Imagine that, as an educator, one of your long-term goals for students is that they acquire critical thinking skills: You want them to evaluate the soundness of logical arguments in persuasive essays, determine whether scientific research studies truly support certain conclusions, and so on. At a school board meeting, a father of one of your students complains about your emphasis on critical

Question

thinking. He insists that the purpose of education should be simply to teach students facts that experts have determined to be "true" in various academic disciplines. Of the following ways in which you might respond to the father, which one is most accurate and defensible?

A) Students are more motivated by long-term, abstract goals than by shorter, concrete objectives.
B) Critical thinking is the most basic cognitive process identified in the recent revision of Bloom's taxonomy presented in the textbook; all other cognitive processes build on it.
C) Standards developed by professional groups in various academic disciplines often include critical thinking.
D) Virtually any approach to instruction—whether it be expository instruction, mastery learning, cooperative learning, or some other approach—invariably involves mastering aspects of critical thinking.

Answer 1

C