Deanna Kuhn

A Developmental Model of Critical Thinking

The critical thinking movement, it is suggested, has much to gain from conceptualizing its subject matter in a developmental framework. Most instructional programs designed to teach critical thinking do not draw on contemporary empirical research in cognitive development as a potential resource. The developmental model of critical thinking outlined here derives from contemporary empirical research on directions and processes of intellectual development in children and adolescents. It identifies three forms of second-order cognition (meta-knowing)—metacognitive, metastrategic, and epistemological—that constitute an essential part of what develops cognitively to make critical thinking possible.

The development of epistemological understanding

We propose the coordination of the subjective and objective dimensions of knowing as the essence of what develops in the attainment of mature epistemological understanding. Initially, the objective dimension dominates, to the exclusion of subjectivity; subsequently, the subjective dimension assumes an ascendant position and the objective is abandoned, and, finally, the two are coordinated. This progression, we further postulate, tends to occur in a systematic order across different judgment domains (personal taste, aesthetic, value, and truth), with the orders the reverse of one another in the two major transitions that constitute this progression. These predictions are supported among a sample of seven groups of children, adolescents, and adults varying in age, education, and life experience. Subjectivity is most readily acknowledged in personal taste and aesthetic judgments and least readily in truth judgments. Once subjectivity is accepted and becomes dominant, objectivity is reintegrated in the reverse order, i.e., most readily with respect to truth judgments. Not predicted, however, was the finding that for a number of individuals, both transitions proved most difficult in the values domain. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Strategies of Knowledge Acquisition.

In this Monograph, knowledge acquisition is examined as a process involving the coordination of existing theories with new evidence. Central to the present work is the claim that strategies of knowledge acquisition may vary significantly across (as well as within) individuals and can be conceptualized within a developmental framework.

The Development of Argument Skills

This work sought to obtain experimental evidence to corroborate cross-sectional patterns of development in argument skills and to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention designed to foster development of these skills in academically at-risk 13- to 14-year-olds. Students participated in 16 sessions of a collaborative, goal-based activity providing dense exercise of argumentive thinking. One condition included peer dialogues; another did not. The former was the more effective, although both groups progressed. Participants showed increased frequency of usage of powerful argumentive discourse strategies, such as counterargument, and decreased frequency of less effective strategies. Quality of individual arguments (for or against a claim) also improved, supporting the existence of a close relation between these two kinds of argument skills.

The Development of Cognitive Skills To Support Inquiry Learning

Establishing the value of inquiry learning as an educational method, it is argued, rests on thorough, detailed knowledge of the cognitive skills it is intended to promote. Mental models, as representations of the reality being investigated in inquiry learning, stand to influence strategies applied to the task. In the research described here, the hypothesis is investigated that students at the middle school level, and sometimes well beyond, may have an incorrect mental model of multivariable causality (one in which effects of individual features on an outcome are neither consistent nor additive) that impedes the causal analysis involved in most forms of inquiry learning. An extended intervention with 6th to 8th graders was targeted to promote (a) at the metalevel, a correct mental model based on additive effects of individual features (indicated by identification of effects of individual features as the task objective); (b) also at the metalevel, metastrategic understanding of the need to control the influences of other features; and (c) at the performance level, consistent use of the controlled comparison strategy. Both metalevel advancements were observed, in addition to transfer to a new task at the performance level, among many (though not all) students. Findings support the claim that a developmental hierarchy of skills and understanding underlies, and should be identified as an objective of, inquiry learning.

How do People Know

To fully understand processes of knowing and knowledge acquisition, it is necessary to examine peoples understanding of their own knowing. Individual and developmental differences in what it means to know something, and hence in the criteria for justifying knowledge claims, have potentially wide-ranging implications. In providing support for a claim, young children have difficulty differentiating explanation of why a claim makes sense and evidence that the claim is true. Epistemic understanding progresses developmentally, but substantial variation remains among adults, with few adults achieving understanding of the complementary strengths and weaknesses of evidence and explanation in argument. Epistemic understanding shapes intellectual values and hence the disposition (as opposed to competence) to exercise intellectual skills. Only its most advanced levels support a disposition to engage in the intellectual effort that reasoned argument entails. The sample case of juror reasoning illustrates how epistemic understanding underlies and shapes intellectual performance.

The development of argumentive discourse skill.

