john dewey definition of critical thinking

How We Think: John Dewey on the Art of Reflection and Fruitful Curiosity in an Age of Instant Opinions and Information Overload

By maria popova.

Dewey begins with the foundation of reflective thought, the defining quality of the fruitful, creative mind:

More of our waking life than we should care to admit, even to ourselves, is likely to be whiled away in this inconsequential trifling with idle fancy and unsubstantial hope… Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a con sequence — a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors. The successive portions of the reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. Each phase is a step from something to something — technically speaking, it is a term of thought. Each term leaves a deposit which is utilized in the next term. The stream or flow becomes a train, chain, or thread.

Thought, Dewey notes, also denotes belief , which he defines as “real or supposed knowledge going beyond what is directly present,” which is “marked by acceptance or rejection of something as reasonably probable or improbable.” But that process of acceptance or rejection is also where we brush up against one of the most quintessential human flaws, the same one responsible for the “backfire effect” — our tendency to construct our beliefs based on insufficient knowledge and understanding, then to cling to them blindly, rejecting all evidence to the opposite. Stereotypes and prejudice are among the products of such thinking. In that sense, our “thoughts” are not based on true reflection but on crippling cognitive shortcuts, often borrowed from society rather than arrived at by our own cerebration. Dewey writes:

Such thoughts grow up unconsciously and without reference to the attainment of correct belief. They are picked up — we know not how. From obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate themselves into acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our mental furniture. Tradition, instruction, imitation — all of which depend upon authority in some form, or appeal to our own advantage, or fall in with a strong passion — are responsible for them. Such thoughts are prejudices, that is, prejudgments, not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence.

To truly think, Dewey argues, we ought to consider not only the origin of our beliefs but also how they affect our actions, which they inevitably do:

Thinking in its best sense is that which considers the basis and consequences of beliefs… To think of the world as flat is to ascribe a quality to a real thing as its real property. This conclusion denotes a connection among things and hence is not, like imaginative thought, plastic to our mood. Belief in the world’s flatness commits him who holds it to thinking in certain specific ways of other objects, such as the heavenly bodies, antipodes, the possibility of navigation. It prescribes to him actions in accordance with his conception of these objects.

Dewey defines reflective thought, our single most potent antidote to erroneous beliefs:

Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought… It is a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons.

This basis of reasons, Dewey argues, is a relational framework for how different bits of knowledge connect to and validate one another. To think well is to construct fruitful linkages:

[The] function by which one thing signifies or indicates another, and thereby leads us to consider how far one may be regarded as warrant for belief in the other, [is] the central factor in all reflective or distinctively intellectual thinking… Reflection thus implies that something is believed in (or disbelieved in), not on its own direct account, but through something else which stands as witness, evidence, proof, voucher, warrant; that is, as ground of belief .

What follows naturally from this is the idea that to think is also to embrace uncertainty and harness the power of not-knowing :

Thinking … is defined accordingly as that operation in which present facts suggest other facts (or truths) in such a way as to induce belief in the latter upon the ground or warrant of the former. We do not put beliefs that rest simply on inference on the surest level of assurance. To say “I think so” implies that I do not as yet know so. The inferential belief may later be confirmed and come to stand as sure, but in itself it always has a certain element of supposition… [There are] certain subprocesses which are involved in every reflective operation. These are: (a) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt; and (b) an act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested belief.

Much like getting lost helps us find ourselves , being uncertain drives us to reflect, to seek knowledge. The spark of thinking, Dewey argues, is a kind of psychological restlessness rooted in ambiguity — what John Keats memorably termed “negative capability” — which precipitates our effort to resolve the unease by coming to, by way of reflection and deliberation, a conclusion:

Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation , a situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives. As long as our activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another, or as long as we permit our imagination to entertain fancies at pleasure, there is no call for reflection. Difficulty or obstruction in the way of reaching a belief brings us, however, to a pause. In the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to find some standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and, getting a more commanding view of the situation, may decide how the facts stand related to one another… Demand for the solution of a perplexity is the steadying and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection… This need of straightening out a perplexity also controls the kind of inquiry undertaken. A traveler whose end is the most beautiful path will look for other considerations and will test suggestions occurring to him on another principle than if he wishes to discover the way to a given city. The problem fixes the end of thought and the end controls the process of thinking.

This is where the art of critical thinking becomes crucial. Like the scientist, whose chief responsibility is always to remain uncertain , so the thinker must cultivate a capacity for not only welcoming but seeking out doubt:

If the suggestion that occurs is at once accepted, we have uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection. To turn the thing over in mind, to reflect, means to hunt for additional evidence, for new data, that will develop the suggestion, and will either, as we say, bear it out or else make obvious its absurdity and irrelevance… The easiest way is to accept any suggestion that seems plausible and thereby bring to an end the condition of mental uneasiness. Reflective thinking is always more or less troublesome because it involves overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept suggestions at their face value; it involves willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance. Reflective thinking, in short, means judgment suspended during further inquiry; and suspense is likely to be somewhat painful… To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry — these are the essentials of thinking.

Just as importantly, Dewey argues, reflective thought acts as an antidote to autopilot — it “affords the sole method of escape from purely impulsive or purely routine action.” But like the use of any tool, thinking “may go wrong as well as right, and hence … needs safeguarding and training.” Dewey admonishes against the assumption that one’s intelligence prevents the operation from going wrong — if anything, the relationship between creativity and dishonesty suggests that the most intelligent people are often those most deft at rationalizing their erroneous beliefs and the resulting behaviors. Dewey writes:

Natural intelligence is no barrier to the propagation of error, nor large but untrained experience to the accumulation of fixed false beliefs. Errors may support one another mutually and weave an ever larger and firmer fabric of misconception.

Perhaps the greatest gift of thought, Dewey notes, is that it allows us to imagine things not yet experienced, based on what we know in and about the present — it grants us the power of “systematized foresight,” which enables us to “act on the basis of the absent and the future.” And yet therein lies one of the most perilous potential pitfalls, as well as the greatest potentiality of learning the art of reflective thought:

The process of reaching the absent from the present is peculiarly exposed to error; it is liable to be influenced by almost any number of unseen and unconsidered causes — past experience, received dogmas, the stirring of self-interest, the arousing of passion, sheer mental laziness, a social environment steeped in biased traditions or animated by false expectations, and so on. The exercise of thought is, in the literal sense of that word, inference ; by it one thing carries us over to the idea of, and belief in, another thing. It involves a jump, a leap, a going beyond what is surely known to something else accepted on its warrant. Unless one is an idiot, one simply cannot help having all things and events suggest other things not actually present, nor can one help a tendency to believe in the latter on the basis of the former. The very inevitableness of the jump, the leap, to something unknown, only emphasizes the necessity of attention to the conditions under which it occurs so that the danger of a false step may be lessened and the probability of a right landing increased.

Paying attention, essentially, means understanding the context in which an idea occurs and the conditions under which it is given credence — in other words, knowing why we believe what we believe. That, Dewey argues, is a function of critical thinking, the result of which is proof — something without which we can’t be certain that what we believe is true:

To prove a thing means primarily to try, to test it… Not until a thing has been tried — “tried out,” in colloquial language — do we know its true worth. Till then it may be pretense, a bluff. But the thing that has come out victorious in a test or trial of strength carries its credentials with it; it is approved, because it has been proved.

(How brilliantly this applies not only to the pursuit of capital-T truth, but also to the basic fabric of our wants and desires — so often we dismiss something as unworthy without having tried it out. To dismiss experiences and ideas in that way is, then, a profound failure of reflective thinking and of our highest human potentiality.)

In testing our inferences, Dewey argues, it’s crucial to discriminate between “beliefs that rest upon tested evidence and those that do not” and to be mindful of “the kind and degree of assent yielded,” both of which require a rich library of knowledge and experience against which to test our beliefs.

This notion strikes with particular resonance: I founded Brain Pickings around the concept of combinatorial creativity , the idea that our capacity to create — which is, essentially, a function of fruitful thinking — is predicated on a vast and diverse pool of insights, impressions, influences, and other mental resources.

Dewey captures this elegantly in considering “the factors essential to thought”:

Thinking involves … the suggestion of a conclusion for acceptance, and also search or inquiry to test the value of the suggestion before finally accepting it. This implies (a) a certain fund or store of experiences and facts from which suggestions proceed; (b) promptness, flexibility, and fertility of suggestions; and (c) orderliness, consecutiveness, appropriateness in what is suggested. Clearly, a person may be hampered in any of these three regards: His thinking may be irrelevant, narrow, or crude because he has not enough actual material upon which to base conclusions; or because concrete facts and raw material, even if extensive and bulky, fail to evoke suggestions easily and richly; or finally, because, even when these two conditions are fulfilled, the ideas suggested are incoherent and fantastic, rather than pertinent and consistent.

We stock our “store of experiences and facts” via one of the greatest human faculties — our inherent curiosity, a “desire for the fullness of experience”:

The most vital and significant factor in supplying the primary material whence suggestion may issue is, without doubt, curiosity… The curious mind is constantly alert and exploring, seeking material for thought, as a vigorous and healthy body is on the qui vive for nutriment. Eagerness for experience, for new and varied contacts, is found where wonder is found. Such curiosity is the only sure guarantee of the acquisition of the primary facts upon which inference must base itself.

Dewey explores curiosity at its most natural and uncontaminated — in the child’s mind. Children not only offer a model for fruitful risk-taking and overcoming the fear of failure , but their boundless curiosity, he argues, is precisely what we need to reawaken in ourselves in seeking to cultivate fertile thought:

In its first manifestations, curiosity is a vital overflow, an expression of an abundant organic energy. A physiological uneasiness leads a child to be “into everything” — to be reaching, poking, pounding, prying… The most casual notice of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of exploring and testing activity. Objects are sucked, fingered, and thumped; drawn and pushed, handled and thrown; in short, experimented with, till they cease to yield new qualities. Such activities are hardly intellectual, and yet without them intellectual activity would be feeble and intermittent through lack of stuff for its operations.

From this springs the next developmental stage, the what/why phase that often exasperates parents and teachers but provides the foundation for critical thinking:

A higher stage of curiosity develops under the influence of social stimuli. When the child learns that he can appeal to others to eke out his store of experiences, so that, if objects fail to respond interestingly to his experiments, he may call upon persons to provide interesting material, a new epoch sets in. “What is that?” “Why?” become the unfailing signs of a child’s presence… Yet there is more than a desire to accumulate just information or heap up disconnected items, although sometimes the interrogating habit threatens to degenerate into a mere disease of language. In the feeling, however dim, that the facts which directly meet the senses are not the whole story, that there is more behind them and more to come from them, lies the germ of intellectual curiosity. Curiosity rises above the organic and the social planes and becomes intellectual in the degree in which it is transformed into interest in problems provoked by the observation of things and the accumulation of material. When the question is not discharged by being asked of another, when the child continues to entertain it in his own mind and to be alert for whatever will help answer it, curiosity has become a positive intellectual force. To the open mind, nature and social experience are full of varied and subtle challenges to look further.

Once again, Dewey reminds us that this unique human gift is predicated on our fragile willingness to befriend uncertainty and welcome the unknown — something most of us relinquish by mid-life . Lamenting the ease with which “the open-minded and flexible wonder of childhood” is lost, Dewey writes:

If germinating powers are not used and cultivated at the right moment, they tend to be transitory, to die out, or to wane in intensity. This general law is peculiarly true of sensitiveness to what is uncertain and questionable; in a few people, intellectual curiosity is so insatiable that nothing will discourage it, but in most its edge is easily dulled and blunted.

In a sidebar comment on the notion of dullness, he considers the very metaphors we use for the quality of the mind in a rather lyrical passage:

The common classification of persons into the dull and the bright is made primarily on the basis of the readiness or facility with which suggestions follow upon the presentation of objects and upon the happening of events. As the metaphor of dull and bright implies, some minds are impervious, or else they absorb passively. Everything presented is lost in a drab monotony that gives nothing back. But others reflect, or give back in varied lights, all that strikes upon them. The dull make no response; the bright flash back the fact with a changed quality.

But Dewey’s most prescient point has to do with how information overload — a malady undoubtedly far worse today than it was in 1910, yet one each era bemoans by its own terms — muddles the clarity of our view, hindering our ability to think critically and reflectively:

So many suggestions may rise that the person is at a loss to select among them. He finds it difficult to reach any definite conclusion and wanders more or less helplessly among them… There is such a thing as too much thinking, as when action is paralyzed by the multiplicity of views suggested by a situation… The very number of suggestions may be hostile to tracing logical sequences among them, for it may tempt the mind away from the necessary but trying task of search for real connections, into the more congenial occupation of embroidering upon the given facts a tissue of agreeable fancies. The best mental habit involves a balance between paucity and redundancy of suggestions.

In today’s culture of exponentially growing “multiplicity of views,” Dewey’s admonition exposes with great urgency both meanings of critical in “critical thinking.” (Thirty-five years later, in 1945, Vannevar Bush would propose a complementary solution to the predicament by predicting the emergence of “a new profession of trail blazers” — essentially, knowledge sherpas who “find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.”)

For Dewey, the solution was in large part a matter of depth — how deep we are willing to penetrate the bottomless pit of information. It is our capacity for depth that determines the richness and fruitfulness of our thought — something of equally urgent importance today, when the information web is dominated by bite-sized opinion riffs and “How Cat Are You?” quizzes. Deep-diving, according to Dewey, is something that can and should be taught:

One man’s thought is profound while another’s is superficial; one goes to the roots of the matter, and another touches lightly its most external aspects. This phase of thinking is perhaps the most untaught of all, and the least amenable to external influence whether for improvement or harm. Nevertheless, the conditions of the [person’s] contact with subject-matter may be such that he is compelled to come to quarters with its more significant features, or such that he is encouraged to deal with it upon the basis of what is trivial. The common assumptions that, if the [person] only thinks, one thought is just as good for his mental discipline as another, and that the end of study is the amassing of information, both tend to foster superficial, at the expense of significant, thought.

Even more important, in our era of snap-judgments and instant opinions, is Dewey’s point about the slowness and deliberative contemplation inherent to such deep thought:

Sometimes slowness and depth of response are intimately connected. Time is required in order to digest impressions, and translate them into substantial ideas. “Brightness” may be but a flash in the pan. The “slow but sure” person … is one in whom impressions sink and accumulate, so that thinking is done at a deeper level of value than with a slighter load… The depth to which a sense of the problem, of the difficulty, sinks, determines the quality of the thinking that follows.

