Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment 829
that are attentive to individual needs and local and global contexts. The characteristics of such an
educational system are as follows.
A Focus on Critical Thinking
The term critical thinking has quite different definitions depending upon the purpose of education.
If the purpose of education is to control the educational process in order to promote a
specific viewpoint or reproduce a specific arrangement of power, then critical thinking may be
defined as the higher-order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation that are to be
learned and used within narrow contexts with the sole purpose of finding correct answers and
validating the predetermined conclusions of experts. If on the other hand the purpose of education
is to empower and emancipate, then students are encouraged to use these processes to expand
contextual awareness through problem posing and problem solving through research, challenge
simplistic solutions, and uncover injustice, a lack of care, and undemocratic policy and practice.
In this reconceptual definition, critical thinking is inherently critical in its concern for social
justice, an ethic of care, and democratic participation. It is also technical in relation to the
development of higher-order thinking skills within this critical context. It is also contextually
holistic in the understanding that the primary function of these skills is to increase the complexity
of the situation in which they are employed. In addition, a reconceptualized view of critical
thinking requires an awareness and critique of the values that are imbued within all human activity.
One consequence of the inclusion of values is the concomitant inclusion of emotion. Unlike the
positivist separation of reason and emotion, reconceptualized critical thinking understands that
reason and emotion are interrelated and interconnected, and therefore, analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation must engage a situation or problem as having both a logical and an affective dimension.
Critical thinking is not used as a normalizing agent so that students will fit into the preconceptions
of the dominant group, but instead is a best practice that facilitates the development of
critical and creative thinkers who can think out of the box. Through the use of divergent and
lateral thinking as well as convergent and linear thinking, students make connections that allow
them to see the deep and hidden patterns in which all human activity is nested. To achieve this
potential, students learn how to think not what to think. An integral part of problem posing, pattern
detection, and making connections is the ability to engage in continuous critical reflection.
Critically reflecting upon process, conclusions, actions, and consequences is an integral part of
reconceptualized critical thinking. In a reconceptualized context, critical thinking is posed as
using analysis, synthesis, and evaluation in the critical reflection process that is a fundamental
aspect of the praxis process of action–critical reflection–action.
In reconceptualized curriculum, critical reflection as the recurring theme in all critical thinking
activities is inherently metacognitive in nature. Metacognition is the awareness of one’s thinking
processes—how one constructs questions, solves problems, makes decisions, organizes daily
activity, and all of the other cognitive activities that mediate our desires and actions. A deep,
broad, and critical understanding of the consequences of our actions is not possible without this
metacognitive reflection.
In conclusion, reconceptualized curriculum requires a constant use of critical thinking in relation
to the developmental level of the students. The acquisition of facts, data, and information is
always in the context of critical thinking. Instead of collecting and learning facts as an isolated
activity followed by critical thinking, the collection of information occurs within the critical
thinking framework. In their lessons, teachers pose problems or situations that require students to
form questions, gather information, employ higher-order thinking in the analysis of the information,
pose and test solutions, and throughout this whole research-based process engage in critical
reflection. Or, in a less linear sequence, teachers ask students to gather information, formulate