The Journal of

Critical Thoughts on Critical Thinking

by Dean E. Cody

Available online 16 June 2006

Scholars in many academic areas, includinglibrarians, devote a significant amount of

thought to critical thinking. Surveying views ofits use and possibility, the author considers somekey librarians’ thoughts on critical thinking. In

conclusion, the inability to define criticalthinking means that librarians need to

emphasize control of databases.

Dean E. Cody is Acquisitions Librarian,Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA

bdcody@siue.eduN.

Academic Librarianship, Volume 32, Number 4, pages 403–407

INTRODUCTION

MEDLINE’s massive size and diversity, a great benefit toresearchers, pose a significant challenge. Researchers can use acontrolled vocabulary to search an international databaseconsisting of (currently) over fourteen million citations. Thechallenge is that the researchers must know how to control thesearch interface in order to increase relevancy in the retrievedcitations. Lacking knowledge of how to control the searchinterface, the unaware user could retrieve over 100,000 journalcitations to articles in many non-English languages. Accord-ingly, it is important for instruction librarians to develop criticalthinking habits in the minds of their students as they do theirresearch. According to some librarians, critical thinking is auseful skill for increasing relevancy in search results.

Further, we have the responsibility to enable our students tobecome lifelong learners. Institutions of higher education haveto assure students that they will graduate with the skillsnecessary to remain relevant and to know how to learnthroughout their careers. Is critical thinking a skill librarianscan impart to our students? Philosophers, educators, subjectspecialists, and librarians have debated the definition, meaning,and application of critical thinking for decades. Students’widespread use of computers for research raises the issue of theneed for critical thinking skills. For instance, are studentscomplacent with whatever citations their search retrieves? Or,are they knowledgeable enough to understand why their searchstrategy retrieved a particular set of citations? We have in ourvocabulary the phrases ‘‘information technology skills,’’ and‘‘information literacy,’’ as well as ‘‘critical thinking.’’ The taskis to distinguish each from the other. In so far as librarians areheavily involved in computer use and instruction, we also needto be able to distinguish these terms.

The Association of College and Research Libraries(ACRL) is sensitive to these distinctions. It definesinformation technology skills as those enabling ‘‘an individ-ual to use computers, software applications, databases, andother technologies to achieve a wide variety of academic,work-related, and personal goals.’’1 Using these skillsrequires only the rote learning of software and hardware.‘‘Information literacy,’’ on the other hand, ‘‘is an intellectualframework for understanding, finding, evaluating, and usinginformation—activities which may be accomplished in partby fluency with information technology, in part by soundinvestigative methods, but most important, through critical(my emphasis) discernment and reasoning.’’2 ‘‘By ensuring

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that individuals have the intellectual abilities of reasoningand critical thinking (my emphasis), and by helping themconstruct a framework for learning how to learn, collegesand universities provide the foundation for continued growththroughout their careers.’’3 ACRL dances around the issueof defining critical thinking; however, it recognizes itsimportance. In this paper, I shall respond to those scholarswho have given their thoughts on this issue. I wish to pointout that a survey of library literature reveals a lack ofagreement among librarians upon a definition of criticalthinking. Moreover, instruction librarians lack sufficient timein their brief instruction sessions with students to dwellupon a subject as involved as critical thinking. The onlycritical thinking skills instruction librarians have time toimpart are those pertaining to controlling the search inter-face. I now turn to identify two significant theoreticalaccounts of the possibility of critical thinking.

