Critical Thinking in Academic Writing

A Cultural Approach

Shi PU

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000434057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Istruzione superiore

The book inquires into critical thinking through a cultural approach. Based on an ethnographic study, it compares Chinese postgraduate students' conceptualisations and applications of critical thinking in three different settings in China and the UK. From an insider's perspective, it analyses the intricate interplay of multiple cultural and individual factors that conditions students' critical thinking development as they learn to write an academic thesis and to manage postgraduate learning. The book offers insights into the nature of problems that Chinese students encounter with critical thinking and envisions possibilities for the ideas for critical thinking to have a transformative power in an intercultural space.

The book will primarily be of interest to academics and educators who work on critical thinking and academic writing, especially those who work with Chinese students. Scholars interested in intercultural issues in higher education may also find it relevant.

1 Critical thinking as an educational ideal

DOI: 10.4324/9781003189541-1

This chapter introduces the concept of critical thinking from an Anglo-European (i.e., Western) perspective. It first explains how critical thinking came to be seen as an intellectual merit and an ideal for higher education. It then focusses on the field of second language education (SLE) and reviews how critical thinking is conceptualised and researched alongside the teaching of English as a second language. While acknowledging that the cognitive skills of making judgements based on reason is at the core of critical thinking, this chapter argues that students’ development of cognitive critical thinking skills in SLE cannot be fully understood through a mere cognitive approach.

Critical thinking in Western higher education

In the history of education in the West, the earliest systematic use of critical thinking is considered to be the Socratic method, i.e., ‘the destructive cross-examination of the concepts and principles that the Athenians lived by’ (Santas, 1979, p. 5). In Greece during the fifth century BCE, Socrates used probing questions in a wide range of occasions such as teaching, informal talks, and formal debates. The purpose was not only to teach, but also to seek answers, to raise curiosity, and to stimulate thinking. As Plato recorded, Socrates often ‘attacked the most fundamental principles of Athenian life, the Greek ideals of moderation, courage, justice, piety, wisdom, and versatility’ (Santas, 1979, p. 5). To him, the only way of discovering truth was by ‘examining answers that others give’ (Santas, 1979, p. 71–72). In modern times, Socratic questioning is considered one of the most important approaches to critical thinking. From the Socratic perspective, critical thinkers should be able to evaluate ideas with reason rather than following authority or mere convention. Throughout Western intellectual history, the use of reason is regarded as a key concept that led to the prosperity of Western culture, including the development of science, technology, and political systems (Russell, 2000).

Although the tradition of making judgements based on reason has existed for more than 2,000 years, the term ‘critical thinking’ was not explicitly used to refer to this tradition until the twentieth century. In 1906, William G. Sumner used the term ‘criticism’ and ‘critical faculty’ to describe the importance of critical thinking. He defined ‘criticism’ not as the mere act of expressing disapproval but as ‘the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not’ (p. 632). In 1910, John Dewey used the term ‘critical thinking’ to discuss how to analyse thoughts, which was largely interchangeable with ‘reflective thinking’ in his writing. In 1946, American philosopher Max Black published a textbook on logic and reasoning methods and employed the term ‘Critical Thinking’ as its title. According to Black, using logic is essentially ‘thinking about thinking’ (1946, p. 3) in a ‘systematic, persistent, and, above all, critical’ manner (1946, p. 6). He used ‘criticism’ to refer to what we now mean by critical thinking, meaning that critical thinkers can ‘give reasons for [their] favorable or adverse judgments’ and ‘see connections which are not obvious to inspection’ (1946, p. 6); ‘criticism, in this generous and educative sense, is the same as the exhibition and defence of principles and standards’ (1946, p. 7). During the 1960s, Ennis (1962) developed the concept of critical thinking as a psychological construct, and, during the 1980s, he suggested that critical thinking was not only a skill but also a disposition (Ennis, 1987). Overall, the aim of advocating critical thinking in education was to change education from a platform for passively transmitting knowledge into a ‘community of inquiry’ in which all members, both students and teachers, could raise questions and discuss issues freely on an equal footing (Ryen, 2020).

