critical thinking passive process

Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

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• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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• Warren, Karen J. 1988. “Critical Thinking and Feminism”, Informal Logic , 10(1): 31–44. [ Warren 1988 available online ]
• Watson, Goodwin, and Edward M. Glaser, 1980a, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, Form A , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
• –––, 1980b, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal: Forms A and B; Manual , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation,
• –––, 1994, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, Form B , San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
• Weinstein, Mark, 1990, “Towards a Research Agenda for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking”, Informal Logic , 12(3): 121–143. [ Weinstein 1990 available online ]
• –––, 2013, Logic, Truth and Inquiry , London: College Publications.
• Willingham, Daniel T., 2019, “How to Teach Critical Thinking”, Education: Future Frontiers , 1: 1–17. [Available online at https://prod65.education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/education-for-a-changing-world/media/documents/How-to-teach-critical-thinking-Willingham.pdf.]
• Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus, 1996, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139174763

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1 – Critical Thinking

Since ancient times, the concept of critical thinking has been associated with persuasive communication, usually in the form of speeches, scholarly texts, and literature.

Today, there are many vehicles for information and ideas, but the elements of critical thinking in a university context still bear strong influences from early scholarly writing and oration.

Definition of Critical Thinking

“Critical Thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

Source: https://louisville.edu/ideastoaction/about/criticalthinking/what

Critical thinking may seem very abstract in  definitions such as the one above, but it is, above all,  an action . One source says critical thinking “is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information” ( Skills You Need)   Most college curricula are designed to develop critical thinking.

“Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value … They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments, and findings represent the entire picture and are open to the possibility that they do not. It is more than the accumulation of facts, it is a way of thinking.”

                                                                                                                                   ( Source: Skills You Need )

In her article, “Why Are Critical Thinking Skills Necessary for Academics?,” journalist Jen Saunders  says, “universities concern the ways in which people research and write; their members are responsible for maintaining the foundational principles of truth and knowledge within the folds of scholarship, and permit scholars to grasp and comprehend academic subjects at levels of expertise.” ( https://classroom.synonym.com/ )

Saunders provides this information on the specific ways that critical thinking is important in  college-level work:

• Critical thinking supplies the foundation of high-quality academic writing.
• Peer awareness is an element of critical thinking in that it helps students understand and communicate with those who have different experiences, opinions, and perspectives.
• Critical thinking are necessary for passing some exams (e.g.,  essay answer, a series of multiple-choice questions to test comprehension, and especially situations where students must look for context clues or decipher word elements).
• When students are required to defend a thesis or dissertation, they need to be able to anticipate questions and respond on the spot to those asked by committee members.

Author and master teacher Michael Stratford (Demand Media), in his article, “What Are the Key Ideas for Critical Thinking Skills?”,  and the website, Skills You Need, note that someone with critical thinking skills can:

• Interpret data – becoming aware of all of the parts of an argument, such as point of view, audience, and thesis as well as reasoning through moral dilemmas
• Analyze and synthesize –  the ability to break down data into individual parts and reassemble them to create something original
• Infer and answer :  the ability to explain a problem with an inference, or educated guess. This requires knowing the difference between explaining by inference or by assumptions based on previous ideas
• Make Connections between ideas from varied sources
• Recognize, build, and appraise arguments put forth by others and determine their importance and relevance through objective evaluation
• Spot inconsistencies and errors in reasoning
• Approach problems consistently and systematically
• Reflect on the justification of one’s own assumptions, beliefs, and values

Indeed.com ., a service for finding jobs and polishing a resume, provides the following information about critical thinking. Their website offers five types of skills are important:

Five Important Critical Thinking Skills

Observation.

Observational skills are important for critical thinking because they help you to notice opportunities, problems, and solutions.  Eventually, good observers can predict  or anticipate problems or issues because their experience widens when they get in the habit of close observation. It is necessary to train yourself to pay close attention to details.

After you have spotted and identified a problem from your observation, your analytical skills become important: You must determine what part of a text or media is important and which parts are not. In other words,  gathering and evaluating sources of information that may support or depart from your text or media. This may involve a search for balanced research reports or scholarly work, and asking good questions about the text or media to make sure it is accurate and objective.

Now that you have gathered information or data, you must now interpret it and find a solution or resolution.  Even though the information you have may be incomplete, just make an “educated guess,” rather than a quick conclusion.  Look for clues (images, symbolism, data charts, or reports) that will help you analyze a situation, so you can evaluate the text or situation and come to a measured conclusion.

COMMUNICATION

In the context of critical thinking, this means engaging or initiating discussions, particularly on difficult issues or questions, especially when you face an audience that you know disagrees with your position. Use your communication skills to persuade them. Active listening, remaining calm, and showing respect are very important elements of communicating with an audience.

PROBLEM SOLVING

The problem-solving part of critical thinking involves applying or executing a conclusion or solution. You will want to choose the best, so this requires a strong understanding of your topic or goal, as well as some idea of how others have handled similar situations.

Essential “Critical” Vocabulary

[Source:  ( https://www.espressoenglish.net/difference-between-criticize-criticism-critique-critic-and-critical/]

Now let’s examine the many ways the word “critical” is used in various academic contents. You might be familiar with movie reviews or customer reviews on products in which a critic offers comments.  Below are some reviews of a long-standing Chinese restaurant in Columbus, Hunan Lion:

• The restaurant is over priced. You pay for the atmosphere. Ordered the beef and oriental veggies and to be honest it was onions and 3 pieces of broccoli. The meat was fatty and that is the worst. Typically the food is good but last night it wasn’t.
• 35 years of incredible food. By far the best Chinese restaurant in Columbus. If you want to have a great experience, without a doubt go there, you will love it.
• We ordered take out 10/01/2020. Food was TERRIBLE! The Crab Rangoon…well it’s not crab and I’m not sure of the texture it had going on but it was disgusting! The entire order of food after 1 bite went in the trash! I will certainly spread the word DO NOT ORDER FOOD from this restaurant! They are expensive and you are wasting your money. The girl at the cash register surpasses RUDE.
• The food and service were fantastic! We were in on Christmas day, and despite being busy, they did a magnificent job. We will definitely be back!

These reviews were voluntary; nevertheless, the writers of them are considered “critics,” because what they are really offering is judgment.

In a professional or academic setting, critics do much more than give a strong opinion. Whether they offer positive or negative comments, they all try to do so as objectively as possible. In other words, they avoid Personal Bias, meaning they try not to rely exclusively on their personal experiences, but rather they include influences from people, environments, cultures, values, stereotypes, and beliefs.

It is worth noting that all of these influences are part of being human. Part of critical thinking, however, means acknowledging the impact your own biases may have on the questions you ask or your interpreting of material; then, learn to overcome these evaluations. You must be like a judge in a courtroom:  you have to try to be fair and leave your own feeling out of the situation.

Activity #1:, inference exercise, harper’s is the oldest general-interest monthly magazine in the u.s. it emphasizes excellent writing and unique and varied perspectives. one of its most celebrated features is the “harper’s index,” which is a collection of random statistics about  politics, business, human behavior, social trends, research findings, and so forth. the reader is left alone to make sense of a fact by using inferences and background knowledge., below are some statistics from “harper’s index.” it is up to you to decide what each statistic suggests. something surprising mysterious what could explain its significance.

Choose a few of the facts below and write a response for each in which you raise questions , offer a possible explanation , or propose a tentative theory to explain the fact, or its significance.  Consider what the statistic suggests beyond what is written. Your response should be your own opinion , without consulting any internet resources or others.

Example:    Percentage increase last year in UFO sightings nationwide:   16% Source: [ July 2021 • Source: National UFO Reporting Center (Davenport,Wash.)] Response: Is this a large or small increase? Maybe the  increase is due to the recent U.S. government’s release of a file on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), or, what they call, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” Maybe people feel like they can admit to seeing such phenomena since the government now acknowledges their existence? In the recent past, perhaps people would be laughed at or stigmatized if they claimed to see a UFO because the government and general public believed the idea of “alien life forms”  was ridiculous.

Percentage by which the unemployment rate of recently graduated U.S. physics majors exceeds that of art history majors:  60%

Source:  November 2020 • Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

ACTIVITY #2 – LINKING FACTS

Sometimes the “Harper’s Index” features pairs of statistics.  It is up to you to decide what the pair, seen together, suggests. Select a couple of the pairs below and write down questions you may have, or possible explanations that tell why the pair might be significant.  Consider what the statistic suggests beyond what is written. What you write should be your own opinion , without consulting any internet resources or others.

Type your response below each set:

Movie Reviews

One of the most familiar types of criticism we encounter is a movie review,  a short description of a film and the reviewer’s opinion about it. When you watch a movie on Netflix, for example, you can see the number of stars (1-5) given by those who have watched and rated the movie. Professional reviewers usually try to give a formal, balanced account of a movie, meaning they usually provide a summary and point out some positive and negative points about a film. Amateur critics, however, can write whatever they like – all positive, all negative, or a combination.

Amateur film critiques can be found in many places; the movie review site, IMDB , is one of the most popular, with a user-generated rating feature.  Another popular site is Rotten Tomatoes, which uses a unique ‘tomato meter’ to rate movies: a green tomato means fresh while red means rotten. You can also view the individual ratings given by critics. It has more than 50,000 movies in its database. And finally, another good source of movie reviews is Metacritic , which offers a collection of reviews from various sources.

Let’s look at this review by professional movie critic Roger Ebert ( https://www.rogerebert.com/

In “Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel to “ Top Gun, ” an admiral refers to navy aviator Pete Mitchell (Tom Cruise)—call sign “ Maverick ”—as “the fastest man alive.” Truth be told, our fearless and ever-handsome action hero earns both appraisals and applause.  Indeed, Cruise’s consistent commitment to Hollywood showmanship deserves the same level of respect usually reserved for the fully-method actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis . Even if you somehow overlook the fact that Cruise is one of our most gifted and versatile dramatic and comedic actors with movies like “ Mission Impossible , ”  “ Born on the Fourth of July ,” “ Magnolia ,” “ Tropic Thunder ,” and “ Collateral ” on his CV, you will never forget why you show up to a Tom Cruise movie.

Director Joseph Kosinski allows the leading actor to be exactly what he is—a star—while upping the emotional and dramatic stakes of the first Top Gun (1986) with a healthy dose of nostalgia.  In this Top Gun sequel, we find Maverick in a role on the fringes of the US Navy, working as a test pilot. You won’t be surprised that soon enough, he gets called on a one-last-job type of mission as a teacher to a group of recent training graduates. Their assignment is just as obscure and politically cuckoo as it was in the first movie. There is an unnamed enemy—let’s called it Russia because it’s probably Russia—some targets that need to be destroyed, a flight plan that sounds nuts, and a scheme that will require all successful Top Gun recruits to fly at dangerously low altitudes. But can it be done?

In a different package, all the proud fist-shaking seen in “Top Gun: Maverick” could have been borderline insufferable, but fortunately Kosinski seems to understand exactly what kind of movie he is asked to navigate. In his hands, the tone of “Maverick” strikes a fine balance between good-humored vanity and half-serious self-deprecation, complete with plenty of emotional moments that catch one off-guard.

In some sense, what this movie takes most seriously are concepts like friendship, loyalty, romance, and okay, bromance.  Still, the action sequences are likewise the breathtaking stars of “Maverick.” Reportedly, all the flying scenes were shot in actual U.S. Navy F/A-18s, for which the cast had to be trained. Equally worthy of that big screen is the emotional strokes of “Maverick” that pack an unexpected punch. Sure, you might be prepared for a second sky-dance with “Maverick,” but perhaps not one that might require a tissue or two in its final stretch.

Available in theaters May 27th, 2022

ACTIVITY #3 – BEING A CRITIC

Analyze the film review above.  Does the reviewer give the movie a strongly positive or negative review? A mildly positive or negative review? A balanced review? How can you tell?  Support your opinion by identifying words, phases, and/or comparisons that directly or indirectly are positive, negative, or neutral.

ACTIVITY #4 – WRITE A MOVIE REVIEW

Select a movie to review. Choose one you either love or hate. (If it evokes emotions, it’s usually easier to review.) You may choose any movie, but for this assignment, don’t choose a film that might upset your target audience – your instructor and classmates. A movie review can be long or short.  Usually a simple outline of the plot and a sentence or two about the general setting in which it takes place will be sufficient, then add your opinion and analysis. The opinion section should be the main focus of your review. Don’t get too detailed. Your instructor will determine the word limit of this assignment.

Suggestions:

Do a web search to find information about the film: is it based on real-life events or is it fiction?

Find some information about the director and his/her/their style.

Look for information about the cast, the budget, the filming location, and where the idea for the film’s story came from. In other words, why did the producers want to make the movie?

Be sure to keep notes on where you find each piece of information – its source.  Most of the facts about movies are considered common knowledge, so they don’t have to be included in your review.

Avoid reading other reviews. They might influence your opinion, and that kind of information needs to be cited in a review.

When you are watching the film make notes of important scenes or details, symbolism, or the performances of the characters. You may want to analyze these in detail later. Again, keep notes on the source of the information you find.

Don’t give away the ending! Remember, reviews help readers decide whether or not to watch the movie. No spoilers!

Suggested Steps:

Write an introduction where you include all the basic information so that the film can be easily identified. Note the name, the director, main cast, and the characters in the story, along with the year it was made. Briefly provide the main idea of the film.

Write the main body. Analyze the story, the acting, and the director’s style. Discuss anything you would have done differently, a technique that was successful, or dialogue that was important. In other words, here is where you convey your opinion and the reasons for it. You may choose to analyze in detail one scene from the film that made an impression on you, or you may focus on an actor’s performance, or the film’s setting, music, light, character development, or dialogu

Make a conclusion. Search for several reviews of the film. Include how the film was rated by others. You will need to include information about where you found the information. Then, give your own opinion and your recommendation. You can end with a reason the audience might enjoy it or a reason you do not recommend it. Include a summary of the reasons you recommend or do not recommend it.

[Source:  https://academichelp.net/academic-assignments/review/write-film-review.html]

————————————————

References:

10 Top Critical Thinking Skills (and how to improve them).(2022).   Indeed.com: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/critical-thinking-skills

Difference between criticize, criticism, critique, critic, and critical. Espresso English : https://www.espressoenglish.net/difference-between-criticize-criticism-critique-critic-and-critical/

Hansen, R.S. (n.d.).  Ways in which college is different from high school.  My CollegeSuccessStory.com .

Ideas to Action. Critical Thinking Inventories. University of Louisville:  https:// louisville.edu/ideastoaction/about/criticalthinking/what

Saunders, J. (n.d.). “Why Are Critical Thinking Skills Necessary for Academics?,” Demand Media.

Stratford, M. (n.d. ) What are the key ideas for critical thinking skills? Demand Media .

Van Zyl, M.A., Bays, C.L., & Gilchrist, C. (2013). Assessing teaching critical thinking with validated critical thinking inventories: The learning critical thinking inventory (LCTI) and the teaching critical thinking inventory (TCTI). Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across The Discipline , 28(3), 40-50.

What is Critical Thinking? (n.d.). Skills You Need : https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/critical-thinking.html

Write a Film Review. Academic Help: Write Better : https://academichelp.net/academic-assignments/review/write-film-review.html

Critical Reading, Writing, and Thinking Copyright © 2022 by Zhenjie Weng, Josh Burlile, Karen Macbeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Critical thinking – A skill and a process

Now, that oversimplified approach to learning certainly is the first step to studying as well. However, in order to be successful in our studies, we need to do more than just contain and repeat information. We need to be able to assess the value of the information, its correctness, and its contribution to any given debate. Ideally, we are able to put it into context with other aspects of our knowledge, too. This is what makes us students, this is what makes us critical thinkers.

Critical thinking is not just one skill, rather it is the result of a number of skills applied effectively. In order to be able to think critically, you’ll need to be able reason. You’ll need to be able to assess the source of the information you’re given and you’ll be able to reflect on its accuracy or validity, depending on your task.

By thinking critically, you are applying each of those skills in order to evaluate the information in front of you. This can be a theory, a new research result, or even a news item. Critical thinking allows you to apply an objective approach to your learning, rather than subjectively following either the proposed information you’re given, or your own opinion rather than clear and convincing arguments and facts.

Critical thinking is a process of continuing evaluation and reflection. It is most powerful, when leading to a change of view in ourselves or in others.

This is where critical thinking becomes relevant outside the world of studying. By being critical of what we read, hear and see, we are engaging with the society we live in actively. We are not perceiving anything as given, but are rather reflecting on the value and correctness of the way society works.

This helps us to be better employees, by reflecting on where processes and ways of working can be improved. It helps us to more engaged citizens, as we are reflecting on political campaigns and their truthfulness and value for us when we are asked to participate in an election. Critical thinking pushes ourselves and our environment to continuously adapt and improve.

When you think critically, you open up a whole new way of engaging with the world around you.

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NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

De Brigard F, Sinnott-Armstrong W, editors. Neuroscience and Philosophy. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press; 2022.

Neuroscience and Philosophy.

13 the scientific study of passive thinking: methods of mind-wandering research.

Samuel Murray , Zachary C. Irving , and Kristina Krasich .

13.1. Introduction

Chances are, at some point when you’re reading this, your eyes will move across the page while your mind is elsewhere. This is likely true even if you really want to stay focused on what we have to say. People’s ability to remain vigilant toward any one thing is remarkably flawed—the mind is rich with internal thoughts, concerns, simulation, and feelings that can pull our attention away. Of course, sometimes you can actively shift attention. If you get bored, you might look at your phone to check email or social media. This kind of attention shift is an active mental phenomenon as opposed to the more passive mental phenomenon of having one’s attention drift away.

Mental life involves a dynamic coordination of these active and passive elements. You can decide whether to go to the store before or after work, deliberate on what to purchase, and intentionally buy the fruit instead of the chips (active phenomena), but you cannot easily manage your desire to eat chips or your belief that eating them will make you happy (passive phenomena). With regards to your attention span (assuming you are still with us), you may have decided to read this chapter, but that doesn’t mean your desires to keep up with work or friends won’t distract you.

Instead of reading carefully throughout, your mind will sometimes wander. It might wander to an upcoming test, a dinner out with friends last weekend, or a song you recently heard. Wherever it wanders, your mind will be wandering away from whatever we’re saying. This isn’t something you’ll decide to do, but you will catch yourself doing it from time to time. For this reason, mind wandering falls on the passive side of the active/passive divide. This isn’t a definition. Instead, it’s an example that illustrates the phenomenon’s passivity.

Special methods are often required to measure passive phenomena such as mind wandering or dreaming ( Windt, 2015 ; Irving, 2018 ). In particular, the sciences of passive thinking often require self-reports or retrospective assessments of the content or character of one’s mental states. However, philosophers and cognitive scientists have raised nontrivial epistemic concerns about self-report. It is therefore unclear whether we have an adequate methodology to study mind wandering empirically.

Our solution to this problem proceeds through a metaphysical account of mind wandering. We explain how mind wandering fits into the wider fabric of human agency, which makes sense of the causes and conditions of mind wandering. These can be leveraged into a (limited) defense of the self-report methods used to study mind wandering.

Our chapter has six parts. We first describe the central role of self-report in the rapid expansion of mind-wandering research over the last twenty years (section 13.2). Next, we argue that the passivity of mind wandering explains why self-report is necessary for its study (section 13.3), which may raise skeptical worries about the veracity of mind-wandering research (section 13.4). We then consider whether objective methods (section 13.5) or studies of intentional mind wandering (section 13.6) can obviate the need for self-report (spoiler: they can’t). Finally, we propose a metaphysical solution to the epistemic problems of self-report (section 13.7).

13.2. Methodological Innovations

Two methodological innovations explain why mind wandering came to prominence in cognitive psychology. First was the discovery of the socalled default mode network—a set of brain regions associated with task-independent activity. Of equal importance was the revival of self-report methods to measure the wandering mind. In this section, we discuss why these two innovations are central to the history of mind-wandering research.

Twenty years ago, almost nobody in cognitive psychology or neuroscience talked about mind wandering (notable exceptions include Antrobus, 1968 ; Giambra, 1995 ; Wegner, 1997 ). Presently, each of the last five years has seen more than 100 articles published on mind wandering. One might assume that the reasons for this shift concern the importance of mind wandering itself. Mind wandering occupies a significant portion of our waking thoughts ( Kane, Brown, et al., 2007 ; Seli, Beaty, et al., 2019 ). It is associated with a range of costs, including higher rates of car crashes ( Yanko & Spalek, 2014 ; Gil-Jardiné et al., 2017 ), occupational accidents ( Warm, Parasuraman, & Matthews, 2008 ), and general negative affect ( Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010 ).1 It also has benefits for self-control ( Gorgolewski et al., 2014 ), planning ( Baird, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2011 ), and creativity ( Preiss et al., 2016 ; Gable, Hopper, & Schooler, 2019 ; for a review, see Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ). But the importance of mind wandering cannot explain its increase in prominence within the scientific community. After all, twenty years ago, mind wandering was just as pervasive in everyday life and had the same costs and benefits. Why, then, have the last two decades ushered in so much new research on mind wandering? Two methodological innovations deserve the lion’s share of credit.

One innovation was the discovery of the so-called default mode network. In the early 2000s, researchers discovered a functionally connected set of brain regions that become considerably more active during moments of rest or inactivity than when subjects perform tasks ( Raichle, 2015 ).2 This helped to spur interest in studying what the brain is doing when it’s not engaged in a task. In other words, what is the brain doing when it’s “resting”? This marked an exciting departure from the norm in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, which was to study exclusively the cognitive processes that support task performance ( Irving, 2018 ; Callard, Smallwood, & Margulies, 2011 ).

Over time, researchers realized that the default mode network subserves spontaneous internally directed cognition ( Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008 ) and that default mode activity increases when people’s minds are wandering ( Christoff, Gordon, et al., 2009 ). Initially, these results suggested that mind wandering might reflect a default state of human cognition: the unperturbed stream of thought. That suggestion turned out to be overly simplistic due to evidence that the default network can support goal-directed cognition ( Spreng et al., 2010 ) and that other networks (notably the executive control network) are active during mind wandering ( Fox et al., 2015 ; see Klein, 2012 , for a philosophical discussion).3 Still, the discovery of the default mode network helped mind wandering emerge as a research topic. It set the stage for observational experiments that were primarily concerned with studying what the brain does when one is not explicitly engaged in goal-directed thinking.

