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Thriving in Academe
Thinking Across the Disciplines
Helping students become reflective thinkers is everyone's job.
By Derek D. Turner, Connecticut College

The teaching of critical thinking is not just the purview of philosophers teaching logic.

Although some higher education institutions have implemented "critical thinking across the curriculum" programs, the teaching of critical thinking is too often relegated to 100-level courses offered by the philosophy department.

In these informal logic courses, we usually require students to memorize lists of fallacies with funny names like "argument ad misericordiam" (as in: "Please give me good teaching evaluations because if you don't, I might not get tenure, and then I would be miserable").

We train students to become avid spotters of other people's logical mistakes. Then we encourage them to use the op-ed page from the local newspaper for logical target practice.

Yet critical thinking is not simply about poking holes in other people's arguments. Nor is there any good reason why rigorous and reflective thinking cannot be taught outside of logic courses and in disciplines other than philosophy. Educators in all disciplines care about critical thinking, though its meaning can vary from one discipline to the next.

The time is ripe for philosophers to get together with colleagues from other disciplines to share ideas on what we mean by "critical thinking" to begin with and how, working together, we can go about helping our students to become critical thinkers.

Meet Derek D. Turner
Derek D. Turner is an assistant professor of philosophy at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut.  He regularly teaches courses on logic, philosophy of biology, bioethics, and environmental philosophy.  His research focuses on environmental ethics and on philosophical problems concerning the scientific study of the distant past.  With the generous support and encouragement of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Connecticut College, he has helps to facilitate workshops for faculty on teaching critical thinking across the disciplines.  He can be reached at derek.turner@conncoll.edu.

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