Teaching Critical Thinking Skills: Literature Review

Critical Thinking (CT) has been recognized as one of the most important thinking skills and one of the most important indicators of student learning quality. In order to develop successful critical thinkers, CT must be incorporated into the curriculum content and teaching approaches and sequenced at all grade levels. This research provides a systematic review of the extant literature on teaching CT skills. The comprehensive review led to the building of a conceptual framework that discusses the four main debates among the researchers engaged in the field of teaching CT. One of these debates; can technology promote students CT skills? Overall, the study of actual practices indicates that teaching approaches tend to focus on subject content rather than CT development. The results indicate a gap in teaching CT skills in terms of innovative methods and particularly in the use of new technologies. They also highlight the need for further research that investigates new approaches for teaching CT skills.