Ultimately, Dewey argues that thinking is predicated on mapping out the interaction of information and on an intentional organization of knowledge — something that requires a comfort with uncertainty, a systematic curiosity that stocks the mental store of ideas, and a willingness for depth and slowness:

Thinking [is] not a machine-like, ready-made apparatus to be turned indifferently and at will upon all subjects, as a lantern may throw its light as it happens upon horses, streets, gardens, trees, or river. Thinking is specific, in that different things suggest their own appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories, and in that they do this in very different ways with different persons. As the growth of the body is through the assimilation of food, so the growth of mind is through the logical organization of subject-matter. Thinking is not like a sausage machine which reduces all materials indifferently to one marketable commodity, but is a power of following up and linking together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse. […] Facts, whether narrow or extensive, and conclusions suggested by them, whether many or few, do not constitute, even when combined, reflective thought. The suggestions must be organized; they must be arranged with reference to one another and with reference to the facts on which they depend for proof. When the factors of facility, of fertility, and of depth are properly balanced or proportioned, we get as the outcome continuity of thought. We desire neither the slow mind nor yet the hasty. We wish neither random diffuseness nor fixed rigidity. Consecutiveness means flexibility and variety of materials, conjoined with singleness and definiteness of direction.

And yet, he is careful to point out, it is not a black-and-white matter of tuning out distraction and pursuing absolute concentration — that, in fact, is the very mechanism by which we confine ourselves to our existing beliefs , never leaving our comfort zone of knowledge and opinion. Good thinking, he argues, embraces contradiction rather than shunning it:

Concentration does not mean fixity, nor a cramped arrest or paralysis of the flow of suggestion. It means variety and change of ideas combined into a single steady trend moving toward a unified conclusion . Thoughts are concentrated not by being kept still and quiescent, but by being kept moving toward an object, as a general concentrates his troops for attack or defense. Holding the mind to a subject is like holding a ship to its course; it implies constant change of place combined with unity of direction. Consistent and orderly thinking is precisely such a change of subject-matter. Consistency is no more the mere absence of contradiction than concentration is the mere absence of diversion — which exists in dull routine or in a person “fast asleep.” All kinds of varied and incompatible suggestions may sprout and be followed in their growth, and yet thinking be consistent and orderly, provided each one of the suggestions is viewed in relation to the main topic.

So why would we ever go through all that trouble in the first place, rather than sinking into our comfortable routine? Dewey argues that thinking arises from the need to action — something undoubtedly evidenced by the history of successful entrepreneurship, wherein many great inventions came from the inventor’s own need for something that didn’t yet exist in the world, be it the Polaroid camera , which Edwin Land dreamed up after his little daughter asked why she couldn’t see a photograph right after it was taken, or Instapaper , which Marco Arment built out of frustration with how hard it was to read web articles on the iPhone offline. Dewey writes:

Intellectual organization originates and for a time grows as an accompaniment of the organization of the acts required to realize an end, not as the result of a direct appeal to thinking power. The need of thinking to accomplish something beyond thinking is more potent than thinking for its own sake. All people at the outset, and the majority of people probably all their lives, attain ordering of thought through ordering of action.

How We Think is a magnificent read in its entirety, exploring everything from the defects and potential reform of the education system to how we can train ourselves to interpret facts and create meaning out of them. It is available as a free ebook .

— Published August 18, 2014 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/08/18/how-we-think-john-dewey/ —

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John Dewey on Education: Impact & Theory

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Key Takeaways

• John Dewey (1859—1952) was a psychologist, philosopher, and educator who made contributions to numerous topics in philosophy and psychology. His work continues to inform modern philosophy and educational practice today.
• Dewey was an influential pragmatist, a movement that rejected most philosophy at the time in favor of the belief that things that work in a practical situation are true, while those that do not are false. This view would go on to influence his educational philosophy.
• Dewey was also a functionalist. Inspired by the ideas of Charles Darwin, he believed that humans develop behaviors as an adaptation to their environment.
• Dewey’s influential education is marked by an emphasis on the belief that people learn and grow as a result of their experiences and interactions with the world. He aimed to shape educational environments so that they would promote active inquiry but did not do away with traditional instruction altogether.
• Outside of education and philosophy, Dewey also devised a theory of emotions in response to Darwin’s ideas. In this theory, he argued that the behaviors that arise from emotions were, at some point, beneficial to the survival of organisms.

John Dewey was an American psychologist, philosopher, educator, social critic, and political activist. He made contributions to numerous fields and topics in philosophy and psychology.

Besides being a primary originator of both functionalism and behaviorism psychology , Dewey was a major inspiration for several movements that shaped 20th-century thought, including empiricism, humanism, naturalism, contextualism, and process philosophy (Simpson, 2006).

Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1859 and began his career at the University of Michigan before becoming the chairman of the department of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy at the University of Chicago.

In 1899, Dewey was elected president of the American Psychological Association and became president of the American Philosophical Association five years later.

Dewey traveled as a philosopher, social and political theorist, and educational consultant and remained outspoken on education, domestic and international politics, and numerous social movements.

Dewey’s views and writings on educational theory and practice were widely read and accepted. He held that philosophy, pedagogy, and psychology were closely interrelated.

Dewey also believed in an “instrumentalist” theory of knowledge, in which ideas are seen to exist mainly as instruments for creating solutions to problems encountered in the environment (Simpson, 2006).

Contributions to Philosophy and Psychology

Dewey is one of the central figures and founders of pragmatism in America despite not identifying himself as a pragmatist.

Pragmatism teaches that things that are useful — meaning that they work in a practical situation — are true, and what does not work is false (Hildebrand, 2018).

This rejected the threads of epistemology and metaphysics that ran through modern philosophy in favor of a naturalistic approach that viewed knowledge as an active adaptation of humans to their environment (Hildebrand, 2018).

Dewey held that value was not a function of purely social construction but a quality inherent to events. Dewey also believed that experimentation was a reliable enough way to determine the truth of a concept.

Functionalism

Dewey is considered a founder of the Chicago School of Functional Psychology, inspired by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, as well as the ideas of William James and Dewey’s own instrumental philosophy.

As chair of philosophy, psychology, and education at the University of Chicago from 1894-1904, Dewey was highly influential in establishing the functional orientation amongst psychology faculty like Angell and Addison Moore.

Scholars widely consider Dewey’s 1896 paper, The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology , to be the first major work in the functionalist school.

In this work, Dewey attacked the methods of psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener, who used stimulus-response analysis as the basis of psychological theories.

Psychologists such as Wund and Titchener believed that all human behaviors could be broken down into a series of fundamental laws and that all human behavior originates as a learned adaptation to the presence of certain stimuli in one’s environment (Backe, 2001).

Dewey considered Wundt and Titchener’s approach to be flawed because it ignored both the continuity of human behavior and the role that adaptation plays in creating it.

In contrast, Dewey’s functionalism sought to consider organisms in total as they functioned in their environment. Rather than being passive receivers of stimuli, Dewey perceived organisms as active perceivers (Backe, 2001).

Chicago School

The Chicago school refers to the functionalist approach to psychology that emerged at the University of Chicago in the late 19th century. Key tenets of functional psychology included:

• Studying the adaptive functions of consciousness and how mental processes help organisms adjust to their environment
• Explaining psychological phenomena in terms of their biological utility
• Focusing on the practical operations of the mind rather than contents of consciousness

Educational Philosophy

John Dewey was a notable educational reformer and established the path for decades of subsequent research in the field of educational psychology.

Influenced by his philosophical and psychological theories, Dewey’s concept of instrumentalism in education stressed learning by doing, which was opposed to authoritarian teaching methods and rote learning.

These ideas have remained central to educational philosophy in the United States. At the University of Chicago, Dewey founded an experimental school to develop and study new educational methods.

He experimented with educational curricula and methods and advocated for parental participation in the educational process (Dewey, 1974).

Dewey’s educational philosophy highlights “pragmatism,” and he saw the purpose of education as the cultivation of thoughtful, critically reflective, and socially engaged individuals rather than passive recipients of established knowledge.

Dewey rejected the rote-learning approach driven by a predetermined curriculum, the standard teaching method at the time (Dewey, 1974).

Dewey also rejected so-called child-centered approaches to education that followed children’s interests and impulses uncritically. Dewey did not propose an entirely hands-off approach to learning.

Dewey believed that traditional subjects were important but should be integrated with the strengths and interests of the learner.

In response, Dewey developed a concept of inquiry, which was prompted by a sense of need and was followed by intellectual work such as defining problems, testing hypotheses, and finding satisfactory solutions.

Dewey believed that learning was an organic cycle of doubt, inquiry, reflection, and the reestablishment of one’s sense of understanding.

In contrast, the reflexive arc model of learning popular in his time thought of learning as a mechanical process that could be measured by standardized tests without reference to the role of emotion or experience in learning.

Rejecting the assumption that all of the big questions and ideas in education are already answered, Dewey believed that all concepts and meanings could be open to reinvention and improvement and that all disciplines could be expanded with new knowledge, concepts, and understandings (Dewey, 1974).

Philosophy of Education

Dewey believed that people learn and grow as a result of their experiences and interactions with the world. These compel people to continually develop new concepts, ideas, practices, and understandings.

These, in turn, are refined through and continue to mediate the learner’s life experiences and social interactions. Dewey believed that (Hargraves, 2021):

Empirical Validity and Criticism

Despite its wide application in modern theories of education, many scholars have noted the lack of empirical evidence in favor of Dewey’s theories of education directly.

Nonetheless, Dewey’s theory of how students learn aligns with empirical studies that examine the positive impact of interactions with peers and adults on learning (Göncü & Rogoff, 1998).

Researchers have also found a link between heightened engagement and learning outcomes.

This has resulted in the development of educational strategies such as making meaningful connections to students” home lives and encouraging student ownership of their learning (Turner, 2014).

Theory of Emotions

Dewey vs. darwin.

Another influential piece of philosophy that Dewey created was his theory of emotion (Cunningham, 1995).

Dewey reconstructed Darwin’s theory of emotions, which he believed was flawed for assuming that the expression of emotion is separate from and subsequent to the emotion itself.

Darwin also argued that behavior that expresses emotion serves the individual in some way when the individual is in a particular state of mind. These can also cause behaviors that are not useful.

Dewey, however, claimed that the function of emotional behaviors is not to express emotion but to be acts that value someone’s survival. Dewey believed that emotion is separate from other behaviors because it involves an attitude toward an object. The intention of the emotion informs the behaviors that result (Cunningham, 1995).

Dewey also rejected Darwin’s principle that some expressions of emotions can be explained as cases where one emotion can be expressed by actions that are the exact opposite of another.

Dewey again believed that even these opposite behaviors have purposes in themselves (Cunningham, 1995).

Dewey vs. James

Dewey argued against James’s serial theory of emotions, seeing emotion and stimuli as one simultaneous coordinated act.

William James proposed a serial theory of emotion , in which an emotional experience progresses through several sequential stages:

• An object or idea functions as a stimulus
• This stimulus leads to a behavioral response
• The response is then followed by an emotional excitation or affect

An example would be seeing a bear (stimulus), running away (response), and then feeling afraid (emotion).

Dewey, however, argued that emotion and stimulus form a unified, simultaneous act that cannot be separated in this way.

He uses the example of a frightened reaction to a bear to illustrate his point:

• The “bear” itself is constituted by the coordinated sensory excitations of the eyes, touch, etc.
• The feeling of “terror” is constituted by disturbances across glandular, muscular systems.
• Rather than stimulus → response → emotion, these are partial activities within the one act of perceiving the frightening bear and running away in fear.
• The bear object and the fear emotion are two aspects of the total coordinated activity, happening at once.

So, where James treated stimulus, response, and emotion as sequential stages in an emotional episode, Dewey saw them as “minor acts” coming together in a unified conscious experience.

He maintained James was artificially separating elements that occur as part of one ongoing activity of coordination.

The key difference is that Dewey did not believe it was possible to isolate stimulus, response, and affect as self-sufficient events. They exist meaningfully only within the total act – hence why he emphasizes their simultaneity.

Backe, A. (2001). John Dewey and early Chicago functionalism. History of Psychology, 4 (4), 323.

Cunningham, S. (1995). Dewey on emotions: recent experimental evidence. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 31(4), 865-874.

Dewey, J. (1974). John Dewey on education: Selected writings .

Göncü, A., & Rogoff, B. (1998). Children’s categorization with varying adult support. American Educational Research Journal, 35 (2), 333-349.

Hargraves, V. (2021). Dewey’s educational philosophy .

Hildebrand, D. (2018). John Dewey.

Simpson, D. J. (2006). John Dewey (Vol. 10). Peter Lang.

Turner, J. C. (2014). Theory-based interventions with middle-school teachers to support student motivation and engagement. In Motivational interventions . Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

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John dewey and teacher education.

• Margaret Schmidt Margaret Schmidt Arizona State University
• , and  Randall Everett Allsup Randall Everett Allsup Teachers College Columbia University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.475
• Published online: 29 July 2019

John Dewey’s writings on schooling are extensive, and characteristically wide-ranging: teachers are expected to think deeply about knowledge construction, how we think and learn, the purpose of curriculum in the life of the child, and the role of school and societal reform. He worked throughout his life to develop and refine his philosophy of experience, describing all learning as defined by the quality of interactions between the learner and the social and physical environment. According to Dewey, teachers have a responsibility to structure educational environments in ways that promote educative learning experiences, those that change the learner in such a way as to promote continued learning and growth. The capacity to reflect on and make meaning from one’s experiences facilitates this growth, particularly in increasing one’s problem-solving abilities.

While Dewey wrote little that specifically addressed the preparation of teachers, his 1904 essay, “The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education,” makes clear that he grounds his beliefs about teachers’ learning in this same philosophy of experiential learning. Dewey argued that thoughtful reflection on previous and current educational experiences is especially important in teacher preparation; teacher educators could then guide beginners to examine and test the usefulness of the beliefs formed from those experiences. Teacher educators, therefore, have a responsibility to arrange learning environments for beginning teachers to promote sequential experiences leading to increased understanding of how children learn, “how mind answers to mind.” These experiences can then help beginning teachers grow, not as classroom technicians, but as true “students of teaching.”

