SELS Dialogues Journal Volume 3 Issue 1

Pedagogy and Critical Thinking
COMM Students and Critical Thinking
by Cecilia Aponte-de-Hanna
Critical thinking
The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2) lists three
conditions that must exist for critical thinking to
manifest: a problematic situation, reasoned judgment,
and intellectual tools (James, 2023). Hence, critical
thinking can be explained as the process of finding
solutions through strategic inquiry that occurs when
a person applies their intellectual tools: background
knowledge, criteria for judgement, critical thinking
vocabulary, thinking strategies, and habits of mind
(Critical Thinking Consortium).
Based on TC2’s definition, having a problematic
situation is not a problem, but it is a call for action
that challenges educational communities to “nurtur[e]
critical thinking among all members” (James, 2023).
In this article, I share one way by which I try to foster
critical thinking skills in my students.
Experimenting with critical thinking
pedagogy
I have been experimenting with critical thinking
pedagogy for quite a while. I call my approach ‘strategic
thinking,’ which I feel helps students to develop their
intellectual tools. In June 2022, I shared one of these
approaches on a TESL Ontario blog post titled, “Critical
Thinking Skills as Easy as 1-2-3” (Aponte-de-Hanna,
2022). The numbers 1-2-3 stand for the sequence that
students should take when writing short-answers to
reading comprehension questions. In this sequence,
students complete the following steps:
Directly answer the question;
Provide evidence by referring and citing the source;
Conclude by justifying the response.
To connect each step, students are also encouraged
to use logical connections, including signal words and
phrases, such as “’For example, . . .’, ‘which is why . .
.’, ‘Therefore, . . .’, ‘As a result, . . .’” (Aponte-de-Hanna,
2022).
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