critical thinking in health sciences

Critical thinking in nursing clinical practice, education and research: From attitudes to virtue

Affiliations.

• 1 Department of Fundamental Care and Medical Surgital Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Consolidated Research Group Quantitative Psychology (2017-SGR-269), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
• 2 Department of Fundamental Care and Medical Surgital Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Consolidated Research Group on Gender, Identity and Diversity (2017-SGR-1091), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
• 3 Department of Fundamental Care and Medical Surgital Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Nursing, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
• 4 Multidisciplinary Nursing Research Group, Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), Vall d'Hebron Hospital, Barcelona, Spain.
• PMID: 33029860
• DOI: 10.1111/nup.12332

Critical thinking is a complex, dynamic process formed by attitudes and strategic skills, with the aim of achieving a specific goal or objective. The attitudes, including the critical thinking attitudes, constitute an important part of the idea of good care, of the good professional. It could be said that they become a virtue of the nursing profession. In this context, the ethics of virtue is a theoretical framework that becomes essential for analyse the critical thinking concept in nursing care and nursing science. Because the ethics of virtue consider how cultivating virtues are necessary to understand and justify the decisions and guide the actions. Based on selective analysis of the descriptive and empirical literature that addresses conceptual review of critical thinking, we conducted an analysis of this topic in the settings of clinical practice, training and research from the virtue ethical framework. Following JBI critical appraisal checklist for text and opinion papers, we argue the need for critical thinking as an essential element for true excellence in care and that it should be encouraged among professionals. The importance of developing critical thinking skills in education is well substantiated; however, greater efforts are required to implement educational strategies directed at developing critical thinking in students and professionals undergoing training, along with measures that demonstrate their success. Lastly, we show that critical thinking constitutes a fundamental component in the research process, and can improve research competencies in nursing. We conclude that future research and actions must go further in the search for new evidence and open new horizons, to ensure a positive effect on clinical practice, patient health, student education and the growth of nursing science.

Keywords: critical thinking; critical thinking attitudes; nurse education; nursing care; nursing research.

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

• Attitude of Health Personnel*
• Education, Nursing / methods
• Nursing Process
• Nursing Research / methods

Grants and funding

• PREI-19-007-B/School of Nursing. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. University of Barcelona

• - Google Chrome

Intended for healthcare professionals

• Access provided by Google Indexer
• My email alerts
• BMA member login
• Username * Password * Forgot your log in details? Need to activate BMA Member Log In Log in via OpenAthens Log in via your institution

Search form

• Advanced search
• Search responses
• Search blogs
• News & Views
• Critical thinking in...

Critical thinking in healthcare and education

• Related content
• Peer review
• Jonathan M Sharples , professor 1 ,
• Andrew D Oxman , research director 2 ,
• Kamal R Mahtani , clinical lecturer 3 ,
• Iain Chalmers , coordinator 4 ,
• Sandy Oliver , professor 1 ,
• Kevan Collins , chief executive 5 ,
• Astrid Austvoll-Dahlgren , senior researcher 2 ,
• Tammy Hoffmann , professor 6
• 1 EPPI-Centre, UCL Department of Social Science, London, UK
• 2 Global Health Unit, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway
• 3 Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
• 4 James Lind Initiative, Oxford, UK
• 5 Education Endowment Foundation, London, UK
• 6 Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia
• Correspondence to: J M Sharples Jonathan.Sharples{at}eefoundation.org.uk

Critical thinking is just one skill crucial to evidence based practice in healthcare and education, write Jonathan Sharples and colleagues , who see exciting opportunities for cross sector collaboration

Imagine you are a primary care doctor. A patient comes into your office with acute, atypical chest pain. Immediately you consider the patient’s sex and age, and you begin to think about what questions to ask and what diagnoses and diagnostic tests to consider. You will also need to think about what treatments to consider and how to communicate with the patient and potentially with the patient’s family and other healthcare providers. Some of what you do will be done reflexively, with little explicit thought, but caring for most patients also requires you to think critically about what you are going to do.