THEORETICAL ISSUES

Robert Ennis states in his well known early definition ofcritical thinking that it is the ‘‘correct assessing of state-ments.’’4 He proceeds to develop a twelve step process tokeep in mind when making an assessment. The first, second,and fourth aspects are most relevant to this paper.5 The firstmentioned is ‘‘Grasping the meaning of a statement.’’ To beable to make an assessment, one must share in the logico-linguistic system in which the statement was made. Graspingis an ability to function within this language culture, notmerely a flash of mystical insight. The second step tomaking an assessment is ‘‘Judging whether there isambiguity in a line of reasoning.’’ Ennis gets into difficultyin that this second step is inconsistent with the definitionthat critical thinking is the correct assessment of statements.A statement and a line of reasoning are very differentthings, requiring very different skills in their understanding.Reasoning skills presume knowledge of rules of logic(inductive and deductive) and knowledge of various typesof informal fallacies. These types of skills are not referred toin the original definition. Ennis’ fourth aspect of criticalthinking is, ‘‘Judging whether a conclusion follows neces-sarily.’’ Again, Ennis appeals to a knowledge of deductivelogic in this aspect of assessing statements. Statements andarguments are different sorts of things. Further, not all typesof statements need to be part of a logical argument.Expressions of surprise or excitement, exclamations, andquestions raised for the purpose of making a point are typesof statements for which one can correctly or incorrectlyassess their meaning without being part of a logicalargument. Accordingly, Ennis’ inconsistency calls for aconception of critical thinking encompassing more than anassessment of statements. Further, the subject matter ofcritical thinking need not be restricted to statements becauselibrarians employ critical thinking to search strategies usingonline databases.

The question becomes, what is the subject matter of criticalthinking? One interesting discussion is as follows: criticalthinking consists of a set of skills which are often taught byphilosophy departments and which can be taught apart from anacademic subject, e.g. economics. Others maintain, it lacks itsown set of skills and can only be taught as a skill that one usesas part of an academic subject. This is the debate of thegeneralizability of critical thinking.

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McPeck developed a well-known argument against general-izability. It takes the following form:

All thinking is thinking about x.

But, critical thinking is a kind of thinking.

Therefore, critical thinking is about x.6

This is a deductively valid syllogism. It follows the form ofthe following:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The x denotes something in particular, never anything ingeneral. The implication is that school programs including aclass called ‘‘critical thinking,’’ taught by logicians or philos-ophers, is vacuous. Presumably for McPeck, critical thinkingmust be immersed in a subject area. There are no critical thinkingskills that can be transferred from one subject to another.

While this is neither the time nor the place for an in depthdiscussion of categorical logic, it is appropriate to commentupon logical validity. A categorical syllogism can be logicallyvalid, i.e. cohere to the laws of logic, yet not be true. Thefollowing syllogism is logically valid:

All Vulcans are pointy eared creatures.

Spock is a Vulcan.

Therefore, Spock is a pointy eared creature.

even though there are no Vulcans. McPeck’s syllogism may belogically valid; however, its truth is called into question. Eventhough the syllogism is valid, critical thinking requires us toquestion the truth of the premises.

Is it true that ‘‘All thinking is thinking about X’’? McPeckmaintains that the X has to stand for a subject matter likeeconomics or physics, but not for a college class called criticalthinking. For McPeck, ‘‘thinking is always thinking about X(his emphasis), and that X can never be deverything in generalTbut must always be something in particular’’.6 McPeckmaintains that critical thinking describes a way of thinkingand consequently that there is no X associated with it. ‘‘Thephrase dcritical thinkingT neither refers to nor denotes anyparticular skill’’.6 On the other hand, to deny that there are anygeneralizable critical thinking skills such as might be taught ina college level class on the subject leads to the unwelcomeposition that speech classes or writing classes are equallyvacuous.7

Thinkers arguing that critical thinking should be taughtonly in association with a subject area have perhapsencountered better prepared students than I have. Thesethinkers maintain that the concept of self-contradiction, thesuggestive power of some advertisements, and obviousfallacies in one’s thinking are each obvious and trivial. Onthe other hand, those teaching in the area of critical thinkingmaintain that there is a value to exposing students to thoseconcepts. Where else will students learn about the fallacy ofover-generalization, the concept of contradiction, the structureof inductive arguments, and the forms of deductive argument?These may seem in hindsight to be so obvious as to be trivial;however, we do our students a disservice not to expose themto these concepts.

LIBRARIANS APPROACHES TO CRITICAL THINKING

Librarians have devoted a substantial amount of time and energyto this topic. Many of these writings assume a practicalapproach, viz. how to teach critical thinking, integrating criticalthinking in a collaboratively taught class, and the values ofcritical thinking. In addition, some are aware of attempts todefine critical thinking. Providing a definition at the outset iscrucial because it signifies a common understanding of themeaning of a term or concept. A developed and agreed upondefinition means we all agree on how that concept is used. If weagree on the meaning of a concept, then argument can demon-strate progress. On the other hand, if there is little agreement onthe definition of a concept that is a warning, there is also littleagreement on our understanding of the meaning of the concept.Accordingly, argument is little more than an expression ofopinion. I shall point out that such is the case with criticalthinking.

