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Martin Davies and Ronald Barnett
“theory” of critical thinking, which does justice to the earlier emphasis on
structures of argumentation, and yet which does not neglect other important
human traits such as the emotions, imagination, and creativity, or, for that
matter, the wider educational possibilities within higher education.
All of these waves are on display in many of the chapters in this volume.
However, many of the papers here cannot easily be ascribed to any one wave
but cut across concerns relevant to more than one wave. Some of the papers,
too, are openly reflective of critical thinking itself, and we can see their contri-
butions as a modest step in the direction of third-wave theorizing.
Toward a model of critical thinking
From the overview so far offered, it is evident that any account of the place of
critical thinking in higher education needs to make sense, for example, as to
how critical thinking is represented in debates about critical pedagogy, the role
of education in leading to individual fulfillment and collective sociopolitical
activism, the place of critical thinking in educating for citizenship, the role of
critical thinking in relation to creativity, and so on. Any such account of criti-
cal thinking must also embrace the long-standing focus of critical thinking as
a composite of skills and judgments, and as a variety of dispositions as well. A
model of critical thinking in higher education is needed that incorporates all
these perspectives and approaches.
Critical thinking in higher education has, we contend, at least six distinct, yet
integrated and permeable, dimensions: (1) core skills in critical argumentation
(reasoning and inference making), (2) critical judgments, (3) critical-thinking
dispositions and attitudes, (4) critical being and critical actions, (5) societal and
ideology critique, and (6) critical creativity or critical openness. Each of these,
we believe, has a particular place in an overarching model of critical thinking.
The model we propose here indicates that critical thinking has both an
indi-
vidual
dimension, as well as a
sociocultural
dimension and incorporates six dis-
tinct dimensions of critical thinking, namely skills, judgments, dispositions,
actions, critique, and creativity. For reasons of space, we shall not deal with the
“creativity” dimension here. For this, and for a more detailed development of
the model, see Davies (2015).
The place of critical thinking in higher education
What is the place of critical thinking in higher education? At one level, as
noted, critical thinking is all about the development of certain sorts of skills.
These include skills in argumentation, and skills in making sound judgments.
Employers want evidence of critical thinking skills in their employees, and
graduates are assumed to possess these skills. However, skills without the
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