Articles on Critical Thinking

1. Incorporating Critical Thinking Skills Development into ESL/ESL Courses

This article is specifically for ESL classes. After a brief summary of why critical thinking is important, it focuses on three classroom techniques: debate, media analysis, and problem solving.
2. Enhancing Critical Thinking with Structured Controversial Dialogues

Also for ESL classes, this article discusses how to use structured controversial dialogues in the classroom. Structured controversial dialogues use problem solving and persuasion skills in addition to improving language ability. The article includes a procedure for including it in lesson plans, and two examples of dialogues.
3. Creative and Critical Thinking in Language Classrooms

This article articulates the importance of recognizing and developing the individual thinking of students, particularly in language classrooms. It then gives suggestions on how to achieve this teaching style
4. An Introduction to Critical Thinking

This thorough article gives considerable background on critical thinking, including an analysis of its purpose and a definition, and offers suggestions on how to incorporate it into every aspect of class: lectures, homework, etc.
5. The Role of Questions in Teaching, Thinking and Learning

Creating a classroom environment that fosters excitement about learning is central to this article. It details how important questions are to the learning process and gives advice on how to promote a classroom environment in which students ask questions.
6. Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking

This article discusses skills that involve critical thinking, such as problem solving, and three strategies for teaching these skills: building categories, finding problems, and enhancing the environment. It highlights the importance of presenting students with problems that involve critical thinking, as opposed to teaching through memorization and regurgitation, and suggests some teaching methods and ideas to help teachers do this.
7. Tactics that Encourage Active Learning

This is a brief list of ways to encourage student participation and critical thinking in the classroom.
8. Teaching Thinking Skills

In addition to stating its purpose and definition, this article provides extensive results from research that has been done on teaching critical thinking. The research supports the importance of critical thinking and shows which teaching styles were found to be the most effective. There is a summary of the research findings at the end of the article.
9. A Professional Development Model for K-12 Schools: Critical Thinking as the Key

This article explains a teaching philosophy that is centered on critical thinking. It describes the problems with many of today’s K-12 schools, and offers tips on how to rectify those problems.
10. Problem Solving in the EFL Classroom: Job Hunting Relevance Tasks Using “Reason + X”

This article discusses gearing classroom activities towards student interests to increase motivation. The focus is on role-playing in a job hunting scenario. The article encourages the use of opinion language to express one’s ideas and the reasoning behind them.
11. Making Critical Thinking Intuitive: Using Drama, Examples, and Images. Teaching for Intuitive Understanding

This article discusses the use of drama, examples, and images in teaching critical thinking. The author’s goal is to make students’ critical thinking intuitive. The article also details in considerable length three different personality types in relation to critical thinking.
12. The Critical Thinking Community: High School Lesson Plans

This page is actually a series of short recommendations for lesson plans. Some can be used directly, while others are probably not applicable for ESL teaching. Still, they can provide insight on how to structure a lesson around critical thinking even if they are not used directly.
13. An Interview with Linda Elder about Using Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

This is an extensive interview with the co-author of “How to Study and Learn”, a manual for students that emphasizes thinking about subjects analytically and fundamentally. The interview provides general insight into teaching strategies and new ways of thinking about classroom learning.
14. ARTICLES – THE CRITICAL THINKING COMMUNITY

This page has links to many more articles on critical thinking.