Think, talk, write, reflect: How to teach students to think critically

A focus on critical thinking is back at the forefront of concern across multiple contexts and disciplines.Unfortunately, research indicates that we have not been very successful at developing a critical thinking capacity in students. This paper discusseswhy this might be so and suggests that we can improve outcomes by using an epistemological framework to highlightthe process of knowledge creation.This links critical thinking to outcomes.It then sets out how this can be done by presenting a few simple techniques that have been shown to be effective. The advantage of the techniques described is that they are applicable across disciplines and do not require the displacement of topic content. It is our contention that these techniques, when applied appropriately, will improve students’ critical thinking capacities in measurable ways.