Dewey’s ideas remain relevant, but must also be viewed in historical context, in light of his unfailing belief in education and the scientific method as ways to promote individual responsibility and eliminate social problems. His vision of a democratic society remains a fearless amalgam of human adaptation, continuity, change, and diversity: public schools are privileged locations in a democracy for the interplay and interrogation of old and new ideas. Teacher preparation and teacher wellbeing are crucial elements; they can provide experiences to educate all children for participation in their present lives in ways that facilitate their growth as citizens able to fully participate in a democracy. Despite criticism about limitations of his work, Dewey’s ideas continue to offer much food for thought, for both research and practice in teacher education.

• teacher preparation
• preservice teachers
• learning from experience
• progressive education

Introduction

Few 20th- and 21st-century philosophers have written as prolifically as John Dewey ( 1859–1952 ), capturing ideas in wide-ranging domains such as nature, psychology, science, politics, metaphysics, ethics, and art. Like the ancients Plato and Confucius, Dewey saw philosophy and education as nearly synonymous. And like Plato and Confucius, Dewey sensed the immense power that education could play in shaping not only the individual, but more importantly, the individual in society. Dewey was exceptional in the importance he placed on education, learning, schools, and teachers.

Although practices and beliefs about the preparation of teachers have continued to evolve in the nearly 70 years since Dewey’s death, his writings are regularly referenced among teacher educators. Our intent in this article is to engage with those ideas that have continuing relevance for teacher education, drawing upon the following seminal writings on teachers and teaching: The School and Society ( 1899 ); The Child and the Curriculum ( 1902 ); How We Think ( 1933 ); Experience and Education ( 1938 ); Moral Principles in Education ( 1909 ); Democracy and Education ( 1916 ); “The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education” (1904a), and several essays. As practicing university music teacher educators, we will use examples from the world of music education that are general enough for any discipline.

To understand Dewey’s ideas about how teachers may best learn to teach, Dewey’s own starting point is first approached—that education, and indeed all learning, cannot be understood apart from experience. Next, Dewey’s description of reflective thinking, by which all learners make meaning from their experiences, is presented. Dewey’s ideas specific to teacher education follow: his understanding of the relationship between educational theory and educational practice, and the sequence of experiences he proposed for pre-service teachers. Dewey’s ideas about teaching methods and learning in laboratories are then discussed. The article concludes with reflections placing Dewey’s writings in historical context, and questions for continued research and practice in the Deweyian tradition.

Learning and Experience

All learning, Dewey ( 1938 , p. 7) believed, results from experience—not just in school, but in the individual’s life beyond school as well. Due to the “intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education,” he wanted educators to develop deep understanding of the function of experience in learning. Dewey ( 1933 , 1938 ) defined an experience as an interaction between an individual and the environment, suggesting that all experiences—good and bad—involve doing (how the individual interacts with the environment) and undergoing (how the experience changes the individual). Dewey ( 1938 , p. 13) continually emphasized that, while all students unquestionably have “experiences” in schools, “everything depends upon the quality of the experience which is had.”

The quality of an experience can be judged in relation to two simultaneously occurring processes or principles: interaction and continuity (Dewey, 1938 ). As an individual interacts with her physical environment, she creates insights derived from her interests and curiosities (doing). A child playing the piano for the first time will soon discover gradations of high and low, loud and soft. To her delight, she will soon find out that the pedal somehow makes the sound keep going. But from the standpoint of formal education and requisites of growth, a “quality” experience requires that her discoveries become useful to her needs and her community (undergoing growth in understanding). She needs to be given a place to share and test what she has learned with others, thus affording meaningful contributions to the people around her (Dewey, 1916 , 1938 ). Quality experiences require quality interactions, and teachers are tasked with enriching and enlarging the classroom environment, “in other words, whatever conditions interact with personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities to create the experience which is had” (Dewey, 1938 , p. 25).

The principle of continuity states that the effect of a “good” or “educative” experience is cumulative and enriching. Dewey is famously paraphrased as saying that the purpose of growth is more growth. But such an oversimplification ignores the critical role that teachers play in helping the learner make sense of what has been discovered so that further growth is not misshaped. Whether on the playground or from a history book, all teachers know that wrong lessons can be learned. For Dewey ( 1933 , 1938 ), mis-educative experiences result in insights that impede further learning, while non-educative experiences fail to connect one experience with another, leaving the learner unchanged or merely incurious. In contrast, educative experiences live on in further experiences. “Hence, the central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences” (Dewey, 1938 , p. 13). A teacher’s work is thus “moral,” because educators are charged with the fraught task of interfering in the incidental nature of most social learning (Dewey, 1909 ). A society trusts teachers to select experiences (via curriculum, via pedagogy) that then produce “quality” growth in “other people’s children” (Delpit, 1995 ). Likewise, according to Dewey, teachers have a moral responsibility to become familiar with their students’ home cultures and design lessons that appeal to their interests (Gay, 2010 ; Ladson-Billings, 1995 ), using conditions in the local community “as educational resources” (Dewey, 1938 , p. 23).

Dewey ( 1938 , p. 5) frequently critiqued what he and others have called “traditional education.” While we admit that the term is both imprecise and problematic, Dewey used it to refer to classrooms where teachers expected students to repeat back whatever isolated knowledge was presented to them for use in some distant future; such experiences, devoid of meaningful connections are at best noneducative, and at worst mis-educative. As music educators, the authors of this article are aware of the many dangers of isolated knowledge; for example, teaching musical notation as if its purpose were self-evident and universal (say), or teaching Western classical art music as if it were a-historical or context-free. As university teacher educators, we have too often seen beginning teachers ask children for solutions to “so-called problems” that are “simply assigned tasks ” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 233) or “activities” (Dewey, 1916 ), rather than genuine problems leading to meaningful insights. Dewey ( 1938 , p. 23, italics in the original) similarly cautioned proponents of “progressive education,” those “parents and some teachers [who seem to be] acting upon the idea of subordinating objective conditions to internal ones.” For Dewey ( 1938 , p. 63, italics in the original), the issue was not “new versus old education;” rather, his concern was “a question of what anything whatever must be to be worthy of the name education .” He believed that a middle, more pragmatic approach could help students use the interactions between their internal inclinations and the external environment to both connect present experiences with past experiences and prepare them for continued future growth. Drawing on the principles of interaction and continuity, teachers could learn “how to utilize the surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worthwhile” (Dewy, 1938 , p. 22; also, see Hildebrand, 2018 , for a summary of how Dewey developed these philosophical ideas over time.)

Making Meaning Through Reflective Thinking

To further develop the educative potential of experience, Dewey believed that quality of thought is the basis of all meaningful learning, both in school and in life. Dewey identifies three types of thinking: idle thought, belief, and reflection. Idle thought is “inconsequential trifling with mental pictures, random recollections . . . [and] half-developed impressions” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 114). Beliefs are ideas that “are picked up—we know not how” through “tradition, instruction, imitation . . . Even when they happen to be correct, their correctness is a matter of accident as far as the person who entertains them is concerned” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 116). In contrast, reflective thought is the “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 118). For Dewey, critical or reflective thinking is the only educational aim that can foster freedom of mind and action; he applied this principle equally to the learning and teaching of everyone involved in education, including students, pre-service teachers, and experienced teachers.

Similar to the consummatory experiences in art described by Dewey in his book Art as Experience ( 1934 ), reflective thinking has a kind of rhythm through which insights emerge. The cycle begins with “a perplexed, troubled, or confused situation,” a deviation from the expected situation, that Dewey ( 1933 , p. 200) identifies as a pre- reflective phase; the cycle concludes temporarily in a post -reflective state, a space of intellectual satisfaction—before a new puzzle or trouble reveals itself:

In between, as states of thinking, are (1) suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution; (2) an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity that has been felt (directly experienced) into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought; (3) the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material; (4) the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense in which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and (5) testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action.

Reflecting mindfully about experiences “done” and “undergone” creates growth-enhancing habits , which for Dewey ( 1938 , p. 19) include emotional and intellectual dispositions, as well as “our basic sensitivities and ways of meeting and responding to all the conditions which we meet in living.” A large part of learning—and learning to teach—involves the development of productive attitudes and habits of thought. Both teachers and teacher educators must actively cultivate reflective attitudes of open-mindedness, whole-heartedness, and responsibility with their students. Open-mindedne ss, for Dewey ( 1916 , p. 182), is “accessibility of mind to any and every consideration that will throw light upon the situation that needs to be cleared up, and that will help determine the consequences of acting this way or that,” listening to all sides, and considering “the possibility of error even in the beliefs that are dearest to us” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 136). Whole-hearted involvement in finding a solution or creating meaning, a complete absorption in learning, may be cultivated by experiences that create a sense of suspense in learners, an element of story with “plot interest” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 320). Once a pre-service teacher has considered various reasonable possibilities for resolving a problem, an attitude of intellectual responsibility requires projecting and accepting the consequences of a chosen action, “mak[ing] clear what is involved in really knowing and believing a thing” (Dewey, 1916 , p. 186). Together, open-mindedness, whole-heartedness, and responsibility promote “retention of the capacity to grow” for learners of all ages, as “the reward of such intellectual hospitality” (Dewwy, 1916 , p. 182).

Dewey ( 1916 , p. 183) encouraged educators to welcome diversity of thought, to allow children and preservice teachers time to follow their ideas and make errors, and to resist seeking only “speedy, accurately measurable, correct results”:

Results (external answers or solutions) may not be hurried; processes may not be forced. They take their own time to mature. Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.

The student’s reasoning while solving a problem was far more important to Dewey than the answer itself. A good math teacher will ask students to show their work. A good art teacher will ask students about their intentions and the problems they encountered along the way. A good teacher educator will ask a preservice teacher to explain her thought process in responding to a child’s unexpected response. Dewey ( 1933 , p. 239) recommended that teachers and teacher educators regularly encourage students to conceptualize their reasoning in words, to check that educative meanings were being formed; “without this conceptualizing or intellectualizing, nothing is gained that can be carried over to the better understanding of new experiences. The deposit is what counts, educationally speaking.”

Dewey ( 1899 , p. 12) firmly believed that individuals learn from “books or the sayings of others only as they are related to [personal] experience;” he regularly criticized efforts to require children to memorize information and facts disconnected from their own lives and culture. Such strategies would lead students to repeat meaningless information in efforts to please the teacher or to avoid punishment. In contrast, an emphasis on reflection or “good habits of thinking” (Dewey, 1916 , p. 159) will motivate learners to understand the purposes for which skills and information could be applied, providing further motivation for learning by “arous[ing] curiosity, strengthen[ing] initiative, and set[ting] up desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over dead places in the future” (Dewey, 1938 , pp. 20–21).

For Dewey ( 1916 , p. 166), all children can be creative, no matter the age or domain: “The child of three who discovers what can be done with blocks, or of six who finds out what he can make by putting five cents and five cents together, is really a discoverer.” As learners return to their discoveries, their insights will deepen. Once the child discovers that the pedals on a piano keep the sound ringing, she is likely to explore the very mechanics of the instrument, to lift the lid and look inside. She might even ask a friend to hold down the pedal for her while she touches or plucks the steel wires. Trading places, these intrepid discoverers are likely to create a tentative theory that they bring to the teacher. The music teacher, if she is clever, will help the discoverers find new tricks and delightful problems. “There are no limits to the possibility of carrying over into the objects and events of life, meanings originally acquired by thoughtful examination, and hence no limit to the continual growth of meaning in human life” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 128).

Similarly, beginning teachers must engage in “thoughtful examination” of their educational experiences. For productive reflection, they must reframe a “difficulty or perplexity that has been felt (directly experienced) into a problem to be solved” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 200).

No hard and fast rules decide whether a meaning suggested is the right and proper meaning to follow up. The individual’s own good (or bad) judgment is the guide. There is no label on any given idea or principle which says automatically, “Use me in this situation”—as the magic cakes of Alice in Wonderland were inscribed “Eat me.” The thinker has to decide. (Dewey, 1933 , p. 215)

Unlike the beginning teacher, experienced teachers, in considering children’s conceptual learning, have a store of reflected-upon experiences from which they have learned to predict typical responses. This frees them to focus on surprises that arise in the classroom, and thus they are more likely to be able to frame and reflect on the situation and develop and test hypothetical resolutions. Beginning teachers do not yet have this bank of experiences from which to examine student learning. With so many things happening around them, much of which is surprising, preservice teachers may need guidance to identify or frame a specific problem for productive reflection.

Not Theory Versus Practice: Theory and Practice

The principles of experiential learning and reflection apply equally to teachers working with children and to teacher educators guiding preservice teachers’ learning experiences. Dewey’s important essay, “The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education,” is one of his few that specifically addresses the problems of preparing teachers to do the work of teaching. Dewey ( 1904a , p. 247) “assumes without argument” that both theory and practice are necessary components of teacher preparation; the question in his mind was the purpose of “practical work.” He criticized the apprentice model that was practiced in many programs during his time (and has continued to remain popular) because it too often focuses the apprentice on the immediate results of instructional practices, rather than on long-term growth. Dewey ( 1904a , pp. 255, 251, italics in the original) proposed instead a “laboratory view” of practice, where theory and practice “grow together out of and into the teacher’s personal experience,” and where beginners acquire “ control of the intellectual methods required for personal and independent mastery of practical skill, rather than at turning out at once masters of the craft.” This creates a challenge for teacher educators, as preservice teachers are more interested, at least initially, in “what works” and “what doesn’t” than in general “intellectual methods.” Dewey ( 1904a , p. 256) argued that an early focus on acquiring technical skills is a dangerous shortcut, helpful at the beginning stages of one’s career, but harmful in the longer term:

For immediate skill may be got at the cost of power to go on growing. The teacher who leaves the professional school with power in managing a class of children may appear to superior advantage the first day, the first week, the first month, or even the first year, as compared with some other teacher who has a much more vital command of the psychology, logic, and ethics of development. But later “progress” may with such consist only in perfecting and refining skill already possessed. Such persons seem to know how to teach, but they are not students of teaching . . . Unless a teacher is such a student, he may continue to improve in the mechanics of school management, but he can not grow as a teacher, an inspirer and director of soul-life.