Mind-wandering science also benefited from a second methodological innovation: the development and refinement of self-report measures. Most studies of mind wandering in the lab and everyday life use a self-report method called retrospective thought sampling ( Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ). In these studies, participants are periodically interrupted as they perform tasks in the lab or go about their daily lives. They are then given a thought probe that asks questions about their immediately preceding experiences ( figure 13.1 ). For example, one influential study asked subjects whether they agreed that “At the time of the beep [the thought probe], my mind had wandered to something other than what I was doing” ( Kane, Brown, et al., 2007 ). Subjects who answered “yes” were classified as mind wandering. The study of mind wandering, then, leaned heavily on participants making retrospective judgments about their mental state just prior to being probed.4

Figure 13.1

Retrospective thought sampling in a laboratory study (example). Subjects are interrupted by a thought probe on average once a minute. They are then asked whether their immediately preceding thoughts are related to the laboratory tasks. If not, their thoughts (more...)

Scientists have relied on these self-report methods to discover many characteristics of mind wandering, including (but not limited to) its frequency, costs, benefits, role in education, and its relationship to working memory, affect, episodic thinking, mindfulness, and the stream of thought (for reviews, see Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ; Christoff, Irving, et al., 2016 ). Indeed, the vast majority of our knowledge of mind wandering is owed (at least in part) to self-report. In the next section, we explain why.

13.3. Self-Report and Passive Phenomena

Self-report is central to mind-wandering research. In this section, we explain why this is due to the passivity of mind wandering. Specifically, we build on an argument from Irving (2018) . Irving notes that cognitive psychologists typically study a cognitive process by giving subjects a voluntary task that activates that process. But because mind wandering is passive, no voluntary task initiates mind wandering. So, psychologists need a task-free method to study mind wandering, and presently the best task-free method is self-report.

Here is our expanded version of Irving’s argument:

If a cognitive process or state ϕ cannot5 be voluntarily initiated and does not reliably subserve the performance of a task, then the psychological study of ϕ requires self-report.

Mind wandering cannot be voluntarily initiated.

Mind wandering does not reliably subserve the performance of a task.

Therefore, the psychological study of mind wandering requires self-report. The remainder of this section offers support for these premises.

13.3.1. Processes and Reports (Premise 1)

Cognitive psychology often relies on experimental tasks in part to avoid the need for self-report. Let’s say that a cognitive psychologist wants to study a cognitive process or state ϕ. She will typically design an experimental task the performance of which requires some behavioral response τ, where τ is known to activate ϕ. Our experimenter then has no need to ask subjects to self-report on whether they use process ϕ in the experiment, since we already know that anyone who performs τ activates process ϕ. We call this approach “task-based psychology” (for an example, see our discussion of the go/no-go paradigm in the next paragraph).

Tasks can activate a psychological process or state in two ways, depending on how directly one can control the process or state. First, some tasks exploit the fact that subjects can voluntarily initiate a psychological process or state. We’ll say that an agent can voluntarily initiate ϕ if and only if she can bring about the occurrence of ϕ immediately by deciding, choosing, or willing to make ϕ obtain (see Adams, 1985 , p. 8; cf. van Inwagen, 1989, p. 410). One example of the use of voluntary initiation is how psychologists use a go/no-go task to study inhibitory processes ( Lappin & Eriksen, 1966 ; Logan, 2015 ). Subjects respond quickly to targets (e.g., “go” signs) and withhold their response when they receive a stop signal (e.g., “stop” signs). Because the task is timed, subjects typically begin to respond as soon as they see a stimulus, even if it is a stop signal. In stop trials, they then have to inhibit their response. Psychologists use go/no-go tasks to study the psychological process of inhibiting an ongoing action. Subjects can voluntarily initiate this sort of inhibition. So, anyone who completes the go/ no-go task will voluntarily activate the process in question.

Psychologists cannot use this direct method to study passive states and processes such as beliefs, desires, or dreaming. Agents cannot voluntarily initiate passive processes or directly be in some passive state because they can neither come to be in these states nor bring about the occurrence of these processes immediately. At most, agents can indirectly be in some passive state or bring about the occurrence of a passive process ϕ by performing another action that they know is likely to bring it about that ϕ. Suppose you don’t now desire to eat a tomato, for example. You cannot simply decide or choose to have that desire in a way that immediately and directly causes you to want a tomato. You can do things that make the desire more likely, such as looking at pictures of caprese salads. But this amounts to only indirectly controlling your desires.

Task-based psychologists can sometimes use indirect methods to study passive states and processes. Sometimes, a passive state or process ϕ will subserve the voluntary performance of a task τ. If so, psychologists can ask subjects to voluntarily perform τ in order to activate ϕ indirectly. Consider, for example, how psychologists use spatial cueing paradigms ( Posner, 1980 ) to study the effects of participant’s beliefs on visual attention. Beliefs are passive, insofar as one cannot directly choose or decide to believe something ( van Fraassen, 1984 ). But spatial cueing tasks manipulate subjects’ beliefs about the location of a target stimulus. Participants are assigned to one of three conditions. In one condition, a peripheral cue is presented indicating the location of the target stimulus (the congruent condition). In another condition, the peripheral cue is presented in a location that differs from the target stimulus (the incongruent condition). In the control condition, no peripheral cue is presented. Fixation occurs much more quickly in congruent conditions relative to incongruent conditions ( Israel, Jolicoeur, & Cohen, 2018 ). This suggests that participants with true beliefs about the target location outperform subjects with false beliefs.

Belief, though passive, can be studied within the standard task-based experimental paradigm because we understand something about how belief produces action. Part of what it is to be a belief is to play a certain causal role in the production of action and a normative role in the explanation of action ( Stalnaker, 1984 , pp. 4–5, 82). Paradigmatically, the desire G, coupled with the belief that A-ing is a means to realize G, will cause one to begin A-ing ( Audi, 1979 ). When we know about someone’s actions and desires, we can therefore use this schema to infer someone’s beliefs. For example, visual fixation is an action (or a component of an action) that subjects use to complete an experimental task. So, we can reliably infer that subjects form beliefs about the best location for visual fixation. Crucially, we can make this inference even though belief is passive because we know how beliefs tend to subserve action.

We argue that there are two conditions under which psychologists can use task-based methods to study a cognitive process or state ϕ: (1) when subjects can voluntarily initiate ϕ, and (2) when ϕ reliably subserves the performance of a task that one can voluntarily initiate. If neither of those conditions obtain, psychologists must use the methods of task-free psychology: self-report.

13.3.2. Tasks and Mind Wandering (Premises 2 and 3)

Premise 2 in our argument says that one cannot voluntarily initiate mind wandering. This is intuitive. People cannot make their minds wander at the drop of a hat, and they often catch their minds wandering (just as you can catch yourself dozing off). People can put themselves in a position that makes mind wandering likely, such as reading a boring book. But at the end of the day, you must let mind wandering come to you.

Premise 3 says that mind wandering does not reliably subserve the voluntary performance of a task. Unlike belief, researchers cannot ask subjects to perform tasks that require mind wandering because there are no such tasks. Our argument for this premise differs, depending on how you define mind wandering (cf. Irving, 2018 , for similar arguments).

Most psychologists define mind wandering as task-unrelated thought. In a laboratory, this means that our wandering thoughts are (by definition) unrelated to the task assigned by the experimenter. But if thoughts subserve an experimental task, then they are related to that task. By definition, any thoughts that subserve the experimental task are not mind wandering—at least according to the standard operationalization ( Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ).

Others define mind wandering in terms of its dynamics rather than its relationship to an ongoing task ( Irving, 2016 ; Christoff, Irving, et al., 2016 ; Sripada, 2018 ). Dynamic views focus on how mind wandering unfolds over time, meandering from one topic to another. Such views contrast mind wandering with goal-directed thinking, which remains focused on the agent’s task. Irving (2016) appeals to guidance to explain the dynamic difference between mind wandering and directed thinking. During goal-directed thinking, for example, the agent guides her attention to remain on task-relevant stimuli. During mind wandering, in contrast, the agent’s attention is unguided and thus free to meander from topic to topic.

We can now explain why no task can reliably recruit mind wandering. Part of what it means to perform a task is to guide your attention to thoughts that are relevant to that task. So, any thoughts that subserve an agent’s task will be thoughts toward which she guides her attention. Therefore, those thoughts will not constitute mind wandering.

We now have an argument that explains why mind-wandering research relies on self-report. Agents cannot voluntarily initiate mind wandering, and nor can mind wandering reliably subserve the performance of a task. The methods of task-based psychology are therefore ill suited to study the wandering mind. Mind-wandering researchers must instead rely on taskfree methods—namely, self-report.

13.4. Skepticism about Self-Report

Self-report is central to the science of mind wandering. At bottom, mind-wandering research fundamentally requires that we ask people to reflect on what’s going on in their minds. You might think this is a serious cause for concern. Empirical evidence suggests that people are notoriously unreliable when they make judgments about their own minds. The situation is particularly bad when we use survey responses as data points. Survey responses are subject to framing effects ( Sinnott-Armstrong, 2008 ), social desirability biases ( Robins & John, 1997 ), and simple misunderstanding of the questions being asked ( Cullen, 2010 ). Moreover, people are bad at remembering their responses to surveys, raising the question of whether responding to surveys activates reliable, reasons-responsive processes. Hall, Johansson, and Strandberg (2012) showed this when they reversed people’s responses to a moral and political opinion survey and got people to defend their reversed positions!

Surveys about experience are notoriously unreliable. Fortunately, such surveys differ from thought sampling methodology in important ways. Thought probes do not interrogate why you are mind wandering, just whether you are. So, while people exhibit unreliability in making process assessments (“Why are you in a particular mental state?”), mind-wandering research requires state assessment (“Are you in this particular mental state?”). Furthermore, thought sampling questions do not ask about obscure technical concepts such as knowledge or freedom. Rather, they ask about a pervasive and familiar experience: whether your mind was wandering. Finally, thought-sampling methods ask about your immediately preceding experiences, rather than asking you to report on what your experiences are like in general. Such methods may therefore avoid the distorting effects of memory ( Windt, 2016 ).

We have empirical reasons, though, to trust self-reports of mind wandering. Mind-wandering research shows surprising consistency across subjects in self-reports of mind wandering (see Kane, Smeekens, et al., in preparation). For instance, there is emerging evidence of convergent validity between self-reports and third-party assessments of mind wandering ( Mills, Rafaelli, et al., 2018 ). Self-reports of mind wandering consistently correlate with various indirect measures of mind wandering. Some of these are behavioral, such as performance errors ( McVay & Kane, 2009 ), comprehension failures ( Schooler, Reichle, & Halpern, 2004 ), eye movements ( Uzzaman & Joordens, 2011 ), and changes in response variability ( Seli, Smallwood, et al., 2015 ). Other measures are physiological, including evoked response potentials ( Smallwood, Beach, et al., 2008 ), pupil dilation ( Franklin, Mrazek, et al., 2013 ), eye blink rate ( Smilek, Carriere, & Cheyne, 2010 ), and changes in brain activity ( Christoff, Gordon, et al., 2009 ).

Of course, none of this is decisive. Global skeptical arguments about even the simplest experiential reports ( Schwitzgebel, 2008 ) are notoriously hard to defuse (see Sosa, 1994 ). Furthermore, there are critics of self-report within the science of mind wandering (see Weinstein, 2018 ). One issue concerns the distorting effects of thought probes. Studies that present probes too often may disrupt the natural flow of thought in at least four ways. First, probes may reorient attention to task demands and reduce mind wandering ( Seli, Carriere, Levene, et al., 2013 ; although see Robison, Miller, & Unsworth, 2019 ). Second, hyper-probing can lead to increased metaawareness of one’s thoughts, which itself alters the occurrence of mind wandering ( Zedelius, Broadway, & Schooler, 2015 ). Third, this increased meta-awareness is a problem in itself: it inflates assessments of the degree to which mind wandering is accompanied by meta-awareness. Finally, laboratory tasks are often structurally dissimilar from real-world tasks, meaning that rates of mind wandering in the lab are difficult to translate into predictions of rates of mind wandering in the real world (see Murray et al., 2020 ).

Another methodological problem concerns how we define mind wandering. The vast majority of self-report studies operationally define mind wandering as task-unrelated thought ( Mills, Rafaelli, et al., 2018 ). Indeed, many task-unrelated thoughts overlap with mind wandering. If your mind wanders from topic to topic as your eyes scan this page, for example, your thoughts are unrelated to the task of reading. Yet, the standard view has come under fire from multiple fronts. Task-unrelated thought is a broad and heterogeneous category ( Irving, 2016 ; Christoff, Irving, et al., 2016 ). While your eyes mindlessly scan the page, for example, you might diligently do mental math for your statistics class. Or you might obsessively ruminate on a fight you just had with your friend. Such focused thinking seems to contrast with the meandering characteristic of mind wandering. Furthermore, it’s not clear how the standard view handles cases of mind wandering in the absence of a task. Your mind can wander while you are resting on the beach, but then you don’t have a task to wander away from ( Seli, Kane, et al., 2018 ; Irving, 2016 ).

Cognitive scientists have recently proposed alternatives to the standard definition of mind wandering, but it is still an open question how amenable those new theories are to self-report. The dynamic view says that mind wandering is relatively unconstrained thought, which freely meanders from topic to topic ( Irving, 2016 ; Christoff, Irving, et al., 2016 ; Sripada, 2018 ; see section 13.2). Yet, the empirical study of the dynamic stream of thought is still in its infancy, and ongoing work tells a nuanced story. One study found that reports of freely moving and task-unrelated thought are orthogonal in daily life and that the former independently predicts affect ( Mills, Rafaelli, et al., 2018 ). Another found that unique electrophysiological signatures are differentially associated with freely moving, directed, and task-unrelated thought ( Kam et al., 2021 ). However, yet another study failed to find predicted relationships between freely moving thought and various clinical pathologies (OCD, depression, and anxiety), as well as finding a negative correlation between freely moving thought and creative idea generation (Smith et al., unpublished manuscript). Additional studies also suggest that measures of thought dynamics are redundant with measures of task unrelatedness ( O’Neill et al., 2020 ). This might suggest that the probes used to assess freely moving thought do not yet measure constructs that are readily interpretable.

Others argue that mind wandering is a heterogeneous construct with multiple overlapping attributes that no single instance of mind wandering fully exemplifies ( Seli, Kane, et al., 2018 ). This argument depends on the (contentious) claim that no single definition of mind wandering picks out an extensionally adequate concept. On this basis, some have begun to propose alternative subjective measures of mind wandering that reflect the inherent heterogeneity of the construct ( Murray et al., 2020 ).

Our review suggests that psychologists and philosophers have both worried about our current self-report measures of mind wandering. But the solutions to these problems almost exclusively involve the refinement of self-reports. You may wonder: Can we do better?

13.5. Intentional Mind Wandering

We find ourselves in a pickle. On the one hand, we argue that the scientific study of mind wandering requires self-report. On the other hand, there are several reasons to be skeptical of self-report methods. You may therefore ask whether we can break out of the cycle of self-report.

Our master argument in section 13.2 suggests that mind-wandering research must rely on self-report. Recall that our argument is as follows:

If a cognitive process or state ϕ cannot be voluntarily initiated and does not reliably subserve the performance of a task, then the psychological study of ϕ requires self-report.

Therefore, the psychological study of mind wandering requires self-report.

If you think mind-wandering research can break the cycle—that is, can do without self-report—then there must be something wrong with this argument. In the next two sections, we consider two objections to our argument. The first targets Premises 2 and 3, arguing that so-called intentional mind wandering can either be voluntarily initiated or subserve a task. The second targets Premise 1, on the grounds that objective measures allow us to study mind wandering without tasks or self-report. We turn first to the objection from intentional mind wandering.

Premises 2 and 3 state that no voluntary task can activate mind wandering, either directly or indirectly. You might resist this claim based on empirical evidence for intentional mind wandering. People frequently report intentional mind wandering—that is, letting their minds wander on purpose— both in the laboratory ( Seli, Risko, Smilek, & Schacter, 2016 ) and in everyday life ( Kane, Brown, et al., 2007 ). Empirical research suggests that everyday thinking recognizes the possibility of intentional mind wandering ( Irving et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, intentional and unintentional mind wandering are differentially associated with independent stateand trait-level variables ( Seli, Risko, & Smilek, 2016 ).

The possibility of intentional mind wandering might seem intuitive. While you’re reading this chapter, for example, you might defiantly turn your head away from the page and let your thoughts drift from topic to topic. You might then argue that intentional mind wandering is a voluntary task that activates mind wandering. If so, then task-based methods may be able to measure mind wandering after all (contra Premises 2 and 3). Our response to this objection depends on how you define mind wandering. Consider the task-unrelated thought theory of mind wandering. On this view, intentional mind wandering would consist in you intending to have task-unrelated thoughts. However, in intending to have such thoughts, you acquire a task: letting your mind wander. So, your thoughts are task related—not mind wandering. Intentions generate tasks. So, it’s impossible to intend to think task-unrelated thoughts (see Murray & Krasich, 2020 ).

Of course, alternative characterizations of mind wandering might have the conceptual tools to explain intentional mind wandering. Some have suggested that intentional mind wandering might reflect maintaining variable streams of thought through meta-control (Irving, under revision). This is similar to contemplative techniques used by surrealist painters ( Green, 2010 ) and meditators ( Lutz et al., 2008 ).

Unfortunately, this interesting proposal is limited because the ability to maintain a wandering stream of thoughts requires a specialized process— meta-control—and employing it likely requires specialized training. Metacontrolled mind wandering may therefore differ in important ways from mind wandering in the absence of meta-control. However, there is no way to assess this without the use of self-report. Again, we find that self-report is indispensable for the scientific study of mind wandering.

Our discussion thus far shows the limits of methods that require direct voluntary control over mind wandering. If mind wandering is task-unrelated thought, such methods are conceptually incoherent. If mind wandering is unguided thought, such methods cannot tell us about mind wandering in general unless we use self-report. But perhaps we will have more luck with methods that exploit indirect voluntary control over mind wandering.

It is possible to control mind wandering indirectly: you can perform some other voluntary task τ because you know that τ reliably leads to mind wandering. Suppose that after a long day of studying, you want to let your mind wander to clear your head. You might do this by taking a shower or washing the dishes, which are the kinds of boring tasks that reliably lead to mind wandering ( Mason et al., 2007 ; Smallwood, Fitzgerald, et al., 2009 ). You might assume that indirect voluntary control provides a route to the task-based study of mind wandering. Rather than ask subjects whether their mind was wandering, for example, you might simply give them the kind of boring task that reliably leads to mind wandering.

Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, and colleagues’ (2012) influential study of mind wandering and creativity employs this kind of indirect method. They tested whether mind wandering can lead to creative insights. This idea is intuitive: when you’re stuck on a problem, for example, you might make progress by letting your mind wander in the shower. Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, and colleagues (2012) tested this idea by having subjects solve a creative problem, take a break, and then return to the same problem. During the break, subjects in the experimental condition performed an easy task known to induce mind wandering. Subjects in one control condition performed a difficult task known to reduce mind wandering. Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, and colleagues found that subjects who performed the easy task were more creative after the break than those who performed the difficult task. So, they concluded that mind wandering facilitates creativity.

But Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, and colleagues’ indirect method makes it difficult to interpret their results ( Irving, 2018 ). It is possible that easy tasks facilitate creativity more than difficult tasks because they lead to higher rates of mind wandering. But it is also possible that the effect of task difficulty on creativity bypasses mind wandering entirely. Easy tasks might lead to relaxation, whereas difficult tasks might lead to frustration. And this difference in affective state might be what drives creativity. This is not a problem that indirect task-based methods can solve. Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, and colleagues’ subjects do not voluntarily initiate mind wandering or perform a task that mind wandering subserves. Rather, they perform a task τ that has two likely effects: mind wandering and creativity. Indirect methods alone cannot determine whether the effect on creativity is due to τ or mediated by mind wandering. To test for this mediation, we would need to ask subjects whether their minds are wandering during the break, and see whether those self-reported rates of mind wandering predict creativity—that is, we would need to rely on self-report.

Our discussion in this section shows that mind-wandering researchers cannot use intentional mind wandering to make do without self-report. A careful study of intentional mind wandering might lead to the development of direct and indirect methods to study the wandering mind. But those methods at best complement self-report; they are not a replacement.

13.6. Establishing Objective Measures

We cannot exploit intentional mind wandering to ground a task-based science of the wandering mind. Premise 1 of our master argument states, roughly, that self-report is the best (perhaps the only) alternative to task-based methods. If so, it follows that mind-wandering research must rely on self-report. You might object that there is a third alternative to task-based methods and self-report. Tasks and reports are useful because they reliably indicate that a process such as mind wandering is active. If we can devise alternative indicators for mind wandering, then we can do without tasks or reports. This hope animates the search for objective measures of mind wandering.

Seemingly toward this search, researchers have found various objective markers that correlate with reports of mind wandering, such as motor response times, task accuracy, and eye movements. One hope is that those objective markers can obviate the need for self-report. Rather than ask subjects whether their mind was wandering, the dream is simply to determine this answer by looking at behavior.

After a careful review of objective methods, we argue that we cannot replace self-report for two reasons. First, current findings are mixed and likely impacted by idiosyncrasies of ongoing task demands and strategies. As such, an indisputable set of mind wandering–specific behaviors has yet to be established. Second, self-report is still used to establish objective methods. Thus, objective methods actually extend, rather than replace, self-reports in the study of mind wandering.

13.6.1. Response Times and Performance Accuracy

Many laboratory studies of mind wandering have integrated thought probes into the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; Robertson et al., 1997 ), which is a task historically used to study vigilance. The SART requires participants to respond to nearly all stimuli and withhold responses to infrequent targets. Errors of commission and faster responses times (RT) are generally taken as evidence of vigilance lapses—that is, it is supposed that participants perform the task more quickly because they rely on their prepotent responses to stimuli rather than making on-the-fly adjustments, and errors of commission are thought to occur due to the associated attenuated response inhibition.

In many studies, self-reported mind wandering during the SART is also correlated with worse task performance and faster RT (e.g., McVay & Kane, 2011 ; Kane & McVay, 2012 ; Thomson, Besner, & Smilek, 2015 ). These findings seem consistent with frameworks of mind wandering that characterize it in terms of executive control failures ( McVay & Kane, 2010 ) or lapses in vigilance ( Spruyt et al., 2019 ). The link with faster RT is particularly intriguing as a potential real-time, thought-probe, independent index of mind wandering: with faster RT, the more likely it is that a participant’s mind is currently wandering.

