Derek Bok, former Harvard president in his new book "Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More"

Concepts and theories have little value unless one is able to apply them to new situations.

The ability to think critically –

• to ask pertinent questions,
• recognize and define problems, identify the arguments on all sides of the issue,
• search for and use relevant data,
• and arrive in the end at carefully reasoned judgments –

is the indispensable means of making effective use of information and knowledge, whether for practical or purely speculative purposes.

Instructors need to create a process of active learning by

• posing problems,
• challenging student answers, and
• encouraging members of the class to apply the information and concepts in assigned reading to a variety of new situations.

Instructors who do best at teaching critical thinking tend to follow a number of guiding principles.

They begin

• not by deciding what material they ought to cover but
• by concentrating on what it is they want their students to learn –
• what reasoning skills they want their students to master and
• what knowledge they need to absorb to deal with problems posed in the course.

• They devote much thought to how to awaken their students’ curiosity and make them want to learn, not just get a grade but out of intrinsic interest in the subject.
• They search for common misconceptions students bring to the course that interfere with their thinking and then look for ways to expose and ultimately overcome these mistaken beliefs.
• They encourage their students to think for themselves by challenging them with interesting questions and using class discussions, collaborative projects, and other forms of active learning to develop habits of critical thinking and respect for the power of carefully reasoning and analysis.
• They evaluate their students through papers and tests closely tied to the objectives of the course in order to learn how well members of the class are progressing and give timely feedback to help students monitor their own progress and understand how they can improve their powers of reasoning and analysis.
• Finally, they try to convey high expectations for the class while giving students’ confidence that they can succeed.

What is remarkable, then, is not that professors place so high a value on critical thinking; the wonder, as we shall soon discover, is that they do not do more to act on their belief. Ironically, the fact that college faculties rarely stop to consider what a full-blown commitment to critical thinking would entail may help to explain why they have been so quick to agree on its importance to the undergraduate program.”

”Despite their overwhelming support for critical thinking as the primary goal of undergraduate education, most professors do not teach in the manner just described. Rather than discussing problems in class, or using group work to promote active learning, they spend almost the entire hour lecturing to a passive student audience. According to one survey of 1,800 instructors from a wide variety of institutions, between 73 and 83 percent of the faculty teach in this fashion.”

“It is curious that faculty members rely so heavily on methods of teaching and assessment that seem ill suited for the goal they claim to value above all others. Why, for example, do so many college instructors continue to lecture long after most professional schools have drastically curtailed such methods in favor of more problem-based discussion?”

“Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. It is used to describe thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal directed-the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions when the thinker is using skills that are thoughtful and effective for the particular context and type of thinking task.”
Halpern, Diane F. Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking