Understanding and Teaching Critical Thinking: A Phenomenographic Approach

The essay evaluates the need for understanding and teaching critical thinking. The researcher performs an experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of phenomenographic approach in infusing the idea of critical thinking to the students.

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Project Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to critically review and argue the findings of an article. The
understanding and teaching of critical thinking will be critically evaluated in this essay to
understand the background of the research and the objective that the research is establishing. The
core research problem will be identified in the essay in order to understand the need of critical
thinking. The way by which the research is conducted will be discussed in the essay. A particular
article will be critically evaluated in this research study in order to understand the limitation of
the research under consideration, the assumptions and effectiveness of the article. The analysis of
the article “Understanding and teaching critical thinking—A new approach” is provided in the
following section.
Understanding and teaching critical thinking
Critical Thinking
It is essential to develop student’s critical thinking as it is a significant goal of education
of the societies across the globe. The research background mainly deals with the issues
associated with the critical thinking. The research paper makes use of phenomenographic
theoretical approach to evaluate to understand critical thinking (Larsson, 2017). Critical thinking
can be described as process and ability of thinking rationale and clearly by getting to know the
logical connection between ideas. The concept and idea of critical thinking has been a concept of
debate over the years. Critical thinking skills are important in education because it helps in
creating the link between the ideas (Yang & Chang, 2013). Furthermore, it helps in identifying
the inconsistencies and errors in reasoning. Therefore, it is essential to infuse the idea of critical
thinking in school level.

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A similar study was conducted with an aim of creating digital classrooms that will enable
the students in developing the skills of critical thinking and information literacy. The Students in
such experimental set up were instructed to act on quantitative comparison among the data sets
and between the data models. The experiment proved that the students in such experimental
setup found to be 12 times more spontaneous to propose chances to their process of thinking
(Holmes, Wieman & Bonn, 2015). These students further showed much more sophisticated
reasoning of the data. Therefore it can be said that it is possible to infuse the idea of critical
thinking in students’ mind from the elementary school level. According to Kettler, (2014),
developing the critical thinking skills is found to be worthy of educational goal as the
reorganization of the importance of critical thinking has been increasing over the years (Liu,
Frankel & Roohr, 2014). The article under analysis performs an experiment with a number of
students to identify and understand their critical thinking ability.
Critical thinking is a process to clearly think and understand the logical interconnectivity
between different ideas. Understanding and teaching critical thinking is essential as it provides
an ability to think clearly and rationally (Smith & Szymanski, 2013). It is an ability to engage in
reflective and independent thinking and therefore teaching critical thinking is essential. Critical
thinking provides an ability to rigorously question an idea and assumptions without just
accepting them.
A research about understanding and teaching critical study was undertaken. The research
aimed to describe the different processes and hierarchically ways for understanding the tasks and
different types of critical thinking those tasks delimit (Ku et al., 2014). There are certain core
research questions that the article under evaluation addresses. In this article, the researcher
evaluates the solving of an essay task that is designed in order to elicit critical thinking. Since a

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phenomenographic approach is followed for the research study, it is expected that the research
will be able to find the answers to the research questions.
The research questions that the article addresses are important to address since the
development of thinking critically is considered to a main goal of education in the societies and
around the world. The viability of the different processes of teaching the process of critical
thinking to the students is to be judged which can be done only after having a complete
understanding of critical thinking.
A phenomenographic research process is followed with primary research method. The
participants who were chosen for the research were aged 15-16. A total of 19 participants were
chosen for the research out of which there were 11 girls and 8 boys. For implementing the task in
a manner so that the participants worked separately in separate occasions without any limit of
time. As an empirical analysis to the study, the different processes in which each student
understood the tasks and their answers are analyzed (Larsson, 2017). The analysis involved an
iterative way of reading the essay answer for similarities and differences for understanding the
thinking process of each member or group. The analysis involved reading the essay answers
repeatedly for accurate interpretation. The research highlights that the most important
characteristics of understanding that a particular process or phenomenon is constituted of a
number of discerned components.
The research article evaluated need for teaching and understanding critical thinking. The
article introduced a phenomenographic approach to critical thinking to show how the selected
approach can help in understanding the differences of manifestation of critical thinking and its
contribution in shaping the different learning activities and process of thinking of the students

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(Brookfield, 2013). The findings of the research study confirm that the approach of
phenemenongraphy is a feasible approach of building a strong foundation of critical thinking for
the students. However, a more thorough research about the feasibility of phenomenographic
approach is needed to be carried out and further exploration about the teaching process of critical
thinking is needed to be carried out as well.
The article establishes the fact that critical thinking is important to be infused from the
school level. This is justified as the critical thinking is considered to be an essential skill that is
needed for the students of 21st century (Kettler, 2014). Kettle (2014), defined critical thinking as
a purposeful and self regulatory judgment that help in easy interpretation, analysis, evalautaion
and inference of the evident and concepts. This is considered to be important for the elementary
school student as having an idea of critical thinking from n very early age will help in shaping
the mind towards the concept and its importance.
The experimental results shows that the phenomenographic approach to critical thinking
can be considered as a strong theoretical framework for a clear understanding of the issues and
differences in manifestation of critical thinking, understanding the concept to develop the critical
thinking ability of the students. This approach therefore can be considered as a solid and
cohesive theoretical framework, which can further help in understanding and studying critical
thinking (Yuliani & Saragih, 2015). By performing the experiment with the students of varied
age group, it is established that the phenomenography can provide a feasible way to create a
strong foundation of critical thinking as the students in the experimental condition has been
found to be performed in a better way. The main significance of the article is that although
critical thinking is one of the major unsolved mysteries of pedagogy, a specific theoretical

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approach can help in infusing the concepts on the same in students’ mind which will in turn help
in shaping their critical thinking ability (Kong, 2014).
According to the Holmes, Wieman & Bonn (2015), critical thinking is an ability to take
proper decisions based on the use of data and its inherent uncertainties. Therefore, the young
minds need to develop the critical thinking ability from school level as the need for such
quantitative and critical thinking can occur in many contexts (Aizikovitsh-Udi & Cheng, 2015).
The key ability of making an accurate decision based on the available data is considered to be a
result of critical thinking.
Critical Evaluation
The article provides a good understanding of critical thinking and the need for teaching as
well as getting a good understanding of critical thinking. However, there is a need for carrying
out a research on the teaching strategies of critical thinking. The phenemenographic may or may
not have an effect on the teaching sequences. This is one of the major limitations of this research
study. The major assumptions that the author has made in this research is that the
phenomenographic approach will be effective to all the age groups. This is agreeable as the
article has provided an understanding of the process by which phenomenography can act as a
cohesive theoretical frame for teaching as well as understanding the concept.
The article is quite effective is establishing the fact that it is essential for the students’ to
develop a critical thinking ability to tackle any situations in a more effective manner. As
discussed in the report, many different authors have also established the need for including the
concepts of critical thinking in the curriculum from the school level. However, the article does

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not discuss any process or strategies of making use of phenomenographic approach in teaching
critical thinking, the presence of which could have made the article more effective.
Conclusion
The essay evaluates the need for understanding and teaching critical thinking. The
researcher performs an experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of phenomenographic
approach in infusing the idea of critical thinking to the students. Ideas from different authors are
discussed in this essay to evaluate the effectiveness of this article. The article is found to lack the
strategies of implementing phenomenographic approach in teaching critical thinking.

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References
Aizikovitsh-Udi, E., & Cheng, D. (2015). Developing critical thinking skills from dispositions to
abilities: Mathematics education from early childhood to high school. Creative
Education, 6(04), 455.
Brookfield, S. (2013). Teaching for critical thinking. International Journal of Adult Vocational
Education and Technology (IJAVET), 4(1), 1-15.
Holmes, N. G., Wieman, C. E., & Bonn, D. A. (2015). Teaching critical thinking. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, 112(36), 11199-11204.
Kettler, T. (2014). Critical thinking skills among elementary school students: Comparing
identified gifted and general education student performance. Gifted Child
Quarterly, 58(2), 127-136.
Kong, S. C. (2014). Developing information literacy and critical thinking skills through domain
knowledge learning in digital classrooms: An experience of practicing flipped classroom
strategy. Computers & Education, 78, 160-173.
Ku, K. Y., Ho, I. T., Hau, K. T., & Lai, E. C. (2014). Integrating direct and inquiry-based
instruction in the teaching of critical thinking: an intervention study. Instructional
Science, 42(2), 251-269.
Larsson, K. (2017). Understanding and teaching critical thinking—A new
approach. International Journal of Educational Research, 84, 32-42.

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Liu, O. L., Frankel, L., & Roohr, K. C. (2014). Assessing critical thinking in higher education:
Current state and directions for next‐generation assessment. ETS Research Report
Series, 2014(1), 1-23.
Smith, V. G., & Szymanski, A. (2013). Critical thinking: More than test scores. International
Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 8(2), 16-25.
Yang, Y. T. C., & Chang, C. H. (2013). Empowering students through digital game authorship:
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Education, 68, 334-344.
Yuliani, K., & Saragih, S. (2015). The Development of Learning Devices Based Guided
Discovery Model to Improve Understanding Concept and Critical Thinking
Mathematically Ability of Students at Islamic Junior High School of Medan. Journal of
Education and Practice, 6(24), 116-128.