Unfortunately, this framework is too simple and, at times, inaccurate. Indeed, a few studies have found that self-reported mind wandering was associated with significantly slower RT ( Baird, Smallwood, Lutz, et al., 2014 ; Bastian & Sackur, 2013 ). Factors contributing to these discrepancies are unclear but may include a variety of interrelated factors pertaining to differences in thought content, progression, and meta-awareness of mind wandering ( Bastian & Sackur, 2013 ). Another possibility is that RT variability, rather than speed, is actually a better indicator of mind wandering ( Bastian & Sackur, 2013 ; Seli, Cheyne, & Smilek, 2013 ; Thomson et al., 2014 ), but others have failed to find this effect (e.g., McVay & Kane, 2011 ). Therefore, the collective evidence does not eliminate the link between mind wandering and RT in the SART, but it does call into question RT as a reliable indicator of mind wandering across experimental conditions. In other words, the link between RT and mind wandering seems highly influenced by specific task parameters, which challenges the utility of using it as a single reliable behavioral index of mind wandering.

A tempting hypothesis, then, is that changes in RT relative to task performance could improve predictions of mind wandering. Supportive evidence of this has shown that as an iterated task progressed, the frequency of reported mind wandering increased, the observed differences in associated RT become more robust, and accuracy decreased (e.g., Krimsky et al., 2017 ).

Even this framework, however, is not without its challenges, especially because people can perform simple tasks accurately enough even while mind wandering, such as mind wandering while driving home from work. For example, Brosowsky and colleagues (forthcoming) measured rates of mind wandering during an implicit learning task. They found that as participants learned the task, RTs became faster and depth of mind wandering increased. Performance, however, improved throughout the task (consistent with the task becoming learned). Thus, some tasks are such that as they become automatized, mind wandering does not interfere with their performance. RTs and performance are uninformative indicators of mind wandering in these situations.

Furthermore, people exhibit signs of strategic mind wandering, especially in predictable or familiar task environments ( Seli, Carriere, Wammes, et al., 2018 ). Seli and colleagues had participants watch a clock hand that moved in discrete steps, completing one revolution every twenty seconds. The instructions were simple: press the space bar on the keyboard whenever the clock hand reached the “12” (upright) position. Using thought probes to measure the occurrence of mind wandering, they found that mind wandering was significantly more likely to occur when the clock hand was in the second or third quadrant (“3”–“9”) than the first or fourth quadrants. People began mind wandering when they knew they didn’t need to pay attention, and they returned to the task when they knew they should. Accordingly, there was no relationship between the rates of reported mind wandering and task accuracy.

Collectively, findings from Seli, Smilek, et al. (2018) suggest that people can continue monitoring the task and remain aware of the task environment even when they report mind wandering. Again, we see that the link between mind wandering and potential behavioral indices is highly influenced by specific task parameters and might not be a reliable indicator of mind wandering across contexts.

13.6.2. Gaze Behaviors

A growing body of research has investigated eye movements as a potential behavioral index of mind wandering. Motivating this approach, eye movements are closely linked to the visual processing priorities of the visual system (e.g., Just & Carpenter, 1976 ; Kowler et al., 1995 ). This is in part due to the structural and functional limitations of the visual system in virtue of the anatomy of the eye, the organization of neurons in the primary visual cortex, and strict capacity limits on attention and working memory. People tend to look wherever they are attending (rare exceptions include covert shifts of attention) in such a way that best serves ongoing task goals.

During mind wandering, however, the visual system becomes, to some degree, perceptually decoupled from sensory inputs ( Schooler et al., 2011 ; Smallwood, 2013 ). Neuroscientific measures support this idea. For instance, electroencephalography studies have shown that self-reported mind wandering is associated with attenuated P1 event-related potential (ERP) component amplitude ( Baird, Smallwood, Lutz, et al., 2014 ; Kam et al., 2011 ; Smallwood, Beach, et al., 2008 )—the ERP component associated with lowlevel visual processing ( Hillyard et al., 1973 ). Mind wandering is also associated with attenuated cognitive processing of external stimuli, as indicated by an attenuated P3 ERP component amplitude ( Barron et al., 2011 ). Considered together, these findings indicate a reduction in the cortical processing of external visual information associated with self-reported mind wandering.

Changes in visual processing during mind wandering, then, should result in corresponding changes in gaze behaviors. Accordingly, research has identified a number of changes in gaze behaviors associated with mind wandering, although results have been relatively mixed. To illustrate, as one of the first studies to investigate mind wandering–related gaze behaviors, Reichle, Reineberg, and Schooler (2010) showed that the eyes tended to fixate on words for a longer duration of time before reports of mind wandering compared to reports of attentive reading. These longer fixations were not related to word length or frequency as they typically are during attentive reading ( Juhasz & Rayner, 2006 ; Rayner & Duffy, 1986 ; Reichle, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 2003 ). This finding suggests that the observed longer fixations durations before reports of mind wandering reflected perceptual decoupling, corroborating the self-reports.

Reichle and colleagues (2010) suggests that longer fixation durations might be a promising objective measure of mind wandering, especially because this relationship has been replicated in other work using reading tasks (e.g., Faber, Bixler, & D’Mello, 2018 ; Foulsham, Farley, & Kingstone, 2013 ; Frank et al., 2015 ; Steindorf & Rummel, 2020 ; although see Smilek, Carriere, & Cheyne, 2010 ; Uzzaman & Joordens, 2011 ) as well as scene-viewing tasks ( Krasich et al., 2018 ; Zhang, Anderson, & Miller, 2020 ). The challenge, though, is that many contemporary frameworks of eye movements consider longer fixation durations a marker of increased visual processing (e.g., Choi et al., 2017 ; Coco, Nuthmann, & Dimigen, 2020 ; Henderson, Choi, Luke, & Schmidt, 2018 ; Luke et al., 2018 ), which is supported by neuroscientific evidence in reading ( Henderson, Choi, Luke, & Desai, 2015 ) and scene viewing ( Henderson & Choi, 2015 ). Therefore, it would seem as though the relationship between mind wandering and fixation duration— and perhaps gaze control in general—might also prove to be idiosyncratic.

To test this idea, Faber, Krasich, and colleagues (2020) asked participants to complete a battery of computer-based cognitive tasks while their eye movements were measured. These tasks included the SART, listening to an audiobook (while looking at a central fixation), reading a narrative story, comprehending an illustrated text, viewing visual scenes, watching a recorded academic lecturer, and watching a narrative film. As such, the tasks varied across the spatial extent of the visual stimuli as well as the visual and semantic processing demands. Accordingly, these tasks should demand very different gaze patterns during attentive viewing, and the purpose of the study was to examine whether the relationship between mind wandering and eye movements would also vary by task.

The findings showed just this contextual variance. Specifically, in tasks that required extensive sampling of the visual field (i.e., scene viewing, comprehending an illustrated text, and narrative reading), fewer fixations were made prior to self-reported mind wandering compared to reported attentive viewing. Depending on the task, these fixations were also longer and more spatially dispersed. Conversely, in tasks that required more centrally focused gaze (i.e., the SART, listening to an audiobook while looking at a central fixation, and watching a recorded academic lecture), mind wandering was associated with shorter and more dispersed fixations as well as larger saccades. These findings support the idea that the relationship between mind wandering and gaze behavior varies according to the idiosyncrasies of the task.

These findings pose a challenge for initiatives attempting to use gaze patterns as a behavioral index of mind wandering. It is probably no surprise, then, that predictive modeling methods (such as those described in Yarkoni & Westfall, 2017 ) have yet to identify a common set of gaze parameters that can be used across all tasks. Still, modeling eye movements to predict mind wandering within a task has some potential. Essentially, this approach considers a variety of changes in eye movements associated with reports of mind wandering in concert.

For instance, Faber, Bixler, and colleagues (2018) developed a gaze behavior–based, machine-learned model of mind wandering utilizing reading data from 132 undergraduate students across two universities (data set from Kopp, D’Mello, & Mills, 2015 ). Specifically, this “mind-wandering detector” trained a supervised classification model of gaze behaviors associated with self-caught mind wandering (participants pressed a key on the keyboard when they caught themselves mind wandering).6 The model included sixty-two global (content-independent) gaze features, such as the number, duration, and dispersion of fixations; the number of saccades (ballistic eye movements between fixations); and the number of blinks.

The model was validated using a leave-one-reader-out cross-validation method that trained the model on data from n – 1 participants and tested the model on data from the remaining participant until all 132 served as a “test” participant. The model (sequential minimization optimization) showed a weighted precision of 72.2 percent and a weighted recall of 67.4 percent. Stated simply, this mind-wandering detector could accurately (though not perfectly) predict self-reported mind wandering from gaze behaviors. Others have used similar approaches to predict the likelihood of ongoing mind wandering offline (e.g., Bixler & D’Mello, 2016 ; Brishtel et al., 2020 ) and in real time ( Mills, Gregg, et al., 2020 ) during reading.

Outside of the context of reading, Hutt and colleagues (2019) adopted an offline-to-online classification-verification approach to predict the likelihood of ongoing mind wandering within an artificial intelligence tutoring system (ITS). These authors first gathered data from 135 high school students who completed the ITS and responded to pseudo-randomly distributed thought probes (probe-caught mind wandering) as to whether they were onor off-task at a given moment. The authors then used Bayesian networks to classify gaze behaviors associated with mind wandering (from a set of fifty-seven global gaze parameters, eighty content-specific parameters, and eight features related to the human–computer interactions) and a leave-several-students-out cross-validation scheme (67 percent of students were used in the training set and 33 percent were assigned to the test set) for fifteen iterations. Findings showed accuracies (mind wandering F1 = 0.59) were better than chance (F1 = 0.24), and this model could generalize to data collected from a controlled laboratory study.

Live mind-wandering detection was then tested on a new sample of thirty-nine high school students. Students completed the same ITS while mind-wandering probabilities were generated. Two types of thought probes were distributed throughout the learning session: (1) a probe that was triggered by the mind-wandering detector used to assess hits and false alarms, and (2) pseudo-random probes used to identify missed mind-wandering episodes. Findings showed that mind-wandering detection (F1 = 0.40) was above chance (F1 = 0.24). Collective evidence from Hutt and colleagues (2019) again indicates that accurate (though still imperfect) real-time mind-wandering detection can be achieved by training classification algorithms on a collection of gaze behaviors linked to self-reported mind wandering.

13.6.3. Limitations of Objective Methods

Classifying eye movements to detect ongoing mind wandering seems to promise an objective measure of mind wandering: online machine learning classifiers may allow us to detect ongoing mind wandering without disrupting the subject’s task performance or spontaneous stream of thoughts. This would ease worries about how self-reports disrupt the thoughts they are designed to measure.

Yet, even these mind-wandering detectors do not remove the need for self-report. First, we argued that objective measures of mind wandering are not always available and that they require unique classification for each task context. Moreover, this so-called objective method for identifying mind wandering still has a subjective core. Machine learning classifiers are initially trained on data about self-reported mind wandering. Researchers then validate a classifier on the basis of how well it detects said self-reported mind wandering. Self-report is therefore still the epistemic foundation of objective measures of mind wandering ( Irving, 2018 ).

Classifiers inherit many of the other challenges of self-report methods as well. For instance, even supposing that the classifiers perfectly detect selfreported mind wandering (which they don’t), they will be trained to detect the experimenter-imposed operational definition of mind wandering, which is most frequently task-unrelated thought. But we’ve already seen that various researchers have criticized this definition (section 13.3). Therefore, we can develop a more nuanced classifier—that detects the dynamics of thought, for example—only after we develop more nuanced self-report measures of mind wandering.

Our more fundamental point is that wholehearted skepticism about self-report is not an option for mind wandering research. In section 13.3, we noted that philosophers and cognitive scientists have both questioned whether self-report can ever be a reliable method. We think the success of mind-wandering science generates a powerful response to this brand of skepticism. However, if skepticism still tempts you, objective methods should provide you no relief, since those methods are only as good as the self-reports that they are designed to track.

13.7. Functional Justification of Self-Report

We’ve shown that mind-wandering science cannot break out of the cycle of self-report, but that does not mean we must trust self-report blindly. Instead, we have empirical and philosophical reasons to be confident in self-reports about mind wandering. We have already reviewed some of the empirical reasons for confidence (section 13.4). Self-reports of mind wandering are remarkably consistent in their contents and their ability to pick out behavior, neural activation, and third-party reports. If self-reports were spurious, we should predict that this consistency would not arise.

We will now provide a philosophical argument for the reliability of selfreports. Recall earlier our discussion of how the functional role of belief plays an important role in supporting inferences about it in experimental contexts. We believe that understanding the functional role of mind wandering will be similarly helpful in vindicating some of the self-report methods used to measure mind wandering. Our argument has the following structure. We have independent reason to believe two leading (and compatible) theories about the function of mind wandering (related to plural goal pursuit and exploration). We note that each of those theories makes predictions about the contexts in which mind wandering should be most prevalent. Self-reports confirm those predictions. The fact that our best theories and self-report methods converge is reason to trust both theory and method.

Let us start by reviewing two theories about the function of mind wandering.

13.7.1. Plural Goal Pursuit

The mind’s tendency to wander is both salient and puzzling. Studies indicate that we spend a lot of time mind wandering ( Seli, Beaty, et al., 2019 ). Perhaps this is obvious from your ordinary experience. But take a step back, and this statistic is shocking. When the world is a dynamic, unpredictable, and dangerous place, why would any creature spend half their lives being inattentive? What function could mind wandering have that explains its prominence in our lives?

The first theory is that mind wandering enables scattered agents like us to plan our futures. Human beings have hierarchically structured sets of goals, commitments, and projects that they aim to complete over timescales of days, weeks, months, and even years. This requires balancing many different demands that these place on our time. For example, one must balance the demands of being a teacher, being a parent, being a friend, and so on. Navigating social space requires living up to the different goals and expectations associated with the various roles one occupies.

In addition to having many goals, people have relatively limited capacities. Some of these limitations are physical. The particularities of embodiment preclude us from moving in two opposite directions simultaneously. However, some of these limitations are psychological. Foveal vision does not extend much beyond about 5° of arc. Working memory has severe capacity limits ( Logie, 2011 ), items stored in working memory decay rapidly ( Baddeley & Hitch, 1974 ; Oberauer & Kliegel, 2006), and self-control exhibits depletion effects over short timescales ( Dang, 2018 ). These limits present obstacles to plural goal pursuit.

In order to do a lot with a little, people scatter their agency over time (see Murray, 2020 ). Non-scattered agents act sequentially, and they can only start a new activity upon completing or abandoning their current activity. Scattered agents, on the other hand, are capable of being engaged simultaneously in various projects without explicitly acting on any particular project then and there. In this way, scattered agents act in such a way that their actions have distinct (non-overlapping) temporal parts (see Sorensen, 1985 ). While scattering action is an efficient solution to the problem of plural goal pursuit under conditions of computational limitation, scattered agency raises unique engineering problems. People must now balance focus on their present activities with keeping an eye on acting in the future.

Balancing consists in dynamically altering the allocation of psychological resources to pursue multiple goals fluidly at the same time. At any point in time, there will be multiple, jointly incompatible ways of allocating one’s psychological resources to pursuing distinct tasks. For example, do you focus on answering emails, editing a manuscript, or diving into some grading? You can’t do all three at once, and you’ve got to do them all eventually. The marginal utility of focusing on any task diminishes over time. This creates pressure to switch to other tasks, the phenomenological correlate of which might be the experience of effort ( Shenhav et al., 2017 ). However, the possibility of switching to a disengaged plural pursuit state can be beneficial, where people think about various goals without thinking too hard about any particular goal. This is especially true when current task performance is unlikely to improve with increased or sustained focus. Mind wandering’s first function is arguably to enable this disengaged plural pursuit state.7 On this view, mind wandering drifts between various contents, though it is predominantly drawn to one’s goals and concerns (cf. Klinger, 2013 ; Irving, 2016 ). Mind wandering, then, reflects a way of managing limited mental resources for scattered agency.

13.7.2. The Function of Exploration

Mind wandering’s second function may be to help us navigate the explore– exploit trade-off ( Sripada, 2018 ; Irving, 2019 ). Imagine that you are beginning to write an essay. Before you put pen to paper, you are faced with a choice. Should you pursue one of the ideas that you have already come up with, or should you explore a new idea? Explorers take a risk: you might waste precious time. But you might strike gold. This decision is an example of a fundamental trade-off between two aims of a cognitive agent: to explore for new ideas, or to exploit the ideas we already have in order to get things done.

Humans arguably have different modes of thought that are tailored to the demands of exploitation and exploration ( Sripada, 2018 ). Exploitative modes of thinking remain focused on our goals or personal concerns for extended periods of time and shield out distractions. You engage in exploitative thought, for example, when you successfully guide your attention to this chapter for long enough to get through a few pages. Exploitative thinking is necessary for limited agents like us. At any time, you can only focus on a tiny subset of all the relevant information. To make this subset count, you must be able to focus on what you think is relevant (e.g., this chapter) and ignore almost limitless things that might distract you.

Exploitation is an incomplete strategy, however, because you can be wrong about what is in fact relevant to you. Imagine that you dutifully guide your attention to this chapter, and nothing but, for a whole day. We the authors would be thrilled! But we recognize that you might miss out. Perhaps you would forget about other commitments that you have made. Or you might simply fail to expand the sphere of what you are reading and thinking about. By constantly guiding your attention to what you think is relevant, you risk being caught in a cognitive bubble, where you never notice the information that would lead you to expand your own point of view.

Exploratory modes of thought such as mind wandering may help us burst cognitive bubbles. When your mind drifts between topics, you may think of ideas that seem strange, useless, or irrelevant. This is not a bug of mind wandering but rather a feature, since seemingly useless information can turn out to be crucial. Seemingly irrelevant ideas may be just what you need to expand your point of view. Mind wandering, then, may be an inbuilt mode of cognitive exploration that helps us take risks and search for new ideas. Most of the time, this exploration may prove useless. But sometimes it will strike gold.

13.7.3. Triangulation of Function and Method

We have sketched two theories about the functions of mind wandering. First, mind wandering supports plural goal pursuit. Second, mind wandering supports cognitive exploration. Despite their differences, these theories generate common a priori predictions about the circumstances likely to elicit mind wandering.

Mind wandering should occur when we are bored or under-stimulated. Both of our functional theories contrast mind wandering with more focused forms of thinking, which occur when we are pursuing a single important goal (e.g., writing an exam or running from a tiger). We should therefore expect mind wandering to occur when people are bored, as boredom reflects a perceived lack of important information to extract from the task environment. Relatedly, we should expect strategic mind wandering in familiar and predictable task environments. Such environments are structured in ways where task performance does not benefit from sustained focus on the task ( Kane, Gross, et al., 2017 ). When engaged in boring or predictable tasks, we can free our cognitive resources to focus on the type of plural goal pursuit and/or exploration characteristic of mind wandering ( Geana et al., 2016 ).

Results from self-report studies are consistent with our a priori predictions about the circumstances likely to elicit mind wandering. For example, mind wandering is more frequent when people are bored or under-stimulated, or when they are doing something either too easy or too difficult ( Eastwood et al., 2012 ). People report that mind wandering is more pleasant when they are doing something unengaging, which suggests that mind wandering relieves boredom ( Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013 ). The conditions that we expect to elicit mind wandering turn out to be the conditions where we observe a lot of mind wandering.

The fact that our best functional theories and self-report methods converge is reason to trust both theory and method. Consider an analogy. Imagine that we have two very different methods to estimate a quantity, such as the density of gold. Can we trust that our methods are accurate? Well, suppose we find that each method is internally consistent: they yield the same measurements at different times and for different samples of gold. Suppose further that the methods are consistent with each other: both estimate the density at 19.32 cm3. Unless we have reason to think otherwise, the best explanation of this internal and external consistency is that (1) the density of gold is 19.32 cm3, and (2) both methods can accurately estimate this density. The fact that diverse methods triangulate onto a single answer gives us reason to trust both methods.

We think a similar form of triangulation gives us reason to trust self-report methods in mind-wandering science. Self-report methods are internally consistent, at least about the result that variables such as boredom elevate mind wandering. Self-report methods are also consistent with independently plausible theories about the function of mind wandering. Put colloquially, one reason to believe self-reports about mind wandering is that they make sense.

Put more precisely, philosophical argumentation and self-report are both reliable methods for forming beliefs about mind wandering. These methods triangulate onto common claims about mind wandering—for example that boring tasks elevate mind wandering. Unless we have reason to think otherwise, the best explanation for this triangulation is (1) that mind wandering occurs more frequently in boring and undemanding tasks and (2) that philosophical argumentation and self-report are both accurate.

We have focused on predictions about boredom. But triangulation has much broader application in the science of mind wandering. We can generate more consensus predictions from our best theories of the function of mind wandering. We can then see whether self-report methods yield results that make sense, given these predictions. If they do, this gives us defeasible reason to trust that self-reports about mind wandering are accurate. Mindwandering science may be unable to do without self-report. But our trust in self-report can be based in theory rather than blindness.

13.8. Conclusion

Mind-wandering science cannot do without self-report. At best, objective measures complement but do not replace self-report methods. This is not a defect of mind-wandering research but rather a reflection of the kind of cognitive state that mind wandering is: a passive manifestation of agency. We suspect that there are many other passive manifestations of agency that are inaccessible to purely task-based methodologies. As such, research on mind wandering provides valuable lessons on how to refine self-report methodologies and use them in conjunction with more standard methods in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Skeptics about the reliability of self-report may take this as reason to doubt mind-wandering science. Our response to the skeptic appeals to the metaphysics of mind wandering to partially vindicate self-report methods. This response highlights how theoretical models play an important role in verifying the accuracy of experimental methods. When the outputs of these methods (data) converge with the predictions of the model, this is crucial evidence for the validity of empirical methods. Convergence, then, also provides evidence in favor of the model. The justificatory pathway between theory and data runs both ways. This runs contrary to a tendency in cognitive psychology to separate theory and data, with data being considered the only source of evidence. Theories, on this view, might make predictions that guide the acquisition of data, but theories themselves are not considered sources of evidence. Our argument depends on this being wrong. Instead, the theoretical content of and argument for a model play important roles both in verifying each of these methods and in the model itself. This is consistent with a model-based view of scientific methodology that began to flourish as a reaction against the logical positivism of the twentieth century (see Kuhn, 1962 ; Feyerabend, 1969 ; Tal, 2011 ).

While this is a longer story than we have space here to tell, we want to highlight the fact that, on our view, philosophical theorizing plays an important role in generating evidence insofar as such theorizing can produce models. Our argument is one example of this. The functional characterizations of mind wandering offered above are drawn from philosophical reflections on mind wandering, attention, and action. This suggests that philosophers have a more active role to play in empirical inquiry than simply double-checking the inferences that cognitive scientists make.

The Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) study enjoys some prominence in the mindwandering literature for being one of the first large-scale experience sampling studies of mind wandering published in a prestigious venue. The paper is cited mainly for two findings: (1) the results that 30–50 percent of waking thoughts are mind wandering, and (2) the association between mind wandering and negative affect. However, both results have been challenged recently. Some studies have shown that the frequency of mind wandering varies as a function of the response options provided to indicate mind wandering. Based on how self-reports are interpreted, mind wandering can constitute anywhere from 18 to 60 percent of waking thoughts ( Seli, Beaty, et al., 2019 ). Moreover, the association with negative affect fails to distinguish between different kinds of mind wandering (intentional/unintentional) and does not consider relevant trait-level moderators (e.g., mindfulness; see Wang et al., 2017 ). Reanalysis of the Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) data shows that accounting for interest in the content of off-task thoughts reveals a positive association between mind wandering and positive affect ( Franklin, Broadway, et al., 2013 ). This shows that the results of the Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) study should be viewed within the context of recent developments and criticisms.

Shulman and colleagues (1997) provided the initial characterization of the default mode network by contrasting activations in control states from activations in task states in positron emission tomography studies. Follow-up studies confirmed the identity of the network ( Binder et al., 1999 ; Mazoyer et al., 2001 ).

Nonhuman animals, including marmosets and macaques, also have a network that is organized similarly to the default network (for a review, see Buckner & DiNicola, 2019 ). This may also point to a dissociation between mind wandering and the default network if there are independent reasons to deny that nonhuman animals mind wander.

There are many different kinds of self-report used throughout the behavioral sciences. We are interested in the kind of self-report described here—namely, making a judgment about one’s mental states on the basis of retrospective assessments. All subsequent reference to self-report picks out this subset of self-report measures.

The modal scope includes nomological possibility. In section 13.4, we explain why creatures like us in worlds like this cannot voluntarily initiate certain activities. Perhaps there are worlds and creatures that differ on these grounds. We think it is the job of theologians and poets (rather than this chapter) to consider these possibilities.

Faber, Bixler, and D’Mello (2018) actually tested a few different classification algorithms. The best model was a sequential minimization optimization algorithm, which is an implementation of a support vector machine classifier.

The term “disengaged” serves to distinguish mind wandering from multitasking, the latter of which is an engaged or committed form of plural goal pursuit. Roughly, in multitasking, someone explicitly commits to focusing on several tasks simultaneously. In mind wandering, several tasks can at any one time be at the forefront of one’s mind, but there is no explicit commitment to keep any single task (or set of tasks) in focus.

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• Cite this Page Murray S, Irving ZC, Krasich K. 13 The Scientific Study of Passive Thinking: Methods of Mind-Wandering Research. In: De Brigard F, Sinnott-Armstrong W, editors. Neuroscience and Philosophy. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press; 2022.
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In this Page

• Introduction
• Methodological Innovations
• Self-Report and Passive Phenomena
• Skepticism about Self-Report
• Intentional Mind Wandering
• Establishing Objective Measures
• Functional Justification of Self-Report

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Constructivism Learning Theory & Philosophy of Education

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Constructivism is a learning theory that emphasizes the active role of learners in building their own understanding. Rather than passively receiving information, learners reflect on their experiences, create mental representations , and incorporate new knowledge into their schemas . This promotes deeper learning and understanding.

Constructivism is ‘an approach to learning that holds that people actively construct or make their own knowledge and that reality is determined by the experiences of the learner’ (Elliott et al., 2000, p. 256).

In elaborating on constructivists’ ideas, Arends (1998) states that constructivism believes in the personal construction of meaning by the learner through experience and that meaning is influenced by the interaction of prior knowledge and new events.

Constructivism Philosophy

Knowledge is constructed rather than innate, or passively absorbed.

Constructivism’s central idea is that human learning is constructed, that learners build new knowledge upon the foundation of previous learning.

This prior knowledge influences what new or modified knowledge an individual will construct from new learning experiences (Phillips, 1995).

Learning is an active process.

The second notion is that learning is an active rather than a passive process.

The passive view of teaching views the learner as ‘an empty vessel’ to be filled with knowledge, whereas constructivism states that learners construct meaning only through active engagement with the world (such as experiments or real-world problem-solving).

Information may be passively received, but understanding cannot be, for it must come from making meaningful connections between prior knowledge, new knowledge, and the processes involved in learning.

John Dewey valued real-life contexts and problems as an educational experience. He believed that if students only passively perceive a problem and do not experience its consequences in a meaningful, emotional, and reflective way, they are unlikely to adapt and revise their habits or construct new habits, or will only do so superficially.

All knowledge is socially constructed.

Learning is a social activity – it is something we do together, in interaction with each other, rather than an abstract concept (Dewey, 1938).

For example, Vygotsky (1978) believed that community plays a central role in the process of “making meaning.” For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how they think and what they think about.

Thus, all teaching and learning is a matter of sharing and negotiating socially constituted knowledge.

For example, Vygotsky (1978) states cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-construct knowledge.

All knowledge is personal.

Each individual learner has a distinctive point of view, based on existing knowledge and values.

This means that same lesson, teaching or activity may result in different learning by each pupil, as their subjective interpretations differ.

This principle appears to contradict the view the knowledge is socially constructed.

Fox (2001, p. 30) argues:

• Although individuals have their own personal history of learning, nevertheless they can share in common knowledge, and
• Although education is a social process powerfully influenced by cultural factors, cultures are made up of sub-cultures, even to the point of being composed of sub-cultures of one.
• Cultures and their knowledge base are constantly in a process of change and the knowledge stored by individuals is not a rigid copy of some socially constructed template. In learning a culture, each child changes that culture.

Learning exists in the mind.

The constructivist theory posits that knowledge can only exist within the human mind, and that it does not have to match any real-world reality (Driscoll, 2000).

Learners will be constantly trying to develop their own individual mental model of the real world from their perceptions of that world.

As they perceive each new experience, learners will continually update their own mental models to reflect the new information, and will, therefore, construct their own interpretation of reality.

Types of Constructivism

Typically, this continuum is divided into three broad categories: Cognitive constructivism, based on the work of Jean Piaget ; social constructivism, based on the work of Lev Vygotsky; and radical constructivism.

According to the GSI Teaching and Resource Center (2015, p.5):

Cognitive constructivism states knowledge is something that is actively constructed by learners based on their existing cognitive structures. Therefore, learning is relative to their stage of cognitive development.

Cognitivist teaching methods aim to assist students in assimilating new information to existing knowledge, and enabling them to make the appropriate modifications to their existing intellectual framework to accommodate that information.

According to social constructivism, learning is a collaborative process, and knowledge develops from individuals” interactions with their culture and society.

Social constructivism was developed by Lev Vygotsky (1978, p. 57), who suggested that:

Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level and, later on, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological).

The notion of radical constructivism was developed by Ernst von Glasersfeld (1974) and states that all knowledge is constructed rather than perceived through senses.

Learners construct new knowledge on the foundations of their existing knowledge. However, radical constructivism states that the knowledge individuals create tells us nothing about reality, and only helps us to function in your environment. Thus, knowledge is invented not discovered.

Radical constructivism also argues that there is no way to directly access an objective reality, and that knowledge can only be understood through the individual’s subjective interpretation of their experiences.

This theory asserts that individuals create their own understanding of reality, and that their knowledge is always incomplete and subjective.

The humanly constructed reality is all the time being modified and interacting to fit ontological reality, although it can never give a ‘true picture’ of it. (Ernest, 1994, p. 8)

Constructivism Teaching Philosophy

Constructivist learning theory underpins a variety of student-centered teaching methods and techniques which contrast with traditional education, whereby knowledge is simply passively transmitted by teachers to students.

What is the role of the teacher in a constructivist classroom?

Constructivism is a way of teaching where instead of just telling students what to believe, teachers encourage them to think for themselves. This means that teachers need to believe that students are capable of thinking and coming up with their own ideas. Unfortunately, not all teachers believe this yet in America.

The primary responsibility of the teacher is to create a collaborative problem-solving environment where students become active participants in their own learning.

From this perspective, a teacher acts as a facilitator of learning rather than an instructor.

The teacher makes sure he/she understands the students” preexisting conceptions, and guides the activity to address them and then build on them (Oliver, 2000).

Scaffolding is a key feature of effective teaching, where the adult continually adjusts the level of his or her help in response to the learner’s level of performance.

In the classroom, scaffolding can include modeling a skill, providing hints or cues, and adapting material or activity (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009).

What are the features of a constructivist classroom?

A constructivist classroom emphasizes active learning, collaboration, viewing a concept or problem from multiple perspectives, reflection, student-centeredness, and authentic assessment to promote meaningful learning and help students construct their own understanding of the world.

Tam (2000) lists the following four basic characteristics of constructivist learning environments, which must be considered when implementing constructivist teaching strategies:

1) Knowledge will be shared between teachers and students. 2) Teachers and students will share authority. 3) The teacher’s role is one of a facilitator or guide. 4) Learning groups will consist of small numbers of heterogeneous students.

What are the pedagogical (i.e., teaching) goals of constructivist classrooms?

Honebein (1996) summarizes the seven pedagogical goals of constructivist learning environments:

• To provide experience with the knowledge construction process (students determine how they will learn).
• To provide experience in and appreciation for multiple perspectives (evaluation of alternative solutions).
• To embed learning in realistic contexts (authentic tasks).
• To encourage ownership and a voice in the learning process (student-centered learning).
• To embed learning in social experience (collaboration).
• To encourage the use of multiple modes of representation, (video, audio text, etc.)
• To encourage awareness of the knowledge construction process (reflection, metacognition).

Brooks and Brooks (1993) list twelve descriptors of constructivist teaching behaviors:

• Encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative. (p. 103)
• Use raw data and primary sources, along with manipulative, interactive, and physical materials. (p. 104)
• When framing tasks, use cognitive terminology such as “classify,” analyze,” “predict,” and “create.” (p. 104)
• Allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content. (p. 105)
• Inquire about students’ understandings of the concepts before sharing [your] own understandings of those concepts. (p. 107)
• Encourage students to engage in dialogue, both with the teacher and with one another. (p. 108)
• Encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other. (p. 110)
• Seek elaboration of students’ initial responses. (p. 111)
• Engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion. (p. 112)
• Allow wait time after posing questions. (p. 114)
• Provide time for students to construct relationships and create metaphors. (p. 115)
• Nurture students’ natural curiosity through frequent use of the learning cycle model. (p. 116)

Critical Evaluation

Constructivism promotes a sense of personal agency as students have ownership of their learning and assessment.

The biggest disadvantage is its lack of structure. Some students require highly structured learning environments to be able to reach their potential.

It also removes grading in the traditional way and instead places more value on students evaluating their own progress, which may lead to students falling behind, as without standardized grading teachers may not know which students are struggling.

Summary Tables

What is constructivism in the philosophy of education.

Constructivism in the philosophy of education is the belief that learners actively construct their own knowledge and understanding of the world through their experiences, interactions, and reflections.

It emphasizes the importance of learner-centered approaches, hands-on activities, and collaborative learning to facilitate meaningful and authentic learning experiences.

How would a constructivist teacher explain 1/3÷1/3?

They might engage students in hands-on activities, such as using manipulatives or visual representations, to explore the concept visually and tangibly.

The teacher would encourage discussions among students, allowing them to share their ideas and perspectives, and guide them toward discovering the relationship between dividing by a fraction and multiplying by its reciprocal.

Through guided questioning, the teacher would facilitate critical thinking and help students arrive at the understanding that dividing 1/3 by 1/3 is equivalent to multiplying by the reciprocal, resulting in a value of 1.

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Honebein, P. C. (1996). Seven goals for the design of constructivist learning environments. Constructivist learning environments : Case studies in instructional design, 11-24.

Oliver, K. M. (2000). Methods for developing constructivism learning on the web. Educational Technology, 40 (6)

Phillips, D. C. (1995). The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism . Educational researcher, 24 (7), 5-12.

Tam, M. (2000). Constructivism, Instructional Design, and Technology: Implications for Transforming Distance Learning. Educational Technology and Society, 3 (2).

Teaching Guide for GSIs. Learning: Theory and Research (2016). Retrieved from http://gsi.berkeley.edu/media/Learning.pdf

von Glasersfeld, E. V. (1974). Piaget and the radical constructivist epistemology . Epistemology and education , 1-24.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1994). A radical constructivist view of basic mathematical concepts. Constructing mathematical knowledge: Epistemology and mathematics education, 5-7.

Von Glasersfeld, E. (2013).  Radical constructivism  (Vol. 6). Routledge.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Further Reading

Constructivist Teaching Methods

Constructivism Learning Theory: A Paradigm for Teaching and Learning Strategies Which Can be Implemented by Teachers When Planning Constructivist Opportunities in the Classroom

Related Articles

Child Psychology

Vygotsky vs. Piaget: A Paradigm Shift

Interactional Synchrony

Internal Working Models of Attachment

Learning Theory of Attachment

Stages of Attachment Identified by John Bowlby And Schaffer & Emerson (1964)

Child Psychology , Personality

How Anxious Ambivalent Attachment Develops in Children

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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, what is critical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making what is critical thinking.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: What is Critical Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is critical thinking, what is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot. You've probably heard it used often throughout the years whether it was in school, at work, or in everyday conversation. But when you stop to think about it, what exactly is critical thinking and how do you do it ?

Watch the video below to learn more about critical thinking.

Simply put, critical thinking is the act of deliberately analyzing information so that you can make better judgements and decisions . It involves using things like logic, reasoning, and creativity, to draw conclusions and generally understand things better.

This may sound like a pretty broad definition, and that's because critical thinking is a broad skill that can be applied to so many different situations. You can use it to prepare for a job interview, manage your time better, make decisions about purchasing things, and so much more.

The process

As humans, we are constantly thinking . It's something we can't turn off. But not all of it is critical thinking. No one thinks critically 100% of the time... that would be pretty exhausting! Instead, it's an intentional process , something that we consciously use when we're presented with difficult problems or important decisions.

Improving your critical thinking

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones like What do I currently know? and How do I know this? These can help to give you a better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more complex issues.  

Real-world applications

Let's take a look at how we can use critical thinking to evaluate online information . Say a friend of yours posts a news article on social media and you're drawn to its headline. If you were to use your everyday automatic thinking, you might accept it as fact and move on. But if you were thinking critically, you would first analyze the available information and ask some questions :

• What's the source of this article?
• Is the headline potentially misleading?
• What are my friend's general beliefs?
• Do their beliefs inform why they might have shared this?

After analyzing all of this information, you can draw a conclusion about whether or not you think the article is trustworthy.

Critical thinking has a wide range of real-world applications . It can help you to make better decisions, become more hireable, and generally better understand the world around you.

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Understanding Listening

The importance of listening.

Listening is an active process by which we make sense of, assess, and respond to what we hear.

Learning Outcomes

Define active listening and list the five stages of the listening process

Key Takeaways

• The listening process involves five stages: receiving, understanding, evaluating, remembering, and responding.
• Active listening is a particular communication technique that requires the listener to provide feedback on what he or she hears to the speaker.
• Three main degrees of active listening are repeating, paraphrasing, and reflecting.
• Listening : The active process by which we make sense of, assess, and respond to what we hear.
• active listening : A particular communication technique that requires the listener to provide feedback on what he or she hears to the speaker.

Listening Is More than Just Hearing

Listening is a skill of critical significance in all aspects of our lives–from maintaining our personal relationships, to getting our jobs done, to taking notes in class, to figuring out which bus to take to the airport. Regardless of how we’re engaged with listening, it’s important to understand that listening involves more than just hearing the words that are directed at us. Listening is an active process by which we make sense of, assess, and respond to what we hear.

The listening process involves five stages: receiving, understanding, evaluating, remembering, and responding. These stages will be discussed in more detail in later sections. Basically, an effective listener must hear and identify the speech sounds directed toward them, understand the message of those sounds, critically evaluate or assess that message, remember what’s been said, and respond (either verbally or nonverbally) to information they’ve received.

Effectively engaging with all five stages of the listening process lets us best gather the information we need from the world around us.

Active Listening

Active listening is a particular communication technique that requires the listener to provide feedback on what he or she hears to the speaker, by way of restating or paraphrasing what they have heard in their own words. The goal of this repetition is to confirm what the listener has heard and to confirm the understanding of both parties. The ability to actively listen demonstrates sincerity, and that nothing is being assumed or taken for granted. Active listening is most often used to improve personal relationships, reduce misunderstanding and conflicts, strengthen cooperation, and foster understanding.

When engaging with a particular speaker, a listener can use several degrees of active listening, each resulting in a different quality of communication with the speaker. This active listening chart shows three main degrees of listening: repeating, paraphrasing, and reflecting.

Degrees of Active Listening : There are several degrees of active listening.

Active listening can also involve paying attention to the speaker’s behavior and body language. Having the ability to interpret a person’s body language lets the listener develop a more accurate understanding of the speaker’s message.

Listening and Critical Thinking

Critical thinking skills are essential and connected to the ability to listen effectively and process the information that one hears.

Illustrate the relationship between critical thinking and listening

• Critical thinking is the process by which people qualitatively and quantitatively assess the information they accumulate.
• Critical thinking skills include observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and metacognition.
• The concepts and principles of critical thinking can be applied to any context or case, including the process of listening.
• Effective listening lets people collect information in a way that promotes critical thinking and successful communication.
• critical thinking : The process by which people qualitatively and quantitatively assess the information they have accumulated.
• Metacognition : “Cognition about cognition”, or “knowing about knowing. ” It can take many forms, including knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving.

Critical Thinking

Roosevelt and Churchill in Conversation : Effective listening leads to better critical understanding.

One definition for critical thinking is “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. ”

In other words, critical thinking is the process by which people qualitatively and quantitatively assess the information they have accumulated, and how they in turn use that information to solve problems and forge new patterns of understanding. Critical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses conclusions.

Critical thinking has many practical applications, such as formulating a workable solution to a complex personal problem, deliberating in a group setting about what course of action to take, or analyzing the assumptions and methods used in arriving at a scientific hypothesis. People use critical thinking to solve complex math problems or compare prices at the grocery store. It is a process that informs all aspects of one’s daily life, not just the time spent taking a class or writing an essay.

Critical thinking is imperative to effective communication, and thus, public speaking.

Connection of Critical Thinking to Listening

Critical thinking occurs whenever people figure out what to believe or what to do, and do so in a reasonable, reflective way. The concepts and principles of critical thinking can be applied to any context or case, but only by reflecting upon the nature of that application. Expressed in most general terms, critical thinking is “a way of taking up the problems of life. ” As such, reading, writing, speaking, and listening can all be done critically or uncritically insofar as core critical thinking skills can be applied to all of those activities. Critical thinking skills include observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and metacognition.

Critical thinkers are those who are able to do the following:

• Recognize problems and find workable solutions to those problems
• Understand the importance of prioritization in the hierarchy of problem solving tasks
• Gather relevant information
• Read between the lines by recognizing what is not said or stated
• Use language clearly, efficiently, and with efficacy
• Interpret data and form conclusions based on that data
• Determine the presence of lack of logical relationships
• Make sound conclusions and/or generalizations based on given data
• Test conclusions and generalizations
• Reconstruct one’s patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience
• Render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life

Therefore, critical thinkers must engage in highly active listening to further their critical thinking skills. People can use critical thinking skills to understand, interpret, and assess what they hear in order to formulate appropriate reactions or responses. These skills allow people to organize the information that they hear, understand its context or relevance, recognize unstated assumptions, make logical connections between ideas, determine the truth values, and draw conclusions. Conversely, engaging in focused, effective listening also lets people collect information in a way that best promotes critical thinking and, ultimately, successful communication.

Causes of Poor Listening

Listening is negatively affected by low concentration, trying too hard, jumping ahead, and/or focusing on style instead of substance.

Give examples of the four main barriers to effective listening

• Low concentration can be the result of various psychological or physical situations such as visual or auditory distractions, physical discomfort, inadequate volume, lack of interest in the subject material, stress, or personal bias.
• When listeners give equal weight to everything they hear, it makes it difficult to organize and retain the information they need. When the audience is trying too hard to listen, they often cannot take in the most important information they need.
• Jumping ahead can be detrimental to the listening experience; when listening to a speaker’s message, the audience overlooks aspects of the conversation or makes judgments before all of the information is presented.
• Confirmation bias is the tendency to pick out aspects of a conversation that support one’s own preexisting beliefs and values.
• A flashy speech can actually be more detrimental to the overall success and comprehension of the message because a speech that focuses on style offers little in the way of substance.
• Recognizing obstacles ahead of time can go a long way toward overcoming them.
• confirmation bias : The tendency to pick out aspects of a conversation that support our one’s own preexisting beliefs and values.
• Vividness effect : The phenomenon of how vivid or highly graphic and dramatic events affect an individual’s perception of a situation.

Causes of Poor Listening : There are many barriers that can impede effective listening.

The act of “listening” may be affected by barriers that impede the flow of information. These barriers include distractions, an inability to prioritize information, a tendency to assume or judge based on little or no information (i.e., “jumping to conclusions), and general confusion about the topic being discussed. Listening barriers may be psychological (e.g., the listener’s emotions) or physical (e.g., noise and visual distraction). However, some of the most common barriers to effective listening include low concentration, lack of prioritization, poor judgement, and focusing on style rather than substance.

Low Concentration

Low concentration, or not paying close attention to speakers, is detrimental to effective listening. It can result from various psychological or physical situations such as visual or auditory distractions, physical discomfort, inadequate volume, lack of interest in the subject material, stress, or personal bias. Regardless of the cause, when a listener is not paying attention to a speaker’s dialogue, effective communication is significantly diminished. Both listeners and speakers should be aware of these kinds of impediments and work to eliminate or mitigate them.

When listening to speech, there is a time delay between the time a speaker utters a sentence to the moment the listener comprehends the speaker’s meaning. Normally, this happens within the span of a few seconds. If this process takes longer, the listener has to catch up to the speaker’s words if he or she continues to speak at a pace faster than the listener can comprehend. Often, it is easier for listeners to stop listening when they do not understand. Therefore, a speaker needs to know which parts of a speech may be more comprehension intensive than others, and adjust his or her speed, vocabulary, and sentence structure accordingly.

