Teaching Dialogically: Its Relationship to Critical
Thinking in College Students
Susan N. Reiter
Washtenaw Community College
College students' critical thinking skills remain an area of grave concern ( Association of American Colleges, 1985; National Institute on Education, 1984), and instructional methods to promote them continue to challenge educators. Within the last decade, researchers have dispelled notions that critical thinking skills are natural "by-products" of encountering conventional college subject matter ( deBono, 1983; Fischer & Grant, 1983; Glaser, 1985; McPeck, 1981; Nickerson, 1987), conventional course tasks ( Quellmalz, 1987), or conventional instructional methods ( Nickerson, 1987).
Today, experts call for "direct" critical thinking methods, or instruction that places higher order objectives at center stage and where thinking skills are taught explicitly ( Beyer, 1985; Fischer & Grant, 1983; Jackson, 1986; Nickerson, 1987, Quellmalz, 1987; Swartz, 1987; Worsham & Stockton, 1986; Woods, 1987).
Direct critical thinking methods might make students aware of the mental processes they use (McKeachie, Pintrich, Lin, Smith, & Sharma, 1990; Woods, 1990); instruct students in employing thinking skills ( Bereiter, 1984; Beyer, 1985, 1987; Swartz, 1987); give students practice in thinking using a diverse array of examples and domains ( Beyer, 1985; Perkins, 1987); or ask students to apply thinking skills to entirely new contexts ( Lipman, 1987, Quellmalz, 1987; Sadler & Whimbey, 1985).