entrepreneurial
university.
However, whether critical thinking can and should be taught is itself a con-
tested matter; and views here depend in part on what is understood as critical
thinking. Many would concur that recognizing and constructing arguments—
that is, critical thinking as reasoning skills—is valuable and important. Much
less agreement attaches to the idea of educating for radical social and political
change (“critical pedagogy”). Others are not happy with the teaching of criti-
cal thinking in
any
form. The Texas Republican Party actually tried to ban the
teaching of critical thinking in schools (Strauss 2012). But what
exactly
did the
Republicans want to ban? This was not obvious. Little progress on the topic of
critical thinking in higher education can be made if the concept itself lacks a
theoretical and conceptual grounding. Critical thinking surely remains “one
of the defining concepts in Western education which enjoys wide endorse-
ment, [and] yet we have no proper account of it” (Barnett 1997, 1)
What should be done?
Our sense is that while the topic of critical thinking in higher education is-
and should be—of concern to many, it has, to date at least, typically been
addressed in a piecemeal fashion, and within the confines of separate disci-
plines and fields (philosophy, sociology, psychology, education, pedagogy,
management studies, and so on). Few attempts have been made to construct
a broad overview of the field, with a focus on how critical thinking should be
located, applied, studied, and taught within higher education. This then is a
pressing need given the increasing importance of critical thinking in the cur-
riculum, the university, and the world beyond, that of bringing together the
key approaches so as to begin to form a unified field for study and practical
implementation.
Another outstanding task is that of constructing a
model
of critical think-
ing as it might apply in higher education. Work has been done for at least
forty years on the topic of critical thinking and informal logic, and the skills
needed for fine critical thinking. This is a matter of explicitly educating
for
critical thinking (i.e., for developing the skills required by students for criti-
cal thinking within higher education). However, there has been very little
done on the matter of being critical in the wider world and the ways in
which higher education can help here. Providing a model of critical think-
ing in higher education will go some way toward clarifying its nature and its
possibilities.
Initially much of the intellectual running was made by philosophers, espe-
cially those working on reason, argument, and the philosophy of the mind.
Not surprisingly, they came to associate critical thinking with precisely what
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