Book Review: Teaching Students to Think Critically: A Guide for Faculty of All Disciplines
Chet Meyers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986.
Reviewed by Emile Lester, former TRC Graduate Student Associate and Deparment of Government and Foreign Affairs

"One of the primary aims of college education," Chet Meyers writes in Teaching Students to Think Critically, "is to move students from a self-centered universe, based on limited personal experiences and concrete realities, to a richer, more abstract realm where a multiplicity of values, visions, and verities exist." Meyers's work provides a wealth of theoretical insight and practical advice that instructors can use to move their students beyond their self-centered universes and into the realm of critical thought.

Teaching Students to Think Critically is divided into three parts. The first provides a review of the basic concepts related to the teaching of critical thinking. The second part consists of practical considerations about how to replace lecturing with discussion and problem-solving. The final section describes how the instructor's disposition toward the course material can facilitate students' critical thought.

Meyers's discussion of the theory behind critical thought is succinct, convincing, and not overly technical. The section begins with a discussion of the limitations of traditional approaches to critical thinking which emphasize the inculcation of the general skills of logic and problem-solving. Meyers emphasizes that there is no such magic bullet for teaching critical thought. He recommends the use of a discipline-specific approach to critical thought.

The section on theory concludes with a discussion of the motivational and affective aspects of teaching critical thought. Drawing upon the cognitive psychology theory of Piaget, Meyers emphasizes catching students' attention at the beginning of the course through the use of concrete problems and examples rather than beginning by introducing concepts as abstract verbal formulations. Meyers discusses the ways in which newspaper clippings, analogies, and metaphors can enable students to grasp concepts concretely before they are expected to verbalize these concepts abstractly. Using concrete imagery to understand course material is as helpful for instructors, Meyers notes, as it is for students.

Meyers presents thoughtful and challenging practical suggestions for promoting critical thinking through course structure, class organization, and writing assignments. In particular, his criticism of the traditional term paper as a vehicle for promoting critical thought is sure to have many instructors re-thinking their writing assignment practices. The students' critical reflection about the material is best promoted, Meyers believes, if the student writes early in the semester and often throughout the semester. He describes five forms of effective short writing assignments.

Perhaps Meyers's most thought-provoking suggestion appears in the third part of the book where he argues that critical thought is best promoted when teachers take a subjective approach to the material. Subjective teaching involves the instructor's acknowledgment that basic problems in the discipline remain unsolved and are amenable to criticism and a variety of interpretations. It also involves the instructor's revealing to students his/her own struggles with and critical thought process about basic problems in her discipline. This subjective approach, Meyers believes, will enable students to realize that theories and concepts are not set in stone, but rather are constructed by flesh-and-blood individuals using the same critical thought process the instructor wants them to develop.

Two particular recommendations by Meyers had a direct personal effect on my own teaching philosophy and practice. First, the book's second chapter discusses how one can utilize pictorial representations of course goals and structures. Pictorial representation strikes me as a particularly effective way of not only enabling the students to understand the course, but also of enabling the instructors to clarify their own views on the material. I found imagining ways to represent pictorially the structure of my summer course enlightening and more interesting than creating a traditional syllabus. Second, Meyers argues that converting a lecture-oriented course into a discussion-oriented course will require that the course material be pared by at least twenty-five percent. Like most teachers, I am partial to all of my courses' major works and regret any sacrifice of course material. Yet Meyers helped me to realize that students will actually learn the most if they have the opportunity to engage directly with the material they are learning.

While Meyers supplies a diversity of methods to promote critical thought, he never really fulfills his promise to describe discipline-specific approaches to developing critical thinking. Although a review of all the possible disciplinary approaches to promoting critical thinking is unrealistic, Meyers could have used several examples of disciplinary-specific approaches to illustrate his point. Nevertheless, Teaching Students to Think Critically provides a general framework for thinking about how to promote critical thought while leaving the instructor free to choose among the many suggestions offered by its author.

For further reading on critical thinking:

Brookfield, Stephen D. Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989.

Kurfiss, Joanne G. Critical Thinking: Theory, Research, Practice and Possibilities. College Station, TX: Assoc. for the Study of Higher Education & Texas A & M Univ., 1988.

Paul, Richard. Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World. 2^nd ed. Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1992.

Stice, James E. Developing Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Abilities. New Directions for Teaching and Learning #30. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.