Dewey ( 1904a , p. 258) suggests that teacher education classes begin with critical reflection on preservice teachers’ own “direct and personal” learning experiences, both within and outside school, as “the greatest asset” in their possession. This store of experiences provides preservice teachers with “plenty of practical material by which to illustrate and vitalize theoretical principles and laws of mental growth in the process of learning,” as well as “plenty of practical experience by which to illustrate cases of arrested development—instances of failure and maladaptation and retrogression, or even degeneration” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 258). Through guided reflection about the past experiences that most enthused and confused them when they were young learners, preservice teachers might better connect educational theory with actual practice, becoming better equipped to test out their insights in their current setting.

The principle of continuity suggests both the importance and the possibility of guiding preservice teachers to transition from a student’s perspective on schooling and learning to a teacher’s perspective on education and teaching .

Only by beginning with the values and laws contained in the [preservice teacher’s] own experience of his own mental growth, and by proceeding gradually to facts connected with other persons of whom he can know little; and by proceeding still more gradually to the attempt actually to influence the mental operations of others, can educational theory be made most effective. Only in this way can the most essential trait of the mental habit of the teacher be secured—that habit which looks upon the internal, not upon the external; which sees that the important function of the teacher is the direction of the mental movement of the student, and that the mental movement must be known before it can be directed. (Dewey, 1904a , p. 262)

By focusing preservice teachers’ attention on “how teacher and pupils react upon each other—how mind answers to mind” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 260), the function of practical experiences becomes enriching their understanding of “the knowledge of subject-matter and the principles of education” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 249). Dewey believed that practical experiences could offer a rich source from which to develop, through reflection, a broad understanding of educational psychology and curriculum development, with a goal to develop “intellectual responsibility” and become independent practitioners, not just masters of a craft of teaching.

Sequence of Experiences in the Teacher Education Program

Dewey believed the popular apprenticeship model of learning through “cadetting” or student teaching was not adequate to meet the long-term well-being of future teachers. He developed many of his ideas about teacher education in the context of the laboratory schools he helped found at the University of Chicago ( 1896–1904 ), with later refinements as professor of philosophy at Columbia University. Dewey ( 1904a ) outlined a sequence of experiences that, in conjunction with a laboratory school, could help preservice teachers integrate their theoretical studies with their teaching practices.

Dewey ( 1904a , p. 268) recommended that preservice teachers’ reflection on their own past experiences be supplemented with initial observations in a school classroom—not so much to see how teachers teach, but “to get material for psychological observation and reflection, and some conception of the educational movement of the school as a whole.” According to Dewey ( 1904a , p. 260), these early observations should be focused “to see how teacher and pupils react upon each other—how mind answers to mind. . . . What the student needs most at this stage of growth is ability to see what is going on in the minds of a group of persons who are in intellectual contact with one another.” Only then, after developing a richer understanding of the workings of the school through reflective writing and observation, could preservice teachers begin to serve as assistants for “more intimate introduction to the lives of the children and the work of the school” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 268).

When preservice teachers are ready for the next challenge, after assisting the cooperating teacher with small tasks and putting theory and practice together through observation and reflection, they may begin to select and arrange subject matter. In typical Deweyian fashion, this third stage is pragmatically considered. Dewey believed that initial curriculum-making should not include the common task of writing isolated make-believe or “practice” lesson plans. Rather, the preservice teacher should focus on one subject area across grade levels to develop “the habit of viewing the entire curriculum as a continuous growth, reflecting the growth of mind itself” (Dewey, 1904a , pp. 267–268). In this third sequence of development, the prospective teacher co-participates in lesson planning by helping the cooperating teacher find supplementary materials, creating authentic discipline-specific problems, or developing a “scheme of possible alternative subjects for lessons and studies” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 269).

Once the preservice teacher is deemed ready, she may move to the fourth stage, actual teaching. Interestingly, in this penultimate period of preparation, the prospective teacher is “given the maximum amount of liberty possible” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 269).

Students should be given to understand that they not only are permitted to act upon their own intellectual initiative, but that they are expected to do so, and their ability to take hold of situations for themselves would be a more important factor in judging them than their following any particular set method or scheme. (Dewey, 1904a , p. 269)

Dewey ( 1904a , pp. 269–270) recommended that supervisors keep observation and feedback to a minimum, thereby allowing the preservice teacher time to overcome the “shock” of being newly in charge of a classroom, and “to get enough experience to make him capable of seeing the fundamental bearing of criticism upon work done.”

At this fourth stage, only when the preservice teacher begins to feel comfortable, may the instructor or supervisor offer suggestions. But rather than criticizing specific elements of the teaching or lesson planning, the supervisor should guide “the student to judge his own work critically, to find out for himself in what respects he has succeeded and in what failed, and to find the probable reasons for both failure and success” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 270). Building on a similar process from the third stage, Dewey ( 1904a , p. 270) recommended allowing the prospective educator to “assume responsibility for the development of some one topic . . . [rather than] to teach a certain number (necessarily smaller in range) of lessons in a larger number of subjects.” This posture would afford student teachers a deeper understanding of the principles of teaching, with less focus on the methods of teaching. “No greater travesty” could happen in a preservice teacher’s development than for the supervisor to assign “a brief number of lessons, have him under inspection in practically all the time of every lesson, and then criticise him almost, if not quite, at the very end of each lesson.” Such oversight might give the person “some of the knacks and tools of the trade,” but would not “develop a thoughtful and independent teacher” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 270).

Dewey’s fifth and final stage is actual apprenticeship. He insists that apprenticeship is only useful if the program is long enough for the beginning teacher to be grounded in “educational theory and history, in subject-matter, in observation, and in practice work of the laboratory type” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 271), and if the “practice schools are sufficiently large to furnish the required number of children” to offer all prospective teachers this opportunity (Dewey, 1904a , p. 270). Even here, Dewey ( 1904a , p. 271) recommends limiting oversight and criticism, while allowing the apprentice teacher “as much responsibility and initiative as he is capable of taking.” Preservice teachers’ reflective thinking about their teaching experiences remains critical here. The goal of supervision in this period is not for supervisors to “turn out teachers who will perpetuate their own notions and methods, but in the inspiration and enlightenment that come through prolonged contact with mature and sympathetic persons” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 271).

Dewey ( 1899 , p. 39) believed that this could be accomplished best by “getting things into connection with one another, so that they work easily, flexibly, and fully.” He advocated for more connection at all levels of education from kindergarten through college, connection among content areas, connection of theory and practice, connection of school with life; failing such relationships, “each side suffers from the separation” (Dewey, 1899 , p. 43).

Developing Teaching Methods

Dewey was consistent in his aversion to binary thinking. A concept like method (Latin methodus /Greek méthodos = pursuit) is neither inherently good, nor inherently evil—it is merely a strategic pursuit. A method, after all, is a natural aspect of life and living, defined in this article as the application of intelligence to the contingencies of an ever-changing world. Teaching methods are rightly criticized when they act as proxy for teacher strategy (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012 ; Dewey, 1916 ). In Deweyian logic, the most effective methods are funded by experience and self-reflection. For example, when introducing a new plant to a flower garden, the savvy gardener will call upon her past experiences to forecast how her new addition will thrive. Likewise, a music teacher will draw upon past experience to create interest in an unsuspecting but enthusiastic beginner who wants to play an instrument. In either situation, she knows that flourishing is never guaranteed. In these examples, our hypothetical methodologist will observe and take note, but be ready to make changes should her strategy require it.

In Dewey’s ( 1916 , p. 177) vision for teacher preparation, methods arise from a thorough understanding of one’s disciplinary domain, but subject matter is always balanced by a deep understanding of the principles of learning and teaching: “In brief, the method of teaching is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by ends.” Using aesthetic language, teaching methods are never counterfeits or copies from fellow artists, but sincere forms of self-expression: “an expression of [teachers’] own intelligent observations” of children. Dewey ( 1916 , p. 177) argues that artists both follow their own inspiration and “study the operations and results of those in the past who have succeeded greatly.” The art of choosing an appropriate method is “the problem of establishing conditions that will arouse and guide curiosity ; of setting up the connections in things experienced that will on later occasions promote the flow of suggestions , create problems and purposes that will favor consecutiveness in the succession of ideas” through productive reflection (Dewey, 1933 , p. 157).

Dewey ( 1916 ) distinguishes “general method” from “individual method.” Preservice teachers can and should learn general methods from a more experienced teacher, including “knowledge of the past, of current technique, of materials, of the ways in which one’s own best results are assured,” supplemented with “child-study, psychology, and a knowledge of social environment” and a thorough knowledge of subject matter (Dewey, 1916 , pp. 177, 180). An understanding of general methods alone, however, is “worse than useless”—or even harmful—if it “get[s] in the way of [the teacher’s] own common sense” (Dewey, 1916 , p. 179). For example, Dewey ( 1933 , p. 207) suggests that there is “nothing especially sacred about the number five” in the phases of reflection that he outlines; depending on the situation, two phases may run together or a phase may be expanded to include more small steps. Dewey ( 1916 , pp. 178–179) viewed general methods, not as “ready-made models” for instruction, but as “aids in sizing up the needs, resources, and difficulties of the unique experiences” of individual learners.

As young teachers develop “the working tendencies of observation, insight, and reflection” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 256) of their students, and of themselves as educators, they may gain confidence and be freed to create their own individual methods as needed for different learners in varied social settings. As preservice teachers deepen their understanding of curriculum and educational theory, they may become more like jazz musicians, more improvisatory—more capable of allowing “these principles to work automatically, unconsciously, and hence promptly and effectively” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 256). The specific methods used by individual teachers with particular students thus “will vary as [their] past experiences and [their] preferences vary . . . [thus] no catalogue can ever exhaust [the] diversity of form and tint” of methodological approaches (Dewey, 1916 , p. 180).

Conceptualizing method as “a statement of the way the subject matter of an experience develops most effectively and fruitfully” (Dewey, 1916 , p. 186) can help young teachers to understand how to sequence problems for children’s experimentation and reflection in ways that, through continuity of learning, build deeper and deeper conceptual understanding of various subjects. Dewey ( 1916 , p. 164) suggests that “a large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring” to connect with prior learning.

As mentioned, for Dewey ( 1916 , p. 160), the basis of any method (as with all learning) is experience. He suggests that “the first stage of contact with any new material, at whatever age of maturity” and no matter the subject matter, must allow children opportunities to experiment with material through trial and error, taking action (doing) and observing the consequences of the actions (undergoing), “trying to do something and having the thing perceptibly do something to one in return.” Once students have sufficient experience with an object or concept, “memory, observation, reading, communication” may all become “avenues for supplying data” for reflection and problem solving (Dewey, 1916 , p. 164).

Dewey warns that preservice teachers are likely to teach the way they were taught; they may fail to recognize that a new generation of students will always bring new problems to the classroom, or that a different social environment requires different considerations. He believed “thoughtful and alert student[s] of education” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 256) have a moral duty to learn about their students’ interests and prior experiences in order to design appropriate and effective learning experiences for them. The more teachers know about their students’ world, the better they may “understand the forces at work that need to be directed and utilized for the formation of reflective habits” (Dewey, 1933 , pp. 140–141). The teacher should “give pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results” (Dewey, 1916 , p. 161).

To emphasize, Dewey ( 1933 , p. 157) saw the concept of “method” as richer than a pedagogical technique or the sequence of a lesson plan. Method must be understood in its very broadest sense:

Method covers not only what [the teacher] intentionally devises and employs for the purpose of mental training, but also what he does without any conscious reference to it—anything in the atmosphere and conduct of the school that reacts in any way upon the curiosity, the responsiveness, and the orderly activity of children.

Dewey calls this unconscious transmission “collateral learning,” a notion that predates current ideas about the “hidden curriculum” (e.g., Apple, 2004 ; Eisner, 1994 ; Giroux & Penna, 1979 ). Students will learn many things in a classroom, intended or not. For example, methods that require a student to memorize “predigested materials” might inadvertently teach the student that school is not a democratic space, nor one concerned with justice. Dewey ( 1938 , p. 27) believed that inappropriate collateral learning would dull the child’s innate curiosity, and might cause her to engage “in the mental truancy of mindwandering” or to build “an emotional revulsion against the subject” or schooling in general. Collateral learning may be educative or mis-educative, but it appears to be a constant in education.

Everything the teacher does, as well as the manner in which he does it, incites the child to respond in some way or other, and each response tends to set the child’s attitude in some way or other . The teacher is rarely (and even then never entirely) a transparent medium of the access of another mind to a subject. (Dewey, 1933 , p. 159, italics in the original)

Committed and ongoing reflection, Dewey believed, helps teachers, preservice teachers, and teacher educators remain alert for the development of their students’ attitudes toward learning.

Learning in Laboratories

Dewey is sometimes referred to as America’s first postmodernist because of his deep antipathy toward dualistic thinking (Hickman, 2007 ). Dewey was specifically worried that binaries misdirect the focus of our attention. The child, for example, should never be defined in opposition to the curriculum, or seen as an unformed or “miniature” adult (Dewey, 1902 ). Importantly, for Dewey, the public school must never be viewed as somehow isolated from the larger community in which it is located. Referring to the classroom as a “laboratory” was one way that Dewey could skirt the easy dualism that most people associated with schools—those all-too-familiar spaces that, with their tiny desks and green chalkboards, do not resemble much of anything else in society. Rather, the public school in a democracy is embryonic : a nondualistic metaphor that suggests an environment that is both safely apart and protected, but also incorporated into the “body” of society.

To do this means to make each one of our schools an embryonic community life, active with types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society, and permeated throughout with the spirit of art, history, and science. [Hence] the school introduces and trains each child of society into membership within such a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction. (Dewey, 1899 , pp. 19–20)

Set apart, protected, and incorporated, “the school in turn will be a laboratory in which the student . . . sees theories and ideas demonstrated, tested, criticized, enforced, and the evolution of new truths” (Dewey, 1899 , p. 56).

