In our last critical thinking column we introduced the idea of intellectual standards and pointed out that all natural languages are repositories for such standards, which, when appropriately applied, serve as guides for assessing human reasoning. We argued that intellectual standards are necessary for cultivating the intellect and living a…

Students live in a world of thoughts. They accept some thoughts as true. They reject others as false. But the thoughts they perceive as true are sometimes false, unsound, or misleading. And the thoughts they perceive as false and trivial are sometimes true and significant. People don't automatically sense what is reasonable and what is…

In the last two columns in this critical thinking series we briefly introduced and discussed the concept of intellectual standards in connection with natural languages. We presented nine essential intellectual standards: clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, logicalness, significance, and fairness. These nine intellectual…

In the last three columns the authors introduced the concept and provided several examples of critical thinking competency standards that target the cultivation of intellectual traits. In this column the authors continue the discussion of these competency standards that are essential to teaching and learning because they go beyond the development…

Much lip service is given to the notion that students are learning to think critically. Studies consistently show that though faculty say that critical thinking is important to their instruction, they have difficulty articulating a clear conception of it and demonstrating how they foster it. In order for students to learn critical thinking,…