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Martin Davies and Ronald Barnett
date, much of the scholarly effort has been (rightly) expended on the indi-
vidual axis, with its emphasis on the cultivation of skills and dispositions.
This is understandable: being an (individual) critical thinker naturally has
many personal and social benefits, not to mention its need in the workplace.
Increasingly, however, over the past twenty years, the sociocultural dimension
has been developed, and it should be accorded an equal place in any model of
critical thinking.
What is critical thinking?
In 1990, the American Philosophical Association convened an authoritative
panel of forty-six noted experts on the subject to produce a definitive account
of the concept. It resulted in the production of the landmark Delphi Report
(Facione 1990). This led to the following definition of critical thinking which
is as long as it is hard to follow:
We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment
which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation and inference as well
as explanation of the evidential conceptual, methodological, criteriological
or contextual considerations upon which that judgment was based. Critical
thinking is essential as a tool of inquiry. Critical thinking is a pervasive and
self-rectifying, human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitu-
ally inquisitive, well-informed, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in
making judgments, willing to consider, clear about issues, orderly in com-
plex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in selec-
tion of criteria, focused in inquiry and persistent in seeking results which
are as precise as the subject and circumstances of inquiry permit. (Facione
1990)
While of undeniable importance as a definition of critical thinking for educa-
tional philosophers, this account of critical thinking does not lend itself easily
to educational implementation. How would a dean of a Faculty, for example,
use this definition to further embed the teaching of critical thinking in the
curriculum? How useful is it, in a practical sense, in a higher education con-
text? It is not clear that higher education can benefit from such a definition in
the form it is presented. Nor does it square with the wider concerns about the
nature of criticality. It seems, on the face of it, a definition rooted in
one kind
of critical thinking, namely, critical thinking as argumentation and judgment
formation.
Among the various threads in the above definition, we can distinguish the
following: critical thinking as skills in inference making and argumentation,
critical thinking as (reflective) judgment formation, and critical thinking as
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