The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing found that while 89% of faculty considered critical thinking a high priority, only 19% could confidently define it. Even more telling, over 75% struggled to reconcile content delivery with fostering critical thinking (Paul, Elder, & Batell, 1997). 

Questions That Still Linger

  • Some of the key questions educators continue to wrestle with include:
  • Are skills from Bloom’s taxonomy the same as critical thinking?
  • Can students critically think without strong content knowledge?
  • Do critical thinking skills transfer across disciplines?
  • Is critical thinking a universal skill or domain-dependent?

These questions have fueled decades of debate among theorists, particularly around two dominant perspectives: fluid vs. grounded critical thinking (Kaminske, 2019).

Fluid vs. Grounded Thinking

  • Fluid critical thinking assumes that students can develop habits of mind that apply across contexts. This view focuses on reasoning, logic, and decision-making as transferable skills.
  • Grounded critical thinking, by contrast, argues that critical thinking cannot exist outside deep content knowledge. According to this view, students need to be immersed in a discipline to think critically within it.

In practice, we may need to blur these lines. Helping students become confident, analytical thinkers means cultivating both general habits and field-specific understanding.

So, What Is Critical Thinking?

Multiple definitions exist, but common threads include reasoning, reflection, and purposeful analysis:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information... as a guide to belief and action (Scriven & Paul, 1987).  

It’s not just about "thinking hard." It’s about improving the quality of thought through structure, habit, and self-discipline (Paul & Elder, 2008).

Recognizing the Signs: Effort, Habit, and Practice

According to Paul and Elder (2008), we can recognize critical thinking in students through:

  • Effort: Metacognition, holistic information gathering, and reasoning.
  • Habit: Consistent engagement in cognitive processes and self-monitoring.
  • Practice: Applying frameworks across contexts to guide belief and action.

However, barriers still exist. Students may default to agreement in discussions, jump to conclusions, or reject alternative perspectives (Isaksen & Treffinger, 1985; Isaksen, 2019).

Creative Problem Solving: A Structured Path Forward

To support critical thinking, we introduced the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving (CPS) model. This six-stage process builds in both divergent and convergent thinking, offering students a practical path from problem identification to implementation:

  1. Mess-Finding—Identifying the right issue
  2. Data-Finding—Gathering and analyzing information
  3. Problem-Finding—Crafting a focused problem statement
  4. Idea-Finding—Generating and building upon ideas
  5. Solution-Finding—Evaluating and selecting solutions
  6. Acceptance-Finding—Developing a plan for action

This linear yet iterative process balances creativity with criticality, providing a clear structure to guide students toward higher-level thinking (Isaksen & Treffinger, 1985; Osborn, 1963).

Facilitation Matters

Facilitating critical thinking isn’t passive. Instructors must model the process, manage group dynamics, and avoid brainstorming pitfalls like production blocking and social loafing (Diehl & Strobe, 1987).

Effective facilitation strategies include:

  • Managing interaction norms.
  • Using electronic exchanges for idea development.
  • Teaching the language of CPS explicitly.
  • Reinforcing divergent/convergent phases of thinking.

Creative problem solving, when implemented well, helps students move beyond intuition and guesswork to structured, reflective decision-making.

Final Thoughts: Cultivating Critical Thinkers

Critical thinking is not a mystery. It’s a teachable, observable, and essential skill. But it requires clarity, intention, and structure. Whether we lean toward fluid or grounded models, our job is to create space for students to:

  • Wrestle with complex problems.
  • Explore unfamiliar perspectives.
  • Apply structured thinking across real-world contexts.

As facilitators, we must help students not just "think better" but think with discipline, empathy, and precision.