College students who supported opposing positions on abortion were asked to state their reasons for and against their own position as well as their reason for and against the opposition. Students then served as judges on 4 cases in which women were seeking an abortion. The circumstances motivating a woman varied across the 4 cases. Case information either challenged or supported prototypic assumptions and beliefs that underlie a prolife or prochoice stance. Students who received information directly challenging their position on abortion changed stances more frequently than those who did not. Three additional factors also predicted changes in stances: (a) taking a prochoice rather than a prolife position, (b) being able to cite more problems with ones own position, and (c) receiving challenging cases that present novel rather than anticipated conditions motivating a womans desire for abortion. The results are discussed in terms of a process model of conceptual change and learning, where changes in stanc...The skills involved in argument as a social discourse activity presumably develop during the childhood and adolescent years, but little is known about the course of that development. As an initial step in examining this development, a coding system was developed for the purpose of analyzing multiple dialogues between peers on the topic of capital punishment. A comparison of the dialogues of young adolescents and those of young adults showed the teens to be more preoccupied with producing the dialogue and less able to behave strategically with respect to the goals of argumentive discourse. Teens also did not exhibit the strategic skill that adults did of adapting discourse to the requirements of particular argumentive contexts (agreeing vs. disagreeing dialogues).Argumentation constitutes 1 of the most common forms of human interaction. Yet despite its pervasiveness, relatively little psychological research has been conducted on the topic. This article serves as an introduction to this research and has 2 goals. One is to discuss a number of general issues relevant to the study of argumentation, including the definition, goals and functions, structure, evaluation of arguments and argumentation, and the relation of narrativity and argumentation. The 2nd goal is to describe some examples of the existing psychological research on argumentation, with emphasis on articles in this special issue. Topics include argumentation by children, argumentation skill, writing argumentative text, argumentation and case-based change, argumentation and critical thinking, and argumentation and narrativity in a legal context.This article examines the effects of participation in oral argumentation on the development of individual reasoning as expressed in persuasive essays. Engagement in oral argumentation is the essential feature of a classroom discussion method called collaborative reasoning. A premise of this method is that reasoning is fundamentally dialogical and, hence, the development of reasoning is best nurtured in supportive dialogical settings such as group discussion. Students from 3 classrooms participated in collaborative reasoning discussions for a period of 5 weeks. Then, these students and students from 3 comparable classrooms who had not engaged in collaborative reasoning wrote persuasive essays. The essays of collaborative reasoning students contained a significantly greater number of relevant arguments, counter-arguments, rebuttals, formal argument devices, and uses of text information.Argumentation was studied in a courtroom context in which the prosecuting attorney’s summary is assumed to be an argument with “X is guilty” as the claim and the narrative, which contains the evidence of the case, providing support for the claim. In Experiment 1, quality of evidence, narrative coherence, and gender were studied. In Experiments 2A and 2B the role of uncertainty of narrative information, emotional expressions in the narrative, and gender were studied. Both crime-related and non-crime-related uncertain information produced lower guilt ratings and lower ratings of narrative goodness than the baseline, suggesting jury doubt occurs with any narrative uncertainty. Victim-related emotional expressions produced lower guilt ratings than the baseline, although these were mediated by the particular story read. Effects of defendant-related emotional expressions depended on gender and narrative contents. The gender results suggest men respond more heuristically, focusing primarily on evidence, whereas women process the narrative more comprehensively.The emergence and development of argumentation skills in interpersonal conflict situations are the focus of this study. The mental structures used to understand arguments are related to those used to understand social conflict and goal-directed action. The desire to maintain or dissolve a relationship, to persuade, and to understand a position operate throughout interpersonal arguments. Decisions made about whether a relationship should be maintained influence the reasoning and thinking during negotiation, the negotiation strategies, and the outcome of an argument. Because social goals are crucial to understanding argument, negotiations and memory for an argument may be affected as to bias and accuracy. The ability to understand an argument is claimed to emerge early in development. By 3 years of age, children understand and generate the principle components of an argument, either in face-to-face interaction or individual interviews. The ability to construct detailed, coherent rationales in defense of a f...

Metacognition: A Bridge Between Cognitive Psychology and Educational Practice

Although they have their differences, educational practitioners and academic researchers largely agree on a broad goal: to develop in students the kinds of thinking skills that will prepare them to contribute to a democratic society. But the two groups largely speak different languages. While educators frequently talk about critical thinking as an objective, researchers have largely avoided the term, preferring constructs that can be more precisely defined and measured. How do we connect critical thinking to modern research on cognition and learning? The authors propose the construct of metacognition as having the potential to bridge the concerns of educators and researchers whose work is addressed to the development of skilled thinking. Given its growing importance in studies of cognition and learning, teachers would benefit from an understanding of the mechanisms involved in metacognition and how best to foster it.

Developmental Origins of Scientific Thinking

Identifying the developmental origins of scientific thinking, as well as its endpoint, provides an essential framework for understanding its development. The origins of scientific thinking are claimed here to lie in attainments in epistemological understanding, beginning with the understanding achieved at about 4 years of age that assertions generated by human minds are distinguishable from an external reality against which they can be compared. Despite this achievement, children between 4 and 6 years of age exhibit an epistemological category mistake regarding the source of knowledge. They confuse a theory making it plausible that an event occurred and evidence indicating that the event did occur, as the source of their knowing that the event occurred. Appreciation of this distinction develops rapidly during this age range and reflects increasing mastery of an epistemological understanding we argue to be of foundational status for the development of scientific thinking, defined here as the consciously controlled coordination of theory and evidence.

An Experimental Study of the Development of Formal Operational Thought.

KUHN, DEANNA, and ANGELEV, JOHN. An Experimental Study of the Development of Formal Operational Thought. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 697-706. Fourth and fifth graders took part in a 15-week intervention program during which they confronted problems requiring formal operational thought. Subjects showed advancement toward formal operations on the pendulum and chemicals problems (Inhelder & Piaget 1958) and on a third problem designed by the authors on both immediate and 4-month posttests. Density of exposure to the problems (once per 2 weeks, once per week, twice per week) was monotonically related to amount of advancement. An additional group of subjects who were also given explicit demonstrations of formal operational solutions to the problems showed no more advancement than subjects given exposure alone. Results were interpreted in the context of Piagets equilibration theory (1971). Implications for Inhelder and Piagets (1958) theory of formal operations are discussed.