Critical thinking, the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe, is essential for the practice of medicine. Few doctors are likely to argue with this. Yet, until recently, the UK regulator the General Medical Council and similar bodies in North America did not mention “critical thinking” anywhere in their standards for licensing and accreditation, 1 and critical thinking is not explicitly taught or assessed in most education programmes for health professionals. 2

Moreover, although more than 2800 articles indexed by PubMed have “critical thinking” in the title or abstract, most are about nursing. We argue that it is important for clinicians and patients to learn to think critically and that the teaching and learning of these skills should be considered explicitly. Given the shared interest in critical thinking with broader education, we also highlight why healthcare and education professionals and researchers need to work together to enable people to think critically about the health choices they make throughout life.

Essential skills for doctors and patients

Critical thinking is not a new concept in education: at the beginning of the last century the US educational reformer John Dewey identified the need to help students “to think well.” 3 Critical thinking encompasses a broad set of skills and dispositions, including cognitive skills (such as analysis, inference, and self regulation); approaches to specific questions or problems (orderliness, diligence, and reasonableness); and approaches to life in general (inquisitiveness, concern with being well informed, and open mindedness). 4

An increasing body of evidence highlights that developing critical thinking skills can benefit academic outcomes as well as wider reasoning and problem solving capabilities. 5 For example, the Thinking, Doing, Talking Science programme trains teachers in a repertoire of strategies that encourage pupils to use critical thinking skills in primary school science lessons. An independently conducted randomised trial of this approach found that it had a positive impact on pupils’ science attainment, with signs that it was particularly beneficial for pupils from poorer families. 6

In medicine, increasing attention has been paid to “critical appraisal” in the past 40 years. Critical appraisal is a subset of critical thinking that focuses on how to use research evidence to inform health decisions. 7 8 9 The need for critical appraisal in medicine was recognised at least 75 years ago, 10 and critical appraisal has been recognised for some decades as an essential competency for healthcare professionals. 11 The General Medical Council’s Good Medical Practice guidance includes the need for doctors to be able to “provide effective treatments based on the best available evidence.” 12

If patients and the public are to make well informed health choices, they must also be able to assess the reliability of health claims and information. This is something that most people struggle to do, and it is becoming increasingly important because patients are taking on a bigger role in managing their health and making healthcare decisions, 13 while needing to cope with more and more health information, much of which is not reliable. 14 15 16 17

Teaching critical thinking

Although critical thinking skills are given limited explicit attention in standards for medical education, they are included as a key competency in most frameworks for national curriculums for primary and secondary schools in many countries. 18 Nonetheless, much health and science education, and education generally, still tends towards rote learning rather than the promotion of critical thinking. 19 20 This matters because the ability to think critically is an essential life skill relevant to decision making in many circumstances. The capacity to think critically is, like a lot of learning, developed in school and the home: parental influence creates advantage for pupils who live in homes where they are encouraged to think and talk about what they are doing. This, importantly, goes beyond simply completing tasks to creating deeper understanding of learning processes. As such, the “critical thinking gap” between children from disadvantaged communities and their more advantaged peers requires attention as early as possible.

Although it is possible to teach critical thinking to adults, it is likely to be more productive if the grounds for this have been laid down in an educational environment early in life, starting in primary school. Erroneous beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours developed during childhood may be difficult to change later. 21 22 This also applies to medical education and to health professionals. It becomes increasingly difficult to teach these skills without a foundation to build on and adequate time to learn them.

Strategies for teaching students to think critically have been evaluated in health and medical education; in science, technology, engineering, and maths; and in other subjects. 23 These studies suggest that critical thinking skills can be taught and that in the absence of explicit teaching of critical thinking, important deficiencies emerge in the abilities of students to make sound judgments. In healthcare studies, many medical students score poorly on tests that measure the ability to think critically , and the ability to think critically is correlated with academic success. 24 25

Evaluations of strategies for teaching critical thinking in medicine have focused primarily on critical appraisal skills as part of evidence based healthcare. An overview of systematic reviews of these studies suggests that improving evidence based healthcare competencies is likely to require multifaceted, clinically integrated approaches that include assessment. 26

Cross sector collaboration

Informed Health Choices, an international project aiming to improve decision making, shows the opportunities and benefits of cross sector collaboration between education and health. 27 This project has brought together people working in education and healthcare to develop a curriculum and learning resources for critical thinking about any action that is claimed to improve health. It aims to develop, identify, and promote the use of effective learning resources, beginning at primary school, to help people to make well informed choices as patients and health professionals, and well informed decisions as citizens and policy makers.

The project has drawn on several approaches used in education, including the development of a “spiral curriculum,” measurement tools, and the design of learning resources. A spiral curriculum begins with determining what people should know and be able to do, and outlines where they should begin and how they should progress to reach these goals. The basic ideas are revisited repeatedly, building on them until the student has grasped a deep understanding of the concepts. 28 29 The project has also drawn on educational research and methods to develop reliable and valid tools for measuring the extent to which those goals have been achieved. 30 31 32 The development of learning resources to teach these skills has been informed by educational research, including educational psychology, motivational psychology, and research and methods for developing learning games. 33 34 35 It has also built on the traditions of clinical epidemiology and evidence based medicine to identify the key concepts required to assess health claims. 29

It is difficult to teach critical thinking abstractly, so focusing on health may have advantages beyond the public health benefits of increasing health literacy. 36 Nearly everyone is interested in health, including children, making it easy to engage learners. It is also immediately relevant to students. As reported by one 10 year old in a school that piloted primary school resources, this is about “things we might actually use instead of things we might use when we are all grown up and by then we’ll forget.” Although the current evaluation of the project is focusing on outcomes relating to appraisal of treatment claims, if the intervention shows promise the next step could be to explore how these skills translate to wider educational contexts and outcomes.

Beyond critical thinking

Exciting opportunities for cross sector collaboration are emerging between healthcare and education. Although critical thinking is a useful example of this, other themes cross the education and healthcare domains, including nutrition, exercise, educational neuroscience, learning disabilities and special education needs, and mental health.

In addition to shared topics, several common methodological and conceptual issues also provide opportunities for sharing ideas and innovations and learning from mistakes and successes. For example, the Education Endowment Foundation is the UK government’s What Works Centre for education, aiming to improve evidence based decision making. Discussions hosted by the foundation are exploring how methods to develop guidelines in healthcare can be adapted and applied in education and other sectors.

Similarly, the foundation’s universal use of independent evaluation for teaching and learning interventions is an approach that should be explored, adapted, and applied in healthcare. Since the development and evaluation of educational interventions are separated, evaluators have no vested interested in the results of the assessment, all results are published, and bias and spin in how results are analysed and presented are reduced. By contrast, industry sponsorship of drug and device studies consistently produces results that favour the manufacturer. 37

Another example of joint working between educators and health is the Best Evidence Medical Education Collaboration, an international collaboration focused on improving education of health professionals. 38 And in the UK, the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine coordinates Evidence in School Teaching (Einstein), a project that supports introducing evidence based medicine as part of wider science activities in schools. 39 It aims to engage students, teachers, and the public in evidence based medicine and develop critical thinking to assess health claims and make better choices.

Collaboration has also been important in the development of the Critical Thinking and Appraisal Resource Library (CARL), 40 a set of resources designed to help people understand fair comparisons of treatments. An important aim of CARL is to promote evaluation of these critical thinking resources and interventions, some of which are currently under way at the Education Endowment Foundation. On 22 May 2017, the foundation is also cohosting an event with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health that will focus on their shared interest in critical thinking and appraisal skills.

Education and healthcare have overlapping interests. Doctors, teachers, researchers, patients, learners, and the public can all benefit from working together to help people to think critically about the choices they make. Events such as the global evidence summit in September 2017 ( https://globalevidencesummit.org ) can help bring people together and build on current international experience.