It was against this background that critical thinking started to be taught in Western higher education. During the 1970s, it was mainly taught as reasoning skills from a philosophical perspective by informal logic theorists (Paul, 1997), focussing on the use of logic to achieve ‘clear and rigorous thinking’ (Davies & Barnett, 2015, p. 6). Students were led to analyse and improve arguments in a technical manner isolated from contexts. During the 1980s, while the teaching of argumentative skills continued to be conducted by philosophers, it also appeared in composition and rhetoric courses within language departments (Jason, 2001). It was taught from various perspectives such as cognitive psychology, feminism, and critical pedagogy. Gradually, it also became a component of subjects such as nursing, biology, and business. Later on, as researchers became aware that the application of critical thinking involved creative and emotional dimensions, critical thinking was understood as a disposition in addition to skills. The dispositional dimension of critical thinking gave rise to the educational approach, meaning that the teaching of critical thinking was

interested chiefly in the wider educational development of the individual student and, to that end, is concerned with ways in which critical thinking can benefit the wider society outside the classroom through the development and formation of a critic-social attitude.

(Davies & Barnett, 2015, p. 6)

Gradually, the educational approach to critical thinking was further extended, sometimes conceptualised as ‘criticality’. According to Davies and Barnett, criticality comprised ‘thinking, being and acting’ (2015, p. 15), meaning that it was not enough to have critical thinking skills or disposition, but one also needed to take actions in a critical way (Moon, 2008), to participate in society and to do things ‘ethically on the basis of reasoned judgments’ (Davies & Barnett, 2015, p. 16). This meant that the teaching of critical thinking was not only about training argumentative skills or cultivating critical dispositions; it should also encourage students to incorporate critical thoughts into their everyday life so as to become responsible citizens. As a result of this understanding, many universities, mainly in the US, started to consider critical thinking as a major aim of higher education, although different institutions had different understandings of the ‘critical thinking’ that they claimed to teach, ranging from reasoning skills and critical dispositions to responsible citizenship. Some institutions aimed for their students to master argumentative skills, while others encouraged them produce ‘transformative critique’, i.e., ‘to live and breathe as a critical thinker’ (Davies & Barnett, 2015, p. 17).

Today, higher education is faced with an urgent need to respond to the rapid-changing social environment. The changing political and economic conditions and the development of technology have caused complex changes to the labour market worldwide, posing challenges to higher education. Universities in the West are going through profound changes brought about by ‘massified enrolments, an increasing diversity of learner profiles, [and] the rise of university management culture’ (Lincoln & Kearney, 2019, p. 799), and, meanwhile, they have to produce qualified people for global and local job markets. Critical thinking is officially written into documents of international organisations as a ‘21st-century skill’ (OECD, 2018), a basic quality required for personnel involved in professional workplace in the European and international context (Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, 2007; WEF, 2016; European Commission, 2017). Skills of critical thinking not only characterises reasoned judgement as a general way of thinking, but has also been specified for specific social scenarios, including using scientific and evidence-based reasoning to enhance political decision-making, problematising ‘fake news’ in social media, understanding and transferring messages, as well as correcting oneself based on self-reflection (Barnett, 2015; Frederiksen, 2017; Peters, 2017; Penkauskienė et al., 2019). Cultivating students’ critical thinking is believed to make Western higher education more accountable for job markets.

It is worth noting that, during the 1970s and 1980s, critical thinking also developed into critical pedagogy, commonly referred to as ‘the use of higher education to overcome and unlearn the social conditions that restrict and limit human freedom’ (Davies & Barnett, 2015, p. 18). It advocated participation in society as a critical engagement and emphasised the need to transform existing social systems (Freire, 2003/1970; Giroux, 1988). This school of thought highlighted the purpose of critique as a way of identifying un-examined assumptions. As opposed to de-contextualised reasoning exercises, it raised people’s awareness of the social conditions for critical thinking (Davies & Barnett, 2015). By seeing existing society as oppressive and dehumanising, critical pedagogy had a clear political stance: It was fighting against the capitalist hegemony, envisaging the role of education as one that should turn students ‘against the idea of being trained for the economic needs of large corporations’ (Davies & Barnett, 2015, p. 20). In a sense, this approach stood at the radical end of the spectrum of the socio-political dimension of critical thinking.