Lack of Prioritization

Just as lack of attention to detail in a conversation can lead to ineffective listening, so can focusing too much attention on the least important information. Listeners need to be able to pick up on social cues and prioritize the information they hear to identify the most important points within the context of the conversation.

Often, the information the audience needs to know is delivered along with less pertinent or irrelevant information. When listeners give equal weight to everything they hear, it makes it difficult to organize and retain the information they need. For instance, students who take notes in class must know which information to writing down within the context of an entire lecture. Writing down the lecture word for word is impossible as well as inefficient.

Poor Judgement

When listening to a speaker’s message, it is common to sometimes overlook aspects of the conversation or make judgments before all of the information is presented. Listeners often engage in confirmation bias, which is the tendency to isolate aspects of a conversation to support one’s own preexisting beliefs and values. This psychological process has a detrimental effect on listening for several reasons.

First, confirmation bias tends to cause listeners to enter the conversation before the speaker finishes her message and, thus, form opinions without first obtaining all pertinent information. Second, confirmation bias detracts from a listener’s ability to make accurate critical assessments. For example, a listener may hear something at the beginning of a speech that arouses a specific emotion. Whether anger, frustration, or anything else, this emotion could have a profound impact on the listener’s perception of the rest of the conversation.

Focusing on Style, Not Substance

The vividness effect explains how vivid or highly graphic an individual’s perception of a situation. When observing an event in person, an observer is automatically drawn toward the sensational, vivid or memorable aspects of a conversation or speech.

In the case of listening, distracting or larger-than-life elements in a speech or presentation can deflect attention away from the most important information in the conversation or presentation. These distractions can also influence the listener’s opinion. For example, if a Shakespearean professor delivered an entire lecture in an exaggerated Elizabethan accent, the class would likely not take the professor seriously, regardless of the actual academic merit of the lecture.

Cultural differences (including speakers’ accents, vocabulary, and misunderstandings due to cultural assumptions) can also obstruct the listening process. The same biases apply to the speaker’s physical appearance. To avoid this obstruction, listeners should be aware of these biases and focus on the substance, rather than the style of delivery, or the speaker’s voice and appearance.

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Passive vs. Active Learning: Unleashing the Power of Engagement

In the ever-evolving world of education, the teaching strategies we employ and the learning approach we encourage can greatly influence the success of our students. Two such strategies, active learning and passive learning, have been the subject of extensive debate.

This blog post aims to explore both of these contrasting approaches, dissecting their benefits, drawbacks and impact on both student engagement and teacher well-being.

Drawing from the philosophies and methodologies of Strobel Education, we will make a compelling case for the power of active learning. Whether you’re an educator, school administrator, parent, or student, this enlightening exploration will equip you with fresh insights into effective learning strategies, and perhaps even inspire you to rethink your approach to education.

Now, let’s set the stage by understanding the core concepts of active and passive learning.

What Is Active Learning?

Active learning is an educational approach that places the learner at the center of the process. This approach is defined as any instructional method that engages students in the learning process, requiring them to do meaningful learning activities and think about what they are doing.

Unlike traditional lecture-style teaching, active learning encourages students to take responsibility for their learning journey.

In an active learning environment, students play an instrumental role in their education. They set the stage, provide resources, and offer support, but the students drive the learning.

What Is Passive Learning?

Passive learning is a traditional model of instruction wherein students play a less active role.

In this model, knowledge is primarily transferred from the teacher to the students. The teacher is the main source of information, and students are expected to absorb and recall that information, often through lectures, reading assignments, and rote memorization.

This approach does not require much participation from students apart from listening and note-taking.

Comparing Active Learning and Passive Learning

The distinct differences between active and passive learning are crucial to understanding their impacts on student outcomes.

Active learning is characterized by a dynamic classroom where students are engaged in their learning process. They participate in discussions, problem-solving, and activities that require critical thinking. On the other hand, passive learning involves students receiving information without interacting with it, such as listening to a lecture or reading a textbook.

Distinguishing between these two methods depends on recognizing the role of the student and the teacher in the learning process.

In active learning, the student takes the initiative, actively engaging and interacting with the learning material. The teacher’s role is to facilitate this process, guiding students and providing resources.

Conversely, in passive learning, the teacher is the primary source of knowledge, while students passively absorb the information presented.

However, active learning and passive learning are not entirely opposites. There can be instances where the two methods overlap.

For example, a lecture (typically a passive learning approach) can incorporate elements of active learning if the teacher encourages student questions or integrates interactive activities. Similarly, a student-led discussion (an active learning method) can become passive if the students merely reiterate information without questioning or critically examining it.

Benefits of Active Learning

Active learning significantly enhances student engagement and retention.

When students participate in the learning process, they’re more likely to be interested in the material and retain the information. This is because active learning requires a higher level of cognitive engagement, making the learning experience more memorable and impactful.

In addition to information retention, active learning also plays a vital role in skills development . It encourages critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration of which are essential skills in today’s world .

By regularly engaging in active learning exercises, students can develop these skills in a supportive, educational setting.

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A Gallup survey shows that less than half of our students feel engaged in school. This course teaches simple techniques to increase their interest and enjoyment of school.

Drawbacks of Passive Learning

Although passive learning remains an accepted (if not preferred) practice in many educational settings, its limitations are clear.

One of the primary downsides is its inability to fully engage students in the learning process. In passive learning , students are often relegated to mere spectators rather than active participants. They receive information rather than actively seeking or creating it, which can lead to less motivation and lower levels of interest.

In addition to lower engagement, passive learning also impacts retention negatively. When students are not actively involved in the learning process, they are less likely to remember and understand the information presented to them.

This is known as the “passive learning paradox” – while the information is easier to absorb, it’s also easier to forget.

The impact of passive learning on skills development is another area of concern. Since passive learning involves primarily listening and reading, it doesn’t provide ample opportunity for students to develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and other essential skills. The absence of hands-on activities and collaborative work in passive learning can limit the development of these skills.

Transitioning from Passive Learning to Active Learning

Transitioning from passive to active learning methodologies can be an enriching but challenging process.

It requires a fundamental shift in teaching strategies and classroom dynamics. The first step in this transition is embracing a student-centered approach. This means shifting the focus from mere delivery of information to facilitating students’ active involvement in the learning process.

Encouraging collaborative projects, fostering discussions, and integrating technology are some ways to promote an active learning environment.

However, implementing active learning is not without its challenges. Resistance from students accustomed to traditional learning methods, initial time investment in planning active learning strategies, and lack of resources can pose issues.

Overcoming these challenges requires persistence, creativity, and the willingness to experiment with different teaching styles and techniques.

Professional development workshops, peer mentoring, and online resources can provide valuable support during this transition.

Educators can also turn to educational organizations such as Strobel Education , which provide expert guidance and resources to make the shift to active learning easier and more effective. These resources can help educators make the transition smoother and more successful, leading them toward a new era of enriched teaching techniques.

Adopting Active Learning with Strobel Education

Strobel Education stands firmly in the camp of active learning, advocating for a hands-on, student-centered approach to teaching. This philosophy is rooted in the belief that students learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process, rather than passively receiving information.

At the heart of Strobel Education’s method is the emphasis on creating a dynamic and interactive classroom environment. This involves a considerable shift from traditional teaching practices, placing students at the center of the learning experience.

Teachers act as facilitators, guiding students through discovery and exploration, fostering critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and creativity.

For a practical illustration of this philosophy in action, consider Strobel Education’s use of project-based learning . In this approach, students work on complex, real-world challenges that require the application of various skills and knowledge areas.

For a hands-on, real-world understanding of the material that creates a dynamic learning environment with lasting impact and drives engagement. This approach is highly effective as it encourages self-directed learning by providing students with an environment to explore their interests.

Another important part of Strobel Education’s approach is the use of formative assessments . These ongoing evaluations provide valuable feedback to both teachers and students, helping to tailor instruction to individual learning needs and promote continuous improvement.

How to Leverage Strobel Education's Services for Active Learning Professional Development

Strobel Education offers a wealth of services designed to support educators in their professional development journey. These include virtual workshops, online courses, professional development, coaching, and speaking engagements, each tailored to equip educators with the tools and strategies necessary to implement a student-centered approach to active learning in their classrooms.

• Onsite Professional Development provides in-person training.
• Online courses and virtual workshops provide easy access PD with the online courses being done at your own pace.
• Coaching delves deeper into theoretical understanding, application of the practices and monitoring of the progress.
• Keynotes are great for inspiring and motivating educators to transform their teaching practices.

Booking these services is straightforward. Visit Strobel Education’s website and select the offering that best suits your professional development needs. Each service has a detailed description and booking instructions.

Beyond these services, Strobel Education’s website is a treasure trove of resources.

From friendly “Joy Drops” to FREE downloadables and lesson modules , there’s a wealth of information available to help educators transition to a student-centered approach.

Be sure to check out the ‘Blog’ section for teaching tips, better classroom management strategies, and a more comprehensive understanding of student-centered learning.

Engaging with Strobel Education’s services and resources can have a profound impact on teaching practices. It can help educators create a more inclusive, engaging, and personalized learning environment, leading to improved student outcomes.

This is echoed in the numerous testimonials from educators who have utilized these services, sharing their transformative experiences and the positive effects on their students.

Foster Student Success with the Power of Active Learning

The power of active learning in shaping the future of education is undeniable.

It holds the potential to enhance student engagement, foster skills development, and ultimately, transform the educational landscape. To achieve these goals, it is essential to move away from traditional teaching styles and embrace the principles of active learning.

This process requires dedication, patience, and support from both teachers and students.

Strobel Education, with its informed approach and commitment to active learning, is ready to journey with you in this transformation. If you’re seeking professional development opportunities, consider their wide array of services including live virtual workshops , online training courses , and keynote speeches .

Embrace the change, challenge the status quo, and let’s redefine education together. Harness the power of active learning with Strobel Education and witness the positive impact it brings to both teacher well-being and student achievement.

Remember, active learning isn’t just a teaching strategy, it’s a mindset shift. It’s time to make that shift.

Related Posts

Reimagining Education | Part One

Empowering Success: Transforming Classrooms with Student-Centered Learning

Teaching Kids to Make the ‘Right’ Choice

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4 Active Learning: Engaging People in the Learning Process

Introduction.

Active learning, as the name implies, is any type of learning that involves direct interaction with the content or materials. Active learning has seen increasing popularity over the past few decades, beginning in 1984 with a report from the National Institute of Education which identified student involvement in learning as a condition of success in education. The report promoted active learning as a way to encourage more student involvement and called on faculty to “make greater use of active modes of teaching and require that students take greater responsibility for their learning” (p. 38). Likewise, in 1987, Chickering and Gamson listed active learning as one of the seven principles to improve undergraduate education. In recent decades, proponents have recommended the integration of active learning techniques in virtually any learning environment and with all age groups, from preschool through higher education, as well as continuing education and professional development. This chapter begins with an overview of active learning, including arguments for implementing it throughout learning experiences, as well as some of the concerns or challenges to integrating the techniques into the classroom. The chapter concludes with examples of some common active learning approaches and techniques.

What Is Active Learning?

Active learning involves direct engagement with course material, such as discussion, debate, role playing, and hands-on practice. In contrast, passive learning does not directly involve the student; examples of passive learning include lecture or demonstration, where students listen and watch but do not actively participate. Bonwell and Eison (1991, p. iii) define active learning as “instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing.” In other words, active learning includes direct interaction with content but also has a metacognitive element that promotes reflection on learning. While we can use active learning approaches with individual learners, many of the techniques emphasize group work and collaboration. In addition to classroom activities, active learning can take place outside the classroom through experiences like internships, service-learning opportunities, and assignments that involve interaction and reflection. However, this chapter will focus on instructor-designed active learning that takes place in venues such as classrooms, workshops, and webinars, as these are the experiences with which information professionals will most likely be involved.

Active learning has its roots in several of the theories described in Chapter 3. Humanists reject the notion that learners are blank slates that passively receive information transmitted from teachers. Constructivists believe that learners construct knowledge, which presupposes active engagement with information in order to create new meanings and understandings, while social constructivists emphasize the importance of interactions with other people in constructing knowledge. According to cognitive scientists, learners actively engage with material as they retrieve information from long-term memory and make connections between new information and existing knowledge.

Active learning approaches challenge the traditional, or “banking,” model of education, in which learners are generally passive; they are expected to listen and take notes, but they are not required to interact with or think deeply about the content. At most, students are asked to recall and repeat what they have learned in an exam or paper. Active learning centers on the learner and encourages interaction, engagement, and reflection. The emphasis with active learning is less on content and more on skills and concepts, or learning how to learn (Thomas, 2009). This does not mean that active learning does not involve content, but more time is typically devoted to solving problems, analyzing issues, and reflecting on learning than, say, learning rote facts.

Despite the history and current popularity of active learning, the concept remains somewhat elusive. There is no unified theory or single set of practices for active learning.  In a sense, active learning is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of approaches to teaching and learning and a wide variety of specific techniques. Prince (2004) identifies three of the most common approaches to active learning as collaborative learning, cooperative learning, and problem-based learning, each of which has different applications and implementations. Collaborative learning, according to Prince, is any type of learning in which students work together on a project or toward the same learning outcome. Cooperative learning is also collaborative, but the emphasis is on joint incentives and common goals, whereas collaborative learning is sometimes centered on competition. In problem-based learning, the instructor presents students with a challenge or scenario, often drawn from the real world, and students must develop solutions to the problem. Problem-based learning is often self-directed, with the instructor acting as a guide and facilitator rather than an expert with answers. Cattaneo (2017) classifies active learning activities as problem-based learning, discovery-based learning, inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, and case-based learning. She finds that each of these approaches is student-centered, but they vary quite widely in their implementation.

Finally, Graffam (2007) suggests that active learning has three components: intentional engagement, purposeful observation, and critical reflection. Intentional engagement is hands-on practice, where students perform the tasks or engage the skills they are expected to learn. For instance, LIS students might role play a reference interview, or a library instructor might have a group of undergraduates evaluate a website. In purposeful observation, students watch demonstrations or observe interactions in order to learn skills, tasks, or procedures. Demonstrations are quite common in library instruction, as when library instructors walk students through Boolean searching. Another example is having LIS students watch a reference interview in order to learn techniques for clarifying questions. The difference between demonstration and purposeful observation is that purposeful observation shifts the focus from the instructor, or demonstrator, to the learner, putting responsibility on the learner to pay attention and glean important information. Instructors can facilitate the process by describing each step in a demonstration and debriefing or asking questions after a simulation to draw attention to the important aspects. Finally, critical reflection is a metacognitive act in which students reflect on their learning. This step is crucial because it encourages students to make connections and helps to deepen the learning.

Ultimately, we can think of active learning as a set of best practices based on these broad, student-centered approaches. We can implement active learning in both face to face and online classrooms using specific methods and techniques such as discussions, think-pair-share, role playing, case studies, and jigsaws, as described in more detail later in this chapter. Activity 4.1 is a reflective exercise on active learning.

Activity 4.1: Active Learning: What Has Been Your Experience?

Think back on some of the learning experiences you have had in the past one or two semesters. These might include lectures, discussions, debates, writing exercises, videos, readings, demonstrations, role plays, and presentations, and they might have taken place in face to face or online courses, workshops, and conferences.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion:

• Would you characterize these various activities as active or passive?
• Did you find one type of experience more engaging?
• Did you feel as if you learned more with one type of experience than the other?
• Do you prefer one type of learning experience over the other? If so, why?
• Think about the different learning settings you’ve experienced: elementary school, high school, undergraduate, graduate, study abroad, professional development, workshops, online, face to face, and so on. Do you find that some of these experiences use active learning more than others? Why might that be?
• Could you imagine ways of incorporating active learning into some of the more passive experiences you have had?

The Case for Active Learning

Support for active learning abounds, but does this approach really work to engage students and increase learning? Bonwell and Eison (1991) state that students prefer active learning and that students in active learning classrooms are more engaged and motivated than those who are required only to passively listen to a lecture. They also maintain that active learning can promote higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, while still achieving the same mastery of content as lectures. Overall, their claims seem to be supported. Prince (2004) found that collaborative and cooperative learning improved academic performance and led to better learning outcomes. Hake (1998) similarly found that active learning led to better test scores and increased problem-solving abilities, while Harris and Bacon (2019) indicate that active learning produces results at least as good as traditional, passive learning, and that it promotes both lower-order and higher-order critical thinking skills. Similarly, Freeman et al. (2014) found active learning to be beneficial, leading to improved exam scores. In fact, they went so far as to say that “if the experiments analyzed here had been conducted as randomized controlled trials of medical interventions, they may have been stopped for benefit—meaning that enrolling patients in the control condition might be discontinued because the treatment being tested was clearly more beneficial” (Freeman et al., 2014, p. 8413). The majority of studies on active learning have looked at children and young adults, but Uemura et al. (2018) found that active learning increased health literacy in older adults.

The benefits of active learning techniques do not seem to be limited to improved learning outcomes. For example, students in active learning classrooms tend to report more positive attitudes (Freeman et al., 2014), and there is some evidence that active learning reduces student attrition, meaning students are less likely to drop out of courses that utilize active learning techniques (Freeman et al., 2014: Prince, 2004). Prince (2004) also found evidence that cooperative learning improved students’ interpersonal skills and teamwork. Importantly, some evidence suggests that active learning might be more inclusive and benefit traditionally underrepresented and marginalized students in particular (Berry, 1991; Frederickson, 1998; Lorenzo et al., 2006; Rainey et al., 2019).

While the evidence for active learning seems positive, both Prince (2004) and Bernstein (2018) note that it is challenging to truly assess its impact because of the wide variety of approaches and techniques involved. Many studies assess only one small aspect of active learning or the implementation of a specific technique, and such studies are usually small and lack controlled variables, making comparisons across studies or generalizations of findings difficult. Bernstein (2018) suggests that rather than asking whether active learning works, instructors should consider which techniques work best under which circumstances. He finds that active learning needs to be highly structured and is most effective when students are required to engage, and suggests that instructors new to active learning take an incremental approach to integrating the techniques. In general, however, research suggests that in the best case, active learning leads to better performance, and at the very least, the performance of students in active learning classrooms is equivalent to their peers in more traditional contexts (Thomas, 2009).

Concerns and Challenges

Despite the popularity of active learning in the literature, and evidence of its effectiveness, lecture still seems to be the dominant form of instruction, especially in higher education. One reason for this might be familiarity. Most instructors teaching today learned through lecture, and it is natural for them to replicate what they know, especially if they have never been introduced to theories and pedagogies that promote other forms of learning. Bonwell and Eison (1991) identified a number of other barriers to adoption of active learning techniques. They note that change involves risk and can lead to uncertainty or anxiousness. New techniques rarely succeed perfectly on the first try, and instructors may have little incentive to innovate or try new teaching techniques, especially if they believe that their current approach is effective. Further, the lecture is familiar not just to instructors but also to students. Each is familiar with the role they are expected to play in a lecture-based classroom, making it comfortable, if not necessarily engaging.

Other common barriers to active learning include (Bonwell & Eison, 1991, p.59):

• Pressure to cover content
• Class sizes that are not conducive to active learning
• Time and planning involved in active learning
• Lack of materials or equipment

Instructors often feel that they have more material to cover than time in which to cover it. While this feeling is common across fields and grade levels, it is perhaps especially true of elementary and high school teachers, as well as college faculty in licensed fields such as nursing, all of whom need to teach specific content to prepare students to pass standardized exams. Lectures are a very efficient way of transmitting content. Active learning techniques, which require learner participation and often build in time for reflection, take up class time and leave less time to cover content. Librarians are not immune to this concern. In fact, because librarians generally have less time with students than a regular classroom teacher does, they might feel even more pressure to cram as much material as they can into the limited time that they have, resulting in sessions that are overpacked and rushed, as well as lacking in meaningful learning activities.

Active learning requires a shift in thinking as well as in techniques. The emphasis in active learning is on skills and competencies rather than on content. Through the various activities, students develop problem-solving, critical thinking, and reflection skills. In addition to learning specific content, students are putting skills into practice and learning how to learn. With that in mind, instructors may need to reduce the amount of material covered in class in order to make time for such skill building. However, this approach does not mean that the content is not covered at all. Rather, it might be delivered in different ways, often outside of regular classroom time. For instance, in a traditional classroom, instructors deliver content through lecture and demonstration, and then give students homework such as worksheets or other assignments where they practice or apply what they learned in class. However, instructors could have students read texts and watch videos outside of class that cover the same content the instructor might normally have delivered through an in-class lecture, then use class time for practice problems and skill building. This approach, sometimes referred to as the “flipped classroom,” is covered in more detail in Chapter 10.

Some instructors, especially at the college level, will find themselves in large classes of 100 or more students. Though such class sizes are less conducive to active learning than smaller classes are, it is not impossible to integrate some active learning even with hundreds of students (Harrington & Zakrajsek, 2017). One technique is a lecture pause, in which instructors stop the lecture and ask students to write down everything they remember from the lecture up to that point (or the two or three most important things they remember). The activity could end there, or the instructor could have students pair up to compare answers and perhaps fill in gaps in each other’s notes. This simple activity engages the students and entails the kind of retrieval practice that increases memory and retention of information.

Instructors can also be hesitant to try active learning because of the time involved or their own anxiety about trying a new activity. However, integrating active learning does not have to entail changing an entire workshop, session, or course; instructors can integrate active learning activities slowly over time. New activities will rarely work perfectly the first time through, so it makes sense to integrate a single activity, assess it, and make adjustments as necessary before adding more activities. Some experienced teachers might be able to add activities spontaneously. For instance, a confident and seasoned instructor might feel comfortable leading an unplanned discussion about a recent news story. But most instructors, especially those new to active learning, will find that each activity will take some time to plan ahead of its implementation. Ultimately, however, planning active learning activities is no more time-consuming than planning a detailed lecture.

Similarly, active learning does not have to depend on expensive materials and equipment. Technology can certainly enhance active learning, and many tools exist to increase student engagement. For example, many elearning platforms include online discussion boards, polling tools, document sharing, and even conferencing tools. However, many activities can be undertaken with few or no materials, such as the lecture pause described earlier that requires only a paper and pencil.

In addition to these four barriers, some teachers question the premise of active learning itself (Graffam, 2007; Thomas, 2009). Generally, these instructors are deeply rooted in traditional modes of teaching and understand instruction as the transmission of knowledge. This perspective can pose special challenges for academic and some school librarians, who are often guests in other teachers’ classrooms. If a librarian is invited to speak in the class of an instructor who does not view active learning as “real” teaching, the librarian might be hesitant to incorporate such techniques even if they support them. On the other hand, the librarian could view this as an opportunity to model good instructional practice. One or two judiciously chosen activities that engage students could demonstrate the effectiveness of active learning, and the librarian could enhance the technique by being transparent in their instruction. By explaining why they incorporated a particular activity, identifying its learning outcomes and the ways in which the activity achieves those outcomes, and by having students reflect on their learning, the librarian can help both the student and a reluctant instructor see how the techniques work.