Contributors and sources: This article reflects conclusions from discussions during 2016 among education and health service researchers exploring opportunities for cross sector collaboration and learning. This group includes people with a longstanding interest in evidence informed policy and practice, with expertise in evaluation design, reviewing methodology, knowledge mobilisation, and critical thinking and appraisal.

Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that we have no competing interests.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

• ↵ Krupat E, Sprague JM, Wolpaw D, Haidet P, Hatem D, O’Brien B. Thinking critically about critical thinking: ability, disposition or both? Med Educ 2011 ; 357 : 625 - 35 . doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03910.x   pmid:21564200 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Huang GC, Newman LR, Schwartzstein RM. Critical thinking in health professions education: summary and consensus statements of the millennium conference 2011. Teach Learn Med 2014 ; 357 : 95 - 102 . doi:10.1080/10401334.2013.857335   pmid:24405353 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Dewey J. How we think. D C Heath, 1910 . https://archive.org/details/howwethink000838mbp doi:10.1037/10903-000 .
• ↵ Facione PA. Critical thinking: a statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction. Research findings and recommendations. American Philosophical Association, 1990 , http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED315423.pdf .
• ↵ Higgins S, Katsipataki M, Coleman R, et al. The Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit. Education Endowment Foundation, 2015 .
• ↵ Hanley P, Slavin RE, Elliot L. Thinking, doing, talking science. Evaluation report and executive summary. Education Endowment Foundation, 2015 , https://v1.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/Oxford_Science.pdf .
• ↵ Sackett DL. How to read clinical journals: I. why to read them and how to start reading them critically . Can Med Assoc J 1981 ; 357 : 555 - 8 . pmid:7471000 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Guyatt G, Cairns J, Churchill D, et al. Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group. Evidence-based medicine. A new approach to teaching the practice of medicine . JAMA 1992 ; 357 : 2420 - 5 . doi:10.1001/jama.1992.03490170092032   pmid:1404801 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Oxman AD, Sackett DL, Guyatt GH. The Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group. Users’ guides to the medical literature. I. How to get started . JAMA 1993 ; 357 : 2093 - 5 . doi:10.1001/jama.1993.03510170083036   pmid:8411577 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Rynearson EH. Endocrinology: a critical appraisal . Cal West Med 1940 ; 357 : 257 - 9 . pmid:18745588 . OpenUrl
• ↵ General Medical Council. Tomorrow's doctors. General Medical Council, 1993. http://www.gmc-uk.org/10a_annex_a.pdf_25398162.pdf
• ↵ General Medical Council. Good medical practice. General Medical Council, 2013. http://www.gmc-uk.org/static/documents/content/GMP_.pdf
• ↵ Edwards A, Elwyn G. Shared decision-making in health care: achieving evidence-based patient choice. 2nd ed . Oxford University Press, 2009 .
• ↵ Sumner P, Vivian-Griffiths S, Boivin J, et al. Exaggerations and caveats in press releases and health-related science news. PLoS One 2016 ; 357 : e0168217 . doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0168217   pmid:27978540 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Schwartz LM, Woloshin S, Andrews A, Stukel TA. Influence of medical journal press releases on the quality of associated newspaper coverage: retrospective cohort study. BMJ 2012 ; 357 : d8164 . doi:10.1136/bmj.d8164 .  pmid:22286507 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Glenton C, Paulsen EJ, Oxman AD. Portals to Wonderland: health portals lead to confusing information about the effects of health care. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak 2005 ; 357 : 7 . doi:10.1186/1472-6947-5-7   pmid:15769291 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Moynihan R, Bero L, Ross-Degnan D, et al. Coverage by the news media of the benefits and risks of medications . N Engl J Med 2000 ; 357 : 1645 - 50 . doi:10.1056/NEJM200006013422206   pmid:10833211 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Voogt J, Roblin NP. A comparative analysis of international frameworks for 21st century competences: implications for national curriculum policies. J Curric Stud 2012 ; 357 : 299 - 321 doi:10.1080/00220272.2012.668938 . OpenUrl
• ↵  National Research Council. Taking science to school: learning and teaching science in grades K-8. National Academies Press, 2007 .
