What does it mean to be critical in higher education?
Andrew Drybrough*
Back in 2012, while a ‘Visiting Professor’ in a state university in South Korea, I was asked if I was interested in teaching a liberal arts course to a class of undergraduate students on ‘Global Citizenship’. This was a one-semester course through English medium instruction that I ended up designing and teaching on my own after a colleague dropped out. The course director bemoaned that the students lacked ‘critical thinking’ and I needed to encourage them to develop this skill. At the time, I was not quite sure what he meant by this term, but two years later I had embarked on my study of it for my PhD.
Ronald Barnett (1997) considered being critical as one of the fundamental features of higher education. But, this is where the problem begins, as different people have different ideas about what ‘being critical’ means. In Davies and Barnett’s (2015) compendium of ideas they begin by outlining three different ‘movements’ of critical thinking in higher education: the ‘critical thinking movement’ (CTM), ‘criticality movement’ (based on Barnett, 1997), and the ‘critical pedagogy movement’ based on the ideas of Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux among others.
The focus of my PhD research ended up being closer to the CTM than any other. I interviewed 14 lecturers and 14 Master’s students to gauge their conceptualisation of critical thinking in academic writing at Master’s level. What was reported tended to focus on different skills, including the ability to compare and evaluate the evidence that supported different perspectives; the nature of argumentation, judgement and authorial voice embedded within the epistemological frameworks of different disciplines, what Toulmin (2003) might describe as ‘field-dependent’ argument. Dispositional elements and developmental aspects of critical thinking were also acknowledged. In relation to higher education, this could be summarised as the analysis, comparison and evaluation of different evidence-based perspectives in order to make informed decisions and present a position on a subject within an academic discipline.
The extent to which critical thinking is generic and transferable across academic disciplines is also open to debate. Some would argue that nature of critical thinking does vary across disciplines (e.g. Jones, 2007; Moore, 2011), while others believe that there are generic features of critical thinking that can be applied across disciplines, such as critical analysis, synthesis and evaluation (e.g. Davies, 2013).
There are also questions relating to what extent critical thinking is transferable across cultures. Durkin (2008) highlights the resistance of Chinese master’s students to adopt a particular conceptualisation of critical thinking, concluding that Chinese students adopt a ‘middle way’ between a Western approach that she defined as ‘wrestling debate’ and a more ‘conciliatory’ approach common in Chinese culture. Pu (2022) highlights the cultural nature of critical thinking that often causes Chinese students to struggle to adopt a ‘Western’ approach, and Atkinson (1997) critiqued this particular conceptualising of critical thinking and the difficulties of teaching it to students from different cultures; instead conceiving critical thinking more as a social practice. Atkinson’s concept of ‘cognitive apprenticeship’ highlights the situated and social nature of it. The nature of critical thinking can therefore vary across cultures and should be situated within specific academic communities of practice.
There is also the issue of how students should ‘think’ when they return to (or live in) a specific academic context or community of practice. This does not only apply to countries where this particular conceptualisation of critical thinking is not as valued, but also where certain types of ‘critical’ are valued or privileged over others, and where if you do not ‘follow the tribe’ you get nudged out (Adams, 2021).
One of the key features of critical thinking is making informed decisions based on empirical evidence. However, the same ‘evidence’ can be used to defend a variety of positions. Critical thinking should therefore involve an interrogation of that evidence, and that often requires specialist knowledge regarding the particular research method used to ‘find’ or ‘produce’ the evidence.
Knowledge has also been used to exercise power and privilege and to further particular agendas, rather than to open up constructive debate over different perspectives and positions. The phrase ‘knowledge is power’ is commonly attributed to Francis Bacon in his Meditationes Sacrae (1597). One of the distinct places in Bacon’s posthumous work New Atlantis was ‘Solomon’s House’; this is often considered to be a blueprint for the research university. Bacon was also one of the pioneers of empiricism, which focuses on the key role of empirical evidence in the formation of (scientific) knowledge.
During the aforementioned Global Citizenship course that I taught, I introduced the students to the New Atlantis as a model society. It should be noted that students were encouraged to critically evaluate aspects of New Atlantis, and not just take it as ideal. It was, however, an imaginary place built on the use of knowledge to benefit that society. It was not only built on scientific principles, but also founded on spiritual, moral and social rites and traditions.
In the context of our current age where so much that is solid appears to have melted into air, some of the spiritual and moral principles as well as the scientific ones from the New Atlantis are worth a re-examination. There are opportunities to consider deeper questions of truth, rather than only considering ‘in whose interest’ knowledge is being used. Of course, there are different ‘truths’ and perspectives, but it is still important to consider the different perspectives and the evidence and assumptions that support them, so that they may be critically evaluated and not cancelled without consideration in order to further specific political agendas. By doing so we can all become better critical thinkers.
*Dr Andrew Drybrough is Associate Tutor in Education, Moray House School of Education and Sport, The University of Edinburgh
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