Can critical thinking be taught?
Robert Boostrom, associate professor of education, doesn’t think critical thinking – or any subject – can be taught in the traditional sense. “I don’t think it can be reduced to any recipe and transmitted in any form,” he said. “I think we can create environments that allow students to think.” Boostrom teaches a graduate level education course based on his book, Thinking: the Foundation of Critical and Creative Learning in the Classroom, which explores the ways in which the practice of teaching unintentionally encourages students not to think. “It’s important for teachers to be conscious of the ways in which they teach non-thinking,” Boostrom said. “If you tell students, ‘Here’s how you do this,’ you end up with people not thinking at all, they are just following a procedure. There are a number of conditions in teaching and learning that encourage students to engage in non-thinking procedures.” The course is structured around the three main paradoxes from his book: defining, telling an