Finally, students can also be resistant to active learning (Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Thomas, 2009). After all, active learning requires learners to engage and participate, and puts more responsibility on them. Students who are used to listening to lectures and taking notes might be confused or put off by active learning activities, at least at first. In fact, some students believe they learn less in active learning classrooms than they do from lectures, even though the research suggests the opposite (Miller, 2019). Just as engaging in active learning entails some risk for the instructor, it also can feel risky to the learner. Active learning often requires students to share thoughts, ideas, and answers in small and large groups, and some learners might be nervous about giving a “wrong” answer or sharing an unpopular idea. Further, the interaction with peers might be stressful for some people, especially shy, introverted, and neurodiverse students for whom social interaction can be anxiety-inducing (Cohen et al., 2019; Cooper et al., 2018; Monahan, 2017).

Certain active learning techniques, such as cold-calling, or randomly calling on a student who has not volunteered to answer a question, are particularly likely to be stressful for learners (Cooper et al., 2018). Most other techniques, however, can be implemented so as not to cause such anxiety. For instance, low-stakes activities that have little impact on a students’ grade reduce the potential for anxiety. Learners also tend to feel more comfortable when they are familiar with an activity (Bonwell & Eison, 1991), so introducing an activity by explaining its purpose, how it will be implemented, and what the expectations of students are can help ease fears. Bonwell and Eison (1991, p. 69) classify a range of instructional learning techniques according to the amount of risk they present to students. Activities that involve less speaking or presenting, such as lecture pauses, self-assessment activities, and structured small group discussions, are lower risk and lower stress. Higher risk, higher stress activities like role playing and presentations are more often group- or whole-class-based and require more speaking or interaction.

Developing trust between the instructor and students and among the students themselves can be crucial to successful active learning, especially when the activities will require students to interact with one another. Many of the techniques already mentioned, such as being clear about expectations and using low-stakes activities, can help build trust. We can also work with learners to establish ground rules for interactions—for example, encouraging active listening and respect during discussions. It can be helpful to give students time to get to know each other before assigning group work, and allowing students to choose their own groups so that they can find peers with whom they are comfortable (Cohen et al., 2019). Having people work in pairs rather than larger groups might also be less intimidating for some. Finally, simply allowing learners time to gather their thoughts before expecting them to join a discussion can be helpful. For instance, after asking a question of the class, try waiting a few extra seconds before choosing a volunteer, or give students time to reflect and jot down their thoughts before launching a discussion. Activity 4.2 addresses strategies to overcome faculty and student resistance to active learning.

Activity 4.2: Engaging Students in Active Learning

Read through the brief scenarios below and answer the questions that follow:

Scenario 1: Lisa is a user services librarian in a public library. She leads a popular series of job hunting workshops and has always had positive reviews. In the past, Lisa would mostly lecture, but recently she decided to incorporate some active learning. During one session, she had patrons pair off to practice answering interview questions and giving each other feedback on the answers. After the workshop, a patron complained that she had come to the workshop to learn from Lisa, not from other students who did not know any more than she did. She felt that Lisa was not “teaching” them how to do a good job interview.

• Why might the patron feel this way?
• Why might Lisa believe this is a good activity for this workshop?
• What might Lisa do or say to persuade this patron that such peer interaction and role playing is a legitimate teaching and learning activity?

Scenario 2: Ben is a school librarian who believes in the value of active learning and peer-to-peer instruction. During class, he always asks students to come to the front of the room to demonstrate different skills and tasks like keyword and subject searching, rather than leading the demonstration himself. He likes the fact that the peers show each other how to do these tasks by explaining what they are doing and why they are doing it, and he can act as a coach, guiding and correcting them as needed. However, Ben has noticed that when he asks for volunteers, only a few students raise their hands, and it is usually the same students who volunteer every time.

• Why might some learners be hesitant to volunteer in Ben’s class?
• Even if more students volunteer, Ben probably has time to let only two or three students demonstrate in each class. Is there a way to structure this activity so more students could participate?
• Some people might find demonstrating in front of the class stressful or scary. Are there ways in which Ben could structure his activity to make it less stressful or lower stakes?

Most of the literature suggests that best practice both for instructors and for students new to active learning is to ease into the practice. Bonwell and Eison (1991) recommend that, when possible, instructors assess students’ background knowledge on the topic ahead of time in order to plan activities at the appropriate knowledge and developmental level. Chapter 7 offers an overview of techniques for this kind of assessment. Bonwell and Eison also acknowledge that not all instructors are equally comfortable with all techniques, and advise instructors to begin with activities they find comfortable. Harris and Bacon (2019) note that more advanced learners find greater benefit from active learning, leading them to suggest that the activities should be scaffolded, meaning that the class should begin with easier, lower-risk activities while students are still learning basic content, and then gradually move to more complex tasks as learners develop mastery.

Examples of Active Learning Techniques and Strategies

Literally dozens of examples of active learning techniques and strategies exist. Part III of this textbook will offer more details about designing and implementing instruction sessions, including active learning strategies. This section provides short descriptions of some of the more popular activity examples, with a focus on those most suited to a typical library instruction session.

Think-Pair-Share

Perhaps one of the most widely recognized active learning techniques, think-pair-share can be used in classes of all sizes, with all different ages. Because it requires learners to interact only with one other person, it is relatively low risk even for introverted or anxious students. In this activity, instructors pose a question or provide another prompt such as a brief scenario. Next, they pause for a minute or two, giving students time to think about their responses. Students might just reflect or might jot down their thoughts. After a few minutes, learners pair up with a peer to share their responses and discuss their thoughts and reactions. Instructors might also encourage students to identify any questions that arose for them. Depending on the size of the class, the instructor might have each student share thoughts with the class or ask for a few volunteers to share ideas from their discussion with the whole group.

Discussions are another popular and well-known active learning technique. Discussions can be carried out in large- or small-group formats, although smaller groups are generally more conducive to in-depth discussions and allow for more student participation. During discussions, learners reflect on and respond to readings, questions, or other prompts. Specific implementation strategies are detailed in Chapter 10.

Brainstorm/Carousel Brainstorm

Brainstorming activities encourage students to identify anything they can think of related to a topic. These activities can be done individually, or students can work in groups to pool their knowledge. A fun variation on a collective brainstorm is the carousel brainstorm. In this version, the teacher identifies different aspects or subtopics of the subject under study, perhaps posted on large sheets around the room. Small groups of learners are assigned to brainstorm a single subtopic. After a few minutes, the groups rotate to a new subtopic and add what they can to the previous group’s work. When each group has had a turn at each subtopic, the original group reviews and synthesizes the full class brainstorm of their subtopic and presents the information to the class. Activity 4.3 is an example of a brainstorming activity.

Activity 4.3: Instruction Brainstorm

Choose an information setting in which you would like to work and a patron group you would likely encounter there. Brainstorm as many different instruction topics as you can that would be relevant to that group and setting. You might extend the brainstorm by thinking of active learning techniques that could be used to learn about those topics.

Pair up with a classmate and exchange brainstorms. Review your peer’s paper and see if you can add any additional topics or active learning techniques.

Concept Mapping

In concept mapping, learners create visual displays of the connections or relationships among ideas. Generally, a learner will begin with a single idea and brainstorm to identify other words and concepts, which they arrange around the original idea, with lines illustrating how the concepts relate. The new words might describe subtopics, broader topics, and related topics. Depending on the original idea, students might identify research questions on the topic, audiences concerned with or impacted by the topics, action steps, and so on. Concept maps are a great activity for students who are just beginning a research paper, as they can help identify areas of focus, as well as keywords and synonyms for searching. Concept mapping can be created by individuals or groups. Figure 4.1 shows a concept map of information literacy terms created by using the free tool MindMup .

Figure 4.1: Information Literacy Concept Map

Student Demonstration

Rather than lecturing or leading the class through a demonstration, we can turn the class over to the students to show one another how to work through a particular task or problem. For instance, a library instructor could ask learners to demonstrate the steps they took to locate a book or article, or to share the criteria they used to evaluate a website. This way, the learners take on a teaching role, and the instructor can act as a coach from the sidelines, offering feedback or suggestions if the learner gets stuck. One drawback of student demonstrations is that unless the class is very small or a significant amount of time is set aside, it is unlikely that all students will have a chance to demonstrate. A workaround might be to have students work in small groups or pairs.

The jigsaw activity has students assigned to groups, with each group working on a different aspect of a larger project. Once groups complete their assigned task, the instructor shuffles the students into new groups comprising at least one representative from each of the initial groups. In this new group, learners piece together the work from their original groups to complete the larger project. The jigsaw is a collaborative effort, and each student has a chance to act as an expert or instructor when bringing the knowledge from the original group to the new group. As an example, imagine a class of second graders doing a unit on the life cycle of the frog. The librarian could create groups and ask each group to research and describe one stage of the cycle. Once the groups have completed this task, the instructor would create new groups with at least one student from each of the stages. Now, the new groups could compile their research and present a completed life cycle.

Role Play and Skits

Role playing can be an effective way for learners to test their skills and abilities with the kinds of roles or positions they anticipate encountering in the real world. Role playing requires students to think on their feet and draw on the ideas or knowledge they have acquired to address a problem or issue. This technique is often associated with professional programs such as nursing, where students might take turns playing the nurse and patient roles to practice doing a patient intake. However, this technique can be effective in many classrooms. For instance, a public librarian leading a session on job hunting could have students pair off and answer sample interview questions. Because role playing requires spontaneous thinking and interacting with peers who might or might not be familiar, it can feel a little risky, especially for shy students. Giving people time to get to know one another and keeping the activity low stakes can help make the experience more comfortable. Skits are a variation on role playing, in which learners develop a brief play illustrating a relevant situation, scenario, or process to act out in front of the class. For instance, after having students role play a job interview in pairs, the instructor could have learners finalize a script and perform for the class, opening up opportunities for wider discussion and more peer feedback.

Lecture Pause

Described briefly earlier, the lecture pause is a relatively easy technique to integrate and can work well even in very large classes. Using this technique, the instructor will pause every so often during the lecture to allow students to reflect on their learning. During the pause, the instructor might ask students to jot down the key points of the lecture, answer a specific question, or generate their own questions about the material. Students can work individually or pair up to share their reflections and answers. Pairing up can be effective, as learners might be able to answer one another’s questions, or fill in gaps in each other’s recollections of key points.

Peer Instruction

Instructors will often find they have classes of mixed abilities. Some students will be familiar with certain content, while for others it will be completely new. Instructors can find it challenging in such circumstances to present material in a way that is not too advanced for some or too easy (and likely boring) for others. This is common in public libraries where learners self-select into a session, and in academic libraries, where library instruction often is not fully integrated into the curriculum. Because some faculty request library instruction regularly, while others might never have a librarian visit their class, in any one class we will find some students who have sat through multiple similar sessions and some for whom this is a first. Peer instruction can be effective for such mixed classrooms. Instructors can pair or group learners who have more experience with the content together with those who have less, allowing the experienced students to do some of the instruction. Not only is this approach more engaging for all involved, but it has the added benefit that teaching is actually a great way to reinforce knowledge. The students engaging in instruction are deepening their own learning even as they offer instruction. While this approach can be ideal for groups of mixed levels, it is not always necessary for the students doing instruction to be more knowledgeable or advanced. After introducing a new concept or skill, instructors could have students take turns explaining or demonstrating for one another what they have just learned. In all cases, the instructor should stay engaged and offer feedback or redirect if the peer instructors are providing inaccurate information.

Minute Paper

The minute paper is a brief activity that asks students to reflect on their learning by taking roughly one minute to react to the day’s lesson. Instructors often guide the reflection by asking students to recall one or two new things they have learned and/or to identify the “muddiest point” of the lesson, or the section they found most confusing or about which they still have questions. This activity can be done anonymously, thus keeping stakes low and allowing students to be more honest in their reflection. If time allows, the instructor can review the papers and address some of the outstanding questions before the class ends. Another option is to have students add their name to the paper, and then return the paper with comments and answers to questions. The minute paper takes very little class time and can be done in classes of any size.

Scavenger Hunt

A scavenger hunt can be a great way to introduce people to the layout, services, and materials of the library. As in any scavenger hunt, participants in a library scavenger hunt will receive a list of items to find within the physical library. Rather than objects, this list could include recording the call number of a certain item, getting a pass signed by a reference librarian, or checking out a book. Participants could work individually or in teams.

This list is only a small sampling of active learning activities, and each of these has many possible variations. One of the best things about active learning is that it is not only engaging for the students, but it allows the instructor to be creative as well. As discussed in Chapter 9, many active learning techniques can also double as assessment tools, as the activities require students to demonstrate knowledge and ability. See Activity 4.4 for a brief activity on implementing active learning techniques.

Activity 4.4: Integrating Active Learning Techniques

Below are several descriptions of library classroom settings. See if you can think of at least two active learning technique for each example. You do not have to limit yourself to the techniques described in this chapter. There are many more examples available online and in the literature. Do a quick web search and see what other ideas you can find.

• A high school librarian is teaching a class on how to spot “fake news.” By the end of the session, he wants his students to check the domain name of the site, research the author or organization that created the site, and use additional sources to verify facts.
• A public librarian is running a workshop on online safety and privacy, which includes setting up a password manager. Her audience is mostly adults with at least a high school education.
• A college librarian is teaching a session for undergraduate students who have just been assigned a research paper. He plans to teach the students about Boolean operators and search limiters.
• A librarian at a legal firm is running a session to train lawyers on a new version of Westlaw . A few of the staff members who graduated recently are already familiar with this version from their law school.

Active learning is widely considered a best practice in teaching and learning, and both instructors and learners find active instructional strategies more engaging. Although active learning shifts much of the responsibility for learning from the instructor to the student, these techniques take at least as much planning and involvement on the part of the instructor as more traditional strategies like lecture. However, the work involved in active learning can offer great returns in the form of increased motivation and learning.

The major takeaways from this chapter are:

• Active learning techniques involve students directly with the content and can lead to deeper learning.
• An array of active learning techniques exists, with varying levels of complexity, the amount of class time they require, and whether they are intended for group or individual work. This variety and flexibility mean that active learning can be integrated into virtually any lesson, regardless of the size of the group, the amount of content to be covered, or the length of the session.
• Active learning techniques such as think-pair-share and lecture pause can be adopted even in large, lecture-based courses.
• Instructors new to active learning might start with brief, more simple techniques such as think-pair-share.

Suggested Readings

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques . Jossey-Bass.

This classic handbook offers myriad examples of active learning techniques. Although they are presented as methods of assessing student learning, the strategies in this book could be used as classroom activities as well, and most could be easily adapted for online sessions. A selection of 50 activities from this book are available at no cost online from the University of San Diego. ( https://vcsa.ucsd.edu/_files/assessment/resources/50_cats.pdf )

Bonwell, C. C., & Eison, J. A. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the classroom. Association for the Study of Higher Education (ED336049). ERIC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED336049

Another classic text, this brief monograph provides a clear overview of a variety of active learning techniques, including problem solving, case studies, games, and peer teaching. The section on computer-based learning is extremely dated, but other techniques continue to be relevant. Bonwell and Eison also summarize the benefits of and challenges to implementing active learning.

Brame, C. (2016). Active learning . Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/active-learning/

This teaching guide from Vanderbilt University gives a clear and concise overview of active learning, including its theoretical basis, and research into its effectiveness. The author also gives several examples of active learning activities and advice on how to implement them.

Harrington, C., & Zakrajsek, T. (2017). Dynamic lecturing: Research-based strategies to enhance lecture effectiveness . Stylus Publishing.

In this volume, authors Harrington and Zakrajsek make the case that lectures can be active and engaging. They offer clear, research-based advice on how to plan, structure, and deliver a lecture that engages learners and incorporates activity and reflection.

Hinson-Williams, J. (2020). Active learning in library instruction: Getting started . Boston College Libraries. https://libguides.bc.edu/activelearning/gettingstarted

This LibGuide is an excellent resource for library instructors interested in integrating active learning into their sessions. The guide offers an overview of a range of active learning activities, organized by the amount of class time they take to implement. Additional tabs provide guidance on choosing an activity based on learning goals, and a short list of tech tools for active learning.

University of San Diego, Student Affairs. (n.d.) 50 classroom assessment techniques by Angelo and Cross . https://vcsa.ucsd.edu/_files/assessment/resources/50_cats.pdf

This freely available resource offers a brief overview of 50 of the active learning techniques described in Angelo and Cross’ (1993) classic handbook of classroom assessment techniques cited above.

Walsh, A, & Inala, P. (2010). Active learning techniques for librarians: Practical examples. Chandos Publishing.

This book offers examples of over three dozen active learning techniques for the library classroom. Each technique is outlined with its uses, required materials, notes, advice on how to implement it, suggestions for variations, and pitfalls to avoid. Activities are organized by those meant to be used at the start, middle, or end of a lesson. Separate sections offer tech tools and a set of lesson plans.

Bernstein, D. A. (2018). Does active learning work? A good question, but not the right one. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4 (4), 290-307. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000124

Berry, L. Jr. (1991). Collaborative learning: A program for improving the retention of minority students (ED384323) . ERIC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED384323

Bonwell, C. C., & Eison, J. A. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the classroom (ED336049) . ERIC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED336049

Cattaneo, K. H. (2017). Telling active learning pedagogies apart: From theory to practice. Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 6 (2), 144-152. https://doi.org/10.7821/naer.2017.7.237

Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin , 3-7 (ED282491). ERIC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED282491

Cohen, M., Buzinski, S. G., Armstrong-Carter, E., Clark, J., Buck, B., & Rueman, L. (2019). Think, pair, freeze: The association between social anxiety and student discomfort in the active learning environment.  Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 5 (4), 265-277. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000147

Cooper, K. M., Downing, V. R, & Brownell, S. E. (2018). The influence of active learning practices on student anxiety in large-enrollment college science classrooms. International Journal of STEM Education, 55 (1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-018-0123-6

Frederickson, E. (1998). Minority students and the learning community experience: A cluster experiment (ED423533) . ERIC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED423533

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA , 111 (23), 8410-8415.

Graffam, B. (2007). Active learning in medical education: Strategies for beginning implementation. Medical Teacher, 29 (1), 38-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/01421590601176398

Hake, R. R. (1998). Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics, 66 (1), 64-74. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.18809

Harris, N., & Bacon, C. E. W. (2019). Developing cognitive skills through active learning: A systematic review of health care professions. Journal of Athletic Training, 14 (2), 135-148. https://doi.org/10.4085/1402135

Lorenzo, M., Crouch, C. H., & Mazur, E. (2006). Reducing the gender gap in the physics classroom. American Journal of Physics, 74 (2), 118-112. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2162549

Miller, M. (2019, September 8). Active learning, active pushback, and what we should take away from a new study of student perceptions. Medium. https://medium.com/@MDMillerPHD/active-learning-active-pushback-and-what-we-should-take-away-from-a-new-study-of-student-8c208cb278fd

Monahan, N. (2017). How do I include introverts in class discussion? In Active learning: A practical guide for college faculty. Magna Publications.

National Institute of Education. (1984). Involvement in learning: Realizing the potential of American higher education (ED246833). ERIC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED246833

Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93 (3), 223-231. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x

Rainey, K., Dancy, M., Mickelson, R., Stearns, E., & Moller, S. (2019). A descriptive study of race and gender differences in how instructional style and perceived professor care influence decisions to major in STEM. International Journal of STEM Education, 6 (1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-019-0159-2

Thomas, T. (2009). Active learning. In E. F. Provenzo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the social and cultural foundations of education . Sage Publications.

Uemura, K., Yamada, M., & Okamoto, H. (2018). Effects of active learning on health literacy and behavior of older adults: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 66 (9), 1721-1729. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.15458

Instruction in Libraries and Information Centers Copyright © 2020 by Laura Saunders and Melissa A. Wong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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5.1 Understanding How and Why We Listen

Learning objectives.

• Describe the stages of the listening process.
• Discuss the four main types of listening.
• Compare and contrast the four main listening styles.

Listening is the learned process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. We begin to engage with the listening process long before we engage in any recognizable verbal or nonverbal communication. It is only after listening for months as infants that we begin to consciously practice our own forms of expression. In this section we will learn more about each stage of the listening process, the main types of listening, and the main listening styles.

The Listening Process

Listening is a process and as such doesn’t have a defined start and finish. Like the communication process, listening has cognitive, behavioral, and relational elements and doesn’t unfold in a linear, step-by-step fashion. Models of processes are informative in that they help us visualize specific components, but keep in mind that they do not capture the speed, overlapping nature, or overall complexity of the actual process in action. The stages of the listening process are receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding.

Before we can engage other steps in the listening process, we must take in stimuli through our senses. In any given communication encounter, it is likely that we will return to the receiving stage many times as we process incoming feedback and new messages. This part of the listening process is more physiological than other parts, which include cognitive and relational elements. We primarily take in information needed for listening through auditory and visual channels. Although we don’t often think about visual cues as a part of listening, they influence how we interpret messages. For example, seeing a person’s face when we hear their voice allows us to take in nonverbal cues from facial expressions and eye contact. The fact that these visual cues are missing in e-mail, text, and phone interactions presents some difficulties for reading contextual clues into meaning received through only auditory channels.

The first stage of the listening process is receiving stimuli through auditory and visual channels.

Britt Reints – LISTEN – CC BY 2.0.

Our chapter on perception discusses some of the ways in which incoming stimuli are filtered. These perceptual filters also play a role in listening. Some stimuli never make it in, some are filtered into subconsciousness, and others are filtered into various levels of consciousness based on their salience. Recall that salience is the degree to which something attracts our attention in a particular context and that we tend to find salient things that are visually or audibly stimulating and things that meet our needs or interests. Think about how it’s much easier to listen to a lecture on a subject that you find very interesting.

It is important to consider noise as a factor that influences how we receive messages. Some noise interferes primarily with hearing, which is the physical process of receiving stimuli through internal and external components of the ears and eyes, and some interferes with listening, which is the cognitive process of processing the stimuli taken in during hearing. While hearing leads to listening, they are not the same thing. Environmental noise such as other people talking, the sounds of traffic, and music interfere with the physiological aspects of hearing. Psychological noise like stress and anger interfere primarily with the cognitive processes of listening. We can enhance our ability to receive, and in turn listen, by trying to minimize noise.

