In today’s fast-paced world, information is everywhere—but true understanding requires more than just memorization. Critical thinking is a vital skill for students, enabling them to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, and engage in meaningful discussions. Whether analyzing academic theories, debating complex issues, or assessing research validity, critical thinking fosters deeper learning and better decision-making.
This blog explores the role of critical thinking in academia, the challenges students face in developing these skills, and how embracing nuanced, evidence-based reasoning leads to more informed perspectives. Ready to sharpen your analytical mindset? Let’s dive in!
Development of Understanding
Students are expected to develop critical thinking skills so that they can dig deeper below the surface of the subject they are studying and engage in critical dialogue with its main theories and arguments. This is usually through engaging in critical debate in seminars, presentations, or writing produced for assessment or publication.
One of the best ways of arriving at a point where we really understand something is by doing, or replicating, the underlying research for ourselves. However, as undergraduates, and indeed in everyday life, there simply isn’t time to research everything we encounter. The depth of understanding that comes through direct experience, practice, and experimentation has to be replaced, at times, by critical analysis of the work of other people.
Students need to develop the ability to critically evaluate the work of others. While some find this easy, others tend to accept or apply the results of other people’s research too readily, without analysing it sufficiently to check that the evidence and the reasoning really support the main points being made.
Bodner (1988), for example, describes chemistry students as being unable to ‘apply their knowledge outside the narrow domain in which it was learnt.’ They ‘know’ without understanding.
Bodner suggests that, instead of focusing on standard chemical calculations in books, students should be looking for answers to questions such as ‘How do we know…?’ and ‘Why do we believe…?’
Bodner’s description is likely to be just as true for students in other subjects. It is not unusual for students, and for people generally, to rely unquestioningly on research that is based on a small sample of the population, that is out of date, or that is based on faulty or ill-structured projects.
Evidence from small-scale studies is often treated as if it were absolute proof of a general principle, and is sometimes quoted year after year as if it were an established fact.
Of course A-level sociology students who will have studied research methods should be much less likely to fall into this trap.
Reflection: ‘Knowing without Understanding?’
Do you recognise anything of yourself in Bodner’s description of students? What effect would the approach he suggests have on your learning and understanding?
Both Positives and Negatives
In academic contexts, ‘criticism’ refers to an analysis of positive features as well as negative ones. It is important to identify strengths and satisfactory aspects rather than just weaknesses, to evaluate what works as well as what does not. Good critical analysis accounts for why work is good or poor, why it works or fails. It is not enough merely to list good and bad points.
Comprehensive: Nothing is Excluded
For most academic programmes, students are expected to take a well-reasoned, evidence-based, critical approach to what they hear, see, read, and learn. That is the case even when considering the work of respected academics.
Normally, any theory, perspective, data, area of research, or approach to a discipline could be subject to critical analysis. Some colleges, such as religious foundations, may consider certain subjects to be out of bounds, but this is not typical.
The Idea or the Action, Not the Person
A distinction is usually drawn between the idea, work, text, theory, or behaviour on the one hand, and on the other, the person associated with these. This is also true when making critical analyses of other students’ work if this is a requirement of your course.
Even so, it is worth remembering that people identify closely with their work and may take criticism of it personally. Tact and a constructive approach are needed. Giving difficult messages in a way other people can accept is an important aspect of critical evaluation.
“Your work’s rubbish, of course, but as a human being, you’ll do, I suppose!”
— Irma wasn’t famed for her tact.
Non-Dualistic Thinking
In our day-to-day lives, we can slip into thinking everything is right or wrong, black or white. In the academic world, answers may occur at a point on a continuum of possibilities.
One of the purposes of higher-level thinking is to address questions that are more complicated and sophisticated and do not lend themselves to straightforward responses. You may have noticed that the more you know about a subject, the more difficult it becomes to give simple answers.
Dealing with Ambiguity and Doubt
With the internet at our fingertips, we are used to obtaining answers within minutes of formulating a question. However, in the academic world, questions are raised in new areas, and answers may not be found for years, or even lifetimes. This can feel uncomfortable if you are used to ready answers.
This does not mean, though, that vague answers are acceptable. If you look at articles in academic journals, you will see that they are very closely argued, often focusing on a minute aspect of the subject in great detail and with precision.
Students, too, are expected to develop skills in using evidence, even if drawn from other people’s research, to support a detailed line of reasoning.
It is worth remembering that in academic work, including professional research for business and industry, researchers often need to pursue lines of enquiry knowing that:
- No clear answers may emerge;
- It may take decades to gain an answer;
- They may contribute only a very small part to a much larger picture.
Critical Thinking as a Student Means:
- 🔍 Finding out where the best evidence lies for the subject you are discussing;
- 🏛 Evaluating the strength of the evidence to support different arguments;
- 💡 Coming to an interim conclusion about where the available evidence appears to lead;
- 🛤 Constructing a line of reasoning to guide your audience through the evidence and lead them toward your conclusion;
- 📌 Selecting the best examples;
- 📝 Providing evidence to illustrate your argument.