The Foundational Skills of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is highly valued in educational writings if not in practice. Despite a substantial literature on the subject, for many years the area of critical thinking was notorious for its conceptual diffi culties. For example, years ago Cuban (1984) lamented that “defi ning thinking skills, reasoning, critical thought, and problem solving is troublesome to both social scientists and practitioners. Troublesome is a polite word; the area is a conceptual swamp” (p. 676). There has been some progress in elucidating the concept of critical thinking since the time of Cuban’s statement, but we shall argue here that educational theory is on the verge of an even more stunning conceptual advance in the area of critical thinking. Education is beginning to understand the critical thinking concept by relating it to the constructs of intelligence and rational thought. In fact, modern cognitive science provides a coherent framework for understanding the relation between critical thinking, intelligence, and rational thought.