Critical Thinking Development as a Primary Goal of Elementary Education

Introduction

For the past few years, the impetus for change in the education system has called for a learning approach that not only teaches learners to pass exams but helps them fulfil their potential and support their efforts for growing up into committed and fully responsible citizens. The conventional approach to learning usually referred to as teacher-centered learning approach, has received criticism for the perception that learners are empty vessels whose role in a classroom is to passively receive knowledge from their instructors. Thus, the primary goal of teacher-centered education, which is still widely practiced in America and globally, is to impart knowledge through tests and assessments and expect a positive result. Numerous researchers have come to a consensus that the conventional teaching approach is inefficient due to its over-dependence on the teacher, failure to facilitate higher cognition, and failure to recognize learners as people with different learning potential and talents. As an alternative, the call for a student-centered approach that focuses on developing the skills of each learner and preparing them to navigate and solve problems in the real world before and after school is deepening. Hasslöf and Malmberg (2014) are convinced that critical thinking is an essential skill that students need to be productive both in their learning efforts and becoming self-accomplished individuals.

Given the relevance of critical thinking as primary necessity for learners to effectively encounter and address the complex problems and challenges that today’s world present, there is need to establish and develop frameworks, models, and theories that would help teachers, especially at the elementary education level, to develop students from unreflective thinkers to advanced and accomplished thinkers. Thus, the question that is worth asking, and which is of relevance for this literature review is; “how can elementary teachers develop critical thinking among young learners as a way of setting the pace for future cognitive development of the learners?”

The importance of finding answers to this question is twofold. First, it would help in producing learners who are highly informed not only with the knowledge in books but also the environment around them. Fuad, Zubaidah, Mahanal, and Suarsini, (2017) agree that diverse knowledge about the real world occurrences sets a stage for developing better ideas, critical reasoning, and useful decisions. Second, answering the question would help teachers produce students who have the appetite to think critically and analytically by depending on what they know to improve their lives and positively contribute to their societal development. Answering this question would be of benefit to teachers who seek ways on how to develop their young students into critical thinkers.

Critical Thinking as a Necessity for Better Reasoning and Decision Making

Critical thinking is one of the topics that have attracted much attention in research for the last two decades. Lampert (2013) defines it as the process of focusing thought towards solving a well-defined problem and selecting the best solution among a group of alternatives. Lampert’s definition seems legitimate as society is highly multifaceted, resulting in varying viewpoints. As such, one problem might have different solutions given the varying societal contexts, thereby generating a need to discern problems within the context in which they exist and finding solutions that apply to that context.

Such an argument points to the need for a flexible cognition that that highly depends on the nature identified problem and conditions that define it rather than previous experiences and knowledge. Given the fact that solving real-world problems, issues, and challenges never take a unitary approach, there is an absolute need to develop people who can think divergently. Lampert (2013) holds that it is vital for children to understand that things are not always as they appear and that people usually see the same things differently. The argument points to the fact that the proper reasoning begins by appreciating the divergent nature of problems and developing the need to approach the same problem differently.

Chin (2013) argues that developing students’ divergent thinking skills is more than integral in fostering their creativity. According to her, divergent thinking is the process of seeing and approaching various concepts and ideas from different perspectives by applying diverse interpretations and seeking multiple ways to solve a problem or question. Chin (2013) believes that becoming a critical thinker begins by developing an ability to reflect on personal experiences as well as contextual influences. Chin’s (2013) and Lampert’s (2013) argument suggests that divergent thinking and critical thinking mean the same thing.

Hu, Jia, Plucker, and Shan (2016) see critical thinking as the most important motivating factor towards learning and self-development. They define motivation in the context of learning as a learner’s energy and personal drive to engage, learn, and work effectively towards achieving potential learning goals and improving behavior. The researchers perceive critical thinking as a driving factor towards better reasoning and decision making. Reasoning, as used in this context, is a rational and intellectual process of thinking about something in order to arrive at logical, sensible, and credible conclusions or judgments. Hu et al. (2016) emphasize that teachers at all levels of education have a core role in ensuring that their students are motivated enough towards learning by developing their critical thinking abilities. Hasslöf and Malmberg (2014) hold that as students continue to learn in an environment motivated by critical thinking, they should be able to be more honest with themselves, regard controversial issues and problems as challenging yet exciting, develops curiosity towards problems and strives to understand them and practice more restraint in reasoning and decision making. They should be more interested in testing all sides of an argument, testing the arguments and evidence that are available is supporting or opposing a claim, and performing an exclusive analysis on them before generating informed inferences and conclusions.

