Critical thinking: philosophy and pedagogy

Abstract

The paper explores two approaches to the understanding of critical thinking: philosophical and pedagogical, grounded on different orientations of critical thinking: truth or personality. The philosophical approach emphasizes critical thinking as a set of means of finding the truth and focuses on teaching the methods of rational reasoning. In turn, the pedagogical approach considers critical thinking as a manifestation of personality traits and insists on the teaching of appropriate characteristics. The philosophical context of critical thinking is aimed at the use of critical thinking, the success of which is the achievement of truth, whereas the pedagogical approach is directed to achieve more pragmatic goals, including criticality, awareness, ability to make good decisions, and generally be an adequate active citizen. Philosophical and pedagogical approaches to critical thinking actually outline its theoretical and empirical layers inherent in a particular scientific field. The differences between these approaches and the corresponding discussions can be divided into two groups. (1) Eclectic and therefore irrelevant to a productive discussion are grown out of mixing these areas, similar to the misunderstandings arising from mixing the empirical and theoretical levels of science: general and partial, deductive and inductive, and so on. (1) Significant and hopeful — those that justify the ways of interaction of philosophical and pedagogical approaches to critical thinking and show the directions of development of critical thinking. We argue that these approaches should not be opposed and developed separately from each other. Their combination will help to separate critical thinking into a more independent field of research. To substantiate our idea, we consider these approaches in more detail, analyze their characteristics and shortcomings, review these shortcomings for their authenticity for each approach, and finally conclude that they can be overcome or at least reduce the intensity of their manifestations based on interpenetration both of philosophical and pedagogical approaches.