To summarise, in Western higher education, the notion of critical thinking was conceptualised from three mutually informing perspectives: The philosophical perspective that focussed on logic and reasoning; the educational perspective that focussed on disposition and human development; and the socio-political perspective that aimed mainly for citizenship education and, occasionally, radical political activism (Davies & Barnett, 2015). During the 1990s, scholars recognised the importance of theorising critical thinking with both philosophical rigour and educational comprehensiveness. Today, while the teaching of reasoning skills continues (e.g., Watson & Arp, 2015; Tittle, 2011; Jones, 2001; Fisher & Scriven, 1997), psychological and philosophical theories have successfully integrated reasoning skills with intellectual dispositions such as intellectual integrity, confidence in reason, and fair mindedness (Ennis, 1996, 2015; Paul & Elder, 2014). In the socio-political strand, efforts are being made to engage students in debates surrounding social and moral issues, encouraging students to take on social responsibilities rather than to pursue solipsistic interests (Ryen, 2020; Lim, 2015). The purpose is to cultivate responsible and agentic citizens for liberal democratic societies (Erikson & Erikson, 2019; Penkauskienė et al., 2019).

Critical thinking in second language education

Before the 1990s, most research on critical thinking in language departments in Anglo-American countries focussed on students who spoke English as their first language (Thompson, 2002). During the 1990s, critical thinking became a major issue in the field of SLE, and attention was given to non-Western students studying English as their second language. Echoing its conceptions in Western higher education reviewed in the previous section, critical thinking in SLE is also viewed from three perspectives: As cognitive processes, as dispositional features, and as socio-political acts. In this section, I review the definition of each perspective and analyse how the three perspectives relate to each other as different dimensions of the idea of critical thinking. The purpose is to explain why my research on critical thinking focusses on its cognitive dimension.

Critical thinking as cognitive processes

In SLE, the cognitive dimension of critical thinking is defined in the light of philosophical and psychological theories developed by scholars such as Dewey, Paul, Facione, and Ennis. Dewey (1933) emphasises reflection and defines critical thinking as the ‘active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds which support it and the further conclusions to which it tends’ (p. 9). Paul (1988) regards critical thinking as ‘the ability to reach sound conclusions based on observations and information’ (p. 50) by ‘learning how to ask and answer questions of analysis, synthesis and evaluation’ (p. 37). Facione (1990) considers critical thinking as a form of higher order thinking skills, particularly characterised by cognitive skills of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. Ennis (1992) highlights the purpose of thinking for decision making by defining critical thinking as ‘reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do’ (p. 22).

Overall, the cognitive elements of critical thinking can be synthesised into three categories: Skills, purposes, and criteria. Within existing research on critical thinking in SLE (e.g., Bataineh & Zghoul, 2006; Wen, 2008; Floyd, 2011; Hashemi & Ghanizadeh, 2012; Luk & Lin, 2015; Ebadi & Rahimi, 2018; Lu & Xie, 2019), critical thinking is most notably characterised by a range of reasoning skills, including:

• Identifying assumptions.
• Gathering evidence.
• Analysing.
• Questioning.
• Deducting.
• Inducting.
• Inferencing.
• Synthesising.
• Interpreting and explaining.
• Considering the whole situation.
• Calculating likelihood.

The list is not exhaustive but can largely represent major thinking skills involved in critical thinking. From the cognitive perspective, critical thinking is essentially ‘a way of reasoning’ (Bataineh & Zghoul, 2006, p. 34), and to apply critical thinking is to apply ‘formal and informal logic’ (Bataineh & Zghoul, 2006, p. 33).

The purpose of critical thinking refers to goals that reasoning skills are employed to achieve. According to research literature, the immediate purpose of critical thinking is to evaluate the quality of thought and to decide ‘whether to accept, reject or suspend judgment’ (Bataineh & Zghoul, 2006, p. 33). Although some researchers regard evaluation as a reasoning skill parallel with skills of analysis and synthesis, I consider evaluation as the core of critical thinking. The word ‘critical’ originates from the term kritikós (κριτικός) in ancient Greek, meaning ‘of or for judging, able to discern’. To think critically means to be able to make evaluative judgement based on reason, and the process of making evaluative judgement involves the use of reasoning skills as listed above. In other words, all those reasoning skill...