Critical Study INFORMAL LOGIC XV.2, Spring 1993 The Generalizability of Critical Thinking: Multiple Perspectives on an Educational Ideal edited by Stephen P. Norris WALTER C. OKSHEVSKY Memorial University of Newfoundland Norris, Stephen P. (ed.) (1992). The Gen- eralizability of Critical Thinking: Multi- ple Perspectives on an Educational/deal. New York: Teacher's College Press. Pp. xiv and 1-234. ISBN 0-8077-3172-2. Paper. This collection of fourteen papers grew out of a conference on the generalizability of critical thinking (CT) held at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1989. Stephen Norris has here brought together some of the best-known and most influen- tial writers in the area of CT to produce the first book devoted exclusively to an exami- nation of the generalizability question. It is an important and welcome book. Only four of the papers are published elsewhere, all with modifications. All of the papers are of a high standard in my estimation and there is none of the repetitiveness one tends to find in volumes of collected papers. With contributions from philosophers and psy- chologists, the papers together offer a good representative display of the range of phil- osophical, psychological, and educational issues which have coalesced over the years around the matter of generalizability. A number of papers broaden the vistas further through their treatment of novel or hitherto underdeveloped aspects of the question. Noteworthy as well is the variety of formu- lations of "generalizability" which reveals quite comprehensively how the multi- faceted character of "the" generalizability question is tied to differing conceptions and formulations of the nature of CT and its components. The book has an Introduction by the editor and is followed by three Sec- tions: I) Clarifications and Directions for Research, II) Defenses of Generalizability, and III) Challenges to Generalizability. I cannot here review each of the papers to the extent they deserve and this primari- ly because of competence. One undertakes a review of fourteen scholarly papers from two different disciplines, and from such a variety of perspectives, at one's own peril. Despite my best efforts, intentions, and the usual constraints, some of the contributors will perhaps feel somewhat short- changed. However, in light of the merit of these papers, and in an effort to set out the multiple dimensions of the generalizability issue as represented in the book, I will at- tempt here to outline for the potential read- er of this book their respective approaches and positions and highlight what I take to be some of their major claims and contri- butions. My classification and arrange- ment of these papers differs from the order in which they appear in the book. The papers by Robert Ennis ("The Degree to Which Critical Thinking is Subject Specific: Clarification and Needed Research") and Ralph Johnson (liThe Problem of Defining Critical Thinking") both provide important critical reviews of the state of the art as they see it. Ennis' pa- per gives a comprehensive account of the 140 Walter C. Okshevsky ways in which positions on the generaliza- bility question impact on educational prac- tices and policies of teaching and testing for CT and it provides sufficient recom- mendations for directions of future philo- sophical and empirical work in the field to keep philosophers and psychologists busy for quite some time. After outlining the characteristics of the four major approaches to the teaching of CT -General, Infusion, Immersion, Mixed-the paper turns to a consideration of the subject-specificity of CT as one of the central questions underly- ing the issue of the validity of any particu- lar pedagogical approach. Ennis provides a valuable identification of three versions of the thesis of subject-specificity-domain specificity as an empirical thesis, episte- mological subject specificity, conceptual subject specificity-and critically exam- ines the strengths and weaknesses of their respective claims in terms of internal co- herence, empirical support and educational implication. More so than with any of the other contributions-with the possible excep- tions of those by Jane Roland Martin and Stephen Norris-Ralph Johnson's treat- ment of the generalizability question is finely attuned to the logically prior issue of what "CT' is to mean. As Johnson points out, while "generalizable" itself requires careful definition within a framework of terms differentiating "general" from "gen- eralizable", "generalizability" from "trans- ferability", and "generality" from "univer- sality", the difficulty with defining nCT" is compounded by the lack of any real con- sensus on what precisely it refers to and how it is to be differentiated from a number of related terms and references. This latter claim is well illustrated within a critical re- view of the stipulative definitions of "CT", and the respective theories in which these definitions are embedded, as developed by Ennis, Paul, McPeck, Siegel, and Lipman. Johnson contends that a common underly- ing source of the difficulties besetting these accounts rests in their inability to adequately address and resolve what is termed "the network problem" and "the scope problem" (pAl). The former calls for a clear identification of where it is that "CT" stands with reference to such related