Should critical thinking be considered a general or a subject-specific skill?

Different positions have been developed for critical thinking, its nature and its definition. One of the biggest debates concerns whether critical thinking is a general or a subject-specific skill. This debate is very important for this thesis, because it explores how the assessed construct should be perceived and justifies the decision why critical thinking is assessed as a general construct and a set of skills which can be applied in different contexts.

One of the most famous opponents of the idea that critical thinking is a general skill was McPeck. McPeck disagreed with the idea that critical thinking is a general construct and he claimed that critical thinking can only exist in a subject area. McPeck (1981) defined critical thinking as the ‘appropriate use of reflective skepticism’ (p.7), which means that critical thinking does not require scepticism in general. Critical thinkers should know when to ask questions and what the appropriate questions to be asked are. Critical thinking does not involve simply questioning or disagreeing with what is said. This happens only if it is necessary for a solution to be achieved or for the insight of a problem to be developed.

The key idea of McPeck about critical thinking, which probably distinguished him from Ennis and other scholars, was that ‘critical thinking always manifests itself in connection with some identifiable activity or subject area and never in isolation’ (McPeck, 1981, p.5). According to McPeck, somebody might be critical about X and not be critical about Y. McPeck stated that the study of logic (formal and informal) is not adequate for somebody to think critically. This is probably an argument that could also contradict the ideas of Lipman who argued in favour of the teaching of logic. Lipman (1987) wrote that the opinion of McPeck who perceived only a discipline- specific thinking has merit, but it is ‘needlessly narrow’ (p. 11).

McPeck identified two problems in the position of Ennis. The first issue is the contradiction between discussing for general critical thinking but using subject-specific dimensions. According to McPeck (1981), Ennis mentioned three dimensions of critical thinking: logical, criterial and pragmatic. He explained that even though Ennis

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presented critical thinking as a general skill, only the first dimension incorporates logic, while the other two require specific knowledge and a particular subject area. The second issue is that, when critical thinking is perceived as a subject-independent construct, the statements discussed are always obvious and too generic to be useful. Specifically, McPeck (1981, p.52) mentioned that they ‘typically degenerate into collections of near-tautologies or the most obvious kind of vacuous advice (for example, ‘Select data that support your conclusion’; ‘Do not contradict yourself’)’.

It is important to clarify my own stance in this thesis. This thesis accepts that critical thinking is a general construct for various reasons. First of all, convincing arguments of why critical thinking can be a general construct has been presented. There are inter-disciplinary questions and the people cannot be experts in all of the subjects on which they are asked to take decisions. Therefore, students, who will be future citizens in a democratic society, will be required to decide on different topics and it would be impossible to always ask help from experts. Secondly, critical thinking is a general skill and according to Lipman (2003, p.44) despite the validity of some of McPeck’s arguments, the existence of logic and philosophy as an independent discipline can prove that thinking can be perceived independently of disciplines.

This thesis argues in favour of critical thinking as a general construct which is also the stance that Lipman adopted (Lipman, 1987; 2003). This stance is also in line with the P4C programme targets. To be more specific, P4C dialogue does not focus on topics from particular domains or on perspectives which derive by specific disciplines. The questions are general, and the students can think about them without being subject experts. The programme itself adopts a general approach to critical thinking. For consistency, this is how it was assessed by this thesis.

Furthermore, Siegel introduced the necessity of two different types of principles for reasoning: ‘subject-specific’ and ‘subject-neutral’ (Siegel, 1988, p.34). This suggests that any scholar belonging to the Informal Logic movement or anyone who supported thinking as a subject-specific skill was partially correct.

This thesis is aligned to these ideas and to the ideas of Fisher and Scriven (1997) about the relationship between critical thinking and knowledge. Somebody might be an expert in a domain and this does not imply that they are also critical thinkers. On the contrary, a critical thinker might be able to pick controversies and errors, which might have been missed by the experts in that discipline. What is more, aligned to the positions of the same authors (Fisher & Scriven, 1997), it is accepted

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that critical thinking can be applied in disciplines and this is compatible with the ideas of McPeck. However, it is also accepted that critical thinking can be accepted as a general skill, which has value and, hence, it is worth being taught and assessed even as a stand-alone subject. This general thinking skill can be applied with the common knowledge that everyone has as a citizen or on knowledge which is not necessarily linked to the official curriculum and disciplines taught in schools.

At this point, I judge necessary to add the two main arguments presented by Norris and Ennis (1989) in favour of evaluating critical thinking with general knowledge context. First of all, if critical thinking is evaluated in a general knowledge context, some students are not penalised if they do not hold knowledge in a particular subject. Secondly, if in reality general application of critical thinking on different contexts is desirable, then this is how it should be assessed. Therefore, I can argue that this type of assessment reduces the construct irrelevance. Furthermore, it provides an authentic assessment, which resembles the way critical thinking will be applied in real- life situations.

Paul (1985) argued that if McPeck accepts critical thinking as subject-specific because it is always ‘thinking about X’, then he should also reject the existence of the general ability of writing or reading. Even though there is writing about X or reading about X, it is possible for the students to learn and write or read in general. This is a strong argument and therefore I judge that it effectively suggests that critical thinking can be a general skill similar to reading and writing.

Finally, this thesis accepts the ideas of the critical thinking movement instead of critical pedagogy. It has probably become apparent that this thesis is related to the critical thinking movement and not the critical pedagogy. This movement has been criticized about the ‘neutral’ way that it perceived CT. Davies (2015) claimed that teaching critical thinking should not be considered neutral when social conditions are concerned and therefore it should include more than developing a set of abilities. Even though the sources related to critical thinking movement do not usually discuss critical pedagogy, it is important to explain the difference between the two and acknowledge this difference. Whilst the movement perceived critical thinking skills as neutral, critical pedagogy emphasised on the use of critical thinking as an important educational goal, which could help the students to change the status quo (Burbules & Berk, 1999).

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I accept the critical thinking movement tradition at this stage, because I find this in line with the P4C tradition. P4C does not aim to guide the students to reach specific answers. On the contrary, it provides them with the tools to philosophise even if the dialogue remains open and there is no definite answer at the end of the session. This is in line with the critical thinking movement, which does not promote any indoctrination of the students in a particular ideology but suggests that the students should think for themselves and in a community. Finally, one of my main arguments when I introduced the significance of the study was the preparation of the students for the needs of the society and the economy. Critical pedagogy protects the student from the idea ‘of being trained for the economic needs of large corporations’ (Davies, 2015, p. 72).

Reed-Sandoval and Sykes (2017) argued that P4C should take seriously somebody’s stance on an existing economic, political, cultural and social context. If this is accepted, then P4C cannot be neutral. For example, by not discussing racism or by discussing it in a ‘neutral’ way, it implies acceptance of whiteness and the status quo (Chetty, 2014). Nevertheless, I do not think that P4C has yet reached the type of sessions that critical pedagogy would have expected. P4C schools do always choose to reveal the possible oppressions of particular groups and leave the students to draw their own conclusions at the end of the dialogue.

Similarly, the critical thinking skills and assessments accepted by this thesis refer to a set of skills by accepting neutrality of these skills and without negotiating particular social stances. Although I do not extensively discuss critical pedagogy in this thesis, I do not reject it. However, I believe that a critical thinking assessment as perceived by the critical thinking movement is more appropriate when the effectiveness of P4C of students is examined and for the particular age group compared to an assessment of critical pedagogy.