A critical thought about "critical thinking" in engineering education...
~Mainly drawing on my experience in USA and Israel~
I have noticed the term 'critical thinking' is used in engineering education with three possible meanings. These are somewhat related, though quite distinct from each other.
I have seen how this confusion and conflation of meanings has led to unproductive discussions and to misdesigned curricula.
(a) The most common meaning I've encountered, mainly from faculty with STEM-only background (and very little, if at all, in social science), is "a set of thinking skills/cognitive approaches for addressing complex problems in engineering".
(b) There is also critical thinking in the traditional (Western) philosophical sense, i.e., the cognitive ability for making reasoned arguments. I mostly hear older people, who I guess had some more classical/liberal arts education, refer to critical thinking in this way.
(c) Finally, there are Marxist/Marxist-adjacent approaches for challenging capitalist/Western conventions, traditions, power structures, modes of thinking and being, and so forth, which also reside under this term. This meaning is normally used, in my experience, by social science people or by engineering faculty with social science education/training.
Have you encountered anything similar? Perhaps you disagree with some/all the points I have raised here? Have you heard this term used to mean something else from those meanings I have detailed above?
Hello,
for an engineer, I consider the ability to build logical reasoning and the ability to remember the course of logical reasoning to be the most important skill. This is far from being the case for everyone. I conducted a pedagogical experiment: we discussed the topics of discussion with the students together, and then I asked the students to recall the course of reasoning that led us to the final conclusion. Not many made it. If you want, the details are here
Article “To Teach Learning...” or on the Culture of Thinking of Toda...
Sincerely.
I rarely see it in action in my engineering life "we applied the 6-sigma design of experiment method and ..." came up with a ridiculous conclusion to do everything except read the data sheet/operating manual/a Wikipedia article.
When I hear it brought up outside of STEM it is usually in the context of someone not having critical thinking skills because someone is having a disagreement with someone.
The above is a bit of a rant/lament.
My mother was my STEM mentor and would often challenge assertions I made in conversation like "I can see Saturn's rings without a telescope!" She would gently direct me to the encyclopedias or a trip to the library to get a little more perspective we could share.
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