abilities or terms as problem solving, decision-making, rationality, metacogni- tion. The latter correlative problem is one of delineating the range of items to be in- cluded as a proper subset of CT. Is CT, for example, to extend beyond thinking and belief to encompass the realm of action? (Assuming that thinking can coherently be taken to be somehow distinct from action, Johnson gives the somewhat unusual an- swer that CT should not be so understood.) Does/should CT include a moral dimen- sion and on what grounds? Johnson's criti- cisms are in my view fundamental and central ones: none of the theoretically em- bedded definitions of "CT" provided by the above "Group of Five" are able to cap- ture the force of the term "critical" and none of them is able to adequately identify what precisely it is about some instance or episode of thinking that makes it "critical" thinking and not some other kind of think- ing such as "rational" or "higher-order" thinking. Equally noteworthy about this paper is its attempt to articulate the primacy of the social dimension of CT in a way which challenges some of the Group of Five's re- sidual Cartesian ideals. The reader may want to see in this regard the papers by Blatz and Martin which offer their own corroborating extensions of this primacy. Johnson argues that such criteria of CT as Lipman's "self-correctiveness" over- emphasize the significance and role of the individual thinker and occlude the recogni- tion that such criteria, when held as criteria for "CT", are originally embedded within the methods, procedures and ideals of a community to which the individual sub- mits hislher thought and w~rk for validation and criticism. The individual's self- corrections, like his/her self-ascriptions, do not constitute the final authority on the matter of "criticalness". One of the impor- tant consequences which Johnson draws from his thesis of the primacy of the com- munitarian character of CT is the seldom- recognized virtue of being able to withstand criticism from one's community of fellow practitioners. The capacity "to take hostile, not just friendly, fire ... is an acid test for a critical thinker" (p.SI). Jane Roland Martin's paper ("Critical Thinking for a Humane World") is the only other paper which falls into the category of critical reviews of the state of the art. Rath- er than targeting individual writers or theo- ries, however, Martin offers what I read as an over-all diagnosis of the condition of the soul inhabited by that state. I found her paper to be one of the few papers in this collection which raises, in a sustained and dialectical way, the very question itself of the validity and justification of CT as an educational ideal. Martin's approach to the generalizability issue is through the ques- tion of whether "cr, as we have it vari- ously formulated at present, should be posited as a general-qua-universal ideal of education-i.e., as an ideal which, if itself justifiable, would underwrite the teaching of some determinate set of skills and dis- positions to one and alL Martin argues that CT can be such an ideal. But there are con- ditions. One of these is that our concep- tions and practices of CT not allow thinking to be reduced to an abstract and intellectualist mode of thought. Within such a mode, the concretely practical life- problems of men and women become transformed into simply intellectually sat- isfying academic pursuits or into objects of study for a calculus and technology of stra- tegic action. Martin suggests that while such prevalently-held criteria and ideals of CT as personal distance from the object of study, the suspension of belief, interest, sympathy and intimacy in relation to one's subject matter, may be countenanced by our currently dominant metascientific the- ories, they are a priori givens neither with- in science nor within the rational pursuit of Review oJGeneralizability of CT 141 our everyday activities. Martin illustrates other paradigms and styles of inquiry which, while embracing such "subjective" or "feminine" ideals as care, concern, and connection, do not sacrifice the rigour and the seriousness we expect from genuinely "critical" thinking. The challenge Martin poses is one of coming to recognize that the realities of friendship and love, of feel- ing and relationship, and the uniqueness and complexity of individuals, situations and events, can function as "ingredients of discovery" rather than as indicators of the demise of objectivity (p.168). Martin elo- quently develops her case that our attempts to design a conception of CT which is gen- uinely committed to "liberation and em- powerment" must first confront and break down the gender barrier with its attendant constructed oppositions between reason and feeling, subjectivity and objectivity, mind and body, self and other, the private and the public, masculine and feminine, theory and practice. In the latter part of the paper, Martin focuses directly on the last opposition. Her account sensitively recon- structs some of the ways in which specta- torship is built into the curriculum of a liberal education and examines ways in which the cducational ideal of an integra- tion of thought and action could serve as a justifiable general ideal for CT. Two other philosophical papers ask whether a common epistemology could be formally applicable to CT across the vari- ous