The Importance Of Critical Thinking

It is believed that cultivating critical think and disposition is critical in the 21st century. Yang & Chung set out to ascertain whether introducing critical thinking within the parameters of a civic class would help students to better retain the skills taught. The research comes on the heels or potential in response to the Ministry of Education of Taiwan announcement of the development of a 9 year integrated curriculum which focused on independent critical thinking and problem solving ability as educational goals.
As the world and technology evolves rapidly, it is becoming more and more essential to obtain critical thinking skills to bring about readiness to meet the impeding challenges. Within Yang and Chung experimental study they cite several articles on the teaching of critical thinking. They begin by defining the definition of Critical Thinking; Ennis (1998) defines critical thinking as a ‘reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do’ (Yang, 2009). Kuhn (1991) provides a more global concept in his definitions which deems CT as a ‘form of reasoned argument’ which helps to emphasize both metacognitive and reflective skills that are

However, on other subscales, such as recognition of assumption and deduction, truth-seeking and inquisitiveness there was no difference. Also it was noted that in the process of group debate those in the experimental group made significant efforts to think through solution when confronted with a specific problem. It was concluded that 4 months was an insufficient amount of time to transform relatively passive learner into efficient critical thinker. Since critical thinking takes time, effort and support to develop this type of short term class is insufficient to see extensive progress in