In contrast to the factory model of education, Dewey believed that the public school could be a place where the violence of industrial life (e.g., slaughter houses, iron foundries, railroad work, indentured servitude) is remedied and remediated, where displaced persons could be taught new life skills. Jane Addams in Chicago and Grace Dodge in New York City envisioned the school as a community hub—part library, museum, gymnasium, hospital, clubhouse, and savings bank—one that was centered around learning through community-building (Addams, 2002 ; Lagemann, 1979 ). Evelyn Dewey, writing with her father, makes a case for the school as a “social settlement,” a set-aside place that is deeply committed to the unique concerns of a particular neighborhood:

Schools all over the country are finding that the most direct way of vitalizing their work is through closer relations with local interest and occupations. That period of American school history which was devoted to building up uniformity of subject matter, method, administration, was obliged to neglect everything characteristic of the local environment, for attention to that meant deviation from uniformity . . . in aiming to hit all children by exactly the same educational ammunition, none were really deeply touched. Efforts to bring the work into vital connection with people’s experiences necessarily began to vary school materials to meet the special needs and definite features of local life. (Dewey & Dewey, 1915 , p. 339)

So integrated did Dewey ( 1899 , p. 45) consider the relationship between the school and democratic society that he composed a blueprint—a visual thought experiment—of the school’s relationship to community stakeholders, as well as disciplinary boundaries to each other. On the north side of the re-imagined school are openings to commercial businesses, on the east one sees arrows pointing to home and family life. In this metaphorical blueprint, a garden is located on the school’s south side, and the local university interacts with the school through its westward opening. In another chart, the school houses a museum at the center of the building with openings on four sides leading to chemistry, biology, art, and music labs. On another floor, one finds a library that is provocatively connected to the kitchen, the dining room, the shop, and the textile industries ( 1899 , pp. 52, 49).

Dewey concedes that most people will think of the laboratory as a specialized space, reserved for experts like physicists and physicians. If we leave aside the white-coated scientists in their protected eyewear, what else might we envision?—Activity? Quiet conversation? Focused attention? Group work?

The first great characteristic of a laboratory is that in it there is carried on an activity, an activity which involves contact with technical equipment, as tools, instruments and other apparatus, and machinery which require the use of the hands and the body. There is dealing with real materials and not merely, as in the old, traditional education, with the symbols of learning. (Dewey, 1932 , p. 108)

In this activity-privileged setting, there is a distinction between discovering knowledge and taking information. “I think the laboratory gives a good example of what I mean,” Dewey ( 1923 , p. 176) writes, “The individual has to be using his hands, doing things, but his experimenting in the laboratory is not simply running wild and at random. He has to have enough physical activity to see that his ideas are made definite and precise; that he is getting principles rather than taking information on faith at the word of the teacher or textbook.”

In the early 21st-century context of benchmarks, standards, high-stakes assessment, and accountability, the laboratory provides an antidote to the problem of isolated knowledge and teacher-assigned tasks. Call them inquirers, researchers, or discoverers: laboratory students will necessarily work within and across a discipline’s standards and norms. However, in an authentic laboratory, discoverers are just as likely to reassemble or build new norms and general principles. Dewey would argue that when students test the knowledge that they are given, they will do one of three things: (1) discard that knowledge if it is not useful; (2) alter it to fit a new context; or (3) accept the knowledge as worthwhile for the time being . In this sense, learners—even young learners—are practicing freedom . Standards alone do not fund freedom; that is, they do not inherently enlarge personal capacity or directly aid in problem-solving. But standards that are tested, discarded, altered, or kept in the light of present circumstances are acts of learner agency.

Norms and standards of practice are needed in the laboratory. Indeed, they help us build warranted assertions, which if tested, may assume new forms of knowledge. As Dewey suggests in the previous paragraph, the choices that warrant an assertion, claim, or solution cannot be informed solely by authority, which alone cannot help one make good judgments. Laboratory settings are democratic spaces where debate can occur, where the usefulness or validity of an emerging truth or act of creation is tested and debated with others (Allsup, 2016 ). For all learners who participate in it—students, preservice teachers, and cooperating teachers—the laboratory school, thus, can be characterized as:

a place of creativity, construction, imagination;

a place to test, perform, critique, and verify responses to authentic problems;

a place of warranted assertability; a place of hypothesis-building;

a “real”—but supportive—community, like those that exist outside classrooms, but affording students opportunities to succeed and fail;

a place of knowledge-making, where groups can collectively add to the sum of facts (asserted and tested) and principles (emerging and verified).

Dewey believed that such a laboratory setting within a teacher education program would provide preservice teachers with imaginative experiences that could help them develop understandings of the principles of education in its most ideal sense. Formal and informal settings, no matter the design, might aim for similar ends. Thus, laboratories—in their broadest, most non-binary sense—become both places to test specialized knowledge and everyday settings where (say) a new recipe could be tried out, or a previous lesson plan could be altered and studied for its results.

Dewey’s Work in Historical Context

Dewey’s writings have demonstrated consistent staying power in educational circles, with many ideas that remain relevant well beyond the 70 years during which he wrote them ( 1882–1952 ). His educational work, however, has also been criticized for saying too little about the role of schools and other democratic institutions in addressing social inequities (e.g., Brick, 2005 ; Portelli & Vilbert, 2002 ). It is essential, however, to consider Dewey’s work in the context of his time. Dewey’s ideas about reforming education were in response to the needs of a changing society, one that was undergoing rapid industrialization and mass migration. Electricity, the telegraph, and improved mail service sped communication across great distances. New discoveries in medicine and medical practice helped people live longer. We emphasize, however, that Dewey lived in an era when many in American society, like Dewey ( 1899 , pp. 6–7, 17, 7; see also 1930 , regarding Dewey’s faith in the scientific method), clung to the era’s faith that science could solve problems that were previously intractable.

One can hardly believe there has been a revolution in all history so rapid, so extensive, so complete. Through it the face of the earth is making over, even as to its physical forms; political boundaries are wiped out and moved about, as if they were indeed only lines on a paper map. . . . Even our moral and religious ideas and interests, the most conservative because the deepest-lying things in our nature, are profoundly affected. . . . Travel has been rendered easy; freedom of movement with its accompanying exchange of ideas, indefinitely facilitated. The result has been an intellectual revolution. Learning has been put into circulation; . . . a distinctively learned class is henceforth out of the question. It is an anachronism. Knowledge is no longer an immobile solid; it has been liquefied. . . . That this revolution should not affect education in some other than a formal and superficial fashion is inconceivable.

This description, written by Dewey in 1899 , bears striking resemblance to social conditions in the first quarter of the 21st century . Writing in 1930 , Dewey (p. 275) recognized that “progress” could have negative effects as well; international tensions fostered during and after World War I meant that “race and color prejudice have never had such opportunity as they have now to poison the mind, while nationalism is elevated into a religion called patriotism.” But there remains a hopeful fascination to Dewey’s tone, an inherent faith in the inevitability of progress and growth that is contradicted by the decades that followed his death. Dewey is often described as lacking a sense of the tragic. Should he have lived to see it, the violence of the latter half of the 20th century may have surprised him, particularly as business interests have remade public education according to market principles. And the promises of progressive education are mostly located in private universities and expensive “independent” schools, undermining Dewey’s democratic ideals. While Dewey’s principles clearly address the 21st century’s global interest in the standardization, privatization, and accountability of education, we believe he would continue to argue against any totalizing, one-size-fits-all approach to any reform movement.

Dewey viewed universities as laboratory spaces for social repair and experimentation. At the end of “Theory into Practice” (1904a), Dewey believed that within “the next decade,” more normal schools would become four-year bachelor’s-degree-granting programs. Dewey was hopeful that extending the teacher preparation program from two to four years, within a model of a laboratory school in conjunction with a university, would provide adequate time for preservice teachers to develop deep understandings of theory integrated with their practice and methods of teaching. Those who would graduate from such a program would become lifelong learners and genuine “students of teaching” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 256).

One fundamental and striking element in the significance of the [University of Chicago] School of Education is the desire and resolute purpose to promote the cause of education, not only here, but everywhere, through inspiring teachers with more vital and adequate conceptions of the nature of their work, and through furnishing them with the intellectual equipment necessary to make them effective and apt in carrying out such broadened and deepened ideals. (Dewey, 1904b , pp. 274–275)

Although this goal seemed tantalizingly close in Dewey’s laboratory school experiments, he admitted the model might be challenging to replicate in other settings. Dewey ( 1899 ) cites critics who accuse him of developing his ideas in the context of ideal circumstances: a small teacher–student ratio, close collaboration between university researchers and K-12 faculty, a teaching faculty sharing common beliefs and focused on learning together in community, among other benefits not common to most educators. Dewey ( 1899 , p. 56) responded that genuine experiments, in education as much as in science and industry, required carefully controlled conditions, “working out and testing a new truth, or a new method,” before “applying it on a wide scale, making it available” to others. Ultimately, he left the lab school after seven contentious years (Knoll, 2014 ), although it has continued to offer learning experiences in the Deweyian tradition into the 21st century (University of Chicago Lab Schools, n.d. ).

We now benefit from far deeper knowledge of psychology, which was a young science in Dewey’s time. Dewey did not have access to 21st-century understandings of the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and class, and the multiple ways these contribute to continued inequities in education and teacher education. We also must admit to a far more complex understanding of educational and social problems, arising from, as in Dewey’s ( 1899 , pp. 8–9) day, an “increase in toleration, in breadth of social judgment, the larger acquaintance with human nature, the sharpened alertness in reading signs of character and interpreting social situations, greater accuracy of adaptation to differing personalities.” We continue to expand our vision of what education in a democracy means, who it is for, and how to work toward Dewey’s vision of education for all, with the goal of citizens prepared to participate fully in a democratic society. We have experienced an additional century of research, with solutions proposed and tried with varying success, yet Dewey’s ideas continue to offer teacher educators ample food for thought and practice.

Questions for Continued Research and Practice

Dewey’s writings remain provocative; even a century later, his insights seem ahead of their time. University teacher educators in the early 21st century , like those in Dewey’s day, are still pressured by myriad stakeholders to provide preservice teachers with predetermined outcomes and conclusions. But over and again, Dewey ( 1916 , p. 183) reminds us that the reflective process cannot be rushed, that knowledge and pedagogy “take their own time to mature.” Recognizing that few preparation programs offer all the characteristics of Dewey’s ideal laboratory school, how can we best incorporate the principles of learning Dewey sets forth? What types of experiences hold the greatest educative potential? How can we include both the breadth and depth of experiences needed to develop theoretical understanding and thoughtful practice? How can university teacher educators help preservice teachers create sustained continuity among all their educational experiences? What learning experiences may guide preservice teachers to enlarge their vision of the goals and practices of education and to reconceptualize possibilities for their work with children?

The authors of this article concede that experiential learning does not present itself as “efficient,” at least not in the short term; and front-loading student teaching through reflection and observation takes more time than the apprentice or “cadet” model. Guaranteed outcomes, furthermore, are prohibited in a Deweyian framework. Learners, including preservice teachers, must always make their own meanings from their experiences, and thus no preparation program or student teaching experience can guarantee skill or expertise in teaching. Dewey wrote about teacher preparation during an era when, like ours, teacher education programs were becoming more standardized and less creative. He would be the first to argue against any single definition of teacher quality or standardized curriculum (see, e.g., Dewey & Dewey, 1915 ). What would he say about 21st-century national standards for content-area learning and teacher evaluation systems that are based on student test scores, all of which consider children and their teachers “ en masse , as an aggregate of units” (Dewey, 1899 , p. 22)? He believed this view was responsible for “the uniformity of method and curriculum . . . [with] next to no opportunity for adjustment to varying capacities and demands.” Such “ready-made results and accomplishments to be acquired by all children alike in a given time” conflicted with Dewey’s beliefs about the growing child or the developing teacher: “The moment children [or teachers] act they individualize themselves; they cease to be a mass and become the intensely distinctive beings that we are acquainted with out of school, in the home, the family, on the playground, and in the neighborhood” (Dewey, 1899 , p. 22).

Substituting “teachers” for “children” in the previous statement may offer some insight into potential concerns Dewey would have with policies that evaluate teachers in light of “ready-made results and accomplishments.” Given the policy climate in the early 21st century , how can university teacher educators meaningfully respond to calls for accountability in the preparation of a student teacher? How can we honor the individuality of a preservice teacher while preparing her to meet mandated standards? After four or five years in a preparation program (or four semesters in some), how can the beginner teacher be “holistically” evaluated and deemed ready, both for immediate placement and for potential for continued growth? What types of experiences might best help her to examine, construct, or reconstruct her experiences and then demonstrate an expansive understanding of educational theory and practice? How can she exhibit this knowledge in a way that is developmentally appropriate? And if a universal benchmark is not possible—at least according to Dewey—how then do stakeholders know when a preservice teacher is ready for her own classroom, or not?

Dewey’s ideas about reflection on experience have inspired a vast body of research in teacher education. Studies have explored various strategies for engaging preservice teachers in reflection on their personal beliefs and lived histories (e.g., Grimmett & Erickson, 1988 ; Knowles, 1992 ; Schön, 1987 ). Drawing on Deweyian premises, researchers have studied educative and mis-educative beliefs and their possible source (e.g., Dolloff, 1999 ; Fives & Gill, 2014 ; Schmidt, 2013 ); the role of teaching experience in teacher development (e.g., Boyle-Baise & McIntyre, 2008 ; Clift & Brady, 2005 ; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985 ; Miksza & Austin, 2010 ; Tabachnick & Zeichner, 1984 ); and how beginning teachers make meaning in and through content area courses (Amador, Kimmons, Miller, & Desjardins, 2015 ; Floden & Meniketti, 2005 ; Grossman, 2005 ). The authors of this article believe that more research is needed to identify context-specific practices that engage preservice teachers in truly meaningful reflection based on genuine problems, not “so-called problems” or “simply assigned tasks ” (Dewey, 1933 , p. 233).

Most research in teacher education is focused on preservice teachers’ learning and development. But more studies could be designed to examine the experiences that help preservice teachers develop an invested and strategic curiosity about children and how they think and learn, “to see how teacher and pupils react upon each other—how mind answers to mind” (Dewey, 1904a , p. 260). How can beginning teachers, generally very concerned with their own need-to-teach, focus more on the child’s needs and interests, and learn to view their students as multifaceted individuals? As an extension of this question, what experiences might help beginning teachers better understand and serve the needs of underserved students, viewing them in terms of the potential of their minds to answer to educational opportunities, rather than through a deficit lens? Research might help us design courses to better challenge preservice teachers’ perceptions of their own learning as the norm for all students; such classes could help new teachers foster a genuine desire to learn about and understand the experiences that their future students bring to school from their home cultures (e.g., Delpit, 1995 ; Gay, 2010 ; Ladson-Billings, 1995 ; Lind & McKoy, 2016 ).