domains of its expression. Siegel's paper ("The Generalizability of Critical Thinking Skills, Dispositions, and Episte- mology") argues that there indeed is a uni- tary and fully generalizable epistemOlogy underlying the variety of different criteria of reason assessment we presently have. Whatever be the variations in what counts as a good reason, Siegel argues, all good reasons share the same epistemic feature of providing warrant to the claims for which they serve as reasons (p.102). Reconstructing this epistemology, Siegel articulates three constitutive features of 142 Walter C. Okshevsky such an epistemology: I) a radically non- epistemic conception of truth, 2) a rejec- tion of relativism and the endorsement of an absolutism with respect to the rationality of reasons and belief, and 3) an acceptance of fallibilism. Siegel develops this account in explicit opposition to the view that dif- ferent fields possess their own distinctive epistemologies-a view which is often taken to follow from the thesis of interfield variation in criteria of reason assessment. Siegel argues that even if this thesis were true, all it would coherently mean is that different kinds of claims require different kinds of evidence for their support. The reason for Siegel why the thesis is actually false is because there simply is no strict and systematic correspondence between "field" and type of criteria of reason assessment: we find the same criteria oper- ative in different fields and we find a varie- ty of different criteria operative within the same field. A paper closely related to Siegel's ori- entation is Sharon Bailin's ("Discovery, Justification, and the Generalizability Question"). She too focuses on an under- standing of the epistemology operative within CT, and she too contends that this component, properly understood, is gener- alizable. Bailin argues that the current pre- occupation in the CT literature with skills, abilities, dispositions, and techniques. omits a recognition of the primary impor- tance of an epistemological understanding of the ways in which the creative genera- tion of ideas and solutions, and its con- straint by disciplinary principles, rules and procedures, interact to define the structure of inquiry and to reveal the processes by which knowledge is developed and as- sessed. This epistemological understand- ing, for Bailin, is generalizable in the sense of being applicable within all disciplines as well as within the actual learning of any discipline (p. 95). The argument is devel- oped within an interesting critique of claims John McPeck makes on the rela- tionship between logic and creativity, and between imagination and method, while relying on the distinction between the con- text of discovery and the context of justifi- cation. Bailin attempts to show that McPeck ends up misconstruing the nature of this distinction, and with it, the precise charac- ter of the interaction between the creative and the evaluative/critical components of CT which that distinction allows for. Three other philosophers take a more specific approach in focusing on particular abilities or strategies as sub-components of CT. James Ryan ("Finding Generalizable Strategies in Scientific Theory Debates") develops a Kuhnian-inspired framework for the empirical investigation of the gen- eralizability of scientific reasoning strate- gies. Positing as the units of analysis three "lines of reasoning" and their accompany- ing sets of strategies within scientific theory debate, Ryan examines their operation in the reasoning about graphics, causes and effects, and simplicity, which was displayed within the debate on the theory of conti- nental drift. Ryan argues that neither the employed lines of reasoning nor their ac- companying strategies are unique to geolo- gy but can be found to be operative within, and thus generalizable across, a variety of fields and everyday contexts (p.67). J. Anthony Blair ("The Generalizability of Critical Thinking: The Evaluation of Sources") examines the generalizability of the abilities and dispositions required for the evaluation of the reliability and credi- bility of information sources. This subset of CT is taken to comprise the "lion's share" of CT (p.127). This view appears significantly less exaggerated within the context of recent work, cited by Blair, on the role within the justification of belief of our "epistemic dependence" on sources of information originating beyond our own individual observations and experience. Blair reviews a number of criteria govern- ing the evaluation of different kinds of in- formation sources and then turns to the question of the generalizability of some of the principles which are operative within the evaluation of observation reports. The claim here is that while these principles can be said to be general in the sense of not being restricted in their applicability to specific kinds of observation-content, this is not the case with the actual application of these principles to specific observation reports. For such appraisal requires, as does the actual making of an accurate ob- servation report, specific background knowledge of the type of situation in which the observation report is made (p.130). For Blair, both the claim on the generalizability of the principles, and the claim on the non-generalizability of the particulars of a situation