Teaching critical thinking through engagement with multiplicity

Abstract

It is widely agreed that contemporary higher education should teach critical thinking. In order to explore how university programmes can do so more effectively, this paper examines how students in European Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) programmes, which are renowned for developing critical thinking skills, experience how they acquire this ability. Based on a number of interviews with students in a range of LAS programmes, it is concluded that these students believe that they learn critical thinking by engaging with a multiplicity of perspectives on problems and issues. This makes them sceptical towards decontested claims to knowledge, appreciate different academic and social perspectives, and realise what they themselves should believe or do. LAS programmes achieve this through a multidisciplinary curriculum, a student-centred pedagogy, and a diverse academic community. This insight generates a number of suggestions for how other programmes might teach critical thinking better.

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