Critical thinking and language: The challenge of generic skills and disciplinary discourses [Book Review] (original) (raw)

2015, New Zealand studies in applied linguistics

Interest in the complex and contested topic of critical thinking does not seem to diminish. Higher Education Research & Development recently devoted an entire issue to different facets of the topic. Earlier articles in the journal have engaged in debates on whether critical thinking is a general skill or a subject-specific one (Moore, 2004; Davis, 2006). As an academic skills and language advisor, I teach critical thinking in its various avatars: critical analysis, evaluation, reflective thinking and problem solving, both in generic academic skills workshops, as well as within specific subjects. Therefore, I have followed with interest the growing body of publications on the topic, especially the debate on the generalist versus specificist perspectives on critical thinking. This book, which presents a discussion on the topic, has been a very welcome addition to the body of work on critical thinking as it further enriches discussion on a vital and often challenging pedagogic task. Moore's book makes a solid contribution to the field. It gets many things right. It provides a comprehensive literature review and employs a research design that can be replicated in other disciplines. It is also written in a very accessible style. However, the final conclusion, that critical thinking can be taught only within the context of a specific discipline, is not totally convincing. The book sets out to answer three interrelated questions by uncovering what critical thinking means to individual academics in different disciplines within the Faculty of Arts in an Australian university. On the basis of the responses, Moore seeks to unravel the extent of disciplinary variations with regard to critical thinking. The responses form the basis for an answer to the final question related to the implications for teaching. A broad trans-disciplinary approach to critical thinking is adopted. The teaching of tertiary literacy, cultural studies, English for academic purposes, teaching of English to speakers of other languages, academic literacies, critical pedagogy, literary theory and the history of western education are some of the areas studiously explored. The literature review elegantly synthesises the rich field of critical thinking. The definitional slipperiness of the term and the generalist-specificist debate on critical thinking is carefully documented. Phenomenography forms the overarching framework for the study, and textography, a method initially used by Swales and modestly described as, 'something more than a disembodied textual or discoursal analysis, but something less than a full ethnographic account' (as cited in Moore, 2011, p. 59) is appropriate for the project, as it makes possible a systematic empirical study of an area that is generally under-researched. Seventeen academics from the Faculty of Arts from different disciplines were interviewed and documents related to their specific subjects were examined. These included references to types of thinking and the expectations with regard to it in the subject outline, the assessment tasks, the rubrics of essay questions and any stimulus that