are true "by defi- nition" (p.129). Blair goes on to develop what I consider to be a genuinely incisive analysis of the logical and causal relation- ships between abilities and dispositions and he addresses in light of the analysis a number of important questions concerning the teaching for and the transferability of skills and dispositions of observation report assessment. David Hitchcock ("Reasoning by Analogy: A General Theory") approaches CT through a focus on the structure of rea- soning by analogy as a distinct form of ar- gument, and develops and defends criteria for the evaluation of analogical inference. Hitchcock hypothesizes, however, that such criteria will accord with the criteria governing good inference in general. Ana- logical reasoning is thus examined as a specific case by which to test the thesis of epistemological subject-specificity. On the identification of analogical argument as "reason(ing] from an assumed likeness be- tween a case of interest (the target) and one or more cases (the analog cases or sources) to some further resemblance" (p.109), Hitchcock finds that both the strategy involved and the criteria of evaluation remain common across the fields or contexts in which the arguments are made. Epistemological general ism is here considered to be in order so long as it is recognized that the actual employment Review oJGeneralizability of CT 143 of the criteria within evaluation of an ana- logical inference will require a knowledge of the field within which the subject matter of the argument belongs. Two of the most prominent supporters of a non-generalizability position, John McPeck and Charles Blatz, provide respec- tively a re-examination of the issue and an application of the position to the problem of CT testing. McPeck ("Thoughts on Sub- ject Specificity") reviews his position in the light of empirical research on the prob- lem of transfer, and responds to criticisms of his epistemological thesis of subject- specificity as raised by Ennis' paper for this volume and in an earlier version of the paper. In responding to Ennis' charge that his account of the field-specific nature of CT leaves the term "field" unacceptably vague, McPeck urges us to recognize that the lack of precise boundaries characteriz- ing the term "field", and with it, such terms as "general thinking skill" and "critical thinking skill", is not necessarily the con- sequence of inadequate definition or im- precise theorizing. McPeck draws our attention here to what I believe is an im- portant consideration when examining our concepts and definitions of terms. McPeck points out that what is often taken to be the "vagueness" of a term is actually but a re- flection of the structurally open-ended character of most of the terms and expres- sions within a language. Rather than being seen as a weakness of language, this fea- ture of "the plasticity of language itself", as McPeck terms it, should be recognized as a functioning strength of the language (p.199). Reminding us of Wittgenstein's notion of meaning-as-use, McPeck argues that an awareness of the variety of contexts and paradigms of use through which a term gains its sense is of particular importance in being able to sight the variety of differ- ent forms of CT together with the respec- tive criteria of application and assessment characterizing these forms. McPeck's pa- per goes on to critically identify a common inaccurate construal of the point and direc- 144 Walter C. Okshevsky tion of the question concerning cognitive transferability. His review of some of the literature on transfer leads him to conclude that his position on "general reasoning skills", together with his account of the significance of background knowledge, remain well corroborated by the empirical research. Charles Blatz ("Contextual Limits on Reasoning and Testing for Critical Think- ing") stays with his earlier definition of CT as "the deliberate pursuit of well-supported beliefs, decisions, plans and actions" (p.208) and draws out the consequences of his analysis for the question of the validity of standardized testing for CT. Blatz makes what is for this latter purpose a central dis- tinction between first, the generality (i.e., applicability) of principles of logical rea- soning and patterns of inquiry across con- texts or domains, and second, the generality across contexts of the abilities and disposi- tions to think and operate in ways which fit or instantiate the former abstract patterns (p.217). Blatz maintains that we can ac- knowledge the generality of the former but need to recognize that at the latter actually operational level of self-directed and self- moderated thinking and reasoning, the abilities and dispositions involved in CT are highly context bound (p.207). Under- stood in these terms, Blatz presents his po- sition as a partial form of the epistemo- logical version of subject-specificity. "Communities of discussion" and "infor- mational contexts" are developed as two contextualizing factors functioning to structure variance in the expectations and standards critical thinkers are accountable for meeting. Differences in the former are revealed within background assumptions concerning the categories and behavior of existents together with accepted standard procedures for inquiry and for the transla- tion of determined facts into practice and policy. Blatz