The basic purpose of shaping college students' and upper-grade school students' critical thinking, as well as that of adults who do not have established skills of thinking creatively, is to expand their thinking competences in order to deal effectively with social, scientific, and practical problems. In the process of teaching uppergrade students, their teachers address the following tasks: enabling the students to master knowledge of the laws and methods of logical and critical thinking; mastering hypothetical and deductive logical thinking with elements of critical appraisal; and teaching the ability to understand the logical procedures of explanation and prediction, proof and refutation, debate and argumentation, and assessment and self-assessment. In this article, the author proposes a technology for shaping critical thinking. This technology is based on principles of construction that are based on specific kinds of thinking activity. This technology can serve as a general guide for the teacher, who, before every class, chooses methods that are appropriate to the goals and objectives that he or she has set, and also makes use of specific techniques of instruction and forms of organizing activity and assessing the instruction in lectures, seminars, and practical classes.