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Vol.7, No.2, 2021 1009 

 

 

 

 

Is Critical Thinking Teachable? 

By Leng, J., & Lu, X. 
Correspondence to: Jing Leng, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, East 

China Normal University, China. Email: jleng@deit.ecnu.edu.cn 

RITICAL thinking, as an indispensable ability for talents in the 21st 

century is helpful for people to think logically and independently, 

screen information, and make decisions quickly in the information society. 

Whether critical thinking is teachable or not has always been a controversial 

topic in the academic world. A recent study published in Open Education 

Research selected 79 experiment or quasi-experimental research literature 

from China and abroad as the research objects, explored the differences of 

critical thinking teaching effects and the teachability of critical thinking from 

the aspects of the discipline, teaching stage, the number of participants, tech-

nical intervention, countries, testing methods and so on. 

The results show that: 

 The effect of critical thinking teaching varies significantly among 

different disciplines and teaching stages, it works the best in Math-

ematics and in high school education. 

 The longer the cycle of critical thinking teaching is, the better the 

enhancing effects will be. 

 Teaching intervention has the same effect on whatever the partici-

pants’ number, and there is no significant difference in the im-

provement of students’ critical thinking with or without technical in-

tervention; 

 The teaching effect of critical thinking among different countries is 

significantly different, and the improvement of critical thinking abil-

ity measured by the self-compiled tools of standardized tests is more 

obvious. 

Suggestions: 

 Extend the integration range of critical thinking and disciplines. 

 Professors of critical thinking should be introduced into basic educa-

tion, and the continuity and systematization of teaching should be 

maintained. 

 In the teaching of critical thinking, teachers should not blindly fol-

low the trend of technology and abandon the traditional teaching 

methods. 

C 



 

Vol.7, No.2, 2021 1010 

 Use multiple assessment tools to measure changes in critical think-

ing. Evaluation tools are one of the variables that affect the effec-

tiveness of students’ critical thinking. 

In conclusion, through the comprehensive analysis of the existing re-

search data, this study obtained that the combined effects of teaching intervention 

effect on students’ critical thinking values, with the quantitative results, show that 

critical thinking can be taught, and found that subject, learning, teaching period, 

the technology involved in various cultures, and assessment tools for the students’ 

critical thinking teaching effect has certain adjustment. 

 

 

Source: Open Education Research, 2020; 26(6):110-118.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 


