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Fostering critical thinking skills is always a challenge in teaching. Educators still honor Bloom’s Taxonomy as the basis of learning. With that giving way to its revised and updated interpretations, we now have critical thinking tools that can help in all of the key components of developing such skills. In a nutshell, learning encompasses a series of specific tasks, sometimes in order, but most often not.

How, then, to define critical thinking? It is certainly not an easy question to answer. But perhaps a definition of it is, in the end, unimportant. The important thing is that it does need to be taught, and we need to ensure graduates emerge from university being good at it.

One thing is certain: beyond vague pronouncements and including “critical thinking” among nebulous lists of unmet or hoped-for graduate attributes, universities should be paying more attention to critical thinking and doing a lot more to cultivate it.

The textbook cognitive strategy is critical thinking, an intellectually disciplined, self-guided and effortful process to help identify valid information. In school, students are taught to closely and carefully read and evaluate information. Thus equipped, they can evaluate the claims and arguments they see, hear, or read. No objection. The ability to think critically is immensely important.

But is it enough in a world of information overabundance and gushing sources of disinformation? The answer is “No” for at least two reasons.

Visible thinking routines that encourage students to document and share their ideas can have a profound effect on their learning.

As “research it yourself” becomes a rallying cry for promoters of outlandish conspiracy theories with real-world consequences, educators need to think hard about what’s missing from their information literacy efforts.

    The Critical Thinking Workbook: games and activities to develop critical thinking skills [e-Book]. Global Digital Citizen Foundation, 2016. Texto completo La guía permite explorar a través de juegos y actividades que es el pensamiento crítico,  para que el aprendizaje sea un placer. El libro será de gran ayuda para que tanto el bibliotecario como…