This paper discusses whether critical thinking can be taught in the college classroom. It argues that education in general provides the tools for thinking, and therefore, improves the capability for better thinking. The Alverno College faculty, as an example, has improved student critical-thinking ability because the faculty stresses explicitness, multiple opportunities to practice in differing contexts, and the development of student self-awareness and self-assessment. Teaching students to focus on the elements of a problem or to create a schematic or graphic representation are useful first steps to learning how to think. Also, student participation, teacher encouragement, and student-to-student interaction (active practice, motivation, feedback) are positively related to critical thinking. Courses in logic and laboratory procedures are not very successful in teaching practical reasoning skills, whereas statistics courses have been more useful by helping students to generalize. Three elements of teaching are highlighted as contributing to the improvement of thinking ability: (1) verbalizing methods and strategies to encourage development of learning strategies; (2) student discussion and interaction; and (3) explicit emphasis on problem-solving procedures and methods using varied examples. Contains 13 references and 8 suggested readings. (GLR)