• ↵ Nordheim L, Pettersen KS, Flottorp S, Hjälmhult E. Critical appraisal of health claims: science teachers’ perceptions and practices . Health Educ J 2016 ; 357 : 449 - 66 doi:10.1108/HE-04-2015-0016 . OpenUrl
• ↵  Committee on Science Learning. Kindergarten through eighth grade. How children learn science. In: Duschl RA, Schweingruber A, Shouse AW, eds. Taking science to school: learning and teaching science in grades K-8. National Academies Press, 2007 .
• ↵ Vosniadou S. International handbook of research on conceptual change. 2nd ed . Routledge, 2013 .
• ↵ Abrami PC, Bernard RM, Borokhovski E, Waddington DI, Wade CA, Persson T. Strategies for teaching students to think critically a meta-analysis. Rev Educ Res 2015 ; 357 : 275 - 314 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Ross D, Schipper S, Westbury C, et al. Examining critical thinking skills in family medicine residents . Fam Med 2016 ; 357 : 121 - 6 . pmid:26950783 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Ross D, Loeffler K, Schipper S, Vandermeer B, Allan GM. Do scores on three commonly used measures of critical thinking correlate with academic success of health professions trainees? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Acad Med 2013 ; 357 : 724 - 34 . doi:10.1097/ACM.0b013e31828b0823   pmid:23524925 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Young T, Rohwer A, Volmink J, Clarke M. What are the effects of teaching evidence-based health care (EBHC)? Overview of systematic reviews. PLoS One 2014 ; 357 : e86706 . doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0086706   pmid:24489771 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Informed Health Choices Group. Informed health choices. www.informedhealthchoices.org
• ↵ Harden RM, Stamper N. What is a spiral curriculum? Med Teach 1999 ; 357 : 141 - 3 . doi:10.1080/01421599979752   pmid:21275727 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Austvoll-Dahlgren A, Oxman AD, Chalmers I, et al. Key concepts that people need to understand to assess claims about treatment effects. J Evid Based Med 2015 ; 357 : 112 - 25 . doi:10.1111/jebm.12160   pmid:26107552 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Austvoll-Dahlgren A, Nsangi A, Semakula D. Interventions and assessment tools addressing key concepts people need to know to appraise claims about treatment effects: a systematic mapping review. Syst Rev 2016 ; 357 : 215 . doi:10.1186/s13643-016-0389-z   pmid:28034307 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Austvoll-Dahlgren A, Semakula D, Nsangi A, et al. The development of the “claim evaluation tools”: assessing critical thinking about effects. BMJ Open forthcoming .
• ↵ Austvoll-Dahlgren A, Guttersrud Ø, Semakula D, Nsangi A, Oxman AD. Measuring ability to assess claims about treatment effects: a latent trait analysis of the claim evaluation tools using Rasch modelling. BMJ Open [ forthcoming ].
• ↵ Sandoval WA, Sodian B, Koerber S, Wong J. Developing children’s early competencies to engage with science . Educ Psychol 2014 ; 357 : 139 - 52 doi:10.1080/00461520.2014.917589 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Pintrich PR. A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts . J Educ Psychol 2003 ; 357 : 667 - 86 doi:10.1037/0022-0663.95.4.667 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Clark DB, Tanner-Smith EE, Killingsworth SS. Digital games, design, and learning: a systematic review and meta-analysis . Rev Educ Res 2016 ; 357 : 79 - 122 . doi:10.3102/0034654315582065   pmid:26937054 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Berkman ND, Sheridan SL, Donahue KE, Halpern DJ, Crotty K. Low health literacy and health outcomes: an updated systematic review . Ann Intern Med 2011 ; 357 : 97 - 107 . doi:10.7326/0003-4819-155-2-201107190-00005   pmid:21768583 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Lundh A, Sismondo S, Lexchin J, Busuioc OA, Bero L. Industry sponsorship and research outcome. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2012 ; 357 : MR000033 . pmid:23235689 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Thistlethwaite J, Hammick M, The Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) Collaboration: into the next decade. Med Teach 2010 ; 357 : 880 - 2 . doi:10.3109/0142159X.2010.519068   pmid:21039096 . OpenUrl
• ↵ Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. Einstein—taking EBM to schools. http://www.cebm.net/taking-ebm-schools
• ↵ Castle JC, Chalmers I, Atkinson P, et al. Establishing a library of resources to help people understand key concepts in assessing treatment claims—the Critical Thinking and Appraisal Resource Library (CARL). PLoS One forthcoming .