To this point, although there is no single approved definition of critical thinking, it is evident that there is a consensus among researchers that critical thinking is indeed a necessary concept not only in education but in other spheres of life as well. The importance of critical thinking generates the need for children to begin the process of being critical thinkers as early as possible. As such, there is a need for elementary school teachers to take a central role in developing the initial stages of critical thinking in young learners. Paul (2018) holds that it is essential for elementary teachers to ensure that all their students have equal opportunities to become critical and analytical thinkers. Offering such an opportunity demands that learning paradigms shift from a one-size-fits-all approach to a paradigm where each learner is an independent center of consciousness with the ability to gain unique levels of cognition.

The Role of Teachers in Developing Critical Thinking in Learners

Vieira and Tenreiro-Vieira (2014) emphasize that critical thinking is a learnable skill that can be developed, practiced, and continually improved through effective curriculum integration. To develop critical thinkers right from elementary schooling, teaching instructions require changing from teaching in themselves to emphasizing how the content can be applied in real-world situations. Massa (2013) argues that critical thinking is a complex and controversial concept that must be developed and learned in a sequential manner beginning with the simplest concepts and moving towards more complex ones.  Florea and Hurjui (2015) see children as natural inquiries that are highly inquisitive of themselves and their environment and are thirsty for gaining knowledge to develop the basis for their cognition and reasoning. In this sense, the curriculum must help young students develop the right basis for reasoning and applying critical thinking in solving simple problems. Teachers have a fundamental role, therefore, to discern fundamental approaches of teaching that would help students transition from one stage of critical thinking to the next. The approach to learning that they adopt should seek teaching students to be open-minded, value reason and truth, see things from different angles and perspectives, and appreciate the ideas of others.

Florea and Hurjui (2015) argued that teachers have a central role in ensuring that their learners become efficient in every stage of critical thinking. They held that there are at least seven stages of critical thinking that teachers need to help their learners to develop. Such stages include the ability to recognize and understand the claims and arguments of others in a more objective manner; understand assumptions behind those claims; establish valid relationships between the claims and their respective assumptions; determine the level of appropriateness of the assumptions in drawing inferences; establish the validity of claims; collect necessary evidences to support the claims; adopting more convincing alternatives. Committing efforts towards helping students to develop critical thinking is indeed necessary for developing learners from novice and unreflective thinkers, to challenged thinkers, to the beginning thinkers, and eventually to the practicing thinkers.

As a way of helping elementary students to transition from one critical thinking stage to the next, teachers require embracing their role in positioning the learners as active participants rather than passive knowledge receivers. To achieve this, there is an increasing need for teachers to shifts from paradigms and approaches that are teacher-centered to those that are student-centered. Focusing on the development of each student encourages the learners to search and explore knowledge on their own rather than through classroom models and teachings. As Fuad et al. (2017) posit, a self-motivated learning process results in better reasoning and performance. Thus, teachers have a role to involve every learner in the learning process while being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each learner. Such efforts would grant learners equal opportunities to grow.

Additionally, teachers have a role in applying scientific approaches in their teaching processes to help learners develop a systematic approach to problems and real-world issues. Scientific approaches encourage learners to observe, question, explore, associate, and communicate real-world problems or issues and how to address them. Thus, teachers need to create a learning environment where learners are free to interact, make scientific interpretations and inferences about their experiences and discuss with each other, and come up with guesses, conjectures, and hypotheses that they think best describes their experiences. To this point, it is evident that teachers are at the center of fostering critical thinking in learners. How, then can elementary school teachers develop critical thinking in learners?

Models for Developing Critical Thinking in Learners

There have been significant research efforts for the last decade in an attempt to establish the most viable answers to the question outlined above. Researchers have developed numerous frameworks, models, and theories on how teachers can develop critical thinking in their learners. In their thinking ability structure model, Hu et al. (2016) provide that teaching critical thinking leans on three aspects. First is the critical thinking content, which concerns specific learning pedagogies that learning concentrates on. Second is the thinking method that is applied. Such methods might include inductive and deductive reasoning, brainstorming, comparison, questioning, and classification. The third is the expected thinking quality, which might entail flexibility, originality, and critical thinking. They argue that these three aspects of teaching must be combined effectively and within the context of a body of knowledge. In simple terms, every curriculum requires applying an appropriate thinking method in order to achieve the desired thinking quality. The appropriate thinking method highly depends on the context of the learning process.

