TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING WITH RATIONALE

Although critical thinking is increasingly central in undergraduate education, most courses dedicated to improving students' critical thinking skills produce only slight results. Many students struggle to analyse arguments and fail to acquire transferable skills without dedicated practice. We present a method to teach critical thinking that has been shown to be very effective. This method emphasises deliberate practice of reasoning skills by argument mapping, a technique to visualise the underlying logical structure of argumentation. Empirical evidence suggests that practice with argument maps results in improved critical thinking, as measured by various standardised tests. This improvement is seen also in situations where students are not using argument maps. We present Rationale, software that has been developed to facilitate the implementation of this technique into teaching practice, and show how it has been used in classrooms internationally. Further, we present an innovative experimental course currently underway, which combines argument mapping with a number of innovative pedagogical techniques such as mastery learning, peer instruction and peer assessment.