Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly, logically and systematically. When we think critically, we try not to rely on intuitions or personal feelings. Within the context of higher education, critical thinking skills enable us to, among other things: ^[1]

• analyse arguments’ soundness and evaluate whether a writer or speaker establishes a claim on good grounds (i.e. reasoning and evidence)
• construct arguments and develop reasons in support of what we believe
• identify and evaluate objections to arguments
• draw out implications to a conclusion
• construct a problem to investigate
• evaluate between alternative ways of approaching a question, and answering a question
• discover and overcome prejudices and biases
• reflect on our thinking and suspend judgment when necessary
• become aware of the sources and purposes of various bodies of knowledge, in other words, being able to respond to the question “how do we know what we know?”

^[1] Some of the following points came from David Hitchcock’s account of critical thinking.  See his “Critical Thinking as Educational Ideal,” in On Reasoning and Argument: Essays in Informal Logic and on Critical Thinking (Springer, 2017), 477-497.

As a foundational class in the Humanities and Social Sciences Domain of the USP curriculum, WCT is particularly suitable in developing critical thinking skills, because students repeatedly engage in three activities: (1) evaluating arguments, (2) constructing new arguments and (3) revising their arguments. 

Evaluating Arguments

In WCT, students encounter arguments in assigned readings and in class discussions.  When students evaluate arguments, they practise critical thinking in the following ways.

1. determining whether the claim is supported by adequate grounds: students’ primary job is to examine if a given claim is backed up by good reasoning and evidence.^[2]
   
2. determining if there are counter-arguments: in cases where students would like to contest a claim, they can challenge it intrinsically by raising problems about the grounds of the claim (e.g., they can charge that the evidence does not support the claim), or extrinsically by raising problems about other concerns (e.g. they can query a potential consequence of the claim).
3. drawing out implications: some students may go a step further, to infer an established claim’s implications.^[3]

Constructing arguments

The exercise of critical thinking skills in WCT lies beyond evaluating an argument’s validity and significance. When students draft academic arguments or arguments for a broader audience, they are developing their critical thinking skills in the following ways:

1. constructing a research question: students have to formulate a viable question and justify why it is worth asking.
2. considering different approaches to answering the research question: students need to grasp that there may often be more than one way to answer any question but also to evaluate which option is the most suitable.
3. arguing for the validity of a thesis or main claim (in response to the research question): students have to be able to provide good reasons and evidence as grounds for the claim.
4. collecting evidence: students have to determine which types of evidence to collect (e.g. first-hand data, interviews, scholarly essays).  In cases where they are engaging in human subjects research, students need to reflect on how their engagement with the human subjects can have implications for both the types of data gathered and the conclusion that they can draw from the data.
5. evaluating evidence: students have to evaluate the relevance and strength of the varied types of evidence.
6. organising arguments: students have to determine how to break down their thesis into different component parts and organise the different strands of argument systematically.
7. anticipating and responding to objections: as a way to strengthen an argument, students need to anticipate objections and respond them to them. This process entails constructing counter-arguments, evaluating which counter-argument(s) to respond to, and finally, responding to them.

Revising Arguments

Last but not least, the process of revising drafts helps students develop meta-cognition, that is, the ability to think about, assess and improve their own thinking.  Re-thinking and re-working a draft helps students reflect on how they have constructed the research question, argue for their claims, organize their arguments, clarify their concepts, and identify their struggles.  By prompting students to analyze their own thinking, this reflective process develops students’ self-awareness in employing and evaluating their critical thinking skills. 

^[2] The basic model of a claim, whereby a claim should be supported by grounds, came from the classical accounts of argumentation and reasoning by Stephen Toulmin.  Wayne Booth further specifies the model by suggesting that a claim should rest on reasons which are in turn grounded on evidence.  See Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rieke & Allan Janik, An Introduction to Reasoning, 2^nd ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1978, 1984), 23-78 and Stephen E. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument, updated ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 87-131; and Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb & Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 108-112.

^[3] The idea that critical thinking does not only consist in examining the basis of a claim, but also in drawing out further implications, came from Dewey’s well-known statement: “Active, persistent and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends.”  While Dewey called it “reflective thinking,” scholars and educators have generally taken it to be a classic account of critical thinking. See his How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1933), 9.

Finally, as a foundational class supporting USP’s interdisciplinary mission, WCT develops students’ capacity to discern a variety disciplinary approaches, theories, and methods, to see the ways such theoretical frameworks shape how a question is formulated, to understand what constitutes data or evidence for each, and ultimately to thereby learn how knowledge is constructed among different disciplines.