Researchers could consider more longitudinal studies, following preservice teachers’ growth throughout a program or even into the early years of teaching (e.g., Bullough, 1989 ; Bullough & Baughman, 1997 ; Wetzel, Hoffman, Roach, & Russell, 2018 ). Such studies might provide insights into ways that preservice teachers make connections among their learning experiences both in and out of class, and how they create continuity among their past, present, and future. In an age of teacher de-professionalization, what can we learn about educational experiences that help preservice teachers develop a larger vision of—and a greater commitment to—their own lifelong learning?

It goes without saying that most classic philosophers of education are encountered by contemporary readers in ways that require context and some degree of generosity. Plato’s writings on education should not probably be read too literally, but we can go to The Republic to think deeply about the ways in which a society is strategically shaped through the education of its citizens. We can read Confucius and find new questions about how personhood is shaped through tradition. But Dewey, a classic American philosopher, remains highly relevant to educational concerns in the early 21st century . Indeed, he requires little contextual apology. We can, for example, return to Dewey to find inspiration in his faith in the professional capacity of teachers. He never spoke of children through a deficit lens. Dewey’s abiding belief in hands-on learning—his constant focus on the child and the child’s interests—is a counter-narrative to contemporary educational discourses that see children as future human resources. Given his belief in the power of experiential learning, the lasting influence of his educational writings almost seems counter-intuitive. Yet based on our own experiences as university teacher educators, we have found the principles presented in this article to hold great potential for continued experimentation and reflection in our own practices.

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A John Dewey source page

Originally published as:.

John Dewey. "The Analysis of a Complete Act of Thought" Chapter 6 in How we think . Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath, (1910): 68-78.

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How We Think

Chapter 6: the analysis of a complete act of thought, table of contents | next | previous.

Object of Part Two

AFTER a brief consideration in the first chapter of the nature of reflective thinking, we turned, in the second, to the need for its training. Then we took up the resources, the difficulties, and the aim of its training. The purpose of this discussion was to set before the student the general problem of the training of mind. The purport of the second part, upon which we are now entering, is giving a fuller statement of the nature and normal growth of thinking, preparatory to considering in the concluding part the special problems that arise in connection with its education.

In this chapter we shall make an analysis of the process of thinking into its steps or elementary constituents, basing the analysis upon descriptions of a number of extremely simple, but genuine, cases of reflective experience. [1]

A simple case of practical deliberation

I. "The other day when I was down town on 16th Street a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12.20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o'clock. I reasoned that

(69) as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station ? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part Of I 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o'clock."

A simple case of reflection upon an observation

2. "Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river, is a long white pole, bearing a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

"I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of such a pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited : (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried like poles,

(70) this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

"In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot's position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, be would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly."

A simple case of reflection involving experiment

3. "In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler ? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat or by decrease of pressure, or by both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled

(71) in the water. If heated air was the cause , cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside.

"But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse."

These three cases have been purposely selected so as to form a series from the more rudimentary to more complicated cases of reflection. The first illustrates the kind of thinking done by every one during the day's business, in which neither the data, nor the ways of dealing with them, take one outside the limits of everyday experience. The last furnishes a case in which neither problem nor mode of solution would have been likely to occur except to one with some prior scientific training. The second case forms a natural transition; its materials lie well within the bounds of everyday, unspecialized experience; but the problem, instead of being directly involved in the person's business, arises indirectly out of his activity, and accordingly appeals to a somewhat theoretic and impartial interest. We

(72) shall deal, in a later chapter, with the evolution of abstract thinking out of that which is relatively practical and direct; here we are concerned only with the common elements found in all the types.

Five distinct steps in reflection

Upon examination, each instance reveals, more or less clearly, five logically distinct steps: (i) a felt difficulty; (ii) its location and definition; (iii) suggestion of possible solution; (iv) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (v) further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief.

(a) in the lack of adaptation of means to end

I. The first and second steps frequently fuse into one. The difficulty may be felt with sufficient definiteness as to set the mind at once speculating upon its probable solution, or an undefined uneasiness and shock may come first, leading only later to definite attempt to find out what is the matter. Whether the two steps are distinct or blended, there is the factor emphasized in our original account of reflection ― viz. the perplexity or problem. In the first of the three cases cited, the difficulty resides in the conflict between conditions at hand and a desired and intended result, between an end and the means for reaching it. The purpose of keeping an engagement at a certain time, and the existing hour taken in connection with the location, are not congruous. The object of thinking is to introduce congruity between the two. The given conditions cannot themselves be altered; time will not go backward nor will the distance between 16th Street and 124th Street shorten itself. The problem is the discovery of intervening terms which when inserted between the remoter end and the given means will harmonize them with each other.

(b) in identifying the character of the object

In the second case, the difficulty experienced is the incompatibility of a suggested and (temporarily) accepted belief that the pole is a flagpole, with certain other facts. Suppose we symbolize the qualities that suggest flagpole by the letters a, b, c; those that oppose this suggestion by the letters p, q, r. There is, of course, nothing inconsistent in the qualities themselves; but in pulling the mind to different and incongruous conclusions they conflict ― hence the problem. Here the object is the discovery of some object (0), of which a, b, c, and p, q, r, may all be appropriate traits-just as, in our first case, it is to discover a course of action which will combine existing conditions and a remoter result in a single whole. The method of solution is also the same: discovery of intermediate qualities (the position of the pilot house, of the pole, the need of an index to the boat's direction) symbolized by d, g, 1, o, which bind together otherwise incompatible traits.

(c) in explaining an unexpected event

In the third case, an observer trained to the idea of natural laws or uniformities finds something odd or exceptional in the behavior of the bubbles. The problem is to reduce the apparent anomalies to instances of well-established laws. Here the method of solution is also to seek for intermediary terms which will connect, by regular linkage, the seemingly extraordinary movements of the bubbles with the conditions known to follow from processes supposed to be operative.

2. Definition of the difficulty

2. As already noted, the first two steps, the feeling of a discrepancy, or difficulty, and the acts of observation that serve to define the character of the difficulty may, in a given instance, telescope together. In cases of striking novelty or unusual perplexity, the difficulty, however, is likely to present itself at first as a shock, as

(74) emotional disturbance, as a more or less vague feeling of the unexpected, of something queer, strange, funny, or disconcerting. In such instances, there are necessary observations deliberately calculated to bring to light just what is the trouble, or to make clear the specific character of the problem. In large measure, the existence or non-existence of this step makes the difference between reflection proper, or safeguarded critical inference and uncontrolled thinking. Where sufficient pains to locate the difficulty are not taken, suggestions for its resolution must be more or less random. Imagine a doctor called in to prescribe for a patient. The patient tells him some things that are wrong; his experienced eye, at a glance, takes in other signs of a certain disease. But if he permits the suggestion of this special disease to take possession prematurely of his mind, to become an accepted conclusion, his scientific thinking is by that much cut short. A large part of his technique, as a skilled practitioner, is to prevent the acceptance of the first suggestions that arise; even, indeed, to postpone the occurrence of any very definite suggestion till the trouble ― the nature of the problem ― has been thoroughly explored. In the case of a physician this proceeding is known as diagnosis, but a similar inspection is required in every novel and complicated situation to prevent rushing to a conclusion. The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution. This, more than any other thing, transforms mere inference into tested inference, suggested conclusions into proof.

3. The third factor is suggestion. The situation in

3. Occurance of a suggested explanation or possible solution

(75) which the perplexity occurs calls up something not present to the senses : the present location, the thought of subway or elevated train; the stick before the eyes, the idea of a flagpole, an ornament, an apparatus for wireless telegraphy; the soap bubbles, the law of expansion of bodies through heat and of their contraction through cold. (a) Suggestion is the very heart of inference ; it involves going from what is present to something absent. Hence, it is more or less speculative, adventurous. Since inference goes beyond what is actually present, it involves a leap, a jump, the propriety of which cannot be absolutely warranted in advance, no matter what precautions be taken. Its control is indirect, on the one hand, involving the formation of habits of mind which are at once enterprising and cautious; and on the other hand , involving the selection and arrangement of the particular facts upon perception of which suggestion issues. (b) The suggested conclusion so far as it is not accepted but only tentatively entertained constitutes an idea. Synonyms for this are supposition, conjecture, guess, hypothesis, and (in elaborate cases) theory. Since suspended belief, or the postponement of a final conclusion pending further evidence, depends partly upon the presence of rival conjectures as to the best course to pursue or the probable explanation to favor, cultivation of a variety of alternative suggestions is an important factor in good thinking.

4. The rational elaboration of an idea

4. The process of developing the bearings ― or, as they are more technically termed, the implications ― of any idea with respect to any problem, is termed reasoning . [2] As an idea is inferred from given facts, so reasoning

(76) sets out from an idea. The idea of elevated road is developed into the idea of difficulty of locating station, length of time occupied on the journey, distance of station at the other end from place to be reached. In the second case, the implication of a flagpole is seen to be a vertical position; of a wireless apparatus, location on a high part of the ship and, moreover, absence from every casual tugboat; while the idea of index to direction in which the boat moves, when developed, is found to cover all the details of the case.

Reasoning has the same effect upon a suggested solution as more intimate and extensive observation has upon the original problem. Acceptance of the suggestion in its first form is prevented by looking into it more thoroughly. Conjectures that seem plausible at first sight are often found unfit or even absurd when their full consequences are traced out. Even when reasoning out the bearings of a supposition does not lead to rejection, it develops the idea into a form in which it is more apposite to the problem. Only when, for example, the conjecture that a pole was an index-pole had been thought out into its bearings could its particular applicability to the case in hand be judged. Suggestions at first seemingly remote and wild are frequently so transformed by being elaborated into what follows from them as to become apt and fruitful. The development of an idea through reasoning helps at least to supply the intervening or intermediate terms that link together into a consistent whole apparently discrepant extremes (ante, p. 72).

Corroboration of an idea and formation of a concluding belief

5. The concluding and conclusive step is some kind of experimental corroboration, or verification, of the conjectural idea. Reasoning shows that if the idea be adopted, certain consequences follow. So far the conclusion is hypothetical or conditional. If we look and find present all the conditions demanded by the theory, and if we find the characteristic traits called for by rival alternatives to be lacking, the tendency to believe, to accept, is almost irresistible. Sometimes direct observation furnishes corroboration, as in the case of the pole on the boat. In other cases, as in that of the bubbles, experiment is required; that is, conditions are deliberately arranged in accord with the requirements of an idea or hypothesis to see if the results theoretically indicated by the idea actually occur. If it is found that the experimental results agree with the theoretical, or rationally deduced, results, and if there is reason to believe that only the conditions in question would yield such results, the confirmation is so strong as to induce a conclusion at least until contrary facts shall indicate the advisability of its revision.

Thinking comes between observations at the beginning and at the end

Observation exists at the beginning and again at the end of the process: at the beginning, to determine more definitely and precisely the nature of the difficulty to be dealt with; at the end, to test the value of some hypothetically entertained conclusion. Between those two termini of observation, we find the more distinctively mental aspects of the entire thought-cycle : (i) inference, the suggestion of an explanation or solution, (ii) reasoning, the development of the bearings and implications of the suggestion. Reasoning requires some experimental observation to confirm it, while experiment can be economically and fruitfully conducted only

(78) on the basis of an idea that has been tentatively developed by reasoning.

The trained mind one that judges the extent of each step advisable in a given situation

The disciplined, or logically trained, mind ― the aim of the educative process -is the mind able to judge how far each of these steps needs to be carried in any particular situation. No cast-iron rules can be laid down. Each case has to be dealt with as it arises, on the basis of its importance and of the context in which it occurs. To take too much pains in one case is as foolish -as illogical ― as to take too little in another. At one extreme, almost any conclusion that insures prompt and unified action may be better than any long delayed conclusion; while at the other, decision may have to be postponed for a long period ― perhaps for a lifetime. The trained mind is the one that best grasps the degree of observation, forming of ideas, reasoning, and experimental testing required in any special case, and that profits the most, in future thinking, by mistakes made in the past. What is important is that the mind should be sensitive to problems and skilled in methods of attack and solution.

These are taken, almost verbatim, from the class papers of students.

• This term is sometimes extended to denote the entire reflective process-just as inference (which in the sense of test is best reserved for the third step) is sometimes used in the same broad sense. But reasoning (or ratiocination) seems to be peculiarly adapted to express what the older writers called the "notional " or " dialectic " process of developing the meaning of a given idea.

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Lexical Investigations: Critical Thinking

Though the phrase critical thinking wasn’t coined until the early twentieth century, its principles can be traced back to Aristotle. The educator and psychologist John Dewey first used the phrase in its modern sense in his 1910 book How We Think , though there are instances of the words appearing together in texts before this time. Dewey defined critical thinking as “reflective thought,” requiring healthy skepticism, an open mind, and suspended judgment. Critical thinking is active, in contrast to passive acceptance of the ideas of others. Different criteria and tests used to determine whether or not critical thinking is taking place have been put forth by different educators. Robert Ennis’s popular definition from 1989 also states that, “critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do,” adding an emphasis on the resulting action. Critical thinking has been a reoccurring fad in education for over a hundred years, and in 1997, Michael Scriven, an educator who served as president of both the American Educational Research Association and the American Evaluation Association, declared it an “academic competency,” similar to reading and writing.

Relevant Quotations:

“The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution. This, more than any other thing, transforms mere inference into tested inference, suggested conclusions into proof.”

—John Dewey, How We Think (1910)

“Critical thinking, as the term is generally used these days, roughly means reasonable and reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do. 2 In doing such thinking, one is helped by the employment of a set of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that I shall outline, and that can serve as a set of comprehensive goals for a critical thinking curriculum and its assessment. Pedagogical and psychometric usefulness, not elegance or mutual exclusiveness, is the purpose of this outline. It could be used for an overall critical thinking curriculum outline, or as a comprehensive table of specifications for critical thinking assessment.”

—Robert H. Ennis, “ An Outline of Goals for a Critical Thinking Curriculum and Its Assessment ” (2002)

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Who was John Dewey?

John Dewey was an American philosopher and educator who was a founder of the philosophical movement known as  pragmatism , a pioneer in functional psychology , and a leader of the progressive movement in  education  in the United States.