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock Locked padlock icon ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Publications
• Account settings
• Advanced Search
• Journal List

Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning in the Health Sciences: An International Multidisciplinary Teaching Anthology

Robert cisneros , phd.

• Author information
• Copyright and License information

Corresponding Author: Robert Cisneros, PhD, School of Pharmacy, Campbell University. E-mail: [email protected]

In Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning in the Health Sciences: An International Multidisciplinary Teaching Anthology , 39 educators share classroom strategies and activities designed to enhance students' critical thinking skills. The majority of these authors represent schools of medicine or nursing. One school of pharmacy faculty member is identified. The editors, Drs. Noreen and Peter Facione are well known for their research in critical thinking and their development of critical thinking skills instruments which have been used widely in education: the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, and the Health Science Reasoning Test. Uses of these instruments in pharmacy education have been published. However, this book is far from being a promotion of these instruments. In fact the instruments themselves are rarely mentioned.

This book is not intended as an in-depth literature review of critical thinking research. Its overall theme is presented in a question posed by the Faciones in the preface, “What can I do in my classes to improve my students reasoning test scores and the clinical judgment processes?” [v] The Faciones answer their question by describing the anthology as providing “successful examples of favorite lessons which work when teaching for both thinking and content.” [vi]

There are 27 contributions in this book that describe various educational activities and lessons. The majority of contributions describe activities in classes for medical and nursing students. Other health science-related students are represented also. Pharmacy students are not represented. It should be noted that the “contributions” in this book are not referred to as “chapters” nor are they numbered consecutively in the table of contents. This is a minor inconvenience. The contributions are easy to read and the majority are 10 pages or less. A nice feature at the beginning of each contribution is a short, personal introduction of the author(s) and lesson. The formats of each contribution are similar and usually include headings such as background, learning objectives, rationale, expectations of students, instructions, criteria for evaluation, and student feedback. A review of theory and research is not a major part of most of the contributions, but references are provided by the authors. The figures and charts used are helpful; however, 2 of the figures use font styles that make reading difficult. [p118;120]

The Faciones begin the book with an introductory discussion of “Clinical Thinking and Clinical Judgment.” Subsequent contributions describe different classroom lessons intended to enhance critical thinking. A few examples include: “Nurturing Students' Meta-Cognition and Self Reflection Through On-line Journaling” (Giancarlo-Gittens), “Developing On-line Cases for Teaching Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning Skills” (Kim et. al.), “Using Short Cases to Teach Thinking” (Oermann), “The Poster: A Critical Thinking and Creative Strategy in a Research Course” (Profetto-McGrath), and “Thinking Critically About the Care of Patients with Neurological Disorders (Shin). The final contribution in the book, “Training the Discovery of Evidence of Critical Thinking” by Peter Facione, provides an interesting discussion of the “Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric” which the Faciones developed. The rubric itself is presented along with an Internet link where more information can be obtained.