Interpreting

During the interpreting stage of listening, we combine the visual and auditory information we receive and try to make meaning out of that information using schemata. The interpreting stage engages cognitive and relational processing as we take in informational, contextual, and relational cues and try to connect them in meaningful ways to previous experiences. It is through the interpreting stage that we may begin to understand the stimuli we have received. When we understand something, we are able to attach meaning by connecting information to previous experiences. Through the process of comparing new information with old information, we may also update or revise particular schemata if we find the new information relevant and credible. If we have difficulty interpreting information, meaning we don’t have previous experience or information in our existing schemata to make sense of it, then it is difficult to transfer the information into our long-term memory for later recall. In situations where understanding the information we receive isn’t important or isn’t a goal, this stage may be fairly short or even skipped. After all, we can move something to our long-term memory by repetition and then later recall it without ever having understood it. I remember earning perfect scores on exams in my anatomy class in college because I was able to memorize and recall, for example, all the organs in the digestive system. In fact, I might still be able to do that now over a decade later. But neither then nor now could I tell you the significance or function of most of those organs, meaning I didn’t really get to a level of understanding but simply stored the information for later recall.

Our ability to recall information is dependent on some of the physiological limits of how memory works. Overall, our memories are known to be fallible. We forget about half of what we hear immediately after hearing it, recall 35 percent after eight hours, and recall 20 percent after a day (Hargie, 2011). Our memory consists of multiple “storage units,” including sensory storage, short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory (Hargie, 2011).

Our sensory storage is very large in terms of capacity but limited in terms of length of storage. We can hold large amounts of unsorted visual information but only for about a tenth of a second. By comparison, we can hold large amounts of unsorted auditory information for longer—up to four seconds. This initial memory storage unit doesn’t provide much use for our study of communication, as these large but quickly expiring chunks of sensory data are primarily used in reactionary and instinctual ways.

As stimuli are organized and interpreted, they make their way to short-term memory where they either expire and are forgotten or are transferred to long-term memory. Short-term memory is a mental storage capability that can retain stimuli for twenty seconds to one minute. Long-term memory is a mental storage capability to which stimuli in short-term memory can be transferred if they are connected to existing schema and in which information can be stored indefinitely (Hargie, 2011). Working memory is a temporarily accessed memory storage space that is activated during times of high cognitive demand. When using working memory, we can temporarily store information and process and use it at the same time. This is different from our typical memory function in that information usually has to make it to long-term memory before we can call it back up to apply to a current situation. People with good working memories are able to keep recent information in mind and process it and apply it to other incoming information. This can be very useful during high-stress situations. A person in control of a command center like the White House Situation Room should have a good working memory in order to take in, organize, evaluate, and then immediately use new information instead of having to wait for that information to make it to long-term memory and then be retrieved and used.

Although recall is an important part of the listening process, there isn’t a direct correlation between being good at recalling information and being a good listener. Some people have excellent memories and recall abilities and can tell you a very accurate story from many years earlier during a situation in which they should actually be listening and not showing off their recall abilities. Recall is an important part of the listening process because it is most often used to assess listening abilities and effectiveness. Many quizzes and tests in school are based on recall and are often used to assess how well students comprehended information presented in class, which is seen as an indication of how well they listened. When recall is our only goal, we excel at it. Experiments have found that people can memorize and later recall a set of faces and names with near 100 percent recall when sitting in a quiet lab and asked to do so. But throw in external noise, more visual stimuli, and multiple contextual influences, and we can’t remember the name of the person we were just introduced to one minute earlier. Even in interpersonal encounters, we rely on recall to test whether or not someone was listening. Imagine that Azam is talking to his friend Belle, who is sitting across from him in a restaurant booth. Azam, annoyed that Belle keeps checking her phone, stops and asks, “Are you listening?” Belle inevitably replies, “Yes,” since we rarely fess up to our poor listening habits, and Azam replies, “Well, what did I just say?”

When we evaluate something, we make judgments about its credibility, completeness, and worth. In terms of credibility, we try to determine the degree to which we believe a speaker’s statements are correct and/or true. In terms of completeness, we try to “read between the lines” and evaluate the message in relation to what we know about the topic or situation being discussed. We evaluate the worth of a message by making a value judgment about whether we think the message or idea is good/bad, right/wrong, or desirable/undesirable. All these aspects of evaluating require critical thinking skills, which we aren’t born with but must develop over time through our own personal and intellectual development.

Studying communication is a great way to build your critical thinking skills, because you learn much more about the taken-for-granted aspects of how communication works, which gives you tools to analyze and critique messages, senders, and contexts. Critical thinking and listening skills also help you take a more proactive role in the communication process rather than being a passive receiver of messages that may not be credible, complete, or worthwhile. One danger within the evaluation stage of listening is to focus your evaluative lenses more on the speaker than the message. This can quickly become a barrier to effective listening if we begin to prejudge a speaker based on his or her identity or characteristics rather than on the content of his or her message. We will learn more about how to avoid slipping into a person-centered rather than message-centered evaluative stance later in the chapter.

Responding entails sending verbal and nonverbal messages that indicate attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof. From our earlier discussion of the communication model, you may be able to connect this part of the listening process to feedback. Later, we will learn more specifics about how to encode and decode the verbal and nonverbal cues sent during the responding stage, but we all know from experience some signs that indicate whether a person is paying attention and understanding a message or not.

We send verbal and nonverbal feedback while another person is talking and after they are done. Back-channel cues are the verbal and nonverbal signals we send while someone is talking and can consist of verbal cues like “uh-huh,” “oh,” and “right,” and/or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact, head nods, and leaning forward. Back-channel cues are generally a form of positive feedback that indicates others are actively listening. People also send cues intentionally and unintentionally that indicate they aren’t listening. If another person is looking away, fidgeting, texting, or turned away, we will likely interpret those responses negatively.

Listeners respond to speakers nonverbally during a message using back-channel cues and verbally after a message using paraphrasing and clarifying questions.

Duane Storey – Listening – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Paraphrasing is a responding behavior that can also show that you understand what was communicated. When you paraphrase information, you rephrase the message into your own words. For example, you might say the following to start off a paraphrased response: “What I heard you say was…” or “It seems like you’re saying…” You can also ask clarifying questions to get more information. It is often a good idea to pair a paraphrase with a question to keep a conversation flowing. For example, you might pose the following paraphrase and question pair: “It seems like you believe you were treated unfairly. Is that right?” Or you might ask a standalone question like “What did your boss do that made you think he was ‘playing favorites?’” Make sure to paraphrase and/or ask questions once a person’s turn is over, because interrupting can also be interpreted as a sign of not listening. Paraphrasing is also a good tool to use in computer-mediated communication, especially since miscommunication can occur due to a lack of nonverbal and other contextual cues.

The Importance of Listening

Understanding how listening works provides the foundation we need to explore why we listen, including various types and styles of listening. In general, listening helps us achieve all the communication goals (physical, instrumental, relational, and identity) that we learned about in Chapter 1 “Introduction to Communication Studies” . Listening is also important in academic, professional, and personal contexts.

In terms of academics, poor listening skills were shown to contribute significantly to failure in a person’s first year of college (Zabava & Wolvin, 1993). In general, students with high scores for listening ability have greater academic achievement. Interpersonal communication skills including listening are also highly sought after by potential employers, consistently ranking in the top ten in national surveys (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2010).

Poor listening skills, lack of conciseness, and inability to give constructive feedback have been identified as potential communication challenges in professional contexts. Even though listening education is lacking in our society, research has shown that introductory communication courses provide important skills necessary for functioning in entry-level jobs, including listening, writing, motivating/persuading, interpersonal skills, informational interviewing, and small-group problem solving (DiSalvo, 1980). Training and improvements in listening will continue to pay off, as employers desire employees with good communication skills, and employees who have good listening skills are more likely to get promoted.

Listening also has implications for our personal lives and relationships. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to make someone else feel better and to open our perceptual field to new sources of information. Empathetic listening can help us expand our self and social awareness by learning from other people’s experiences and by helping us take on different perspectives. Emotional support in the form of empathetic listening and validation during times of conflict can help relational partners manage common stressors of relationships that may otherwise lead a partnership to deteriorate (Milardo & Helms-Erikson, 2000). The following list reviews some of the main functions of listening that are relevant in multiple contexts.

The main purposes of listening are (Hargie, 2011)

• to focus on messages sent by other people or noises coming from our surroundings;
• to better our understanding of other people’s communication;
• to critically evaluate other people’s messages;
• to monitor nonverbal signals;
• to indicate that we are interested or paying attention;
• to empathize with others and show we care for them (relational maintenance); and
• to engage in negotiation, dialogue, or other exchanges that result in shared understanding of or agreement on an issue.

Listening Types

Listening serves many purposes, and different situations require different types of listening. The type of listening we engage in affects our communication and how others respond to us. For example, when we listen to empathize with others, our communication will likely be supportive and open, which will then lead the other person to feel “heard” and supported and hopefully view the interaction positively (Bodie & Villaume, 2003). The main types of listening we will discuss are discriminative, informational, critical, and empathetic (Watson, Barker, & Weaver III, 1995).

Discriminative Listening

Discriminative listening is a focused and usually instrumental type of listening that is primarily physiological and occurs mostly at the receiving stage of the listening process. Here we engage in listening to scan and monitor our surroundings in order to isolate particular auditory or visual stimuli. For example, we may focus our listening on a dark part of the yard while walking the dog at night to determine if the noise we just heard presents us with any danger. Or we may look for a particular nonverbal cue to let us know our conversational partner received our message (Hargie, 2011). In the absence of a hearing impairment, we have an innate and physiological ability to engage in discriminative listening. Although this is the most basic form of listening, it provides the foundation on which more intentional listening skills are built. This type of listening can be refined and honed. Think of how musicians, singers, and mechanics exercise specialized discriminative listening to isolate specific aural stimuli and how actors, detectives, and sculptors discriminate visual cues that allow them to analyze, make meaning from, or recreate nuanced behavior (Wolvin & Coakley, 1993).

Informational Listening

Informational listening entails listening with the goal of comprehending and retaining information. This type of listening is not evaluative and is common in teaching and learning contexts ranging from a student listening to an informative speech to an out-of-towner listening to directions to the nearest gas station. We also use informational listening when we listen to news reports, voice mail, and briefings at work. Since retention and recall are important components of informational listening, good concentration and memory skills are key. These also happen to be skills that many college students struggle with, at least in the first years of college, but will be expected to have mastered once they get into professional contexts. In many professional contexts, informational listening is important, especially when receiving instructions. I caution my students that they will be expected to process verbal instructions more frequently in their profession than they are in college. Most college professors provide detailed instructions and handouts with assignments so students can review them as needed, but many supervisors and managers will expect you to take the initiative to remember or record vital information. Additionally, many bosses are not as open to questions or requests to repeat themselves as professors are.

Critical Listening

Critical listening entails listening with the goal of analyzing or evaluating a message based on information presented verbally and information that can be inferred from context. A critical listener evaluates a message and accepts it, rejects it, or decides to withhold judgment and seek more information. As constant consumers of messages, we need to be able to assess the credibility of speakers and their messages and identify various persuasive appeals and faulty logic (known as fallacies), which you can learn more about in Chapter 11 “Informative and Persuasive Speaking” . Critical listening is important during persuasive exchanges, but I recommend always employing some degree of critical listening, because you may find yourself in a persuasive interaction that you thought was informative. As is noted in Chapter 4 “Nonverbal Communication” , people often disguise inferences as facts. Critical-listening skills are useful when listening to a persuasive speech in this class and when processing any of the persuasive media messages we receive daily. You can see judges employ critical listening, with varying degrees of competence, on talent competition shows like Rupaul’s Drag Race , America’s Got Talent , and The Voice . While the exchanges between judge and contestant on these shows is expected to be subjective and critical, critical listening is also important when listening to speakers that have stated or implied objectivity, such as parents, teachers, political leaders, doctors, and religious leaders. We will learn more about how to improve your critical thinking skills later in this chapter.

Empathetic Listening

We support others through empathetic listening by trying to “feel with” them.

Stewart Black – Comfort – CC BY 2.0.

Empathetic listening is the most challenging form of listening and occurs when we try to understand or experience what a speaker is thinking or feeling. Empathetic listening is distinct from sympathetic listening. While the word empathy means to “feel into” or “feel with” another person, sympathy means to “feel for” someone. Sympathy is generally more self-oriented and distant than empathy (Bruneau, 1993). Empathetic listening is other oriented and should be genuine. Because of our own centrality in our perceptual world, empathetic listening can be difficult. It’s often much easier for us to tell our own story or to give advice than it is to really listen to and empathize with someone else. We should keep in mind that sometimes others just need to be heard and our feedback isn’t actually desired.

Empathetic listening is key for dialogue and helps maintain interpersonal relationships. In order to reach dialogue, people must have a degree of open-mindedness and a commitment to civility that allows them to be empathetic while still allowing them to believe in and advocate for their own position. An excellent example of critical and empathetic listening in action is the international Truth and Reconciliation movement. The most well-known example of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) occurred in South Africa as a way to address the various conflicts that occurred during apartheid (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2012). The first TRC in the United States occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina, as a means of processing the events and aftermath of November 3, 1979, when members of the Ku Klux Klan shot and killed five members of the Communist Worker’s Party during a daytime confrontation witnessed by news crews and many bystanders. The goal of such commissions is to allow people to tell their stories, share their perspectives in an open environment, and be listened to. The Greensboro TRC states its purpose as such: [1]

The truth and reconciliation process seeks to heal relations between opposing sides by uncovering all pertinent facts, distinguishing truth from lies, and allowing for acknowledgement, appropriate public mourning, forgiveness and healing…The focus often is on giving victims, witnesses and even perpetrators a chance to publicly tell their stories without fear of prosecution.

Listening Styles

Just as there are different types of listening, there are also different styles of listening. People may be categorized as one or more of the following listeners: people-oriented, action-oriented, content-oriented, and time-oriented listeners. Research finds that 40 percent of people have more than one preferred listening style, and that they choose a style based on the listening situation (Bodie & Villaume, 2003). Other research finds that people often still revert back to a single preferred style in times of emotional or cognitive stress, even if they know a different style of listening would be better (Worthington, 2003). Following a brief overview of each listening style, we will explore some of their applications, strengths, and weaknesses.

• People-oriented listeners are concerned about the needs and feelings of others and may get distracted from a specific task or the content of a message in order to address feelings.
• Action-oriented listeners prefer well-organized, precise, and accurate information. They can become frustrated with they perceive communication to be unorganized or inconsistent, or a speaker to be “long-winded.”
• Content-oriented listeners are analytic and enjoy processing complex messages. They like in-depth information and like to learn about multiple sides of a topic or hear multiple perspectives on an issue. Their thoroughness can be difficult to manage if there are time constraints.
• Time-oriented listeners are concerned with completing tasks and achieving goals. They do not like information perceived as irrelevant and like to stick to a timeline. They may cut people off and make quick decisions (taking short cuts or cutting corners) when they think they have enough information.

People-Oriented Listeners

People-oriented listeners are concerned about the emotional states of others and listen with the purpose of offering support in interpersonal relationships. People-oriented listeners can be characterized as “supporters” who are caring and understanding. These listeners are sought out because they are known as people who will “lend an ear.” They may or may not be valued for the advice they give, but all people often want is a good listener. This type of listening may be especially valuable in interpersonal communication involving emotional exchanges, as a person-oriented listener can create a space where people can make themselves vulnerable without fear of being cut off or judged. People-oriented listeners are likely skilled empathetic listeners and may find success in supportive fields like counseling, social work, or nursing. Interestingly, such fields are typically feminized, in that people often associate the characteristics of people-oriented listeners with roles filled by women. We will learn more about how gender and listening intersect in Section 5 “Listening and Gender” .

Action-Oriented Listeners

Action-oriented listeners focus on what action needs to take place in regards to a received message and try to formulate an organized way to initiate that action. These listeners are frustrated by disorganization, because it detracts from the possibility of actually doing something. Action-oriented listeners can be thought of as “builders”—like an engineer, a construction site foreperson, or a skilled project manager. This style of listening can be very effective when a task needs to be completed under time, budgetary, or other logistical constraints. One research study found that people prefer an action-oriented style of listening in instructional contexts (Imhof, 2004). In other situations, such as interpersonal communication, action-oriented listeners may not actually be very interested in listening, instead taking a “What do you want me to do?” approach. A friend and colleague of mine who exhibits some qualities of an action-oriented listener once told me about an encounter she had with a close friend who had a stillborn baby. My friend said she immediately went into “action mode.” Although it was difficult for her to connect with her friend at an emotional/empathetic level, she was able to use her action-oriented approach to help out in other ways as she helped make funeral arrangements, coordinated with other family and friends, and handled the details that accompanied this tragic emotional experience. As you can see from this example, the action-oriented listening style often contrasts with the people-oriented listening style.

Content-Oriented Listeners

Content-oriented listeners like to listen to complex information and evaluate the content of a message, often from multiple perspectives, before drawing conclusions. These listeners can be thought of as “learners,” and they also ask questions to solicit more information to fill out their understanding of an issue. Content-oriented listeners often enjoy high perceived credibility because of their thorough, balanced, and objective approach to engaging with information. Content-oriented listeners are likely skilled informational and critical listeners and may find success in academic careers in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. Ideally, judges and politicians would also possess these characteristics.

Time-Oriented Listeners

Time-oriented listeners are more concerned about time limits and timelines than they are with the content or senders of a message. These listeners can be thought of as “executives,” and they tend to actually verbalize the time constraints under which they are operating.

Time-oriented listeners listen on a schedule, often giving people limits on their availability by saying, for example, “I only have about five minutes.”

JD Lasica – Business call – CC BY-NC 2.0.

For example, a time-oriented supervisor may say the following to an employee who has just entered his office and asked to talk: “Sure, I can talk, but I only have about five minutes.” These listeners may also exhibit nonverbal cues that indicate time and/or attention shortages, such as looking at a clock, avoiding eye contact, or nonverbally trying to close down an interaction. Time-oriented listeners are also more likely to interrupt others, which may make them seem insensitive to emotional/personal needs. People often get action-oriented and time-oriented listeners confused. Action-oriented listeners would be happy to get to a conclusion or decision quickly if they perceive that they are acting on well-organized and accurate information. They would, however, not mind taking longer to reach a conclusion when dealing with a complex topic, and they would delay making a decision if the information presented to them didn’t meet their standards of organization. Unlike time-oriented listeners, action-oriented listeners are not as likely to cut people off (especially if people are presenting relevant information) and are not as likely to take short cuts.

Key Takeaways

• Getting integrated: Listening is a learned process and skill that we can improve on with concerted effort. Improving our listening skills can benefit us in academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts.
• Listening is the process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. In the receiving stage, we select and attend to various stimuli based on salience. We then interpret auditory and visual stimuli in order to make meaning out of them based on our existing schemata. Short-term and long-term memory store stimuli until they are discarded or processed for later recall. We then evaluate the credibility, completeness, and worth of a message before responding with verbal and nonverbal signals.
• Discriminative listening is the most basic form of listening, and we use it to distinguish between and focus on specific sounds. We use informational listening to try to comprehend and retain information. Through critical listening, we analyze and evaluate messages at various levels. We use empathetic listening to try to understand or experience what a speaker is feeling.
• People-oriented listeners are concerned with others’ needs and feelings, which may distract from a task or the content of a message. Action-oriented listeners prefer listening to well-organized and precise information and are more concerned about solving an issue than they are about supporting the speaker. Content-oriented listeners enjoy processing complicated information and are typically viewed as credible because they view an issue from multiple perspectives before making a decision. Although content-oriented listeners may not be very effective in situations with time constraints, time-oriented listeners are fixated on time limits and listen in limited segments regardless of the complexity of the information or the emotions involved, which can make them appear cold and distant to some.
• The recalling stage of the listening process is a place where many people experience difficulties. What techniques do you use or could you use to improve your recall of certain information such as people’s names, key concepts from your classes, or instructions or directions given verbally?
• Getting integrated: Identify how critical listening might be useful for you in each of the following contexts: academic, professional, personal, and civic.
• Listening scholars have noted that empathetic listening is the most difficult type of listening. Do you agree? Why or why not?
• Which style of listening best describes you and why? Which style do you have the most difficulty with or like the least and why?

Bodie, G. D. and William A. Villaume, “Aspects of Receiving Information: The Relationships between Listening Preferences, Communication Apprehension, Receiver Apprehension, and Communicator Style,” International Journal of Listening 17, no. 1 (2003): 48.

Bruneau, T., “Empathy and Listening,” in Perspectives on Listening , eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 188.

Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, Truth and Reconciliation Commission website, accessed July 13, 2012, http://www.justice.gov.za/trc .

DiSalvo, V. S. “A Summary of Current Research Identifying Communication Skills in Various Organizational Contexts,” Communication Education 29 (1980), 283–90.

Hargie, O., Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 189–99.

Imhof, M., “Who Are We as We Listen? Individual Listening Profiles in Varying Contexts,” International Journal of Listening 18, no. 1 (2004): 39.

Milardo, R. M. and Heather Helms-Erikson, “Network Overlap and Third-Party Influence in Close Relationships,” in Close Relationships: A Sourcebook , eds. Clyde Hendrick and Susan S. Hendrick (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 37.

National Association of Colleges and Employers, Job Outlook 2011 (2010): 25.

Watson, K. W., Larry L. Barker, and James B. Weaver III, “The Listening Styles Profile (LS-16): Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Four Listening Styles,” International Journal of Listening 9 (1995): 1–13.

Wolvin, A. D. and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley, “A Listening Taxonomy,” in Perspectives on Listening , eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 18–19.

Worthington, D. L., “Exploring the Relationship between Listening Style Preference and Personality,” International Journal of Listening 17, no. 1 (2003): 82.

Zabava, W. S. and Andrew D. Wolvin, “The Differential Impact of a Basic Communication Course on Perceived Communication Competencies in Class, Work, and Social Contexts,” Communication Education 42 (1993): 215–17.

• “About,” Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission website, accessed July 13, 2012, http://www.greensborotrc.org/truth_reconciliation.php . ↵

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process.

Listening is key to all effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated.

If there is one communication skill you should aim to master, then listening is it.

Listening is so important that many top employers provide listening skills training for their employees. This is not surprising when you consider that good listening skills can lead to better customer satisfaction, greater productivity with fewer mistakes, and increased sharing of information that in turn can lead to more creative and innovative work.