Where was John Dewey educated?

John Dewey graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the  University of Vermont  in 1879 and received a doctorate in philosophy from  Johns Hopkins University  in 1884.

How did John Dewey impact the world?

John Dewey believed that a democratic society of informed and engaged inquirers was the best means of promoting human interests. To argue for this philosophy, Dewey taught at universities and wrote influential books such as Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Nature  (1925).

John Dewey (born October 20, 1859, Burlington , Vermont , U.S.—died June 1, 1952, New York , New York) was an American philosopher and educator who was a cofounder of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism , a pioneer in functional psychology , an innovative theorist of democracy , and a leader of the progressive movement in education in the United States .

Dewey graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont in 1879. After receiving a doctorate in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1884, he began teaching philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan . There his interests gradually shifted from the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to the new experimental psychology being advanced in the United States by G. Stanley Hall and the pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James . Further study of child psychology prompted Dewey to develop a philosophy of education that would meet the needs of a changing democratic society. In 1894 he joined the faculty of philosophy at the University of Chicago , where he further developed his progressive pedagogy in the university’s Laboratory Schools . In 1904 Dewey left Chicago for Columbia University in New York City , where he spent the majority of his career and wrote his most famous philosophical work, Experience and Nature (1925). His subsequent writing, which included articles in popular periodicals, treated topics in aesthetics , politics, and religion . The common theme underlying Dewey’s philosophy was his belief that a democratic society of informed and engaged inquirers was the best means of promoting human interests.

Being , nature, and experience

In order to develop and articulate his philosophical system, Dewey first needed to expose what he regarded as the flaws of the existing tradition. He believed that the distinguishing feature of Western philosophy was its assumption that true being—that which is fully real or fully knowable—is changeless, perfect, and eternal and the source of whatever reality the world of experience may possess. Plato ’s forms (abstract entities corresponding to the properties of particular things) and the Christian conception of God were two examples of such a static, pure, and transcendent being, compared with which anything that undergoes change is imperfect and less real. According to one modern version of the assumption, developed by the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes , all experience is subjective, an exclusively mental phenomenon that cannot provide evidence of the existence or the nature of the physical world, the “matter” of which is ultimately nothing more than changeless extension in motion. The Western tradition thus made a radical distinction between true reality on the one hand and the endless varieties and variations of worldly human experience on the other.

Dewey held that this philosophy of nature was drastically impoverished. Rejecting any dualism between being and experience, he proposed that all things are subject to change and do change. There is no static being, and there is no changeless nature. Nor is experience purely subjective, because the human mind is itself part and parcel of nature. Human experiences are the outcomes of a range of interacting processes and are thus worldly events. The challenge to human life, therefore, is to determine how to live well with processes of change, not somehow to transcend them.

Nature and the construction of ends

Dewey developed a metaphysics that examined characteristics of nature that encompassed human experience but were either ignored by or misrepresented by more traditional philosophers. Three such characteristics—what he called the “precarious,” “histories,” and “ends”—were central to his philosophical project.

For Dewey, a precarious event is one that somehow makes ongoing experience problematic; thus, any obstacle, disruption, danger, or surprise of any kind is precarious. As noted earlier, because humanity is a part of nature, all things that humans encounter in their daily experience, including other humans and the social institutions they inhabit, are natural events. The arbitrary cruelty of a tyrant or the kindness shown by a stranger is as natural and precarious as the destruction wrought by a flood or the vibrant colours of a sunset. Human ideas and moral norms must also be viewed in this way. Human knowledge is wholly intertwined with precarious, constantly changing nature.

The constancy of change does not imply a complete lack of continuity with the past stages of natural processes. What Dewey meant by a history was a process of change with an identifiable outcome. When the constituent processes of a history are identified, they become subject to modification, and their outcome can be deliberately varied and secured. Dewey’s conception of a history has an obvious implication for humanity: no person’s fate is sealed by an antecedently given human nature , temperament, character, talent, or social role. This is why Dewey was so concerned with developing a philosophy of education. With an appropriate knowledge of the conditions necessary for human growth, an individual may develop in any of a variety of ways. The object of education is thus to promote the fruition of an active history of a specific kind—a human history.

Since at least the time of Aristotle (384–322 bce ), many Western philosophers have made use of the notion of end, or final cause—i.e., a cause conceived of as a natural purpose or goal ( see teleology ). In ethics , ends are the natural or consciously determined goals of moral actions; they are moral absolutes, such as happiness or “the good,” that human actions are designed to bring about. But such ends must be discerned before they can be fully attained. For Dewey, on the other hand, an end is a deliberately constructed outcome of a history. Hence, his expression “the construction of good” encapsulates much of the significance of his philosophy. A person confronted by a spontaneous intrusion of the precarious world into the seemingly steady course of his life will identify and analyze the constituents of his particular situation and then consider what changes he might introduce in order to produce, in Dewey’s parlance, a “consummatory” end. Such an end is a fulfillment of these particular conditions, and it is unique to them. Similarly, there is no such thing as an absolute good against which actions may be evaluated; rather, any constructed end that promotes human flourishing while taking into account the precarious is a good.

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John Dewey: Portrait of a Progressive Thinker

His ideas altered the education of children worldwide  .

John Dewey in 1950.

—Bettmann / Getty Images

“I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.” —John Dewey  

“He was loved, honored, vilified, and mocked as perhaps no other major philosopher in American history.” —Larry Hickman

In the 1894 Pullman strike, workers fought against having their wages cut. Dewey saw the turmoil as symbolic of a rapidly changing America in need of school reform.

—Wikimedia Commons

Dewey praised the Pullman strikers’ leader Eugene V. Debs—head of the American Railway Union—and the strikers’ “fanatic sincerity and earnestness.”

—Harris & Ewing photograph, 1912 / Library of Congress

In July 1894, a train carrying a young philosopher from Ann Arbor, Michigan, pulled into Chicago Union Station. Its arrival was delayed by striking workers of the American Railway Union, who were made furious by the Pullman Company’s decision to cut their wages. The strike ended two weeks later, took the lives of thirty people, and symbolized a rapidly changing America dominated by corporations that set laborers against owners. 

The philosopher had entered a city whose population was exploding with immigrants, many of whom were illiterate; a city of half-built skyscrapers and noisome meatpacking plants; a city with a new university funded by John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago, whose Gothic buildings and eminent faculty would rival those of Harvard and Yale. John Dewey had arrived to chair the philosophy and pedagogy department. Once in the city, he visited the strikers, applauded their “fanatic sincerity and earnestness,” praised their leader Eugene Debs, and condemned President Cleveland’s suppression of the strike. Worried about working for a university dedicated to laissez-faire capitalism, Dewey found himself becoming more of a populist, more of a socialist, more sympathetic to the settlement house pioneered by Jane Addams, and more skeptical of his childhood Christianity. He would conclude that a changing America needed different schools.

In 1899, Dewey published the pamphlet that made him famous, The School and Society , and promulgated many key precepts of later education reforms. Dewey insisted that the old model of schooling—students sitting in rows, memorizing and reciting—was antiquated. Students should be active, not passive. They required compelling and relevant projects, not lectures. Students should become problem solvers. Interest, not fear, should be used to motivate them. They should cooperate, not compete. 

Boys in Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C., construct models of airplanes in 1942 to be used by the U.S. Navy. Dewey advocated for democratized education that was relevant and practical.

—Marjory Collins / Library of Congress

The key to the new education was “manual training.” Before the factory system and the growth of cities, children handled animals, crops, and tools. They were educated by nature “with real things and materials.” Dewey lamented the disappearance of the idyllic village and the departure of children’s modesty, reverence, and implicit obedience. He was, however, no reactionary: “It is radical conditions which have changed, and only an equally radical change in education suffices.” Urban children needed to sew, cook, and work with metal and wood. Manual training should not, however, be mere vocational education or a substitute for the farm. It should be scientific and experimental, an introduction to civilization.

“You can concentrate the history of all mankind into the evolution of flax, cotton, and wool fibers into clothing,” asserted Dewey. He described a class where students handled wool and cotton. As they discovered how hard it was to separate seeds from cotton, they came to understand why their ancestors wore woolen clothing. Working in groups to make models of the spinning jenny and the power loom, they learned cooperation. Together they understood the role of water and steam, analyzed the textile mills of Lowell, and studied the distribution of the finished cloth and its impact on everyday life. They learned science, geography, and physics without textbooks or lectures. Learning by doing replaced learning by listening. 

Manual training revolved around the study of occupations to develop both the hand and the intellect. To know and to do were equally valuable. Cooperative learning encouraged a democratic classroom, which promoted a democratic society without elites, ethnic divisions, or economic inequality. Throughout his life, Dewey believed that humans were social beings inclined to be cooperative, not selfish individuals predisposed to conflict. Always he praised democracy as a way of life and scientific intelligence as the key to reform. 

America in 1900 was preoccupied with the clash between capital and labor, debating how to make the worker more than an appendage to the machine. To science, geography, and physics, Dewey added another advantage: meaning. While the typical student did not go on to high school or attend college, manual training conducted by a skilled teacher could stimulate the imagination, enlarge the sympathies, and acquaint young people with scientific intelligence. Dewey was outraged that “thousands of young ones . . . are practically ruined . . . in the Chicago schools every year.” His new education sought to encourage students to continue in school and combat the increase in juvenile delinquency. It looked to produce an inquiring student who could change America.  

Running through The School and Society is a suspicion of the intellectual who wants to monopolize knowledge and keep it abstract. Dewey opposed the academic curriculum revolving around classical languages and high culture, which he believed suited an aristocracy, not a democracy. “The simple facts of the case are that in the great majority of human beings,” he wrote, “the distinctively intellectual interest is not dominant. They have the so-called practical impulse and disposition.” With more and more Americans enrolled in schools, educators had to acknowledge this fact. Learning had to be democratized and made relevant and practical. “The school must represent present life.”

Classes modeled on Dewey’s principles emphasize cooperation over competition.

—Mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Who was this philosopher who believed that children are curious and good, who would introduce them to civilization through wool and cotton, who would create cooperative classrooms that would end divisions between managers and workers and democratize America? Dewey lived from the Civil War to the Cold War, wrote 37 books, and published 766 articles in 151 journals. In his lifetime, he was hailed as America’s preeminent philosopher. Historian Henry Steele Commager called him “the guide, the mentor, and the conscience of the American people.” In China, he was called a “second Confucius.” 

John Dewey grew up in Burlington, Vermont, the son of a pious, high-minded mother and a well-read grocer father. Shy and withdrawn, the young Dewey read voraciously and graduated from the University of Vermont. Uncertain about a career, he moved to Oil City, Pennsylvania, to teach Latin and algebra at the local high school. An average teacher but an ambitious intellectual, he decided to become a philosopher and fought to gain admission to Johns Hopkins University, which was dedicated to original research. He graduated with a PhD in philosophy. The president of Johns Hopkins, Daniel Coit Gilman, encouraged Dewey to accept an offer to teach at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor but suggested that he curtail his “reclusive and bookish habits.” 

At Michigan, a newly confident Dewey published a psychology textbook and fell in love with one of his students, Alice Chipman (later described by their daughter as a woman “with a brilliant mind which cut through sham and pretense”). Influenced by Alice, Dewey paid more attention to social problems. They started a family and, observing his children, he applied his psychological insights to their upbringing, becoming increasingly more interested in education, so that his children might escape what he felt were the shortcomings of the schools he attended as a child. 

One of his students in Michigan described Dewey as “a tall, dark, thin young man with long black hair, and a soft, penetrating eye, and looks like a cross between a Nihilist and a poet.” A colleague at Michigan found him “simple, modest, utterly devoid of any affectation or self-consciousness, and makes many friends and no enemies.” Later associates would corroborate this positive portrait, stressing Dewey’s ability to accept criticism, his willingness to give credit to others, and his intellectual and physical vigor. After a lunch (hosted by T. S. Eliot) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bertrand Russell praised Dewey: “To my surprise I liked him very much. He has a large slow-moving mind, very empirical and candid . . . [he] impressed me very greatly, both as a philosopher and as a lovable man.” Self-effacing but not introspective, Dewey spoke little about himself, writing neither memoirs nor an autobiography.

Dewey, who seemed to fit the model of the quintessential reserved New Englander, was surprisingly complex. Arriving in Chicago during the strike, he mused, “I am something of an anarchist.” Slightly bohemian, he encouraged his children to go barefoot even in winter, and he and his wife walked naked around the house. He socialized with radicals in Greenwich Village. To understand prostitution, he visited Chicago’s brothels. He wrote passionate love letters to his wife and rhapsodized over the endearing qualities of his children. Once reclusive, he happily worked on philosophic tracts as his children crawled around his desk. His friend Max Eastman noted, “Dewey is at his best with one child climbing up his pants leg and another fishing in his inkwell.” At the age of 58, he had a brief romance (possibly platonic) with Anzia Wezierska, who wrote novels and short stories about the immigrant experience. He wrote poems to her and for himself about the anxiety of philosophizing, poems without literary flair that he never expected would be published.

Away from his family, Dewey could slip into melancholy. In 1894, he wrote to Alice, “I think yesterday was the bluest day I have ever spent.” He was twice visited by catastrophe. While vacationing in Italy in the fall of 1894, his youngest son, Morris, died of diphtheria at age two and a half, a loss from which he and Alice never fully recovered. Ten years later, during his second European trip, his eight-year-old son, Gordon, contracted typhoid fever and died in Ireland. “I shall never understand why he was taken from the world,” wrote Dewey.

Dewey marched in a suffragette parade and campaigned for women’s right to vote. He celebrated as his mentors Ella Flagg Young, the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, and Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House. He rejected his mother’s query, “Are you right with Jesus?,” but sprinkled his essay “My Pedagogic Creed” with religious imagery. Who were Dewey’s heroes? Thomas Jefferson and Walt Whitman, the apostles of democracy; William James, the founder of pragmatism; and Eugene Debs, the champion of radical reform. 

Suspicious of capitalism, this philosopher, the father of six children, had to deal with money. He demanded raises from college presidents, taught extra classes, and moved from apartment to apartment nine times between 1905 and 1914 in a gentrified New York. A workaholic, he pounded away at his typewriter and stopped reading for six months because of eyestrain. 