Most lessons in this book can be related to pharmacy education with little difficulty. The different lessons and activities provide useful ideas to consider for adoption. For example, Dr. Chur-Hansen, a psychologist teaching at the University of Adelaide in Australia, describes a reflective journal on learning required in a course taught for health science, medical, and psychology students. One of the student learning objectives is the “development of critical reflection skills about the course and one's own abilities, including strengths and weaknesses in relation to course requirements, and course aims and objectives.” (p 95) Specific instructions are given for the journal writing. Evaluation criteria are also provided.

Student feedback is found in the majority of contributions and typically described as positive. However, it would have been helpful if more attention would have been devoted to this and how the feedback was used to make changes, if any, in the activity. Insight into what the students did not like would have been useful.

This book can be recommended to pharmacy educators. It will be particularly appealing to the pharmacy faculty member who is interested in enhancing student critical thinking skills and who is not reluctant to consider utilizing new or different successful educational strategies.

• PDF (426.7 KB)
• Collections

Similar articles

Cited by other articles, links to ncbi databases.

• Download .nbib .nbib
• Format: AMA APA MLA NLM

Add to Collections

Science and the Spectrum of Critical Thinking

• First Online: 02 January 2023

Cite this chapter

• Jeffrey Scheuer 3  

Part of the book series: Integrated Science ((IS,volume 12))

1234 Accesses

1 Citations

Since the nineteenth century, the scientific method has crystallized as the embodiment of scientific inquiry. But this paradigm of rigor is not confined to the natural sciences, and it has contributed to a sense of scientific “exceptionalism,” which obscures the deep connections between scientific and other kinds of thought. The scientific method has also indirectly given rise to the complex and contested idea of “critical thinking.” Both the scientific method and critical thinking are applications of logic and related forms of rationality that date to the Ancient Greeks. The full spectrum of critical/rational thinking includes logic, informal logic, and systemic or analytic thinking. This common core is shared by the natural sciences and other domains of inquiry share, and it is based on following rules, reasons, and intellectual best practices.

Graphical Abstract/Art Performance

The spectrum of critical thinking.

The term ‘critical thinking ’ is a bit like the Euro: a form of currency that not long ago many were eager to adopt but that has proven troublesome to maintain. And in both cases, the Greeks bear an outsized portion of the blame. Peter Wood [ 1 ]

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime
• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Brief Presentation of the Contributions

The Scientific Method

On multi-level thinking and scientific understanding

Wood P (2012) Some critical thoughts. Chronicle of higher education. chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/some-critical-thoughts/31252/ .

Lepore J (2016) After the fact: in the history of truth, a new chapter begins. The New Yorker, 21 Mar 21, pp 91–94

Google Scholar  

Wrightstone JW (1938) Test of critical thinking in the social studies. Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University

Novaes CD (2017) What is logic? https://aeon.co/essays/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-of-logic . Accessed Jan 12, 2017

Williams B (2006) Philosophy as a humanistic discipline

Ferry L (2011) A brief history of thought

Ennis RH (1964) A definition of critical thinking. Read Teach 17(8):599–612

Dobelli R (2013) The art of thinking clearly: better thinking, better decisions. Hachette UK

Phillips DZ (1979) Is moral education really necessary? Br J Educ Stud 27(1):42–56

Article   Google Scholar  

Kuprenas J, Frederick M (2013) 101 things I learned in engineering school

Grudin R (1997) Time and the art of living. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Bambrough JR (1965) Aristotle on justice: a paradigm of philosophy. In: Bambrough JR (ed) New essays on plato and Aristotle, pp 162–165

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

56 West 10th Street, New York, NY, 10011, USA

Jeffrey Scheuer

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeffrey Scheuer .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN), Stockholm, Sweden

Nima Rezaei

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Scheuer, J. (2023). Science and the Spectrum of Critical Thinking. In: Rezaei, N. (eds) Brain, Decision Making and Mental Health. Integrated Science, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15959-6_3

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15959-6_3

Published : 02 January 2023

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-15958-9

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-15959-6

eBook Packages : Behavioral Science and Psychology Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research