Another model, developed by Norris and Ennis emphasized on five steps necessary for meeting the requirements of a critical thinking inspiring course. The five-step model consists of classification, basic support, inferences, advanced classification, and strategies and tactics (Fahim  & Eslamdoost, 2014). In this model, teachers should begin by classifying the students in learning-groups in which they can freely interact with each other, share concepts, and foster their thinking. The classification is followed by basic support where teachers avail themselves to each group, providing them with the necessary learning and emotional support that they might need. Such groups and support would foster individual efforts to make personal inferences and influence others. Restructuring the groups would then ensure that advancing thinkers are exposed to more challenging learning problems that would help them develop even further. The teachers are then supposed to adopt appropriate strategies and tactics to assess the level at which learners have gained new concepts.

Another significant model worth mentioning is the dialogue model. According to the model, teachers can best foster critical thinking by always involving learners in a dialogue to develop learning potential from what the learner already knows rather than imparting knowledge directly from textbooks (Fuad et al., 2017). The term dialogue, in this case, means involving the learners, their teachers, and the community in an open conversation where no party is either superior or inferior but is willing to learn from each other. The effective learning process, therefore, begins by establishing a rapport with the learners as a primary motivation towards active learning. Through dialogue, teachers can create an environment where all learners, irrespective of their ages, gender, or race, feel free to contribute to the learning process. Within the concept of dialogue is the need to integrate learning with society. Fuad et al. (2017) noted that increasing children’s participation in community activities allows them to effectively internalize various tools within the communities, thereby fostering thinking. For instance, a learning activity that takes place inside a museum triggers critical thought and understanding history and art more than the concepts inscribed in a textbook.

The final model worth considering is the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. According to the framework, teachers should focus on helping learners develop six levels of cognitive learning, including remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating (Paul, 2018). Each of these learning levels is conceptually different and requires the selection of appropriate language and verbs to foster understanding. For instance, the teaching approach applied at the lowest part of the taxonomy, remembering, should aim at fostering simple knowledge acquisition. Thus, its primary goal is to ensure that learners can memorize, recall, list, and repeat information. The highest level of the taxonomy, creating, focuses on ensuring that learners can build new mental structures by combining various concepts that they have learned to create new judgments, ideas, and perceptions. Beginning every learning process with ‘remembering’ and ending with ‘creating’ ensures that learners gain new insights from the learning process and can apply them is addressing real-world issues.

Conclusion

The literature review confirms that critical thinking is indeed a complex concept yet critical in ensuring excellence not only in the school environment but also in a real-world context. It recognizes the role of elementary teachers in laying a foundation for critical thinking among young learners. Various models that can help teachers in developing critical thinking among young learners have also been identified. However, a critical analysis of the literature review generates various concerns. First, it is perplexing as to why critical thinking is still absent in many schools despite its significance in promoting learning in all levels of education as well as in real life. Second, existing research on the topic of critical thinking has widely been generalized. As such, critical thinking in elementary educations still remains unexplored. It is important to note that some critical thinking frameworks applied at higher levels of learning might be complex for elementary students. Thus, there is a need to tailor research on how critical thinking can be promoted in elementary schools. Such research efforts should focus on developing new models that are specifically applicable to elementary education.

References

Chin, C. (2013). Cultivating divergent thinking: Conceptualization as a critical component of artmaking. Art Education, 66(6), 28-33. doi:10.1080/00043125.2013.11519247

Fahim, M. W., & Eslamdoost, S. (2014). Critical thinking: Frameworks and models for teaching. English Language Teaching, 7(7). doi:10.5539/elt.v7n7p141

Florea, N. M., & Hurjui, E. (2015). Critical Thinking in Elementary School Children. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 180, 565-572. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.161

Fuad, N. M., Zubaidah, S., Mahanal, S., & Suarsini, E. (2017). Improving junior high schools’ critical thinking skills based on test three different models of learning. International Journal of Instruction, 10(01), 101-116. doi:10.12973/iji.2017.1017a

Hasslöf, H., & Malmberg, C. (2014). Critical thinking as room for subjectification in Education for Sustainable Development. Environmental Education Research, 21(2), 239-255. doi:10.1080/13504622.2014.940854

Hu, W., Jia, X., Plucker, J. A., & Shan, X. (2016). Effects of a critical thinking skills program on the learning motivation of primary school students. Roeper Review, 38(2), 70-83. doi:10.1080/02783193.2016.1150374

Lampert, N. (2013). Inquiry and Critical Thinking in an Elementary Art Program. Art Education, 66(6), 6-11. doi:10.1080/00043125.2013.11519244

Paul, R. W. (2018). Critical thinking and the critical person. Thinking: The Second International Conference, 373-403. doi:10.4324/9781315802015-27

Vieira, R. M., & Tenreiro-Vieira, C. (2014). Fostering scientific literacy and critical thinking in elementary science education. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 14(4), 659-680. doi:10.1007/s10763-014-9605-2