Why were students drawn to Dewey? He was not a mesmerizing lecturer, sitting at a table in front of the class with a single piece of paper and thinking aloud. Irving Edman (who became a philosopher) was initially repelled by this method, but looking over his notes, he soon realized “what had seemed so rambling . . . was of extraordinary coherence, texture and brilliance.” Dewey’s former student and later colleague, the philosopher J. H. Randall Jr., described a man who was “simple, sturdy, unpretentious, quizzical, shrewd, devoted, fearless, genuine.” Dewey had, according to biographer Jay Martin, “a general spiritedness and joviality . . . that attracted people of all ages, genders and races.”

After leaving Ann Arbor and following his dramatic entrance into Chicago during the Pullman Strike, Dewey spent ten years at the University of Chicago, becoming more radical and more famous. Before he published his groundbreaking essay, Dewey had to test his half-formed ideas in a real school, thus he and his wife ran the Lab School at the University of Chicago from 1894 to 1905. Classes were small and select. Dewey drew on the expertise of Chicago’s professors to create age-appropriate curriculums, stressing discovery and cooperation and the talents of creative teachers to implement it. The Dewey school was distinctly middle class, with motivated students and supportive parents. 

Visitors came from all over America and Dewey’s vision spread, so much so that he and his daughter Evelyn co-authored the 1915 book Schools of Tomorrow , a celebration of progressive pedagogy, complete with 27 photographs of children at work and play. In these schools, students visited fire stations, post offices, and city halls. They grew their own gardens, cooked, cobbled shoes, and tutored younger students. They staged plays dramatizing historical events. Pretending to be the heroes of the Trojan War, they held battles at recess with wooden swords and barrel-cover shields. Reading, writing, spelling, and calculating would be acquired naturally in conjunction with projects: “Studying alone out of a book is an isolated and unsocial performance,” the Deweys reminded readers of Schools of Tomorrow . The schools portrayed were chiefly elementary, and it is important to remember that Dewey’s reforms were rarely extended to rapidly growing high schools and less tractable adolescents.

In the John Dewey School in Denver in 1964, eighth graders create mosaic murals to decorate school corridors and offices. The activity demonstrates the Dewey principle of manual training—active rather than passive learning, “with real things and materials.”

—Ed Maker / Denver Post via Getty Images

Following a long-simmering conflict with University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper, Dewey—now prominent—moved to Columbia University in 1905. He remained there until 1930, teaching, lecturing in schools and community centers, traveling abroad to advise foreign educators, and writing articles for learned journals and popular magazines like the New Republic . Dewey believed that a philosopher should not only reflect but also act, both to improve society and to participate in “the living struggles and issues of his age.” His tools: reason, science, pragmatism. His goal: democracy, not only in politics and the economy but also as an ethical ideal, as a way of life. 

As an activist and public intellectual, Dewey made a stunning series of contributions. He founded the American Association of University Professors and helped organize the New York City Teachers Union. He supported efforts that led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union. He worked in settlement houses to help assimilate immigrants, spoke out against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, defended Bertrand Russell when Russell’s morals were questioned, and sided with historian Harold Rugg when Rugg’s books were censored. In response to feelings of guilt he harbored about his support for World War I, Dewey led a crusade that culminated in the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, an influential though controversial treaty outlawing war. 

During the 1920s, Dewey’s influence became international. He traveled with Alice to Japan in 1919, where he criticized the emperor cult, and lived in China for more than two years, giving two hundred lectures. The Chinese called him “Mr. Democracy” and “Mr. Science.” His books have been translated into Mandarin, and scholars at the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University remind me that his emphasis on discovery and ethics has influenced contemporary Chinese educators trying to encourage creativity and virtue in students. Dewey went on to travel to Turkey, South Africa, and Mexico, advising governments on how to improve their educational systems. Today, in eleven countries, ranging from Italy to Argentina, that traditionally educate their students with lectures, memorization, and exams, there are Dewey centers that look to humanize education and consider the wider aspects of his philosophy. 

John Dewey’s seventieth birthday on October 20, 1929, just before the stock market crash, became a national event. He had received numerous honorary degrees, declarations from foreign nations, and a portrait bust by the famous sculptor Jacob Epstein. From all over the world came telegrams, including tributes from Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Felix Frankfurter. Twenty-five hundred notables crowded into the Astor Hotel’s Grand Ballroom to hear Dewey compared to Ben Franklin and praised by historian James Harvey Robinson as “the chief spokesman of our age and the chief thinker of our days.” 

Surrounded by children in 1949, John Dewey celebrates his ninetieth birthday at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

—Gado Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Not all Americans praised John Dewey. From his days at the Experimental School in Chicago until his death in 1952, he was the object of sharp criticism. Some parents in Chicago claimed that after a morning of chaotic play in the Dewey school, they had to teach their children how to read and write. Immigrants in New York City violently protested against manual training in 1915. They wanted a classical education so that their children could go to college and become professionals. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr found Dewey’s view of human nature too optimistic, his view of society utopian.

The controversy surrounding Dewey continued after his death. “The 1950s was a horrible decade for progressive educators,” notes educational historian Diane Ravitch. In Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (1953), Arthur Bestor mocked the fad of “life adjustment” and called for a return of the “academic curriculum.” Admiral Hiram Rickover, the father of the nuclear-powered submarine, attributed Russia’s achievement with Sputnik to Dewey and his followers. In Life magazine, President Eisenhower blamed America’s educational failings on “John Dewey’s teachings.”

The controversy continues today. Analytic philosophers have little use for a sage who was not interested in arcane disputes over language. The champion of cultural literacy, E. D. Hirsch, insists that the education-school professors who lionize Dewey instruct future teachers to eschew facts, completion, testing, and lectures. In 2011, Human Events , a conservative weekly, listed Democracy and Education among the most dangerous books published in the past two hundred years. 

Perhaps Dewey’s greatest liability was his style. Concerning clarity, the nineteenth-century philosopher Herbert Spencer once wrote: “To so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least possible effort.” Dewey read Spencer but did not follow this advice. The editor of the New Republic regularly rewrote Dewey’s submissions. Defenders detect profundity beneath obscurity and argue that Dewey deliberately adopted an antirhetorical writing style. Critics demand clarity and example, maybe some rhythm and grace—missing in a philosopher who had no ear for music. I have met many contemporary teachers who have heard of John Dewey. I have not met one who has read his works, except reluctantly.

Of course, any philosopher who becomes famous can expect critiques and may become attractive to followers who will distort his or her message. The distortion will be magnified when the philosopher writes a lot, especially in an abstract and imprecise style. As a result, sweet-tempered John Dewey, who welcomed dialog and experimentation, is blamed for any change that opponents can label “progressive”: open classrooms, cooperative learning, life adjustment, language reading, the attacks on Latin and canonical books, the slighting of the gifted and talented, declining test scores. The assaults can be expanded to include social ills as well as educational shortcomings: communism, creeping socialism, juvenile delinquency, declining patriotism, a weakened military, and a less productive economy. Both Catholics and Communists reviled Dewey.

Patiently, Dewey defended himself. He reminded his educational disciples that students should not be allowed to do whatever they please, that planning and organization must accompany freedom, and that teachers should be guides as well as subject matter experts. While many forms of progressive education were spreading in America, he insisted in his 1938 book, Experience and Education , that education should not be without direction. 

What are we to make of John Dewey? His FBI file mentioned his carelessly combed gray hair, disheveled attire, and monotonous drawl. They might have added that he was agnostic in religion and radical in politics. He was a good husband and father and a generous colleague. Optimistic, hard-working, idealistic, he rejected the Lost Generation’s cynicism and Sigmund Freud’s pessimism and preoccupation with the unconscious. Biographer Alan Ryan notes, “He was uninterested in either his own or other people’s private miseries.” He did not comment on sexuality, the obsession of contemporary America. Unlike evolutionary psychologists, he believed nurture was more powerful than nature. He overcame a natural timidity to become a giant in the world of philosophy and insisted on a new role for the philosopher, combining contemplation with action. 

The words authority , discipline , deferred gratification , tradition , hierarchy , and order , were not part of his vocabulary. He favored community , equality, activity , freedom . He had no use for McGuffey Readers, designed to instill character, patriotism, and love of God. He criticized the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the New Deal. He believed in unions, strikes, government planning, and redistribution of income. Opposed to laissez-faire capitalism, he was convinced that leaders were more dangerous than the masses. 

Rejecting the specialization of contemporary philosophers, Dewey tackled logic, ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology. He commented on war and peace, labor unions, and capitalists. Above all, he transformed schools, connecting students to real life, encouraging them to become critical thinkers and idealists.

The philosopher and educator, photographed here in 1946, wrote 37 books and published 766 articles over his lifetime.

—JHU Sheridan Libraries / Gado Images / Getty

What is Dewey’s legacy? President Lyndon Johnson (once a teacher) extolled “Dr. Johnny” and connected Dewey’s ideas to the Great Society. Southern Illinois University has created a center for Dewey studies and published 37 volumes of his writings as well as twenty-four thousand pieces of his correspondence. The former editor, Larry Hickman, tells me there has been a revival of interest in Dewey after years of neglect. He argues that Dewey’s pluralism encourages “global citizenship.” He notes that after World War II, Japanese educators turned to Dewey and adds that he has a following among millions of Japanese Buddhists. 

There is a John Dewey Society in America and John Dewey Study Centers around the world. Deborah Meier, the only elementary school teacher ever to receive a MacArthur “Genius” award, repeatedly cites Dewey’s influence on her democratic, project- and community-based schools. The Coalition for Essential Schools, whose slogan is “less is more,” is based on Dewey progressivism. Left-leaning public intellectuals and professors Cornel West and Noam Chomsky champion Dewey as an enemy of elites and founder of participatory democracy. The late Richard Rorty, an iconoclastic and controversial but prominent philosopher, rediscovered Dewey in the 1980s and praised Dewey’s pragmatism, political engagement, and vision for a democratic utopia (which Rorty says will never happen).

Echoing Dewey’s conclusion in “My Pedagogic Creed,” many contemporary psychologists insist that human beings are wired to be social, craving group activity and connections. In addition to evidence from brain imaging unavailable in Dewey’s time, they cite the ubiquity of iPhones and the power of Facebook. Communitarians who feel America’s celebration of individualism has gone too far quote Dewey.

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” advised Robert Browning, Dewey’s favorite poet. Dewey was a radical reformer, a socialist, a secular humanist, a meliorist, even a utopian. He dreamed of an America without sexism or racism or ethnic divisions, a community that respected capitalists as well as craftspeople and that cultivated both science and art. His dense, turgid philosophical tracts are now of interest primarily to academicians; his more readable journalism remains of use to historians; his educational writings prove the most influential.

Contemporary Americans have opted for testing, standards, competition, choice, and academic curriculums. Education reports emphasize national security, jobs, and the achievement gap, not discovery, manual training, or community. Deliberately antiprogressive charter schools, such as the KIPP Schools and Success Academies, try to overcome the achievement gap and end poverty by content, competition, and discipline. They stress grit, not joy. Teachers, denied the status Dewey thought so important, still stand in front of the class and talk. Progressive schools are few and seem most effective in small schools staffed by “true believers.” 

Still, glimmers of Dewey’s dream remain. In the New Haven middle school of my thirteen-year-old grandson, the social studies teacher started the year by asking, “Why study history?” The mathematics teacher showed the movie Stand and Deliver . The language arts teacher asked each student to share with the class their thoughts about their individually selected summer reading book. My grandson chose a trilogy, The Hunger Games , not in the canon. The science teacher asked them to construct a model bridge out of one piece of paper and Scotch tape. To build community, the principal suspended classes, led the students outside, and asked each to start a conversation with someone he or she had not talked to before that morning. 

Today most K–12 teachers still believe in content, competition, evaluation, and discipline. Simultaneously, they believe in relevance, projects, group learning, and choice. The Common Core Standards, approved by most states, stress rigor but at the same time emphasize inquiry and understanding. John Dewey would be moderately pleased with a pragmatic nation that combines traditional education with the insights of progressives.

Peter Gibbon is a Senior Research Scholar at the Boston University School of Education and the author of A Call to Heroism: Renewing America’s Vision of Greatness (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002). He has directed four Teaching American History programs and is currently the director of an NEH Summer Seminar, “Philosophers of Education: Major Thinkers from the Enlightenment to the Present.”

Funding information

NEH has awarded 19 grants, totaling $3,091,240, on John Dewey to Southern Illinois University for publication of the Collected Works, in 37 volumes, and an electronic edition of Dewey’s correspondence.

Republication statement

The text of this article is available for unedited republication, free of charge, using the following credit : “Originally published as “John Dewey: Portrait of a Progressive Thinker” in the Spring 2019 issue of  Humanities  magazine, a publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities.” Please notify us at  @email  if you are republishing it or have any questions.

John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings by Reginald A. Archambault, ed., University of Chicago Press, 1964. Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence by James Campbell, Open Court, 1995. Democracy and Education by John Dewey, The Macmillan Company, 1916. Schools of Tomorrow by John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey, Grindl Press, 2016.  The Education of John Dewey: A Biography by Jay Martin, Columbia University Press, 2002. The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001. John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism by Alan Ryan, W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment. Political and business leaders endorse its importance.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o'clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68-69; 1933: 91-92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot's position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Morevoer, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69-70; 1933: 92-93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond line from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on the subsequent emotive response (Siegel 1988).

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in frequency in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the frequency of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Critical thinking dispositions can usefully be divided into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started) (Facione 1990a: 25). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), and Black (2012).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work.

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? Abrami et al. (2015) found that in the experimental and quasi-experimental studies that they analyzed dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), and Bailin et al. (1999b).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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• Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking (AILACT)
• Center for Teaching Thinking (CTT)
• Critical Thinking Across the European Higher Education Curricula (CRITHINKEDU)
• Critical Thinking Definition, Instruction, and Assessment: A Rigorous Approach (criticalTHINKING.net)
• Critical Thinking Research (RAIL)
• Foundation for Critical Thinking
• Insight Assessment
• Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21)
• The Critical Thinking Consortium
• The Nature of Critical Thinking: An Outline of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities , by Robert H. Ennis

abilities | bias, implicit | children, philosophy for | civic education | decision-making capacity | Dewey, John | dispositions | education, philosophy of | epistemology: virtue | logic: informal

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