Many successful leaders and entrepreneurs credit their success to effective listening skills. Richard Branson frequently quotes listening as one of the main factors behind the success of Virgin.

Effective listening is a skill that underpins all positive human relationships.

Spend some time thinking about and developing your listening skills – they are the building blocks of success.

See our pages: Employability Skills and Customer Service Skills for more examples of the importance of listening in the workplace.

Good listening skills also have benefits in our personal lives, including:

A greater number of friends and social networks, improved self-esteem and confidence, higher grades at school and in academic work, and even better health and general well-being.

Studies have shown that, whereas speaking raises blood pressure, attentive listening can bring it down.

Listening is Not the Same as Hearing

Hearing refers to the sounds that enter your ears. It is a physical process that, provided you do not have any hearing problems, happens automatically.

Listening, however, requires more than that: it requires focus and concentrated effort, both mental and sometimes physical as well.  

Listening means paying attention not only to the story, but how it is told, the use of language and voice, and how the other person uses his or her body. In other words, it means being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages. Your ability to listen effectively depends on the degree to which you perceive and understand these messages.

Listening is not a passive process. In fact, the listener can, and should, be at least as engaged in the process as the speaker. The phrase ‘ active listening ’ is used to describe this process of being fully involved.

See our pages: Active Listening and Types of Listening for more information.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen.  Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

We Spend a lot of Time Listening

Adults spend an average of 70% of their time engaged in some sort of communication.

Of this, research shows that an average of 45% is spent listening compared to 30% speaking, 16% reading and 9% writing. (Adler, R. et al. 2001). That is, by any standards, a lot of time listening. It is worthwhile, therefore, taking a bit of extra time to ensure that you listen effectively.

Based on the research of: Adler, R., Rosenfeld, L. and Proctor, R. (2001) Interplay: the process of interpersonal communicating (8th edn), Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt .

The Purpose of Listening

There is no doubt that effective listening is an extremely important life skill. Why is listening so important?

Listening serves a number of possible purposes, and the purpose of listening will depend on the situation and the nature of the communication.

To specifically focus on the messages being communicated, avoiding distractions and preconceptions.

To gain a full and accurate understanding into the speakers point of view and ideas.

To critically assess what is being said. (See our page on Critical Thinking for more).

To observe the non-verbal signals accompanying what is being said to enhance understanding.

To show interest, concern and concentration.

To encourage the speaker to communicate fully, openly and honestly.

To develop an selflessness approach, putting the speaker first.

To arrive at a shared and agreed understanding and acceptance of both sides views.

Often our main concern while listening is to formulate ways to respond. This is not a function of listening. We should try to focus fully on what is being said and how it's being said in order to more fully understand the speaker.

Effective listening requires concentration and the use of your other senses - not just hearing the words spoken.

Listening is not the same as hearing and in order to listen effectively you need to use more than just your ears.

See our page: The Ten Principles of Listening .

Further Reading from Skills You Need

Our Communication Skills eBooks

Learn more about the key communication skills you need to be a more effective communicator.

Our eBooks are ideal for anyone who wants to learn about or develop their interpersonal skills and are full of easy-to-follow, practical information.

To improve the process of effective listening, it can be helpful to turn the problem on its head and look at barriers to effective listening, or ineffective listening.

For example, one common problem is that instead of listening closely to what someone is saying, we often get distracted after a sentence or two and instead start to think about what we are going to say in reply or think about unrelated things. This means that we do not fully listen to the rest of the speaker’s message.

This problem is attributed, in part, to the difference between average speech rate and average processing rate. Average speech rates are between 125 and 175 words a minute whereas we can process on average between 400 and 800 words a minute. It is a common habit for the listener to use the spare time while listening to daydream or think about other things, rather than focusing on what the speaker is saying.

Of course the clarity of what the speaker is saying can also affect how well we listen. Generally we find it easier to focus if the speaker is fluent in their speech, has a familiar accent, and speaks at an appropriate loudness for the situation. It is more difficult, for example, to focus on somebody who is speaking very fast and very quietly, especially if they are conveying complex information.

We may also get distracted by the speaker’s personal appearance or by what someone else is saying, which sounds more interesting.

These issues not only affect you, but you are likely to show your lack of attention in your body language.

Generally, we find it much harder to control our body language, and you are likely to show your distraction and/or lack of interest by lack of eye contact, or posture. The speaker will detect the problem, and probably stop talking at best. At worse, they may be very offended or upset.

Our page on Barriers to Effective Listening explains more about common listening problems, and our page Listening Misconceptions details some of the common myths and misconceptions about listening.

Finally, it is important not to jump to conclusions about what you see and hear. You should always seek clarification to ensure that your understanding is correct.

See our pages: Clarification and Reflection for more information.

How well do you listen? Take the: Interpersonal Skills Self-Assessment

More on listening, continue to: Mindful Listening | The 10 Principles of Listening Effective Listening Skills | Barriers to Effective Listening

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The listening process

We begin to engage in the listening process long before we engage in any recognizable verbal or nonverbal communication. It is only after listening for months as infants that we begin to consciously practice our own forms of expression. In this section we will learn about each stage of the listening process, the main types of listening, and listening styles.

Listening is a process and as such doesn’t have a defined start and finish. Like the communication process, listening has cognitive, behavioral, and relational elements and doesn’t unfold in a linear, step-by-step fashion. Models of processes are informative in that they help us visualize specific components, but keep in mind that they do not capture the speed, overlapping nature, or overall complexity of the actual process in action. The stages of the listening process are receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding.

Before we can engage other steps in the listening process, we must take in stimuli through our senses. In any given communication encounter, it is likely that we will return to the receiving stage many times as we process incoming feedback and new messages. This part of the listening process is more physiological than other parts, which include cognitive and relational elements. We primarily take in information needed for listening through auditory and visual channels. Although we don’t often think about visual cues as part of listening, although they do influence how we interpret messages. For example, seeing a person’s face when we hear their voice allows us to take in nonverbal cues from their facial expressions and eye contact. The fact that these visual cues are missing in e-mail, text, and phone interactions presents some difficulties for reading contextual clues.

It is important to consider noise as a factor that influences how we receive messages. Noise interferes primarily with hearing, which is the physical process of receiving stimuli through internal and external components of the ears and eyes, and some interferes with listening, which is the cognitive process of processing the stimuli taken in while hearing. Although hearing leads to listening, they are not the same thing. Environmental noise such as other people talking, the sounds of traffic, and music interfere with the physiological aspects of hearing. Psychological noise like stress and anger interfere primarily with the cognitive processes of listening. We can enhance our ability to receive, and in turn listen, by trying to minimize noise.

Treasure, J. ( 2011 ). 5 Ways to Listen Better . Ted Talk. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSohjlYQI2A

Interpreting

During the interpreting stage of listening, we combine the visual and auditory information we receive and try to make meaning out of that information. The interpreting stage engages cognitive and relational processing as we take in informational, contextual, and relational cues and try to connect them in meaningful ways to previous experiences. It is through the interpreting stage that we may begin to understand the stimuli we have received. When we understand something, we are able to attach meaning by connecting information to previous experiences. If we have difficulty interpreting information, meaning we don’t have previous experiences or information to make sense of it, then it is difficult to transfer the information into our long-term memory for later recall. In situations where understanding the information we receive isn’t important or isn’t a goal, this stage may be fairly short or even skipped. After all, we can move something to our long-term memory by repetition and then later recall it without ever having understood it.

Our ability to recall information is dependent on some of the physiological limits of how memory works. Overall, our memories are known to be fallible. We forget about half of what we hear immediately after hearing it, recall 35 percent after eight hours, and recall 20 percent after a day.  Our memory consists of multiple “storage units,” including sensory storage, short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory (Hargie, 2011).

Our sensory storage is very large in terms of capacity but limited in terms of length of storage. We can hold large amounts of unsorted visual information but only for about a tenth of a second. By comparison, we can hold large amounts of unsorted auditory information for longer—up to four seconds. This initial memory storage unit doesn’t provide much use for our study of communication, as these large but quickly expiring chunks of sensory data are primarily used in reactionary and instinctual ways.

As stimuli are organized and interpreted, they make their way to our short-term memory where they are either forgotten or are transferred to our long-term memory. Our short-term memory has a mental storage capability that can retain stimuli for twenty seconds to one minute. Long-term memory has a mental  storage capability to which stimuli in short-term memory can be transferred if they are connected to existing information. Once there, they can be stored indefinitely (Hargie, 2011). Working memory is a temporarily accessed memory storage space that is activated during times of high cognitive demand. When using working memory, we can temporarily store information and process and use it at the same time. This is different from our typical memory function in that information usually has to make it to long-term memory before we can call it back up to apply to a current situation. People with good working memories are able to keep recent information in mind, process and apply it to other incoming information. This can be very useful during high-stress situations. A person in control of a command center like the White House Situation Room should have a good working memory in order to take in, organize, evaluate, and then immediately use new information instead of having to wait for that information to make it to their long-term memory and then be retrieved and used.

Although recall is an important part of the listening process, there isn’t a direct correlation between being good at recalling information and being a good listener. Some people have excellent memories and can tell you a very accurate story from many years earlier. Recall is an important part of the listening process because it is most often used to assess listening abilities and effectiveness. Many quizzes and tests in school are based on recall and are often used to assess how well the students comprehended the information presented in class, which is seen as an indication of how well they listened. When recall is our only goal, we excel at it. Experiments have found that people can memorize and later recall a set of faces and names with near 100 percent recall when sitting in a quiet lab and asked to do so. However, if there is external noise, visual stimuli, and multiple contextual influences, then we are unable to remember the name of the person we were just introduced to one minute earlier. Even in interpersonal encounters, we rely on recall to test whether or not someone was listening.

Imagine that Arieh is talking to his sister Becca, who is sitting across from him in a restaurant booth. Arieh, annoyed that Becca keeps checking her phone, stops and asks, “ Are you listening? ” Becca inevitably replies, “ Yes ,” since we rarely confess to our poor listening habits. Arieh asks, “ Well, what did I just say ?”

When we evaluate something, we make judgments about its credibility, completeness, and worth. In terms of credibility, we try to determine the degree to which we believe a speaker’s statements are correct and/or true. In terms of completeness, we try to “read between the lines” and evaluate the message in relation to what we know about the topic or situation being discussed. We evaluate the worth of a message by making a value judgment about whether we think the message or idea is good/bad, right/wrong, or desirable/undesirable. All these aspects of evaluation require critical thinking skills, which we  must develop over time through our own personal and intellectual development.

Studying communication is a great way to build your critical thinking skills. The field of communication gives you the skills to analyze and critique messages, senders, and contexts. Critical thinking and listening skills also helps you take a more proactive role in the communication process rather than being a passive receiver of messages that may not be credible, complete, or worthwhile. One danger within the evaluation stage of listening is when you focus more on the speaker rather than the message. This can quickly become a barrier to effective listening if we begin to prejudge a speaker based on his or her identity or characteristics rather than on the content of his or her message.

Responding involves sending verbal and nonverbal messages that indicate attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof. From our earlier discussion of the communication model, you may be able to connect this part of the listening process to feedback. Later, we will learn specific methods to encode and decode the verbal and nonverbal cues sent during the responding stage. We all know from experience some signs that indicate whether a person is paying attention and understanding a message or not.

We send verbal and nonverbal feedback while another person is talking and after they are done. The v erbal and nonverbal signals we send while someone is talking, which can consist of verbal cues like “uh-huh,” “oh,” and “right,” and/or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact, head nods, and leaning forward.  Back-channel cues are generally a form of positive feedback that indicates others are actively listening. People also send cues intentionally and unintentionally that indicate they aren’t listening. If another person is looking away, fidgeting, texting, or turned away, we will likely interpret those responses negatively.

Reflection is a responding behavior that can also show that you understand what was communicated. When you reflect on a message, you state back what you heard the speaker said in your own words.  For example, you might say the following to start off a reflective response: “ What I heard you say was… ” or “ It seems like you’re saying… ” You can also ask clarifying questions to get more information. It is often a good idea to pair a paraphrase with a question to keep a conversation flowing. For example, you might pose the following reflection and question pair: “ It seems like you believe you were treated unfairly. Is that right? ” Or you might ask a stand alone question like “ What did your boss do that made you think he was ‘playing favorites? ’” Make sure to reflect and/or ask questions once a person’s turn is over, because interrupting can also be interpreted as a sign of not listening. Reflection is also a good tool to use in computer-mediated communication, especially since miscommunication can occur due to a lack of nonverbal and other contextual cues.

Can't We Just Get Along? Copyright © 2023 by Susan Fried is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Mind by Design

Why listening is a passive process and an active process

Some consider listening to be the most important part of speaking. This is because listening is a two-step process: first, it’s passive and involves understanding what’s being said (the words and language); and second, it’s active and requires the listener to provide feedback in order for the speaker to know that they’re understood.

In this article we discuss how listening without providing feedback can cause problems like miscommunication, negative feelings between people, misinterpretations, and other issues.

What is listening?

Listening to what another person has to say is a natural human behavior . It allows us to engage in a two-way conversation and let others know that we’re listening to them. In order for this to happen, we need to understand what the other person is saying. This is done by separating words from meaning, paying attention to details, and being able to discern between what’s being said and how it’s being said (language).

How listening is a passive process

A passive process simply means that there’s a receiver and a transmitter, but the receiver doesn’t contribute much to the conversation. In fact, they don’t provide feedback to indicate that they’re listening.

In other words, the listener’s role is limited to receiving what the speaker has to say. This leads to problems occurring between people because misunderstandings take place because the listener didn’t indicate that they understood what was being said.

The main problem with this process is that the listener can’t differentiate between what the speaker is saying and how they’re saying it. Without this distinction, it’s possible to misinterpret what the speaker intended.

What are the benefits of passive listening?

There are many reasons why someone would choose to passively listen. Here are some:

• They may not feel confident and don’t want to seem like they’re trying to compete with the other person.
• They may think their opinion is unimportant and that the other person’s opinion is more important.
• They may just want others to listen to what they’re saying without judging them for their words.
• They may not be interested in the issue and just want others to listen so they can be entertained or learn something new.
• They may feel uncomfortable and would rather not participate or try to figure out what’s being said.
• They may feel the topic is unimportant and not worth their time.
• They may simply be passive people by nature and prefer to listen without responding much at all.

Listening passively allows the listener to relax, focus, and just try to understand what’s being said without feeling like they have to contribute or pay attention much at all. This is why listening is usually done in the background.

Unfortunately, this passive approach to listening can be problematic because it doesn’t allow others to know they’re being listened to. This can cause problems like miscommunication, negative feelings between people, misinterpretations, and other issues along the way.

Why listening is an active process

There are many reasons why someone would choose to actively listen. Here are some:

• They may feel confident in their ability to understand what’s being said and what they’re saying.
• They may genuinely choose to be an active listener, not only because they like to understand, but also because it shows confidence and respect.
• They may want others to ask them questions or be curious about the topic; this is called inquiry listening.
• They may want others to use facts and evidence to support their ideas, which is called substantiation listening.
• They may be interested in the topic and think it’s important because they’re passionate about it.
• They may feel confident in their ability to comment back on what other people are saying, which is called negotiation listening.
• They may want others to share their opinions or engage them in conversation, which is called collaborative listening.

Problems caused by passive listening

There are many problems caused by passive listening. Here are some:

• It can lead to misunderstandings. As mentioned above, the listener is unable to distinguish between what’s being said and how it’s being said. This can lead to misinterpretations that cause problems for everyone involved, especially when the speaker has different ideas or intentions from what’s being heard. For example, a friend may say something negative about a topic without realizing that you’re hearing them say something positive as well.
• It can cause miscommunication because it’s difficult to find out if the listener heard what was said or misunderstood it. This can cause problems like misunderstandings, confusion, and distrust between people because they feel like the other person doesn’t understand them.
• It can cause feelings of resentment and anger as a result of miscommunication and misinterpretations that don’t go away easily because the person’s feelings were hurt as a result of what they wanted to say being misunderstood.
• It can cause feelings of resentment and anger because the person felt like they were made fun of or ignored.
• It can cause feelings of resentment and anger because the listener feels like was taken advantage of or treated unfairly because he/she felt misunderstood or not respected.

It’s important to realize that passive listening doesn’t have to be a problem for you, but it does have an effect on how you perceive others and feel about them. It’s also important to understand that passive listeners generally don’t talk back or argue with those who speak to them. This means they can be easily misunderstood as well as looked down on because of the way they react to others.

In some cases, passive listening can be a positive thing. For example, if you’re a child and you’re being bullied by a group of kids, being ignored and made fun of will probably make you feel terrible, depressed, and may even cause a mental breakdown. In this case, it’s better to be passive and just listen without trying to respond or defend yourself because it may just wind up making things worse.

However, if you’re an adult being bullied by other adults or a child being bullied by other kids who should have more respect for you, ignoring you may not be a positive option. In these cases, passive listening can cause a lot of problems and may need to be changed to active listening.

Problems caused by active listening

There are many problems caused by active listening. These problems can be similar to those caused by passive listening, but there are some key differences that help with the resolution of the problem. Here are some:

• It can lead to misinterpretations or miscommunication between people because of different ideas, opinions, and experiences that may not go away with just time alone. This can cause problems like disagreement and confusion about what was said because people hear different things.
• It can cause arguments between people when they feel misunderstood because what they want to say isn’t being heard or understood by others.
• It can lead to arguments between people when they feel like they are being threatened or threatened with consequences if they don’t do something. This doesn’t allow the person to make their own choices and feel like it’s their own decision–it’s more like an ultimatum. This may cause arguments to happen with those who feel threatened by the passive listener.
• It can cause arguments between people when they feel like they’re being treated unfairly because their ideas or opinions aren’t being heard or respected, which can lead to a lot of anger and frustration.
• It may make a person want to leave if they feel invalidated, belittled, or treated unfairly because of who they are as a person. This can cause people to feel resentment or anger towards others because they’re not being treated fairly.
• It may cause the passive listener to get angry or upset if they aren’t allowed to get their point across, which can show that they are too emotionally invested in what’s being said. This may make them feel like what’s being said isn’t important to others, which can make them feel like it wasn’t important enough for them to take the time to understand it.
• It can lead to passive listeners feeling like they’re being considered a doormat or a puppet because their ideas or opinions aren’t being considered. This causes passive listeners to feel like what was said isn’t important enough to be heard and respected.

Why combining both passive and active listening will lead to better conversations

Here’s why combining passive and active listening can help improve your conversations.

• Passive listening is better for some types of conversations, but not all of them. Passive listening is best for some types of conversations, but not all of them. For example, passive listening is great if the person speaking is really emotional or trying to get you to agree with them, but it may be hard to understand what they’re actually saying because they use language that’s difficult to hear.

Passive listening is also great in the beginning of a conversation when you’re just learning about someone’s ideas or opinions because it allows the other person to feel comfortable enough to talk about their ideas or opinions without feeling judged or criticized. However, it can often be difficult for passive listeners to decide if they are being listened to because there are so many different types of passive listening.

• Active listening is great for some types of conversations, but not all of them. Active listening works really well when you need to make sure you understand what someone is saying because their language isn’t difficult to hear or they’re trying to get you to agree with them. It also works well when someone is very open or transparent about what they want to say without feeling threatened by others. However, it may be hard for active listeners to understand what is being said if their ideas or opinions are being attacked or argued with.
• Combining both passive and active listening can lead to better conversations because it allows people to feel respected and understood without being attacked or threatened. If both people use this technique, there’s a greater chance of the conversation going more smoothly. In some cases, it can lead to a lot less tension between the people talking, which makes them feel more at ease with each other.
• Combining both passive and active listening can lead to a more positive outcome for both people because it allows them to feel respected, understood, and heard at the same time. This allows everyone involved to feel valued and open up about what they want to say without feeling judged or criticized by others.

Tips for combining both passive and active listening

There are several tips that can help you when combining passive and active listening techniques so you can get the benefits of both without the negative effects. Here are the tips:

• Use your body language to help you control, judge, and react to what’s being said during a conversation. Your body language can help both people understand what you’re saying by making sure you aren’t judged or criticized by the person talking about something that bothers them. The more they know you understand their ideas or opinions, the less likely they are to feel attacked or judged, which makes it easier for them to be open and honest without feeling attacked or judged.
• Try different things in different conversations so you’ll learn what works best in what type of conversation. Try different ways of listening to understand what’s being said so it’s easier for the person speaking. For example, if someone is sharing something personal with you, this may be a great time to make eye contact and show you’re trying to understand their ideas or opinions.

This can help them feel valued and respected by making sure they aren’t judged or criticized by the person talking about something that bothers them. For example, it may be helpful to use active listening during a conversation that’s about something personal. You can try to understand their ideas or opinions by making eye contact with them and asking questions that show you’re trying to understand what they’re saying .

• Wait for the other person to finish speaking before you start talking again. This makes it easier for the person who’s speaking to feel respected and understood because it shows they aren’t being attacked or criticized. For example, you can start with passive listening if the person is emotional or you aren’t sure what they’re trying to say.

This may lead them to become more emotional or open up further, which can make it easier for the person speaking to feel comfortable enough to talk about ideas or opinions that bother them. Then, you can transition into active listening when they’ve started sharing their ideas or opinions. For example, you can try to understand what they’re saying by asking questions that show you’re trying to understand their ideas or opinions.

• Try out a few different types of passive and active listening to see which works best in the situation. There are a lot of different types of passive and active listening so no matter what type of conversation it is, there’s a chance it will work better if you try several different ways before you find the combination that works best for both people talking.

Overall, combining both passive listening and active listening can create a more positive conversation for everyone involved. Passive listening is best for some types of conversations, but not all of them. If you want to be a better listener, it’s important to know the difference between passive and active listening.

Passive listening is great when someone is emotional or doesn’t have enough time to talk because it allows them to feel comfortable enough to express their feelings without feeling judged or criticized by others. However, passive listening isn’t always a good option for longer conversations or ones that have a lot of tension between the people talking.

Active listening tends to work better in many types of situations because it helps you understand what’s being said before you respond to it. It can be difficult to use this type of listening effectively when someone is emotional or doesn’t have enough time to talk. It works great when someone is very direct and open about what they want to say without feeling threatened by others’ ideas or opinions.

The last thing you want to do is make a person feel attacked or judged by responding with a lot of criticism or judging them for what they’re saying. However, if you want to be a better listener, it’s important to learn the difference between passive and active listening techniques. This will help you get the most out of conversations without worrying about being upset by what other people say.

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