maintains that it is such an agreement on questions, problems, as- sumptions and methodological procedures which, while open to change and refine- ment, set at any given time specific logical, conceptual, and normative expectations for CT. He proceeds to persuasively show that this contextualizing factor, together with that of "informational context", which specifies what is to count as common knowledge, and what level of knowledge is to comprise "mastery" within the commu- nity, are factors which cannot legitimately be omitted in constructing and evaluating CT tests for they are constitutive features of CT itself. On this account, if a CT test is to possess construct validity, then it will be a test which reveals the presence and strength of abilities and dispositions to think in accordance with the expectations held by a given community of discussion and a given informational context (p.217). Three of the papers in the volume are by psychologists. Two of these investigate the analysis and interpretation of written texts as the locus or site of CT ability. Linda Phillips ("The Generalizability of Self- Regulatory Thinking Strategies") investi- gates certain thinking and problem- solving strategies which proficient readers actively use in directing and evaluating their reading-i.e., "rebinding", "shifting focus", "analyzing alternatives"-and which can themselves be evaluated for their productivity and strength by means of epistemological criteria proferred within a number of extant models of CT. Reporting on her own research, Phillips finds that highly proficient young readers tend to use more often than low proficiency young readers the same productive reading/ thinking strategies used by skilled adult readers. Interestingly, her findings also suggest that background familiarity with the topic or content of a narrative text does not possess the kind of significance for subjects' reading/thinking abilities we would expect on a theory of CT such as McPeck's (p.148). Such empirical evi- dence for the generalizability of strategy- use from young readers to adult readers, together with Phillips' examination of other research indicating the generalizabil~ ity of strategies across certain subjects (narrative reading and mathematics prob- lem solving), and across certain text genres (narrative reading and expository reading of science), challenges the view that gener- al strategies and principles are in them- selves only weak and trite factors in accounting for CT abilities. David Olson's longstanding interest in the nature and development of literacy is brought to bear on the generalizability is- sue in a paper co-authored with Nandita Babu ("Critical Thinking as Critical Dis- course"). "CT" for the authors is taken to be "essentially synonymous" with literacy: "[t]he interpretation, analysis and criticism of written texts is what critical thinking is and what it is for." (p.l84). Rejecting the explanatory value of such generalist terms as "abilities", "traits", "dispositions" for a psychology and pedagogy of CT, the au- thors recommend that both tasks be pur- sued in light of an analysis of the development of certain concepts and ideas operative within people's actual ways of representing situations, tasks and prob- lems. On this model, these concepts are displayed within such speech act and men- tal state terms as "mean", "intend", "infer", "assume", "know", Such terms are taken to be essential in interpreting and characteriz- ing the truth, warrant, and propositional at- titude of a speaker to his/her utterance. The metacognitive competence of determining whether a speaker believes a statement, or knows it, or has inferred or assumed it, is basic within CT ability. And it is a compe- tence which requires an understanding of the senses and specific roles of speech act and mental state terminology as embedded within the conventions of literate discourse. The authors contend that it is at this level of the acquisition and use of these particu- lar concepts and terms, rather than at the level of general "all-purpose skills", that the generalizability question is able to be adequately addressed. The authors report on research conducted by themselves and by others which illustrates and supports Review of Generalizability of CT 145 this view. A central claim on the generaliz- ability issue here is that while the language of these terms has a general applicability across fields, the correct determination of the role of the propositional content of a statement as being, say, that of an assump- tion rather than an inference, requires disciplinary-specific knowledge (p.186). Robert Lockhart ("The Role of Con- ceptual Access in the Transfer of Thinking Skills") suggests that the complex question of whether CT can be taught as a general- izable skill could profitably be approached via a consideration of a simpler case: memory. He claims that while some rc:;- search indicates skilled remembering to be highly content bound, we should not infer from this that remembering cannot be taught as a generalizable skill. Certain mnemonic techniques, based on general principles of memory processes are suc- cessful. One of these principles is that the content to be remembered be connected with and structured by the elements of the rememberer's already existing knowledge (p.55). Whether a particular form of skilled remembering