140	Frameworks for Thinking

Classification by:	Values:		Practical illustrations
• type of thinking	•	originality	for teachers:
	•	novelty	•	provides exemplars
	•	individuality		of use of the tools
	•	opposed to dialectical		and suggestions for a
		reasoning		range of applications
			•	extensive support
				through website,
				additional training
				materials, courses
				and seminars

Halpern’s reviews of critical thinking skills and dispositions

Description and intended use

Much of the material presented here first appeared in Halpern’s influential book on critical thinking (Halpern, 1984), and was later developed into ‘a taxonomy of critical thinking skills’ (Halpern, 1994, p. 31). The taxonomy was intended to provide a basis for the national assessment of critical thinking skills in adults in the USA. At a govern- ment-sponsored workshop held in 1992, Halpern referred to the thinking skills needed to compete in a global economy and in the exercise of citizenship (1994, p. 29), but chose to focus on what is often referred to as ‘higher-order thinking’, i.e. thinking that is reflective, sensitive to context and monitored. She used the following category headings:

•verbal reasoning skills

•argument analysis skills

•skills in thinking as hypothesis testing

•using likelihood and uncertainty

•decision-making and problem-solving skills.

The 1992 workshop was set up in response to the following U.S. national objective:

The proportion of college graduates who demonstrate an advanced ability to think critically, communicate effectively, and solve problems will increase

substantially. (National Education Goals Panel, 1991, p. 237)

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However, the workshop participants failed to agree on a single theoretical framework on which to base the proposed national assessment and the idea was eventually abandoned. Halpern subsequently revised her lists, and presented them, not as a taxonomy, but as a set of chapter reviews in her book, Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum

(Halpern, 1997). This book, which closely follows the chapter structure of her 1984 volume on critical thinking, includes material on memory skills and on creative thinking as well as on the types of thinking included in her 1992 taxonomy.

Halpern (1997) employs the following working definition of critical thinking as ‘the use of cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. . . thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal-directed. . . and effective for the particular context and type of thinking task’ (1997, p. 4). This definition is so broad that it covers almost all thinking except basic arithmetical calculation and other automatised procedures. Halpern justifies her inclusion of memory skills by claiming that ‘All thinking skills are inextricably tied to the ability to remember’ (p. 19).

All the thinking skills described by Halpern in separate chapters of her book are listed in table 4.4, together with some category descriptors from Halpern (1994). What is omitted are more detailed descriptions and examples of use, all of which were written for a general readership and for ‘any course where critical thinking is valued’ (p. vii). Table 4.3 illustrates the level of detail provided throughout, using a single example, taken from Halpern’s review of decision-making skills (p. 217).

Table 4.3. An example of one of the critical thinking skills specified by Halpern

Skill	Description	Example of use
Avoiding the	Entrapment occurs	Shana decides to stick
entrapment bias	when a course of action	with her boyfriend
	requires additional	who treats her badly
	investments beyond those	because she has already
	already made.	invested several years in
		the relationship.

142 Frameworks for Thinking

Table 4.4. Halpern’s categorisation of critical thinking skills

Memory skills

skills that are needed when learning, during retention and at retrieval

a.monitoring your attention

b.developing an awareness of the influence of stereotypes and other beliefs on what we remember

c.making abstract information meaningful as an aid to comprehension and recall

d.using advance organisers to anticipate new information

e.organising information so that it can be recalled more easily

f.generating retrieval cues at both acquisition and retrieval

g.monitoring how well you are learning

h.using external memory aids

i.employing keywords and images, rhymes, places, and first letters, as internal memory aids

j.applying the cognitive interview techniques (Geiselman and Fisher, 1985)

k.developing an awareness of biases in memory

Thought and language skills

skills that are needed to comprehend and defend against the persuasive techniques

that are embedded in everyday language

a.recognising and defending against the use of emotional and misleading language

b.detecting misuse of definitions and reification

c.understanding the use of framing with leading questions and negation to bias the reader

d.using analogies appropriately

e.employing questioning and paraphrase as a skill for the comprehension of text and oral language

f.producing and using a graphic representation of information provided in prose form

Deductive reasoning skills

skills used to determine if a conclusion is valid – i.e. it must be true if the premises

are true

Productive thinking	143

a.discriminating between inductive and deductive reasoning

b.identifying premises and conclusions

c.reasoning with ‘if-then’ statements

d.using linear ordering principles

e.avoiding the fallacies of denying the antecedent and confirming the consequent

f.using tree diagrams with branches and nodes to represent information

Argument analysis skills

skills that are needed to judge how well reasons and evidence support a conclusion, including considering counter-evidence, stated and unstated assumptions, and the overall strength of the argument

a.identifying premises (reasons), counter-arguments and conclusions

b.making strong arguments that show good thinking and communication skills

c.judging the credibility of an information source and judging the difference between expertise in factual matters and in value matters

d.understanding the difference between opinion, reasoned judgment, and fact

e.recognising and avoiding common fallacies, such as straw person, appeals to ignorance, slippery slope, false dichotomy, guilt by association, and arguments against the person

f.identifying psychological effects on reasoning

g.remembering to consider what could be missing from an argument

Skills in thinking as hypothesis testing

the skills used in scientific reasoning – the accumulation of observations, formulation of beliefs or hypotheses, and then using the information collected to decide if it confirms or disconfirms the hypotheses

a.recognising the need for and using operational definitions

b.understanding the need to isolate and control variables in order to make strong causal claims

c.checking for adequate sample size and possible bias in sampling when a generalisation is made

d.being able to describe the relationship between any two variables as positive, negative, or unrelated

e.understanding the limits of correlational reasoning

144 Frameworks for Thinking

Table 4.4. (cont.)

Likelihood and uncertainty critical thinking skills

the correct use of objective and subjective estimates of probability

a.recognising regression to the mean

b.understanding and avoiding conjunction errors

c.utilising base rates to make predictions

d.understanding the limits of extrapolation

e.adjusting risk assessments to account for the cumulative nature of probabilistic events

f.thinking intelligently about unknown risks

Decision-making skills

the skills involved in the generation and selection of alternatives and in judging

among them

a.framing a decision in several ways to consider different sorts of alternatives

b.generating alternatives

c.evaluating the consequences of various alternatives

d.recognising the bias in hindsight analysis

e.using a decision-making worksheet

f.avoiding the entrapment bias

g.seeking disconfirming evidence

h.awareness of the effects of memory on decisions

Problem-solving skills

skills needed to identify and define a problem, state the goal and generate and

evaluate solution paths

a.restating the problem and the goal to consider different sorts of solution

b.recognising the critical role of persistence

c.using a quality representation of a problem (e.g. graphs, trees, matrices, and models)

d.understanding world-view constraints

e.selecting the best strategy for the type of problem

f.actively seeking analogies

Skills for creative thinking

a.redefine the problem and goal (in several different ways)

b.find analogies (across different domains of knowledge)