Critical Thinking Critical Response

Module 5 Critical Response: Critical Thinking Does critical thinking matter? That is the question posed by Millar (2013), and to put it succinctly, it matters a lot. Nowadays, we have access to an unprecedented amount of information thanks to the internet, much of which is invalid or unreliable. Take the anti-vaccine movement, for example. A lack of critical thinking and fear-mongering on the internet and in the media has led to a wave of people believing that vaccines are responsible for, among other things, autism. This has led to a resurgence of childhood diseases that were at one point essentially eliminated, such as measles (Millar, 2013). It also led to two acquaintances dying from preventable causes because they believed the Covid-19 vaccine would kill them. The vaccine didn’t, but Covid-19 did. Clearly, critical thinking is important. But how can we, as educators, teach critical thinking skills to our students and prepare them for success in the “real world”? Firstly, we must promote the belief in our classrooms that not all information can be trusted at face value. (Ormrod, 2019). We must encourage and model critical thinking and skepticism by thinking aloud and questioning or challenging things we hear or read (Ormrod, 2019). Furthermore, research shows that the most effective way to teach critical thinking skills is to design lessons that explicitly teach these skills (Marin & Halpern, 2011). Students need to understand why the skills are important and have many opportunities to practice and transfer these skills to new contexts (Marin & Halpern, 2011). Ormrod (2019) says, “In this era of widespread access to multiple sources of information...critical thinking is now more critical than ever” (p. 459), and I could not agree more.