is readily transferable or remains content bound thus depends upon the degree to which the knowledge required for the structuring of the novel material is itself specialized and content specific (ibid.). In the case of any applica- tion of a mnemonic technique, however, skilled remembering is a result of a form of training which enables the data of experi- ence to connect with and "trigger" those knowledge structures which are them- selves able to effectively organize incom- ing information (ibid.). One of the lessons here is that remembering can be taught as a generalizable skill despite the fact that skilled remembering in one content area may not readily transfer to another content area. Lockhart importantly points out that the analogy to the teaching of CT should not be drawn as a recommendation to adopt the strategy of first teaching general rules and principles, and then adding on content specific skills. For this strategy 146 Walter C. Okshevsky omits a recognition of the role of "abduc- tive" memory. The term is borrowed from Pierce and here refers to this particular form of memory as a movement from given data to those theoretical structures (i.e., concepts, inference schema) required for the structuring of data and the resolu- tion of a problem (p.57). What a recogni- tion of the role of abductive memory and abductive access reveals is that the gener- alizability of CT is not simply a matter of the generality of rules or schema of thought, but involves as well the factors controlling access to those rules. This access relation between content and schema, captured by the term "abductive remembering", is illus- trated within an examination of related rel- evant research. One of the conclusions reached by Lockhart is that actual applica- tions of general rules and schemas of CT may remain content bound due to the fact that abductive access to the rules is itself bound by highly specialized knowledge. Hence, no amount of practice with a gener- al rule can guarantee its access within the context of a particular problem (p.64). While Stephen Norris' paper ("Intro- duction: The Generalizability Question") opens this collection, I believe its central message is an appropriate one to identify in closing. Norris develops and defends the view that neither the philosopher's work of conceptual analysis nor the empirical re- search of the psychologist is by itself suffi- cient for answering questions concerning the meaning and the generalizability of CT. The need for collaborative inquiry is for Norris especially pronounced within the question of what "CT" means and how we are to go about establishing who or what the term "critical thinker" is to refer to. Norris argues innovatively for this view through an analysis of the semantics of the term "critical thinker". Employing a cate- gorization system which differentiates be- tween nominal kind terms, strict natural kind terms, and nonstrict natural kind terms, Norris concludes that "critical thinker" should be taken as an instance of the third category (p.13). As such, its meaning, together with the matter of its generalizability, are to be established not only through conceptual analysis, conven- tion or stipulative definition, but as well through empirical research into the possi- bility that the term denotes an "underlying trait" shared by all referents of the term. While with nominal kind terms the proper- ties which are conventionally set out in the intension of the term enable a determina- tion of the term's extension, such that if the intension of a term were to be altered with- in a given linguistic community a change in that term's extension would be entailed, this is not the case with a strict natural kind term. For the determination of thc exten- sion of such a term is here not a matter of conventional agreement on which proper- ties are to comprise the term's intension, but is rather an empirical matter of deter- mining those natural traits which are shared by all instances of the term and which underly their varying manifestations (p.8).Norris emphasizes that this is a task for science, not philosophy. "Critical thinker", however, should be seen as a non- strict natural kind, the meaning of which is to be determined both through a communi- ty's value-based negotiations and agree- ment on what should comprise the qualities and characteristics of a critical thinker, as well as through empirical inves- tigation into the underlying trait(s) and powers which are realized/realizable with- in the members of the class. Norris goes on to attempt to locate the definitions of "CT" given by Ennis, Siegel, McPeck, and Norris (previously) within this categoriza- tion system and outlines some of the positive and negative consequences he considers to follow from these definitions for the generalizability issue. For both the scholar in this area, and for the more general studt!nt and reader in- terested in CT and the dimensions of its generalizability/non-generalizability, this is a seminal book which succeeds in gathering and addressing many of the cur- rently central questions surrounding this issue and one which illustrates some of the productive approaches presently being pursued within their investigation. Review of Generalizability of CT 147 WALTER C. OKSHEVSKY FACULTY OF EDUCATION MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND AlB 3X8 0