Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction (original) (raw)

The landmark 1990 APA Delphi Report presents the findings of the two year project to articulate an international expert consensus definition of “critical thinking. Over the past 25 years this report has been adopted by educators at every level and in every discipline, as well as by business, military, healthcare, and technology professionals seeking to make the idea of “critical thinking” practical, positive, and applicable. Today the Delphi conceptualization grounds is used throughout the world. It grounds academic requirements, courses, textbooks, peer-reviewed research, dissertations, competitively funded grants, institutional accreditation projects, and numerous assessment tools used for educational and employment purposes when evaluating an individual’s or a group’s reasoning skills and mindset attributes are important. The international panel of experts who participated in the APA Delphi research project come to the consensus that critical thinking is best understood, taught, and modeled for students as the process of purposeful and reflective judgment. When engaging in critical thinking we solve problems and make decisions by considering the questions, evidence, conceptualizations, context, and standards to apply to the problem or issue at hand. The process is non-linear and the application of our specific critical thinking skills can be recursive, for we can analyze our interpretations, evaluate our inferences, or explain our analyses. The key, of course, is that we are being reflective and fair-minded and truth-seeking throughout the process of determining what to believe or what to do in any given context. Defined in this way, critical thinking is a powerful tool for learning as well as for our professional and civic lives. We all may have different beliefs, values, perspectives, and experiences influencing our problem solving and decision making. But we share the human capacity to be reflective, analytical, open-minded, and systematic about thinking through our problems and choices, so that we can make the best judgments possible about what to believe or what to do. That human process of well-reasoned, reflective judgment is critical thinking. In the Delphi Report the international panel of experts identify the attributes of ideal critical thinker as well as the specific skills that are engaged in the process of purposeful, reflective judgment. The report includes detailed pedagogically focused tables and specific recommendations relating to critical thinking instruction and assessment.