Librarians acknowledge that there is little agreement con-cerning the definition of critical thinking. Instead of developinga definition, McCormick8 and Whitmire9 provide a list ofcharacteristics that they allege are aspects of critical thinking.Librarians who do address the definition issue (Bodi,10 Poirierand Hocker,11 and Gibson,12) merely acknowledge that there isno agreed upon definition. There is agreement to its importancein the education process. Poirier and Hocker state that, ‘‘Whileno consensus has been reached on either a definition for criticalthinking or the proper methods to teach it, experts in the fieldhave outlined its importance in the educational process.’’ Inaddition, Martorama and Doyle write a very insightful articlewithout raising the issue of a definition.13

‘‘Librarians acknowledge that there is littleagreement concerning the definition of

critical thinking.’’

Abrief look at the philosophy of definition might assist us. Asphilosophers understand the concept of definition, is it possibleto define critical thinking? Philosophers from Aristotle to Kantand beyond have addressed the problem of definition. Kantbases his theory on a Euclidean model. Euclid begins theElements with a series of definitions, postulates, and commonnotions. Each definition, in itself, merely expresses what hemeans by a concept, e.g. equilateral triangle; the definition doesnot stipulate that there is an equilateral triangle. Each propositionis a proof (based on the definitions, postulates, and commonnotions) demonstrating the possibility of the procedure stipu-lated in the proposition, e.g. that it is possible to construct anequilateral triangle. In other words, our conception of triangle isnot derived from our interaction with the world; rather, first wecreate the concept and show its possibility, then we look aroundin the world to see if there are any triangles out there. Kantfollows Euclid’s understanding of the meaning of definition, i.e.definitions are only possible in mathematical (geometrical)concepts because it is only with this class of concepts that we canconstruct the object described in the concept in imagination.Following Kant’s narrow understanding of definable concepts,critical thinking does not fit his criteria of concepts that can be

defined.14 Attempts at a definition by providing a list of aspectsof the concept, such asMcCormick andWhitmire have done, arenot really definitions because they lack justification for thecompleteness of the list. Perhaps all we can hope for is a‘‘description’’ of critical thinking.

Perhaps by definition (and regardless of whether there isagreement on the meaning of a term), one merely clarifies orstipulates what he/she means by the term. This is a very sub-jective meaning of definition. Bodi elaborates on critical think-ing and bibliographic instruction after admitting that there is noagreed upon definition of critical thinking. She agrees withmanywriters maintaining that, while not yet defined, critical thinkingconsists of characteristics from several related aspects ofthought. ‘‘Critical thinking is not synonymous with creativethinking, problem solving, or logic, although each of theseabilities is part of critical thinking.’’15 I suspect that a fairnumber of logicians would say that critical thinking is a partof logic, and not vice versa as Bodi claims. She proceeds toagree with McPeck that critical thinking must be discipline-specific and that critical thinkers must possess an attitude tothink critically.16

Another meaning for definition is that when defining aconcept there must be an external object to which we can pointthat exemplifies the concept. For instance, I could define theconcept of tree by pointing to a mature oak and proclaiming,‘‘That is a tree.’’ One obvious difficulty with this concept ofdefinition is that many concepts lack a physical referent. In thediscipline of database instruction, I would maintain that adefinition of critical thinking should not include a reference tothe attitude of the student. When a student submits a searchstrategy and citations as part of a graded assignment, thelibrarian instructor has no way of telling whether the student hada critical attitude at the time.What is obvious is the student’s skilllevel in using the database. The librarian instructor can evaluatethe control the student exercised over the database. A studentcould turn in a well constructed search strategy, yet his/her mindand attitude could have been anything but a critical one.Determining control over the system is something objective,something the instructor librarian can point to.

Librarians over the years have contributed a significantnumber of articles on the issue of critical thinking andbibliographic instruction. Some of the literature seems datedin that it was published before the widespread use of onlinedatabases and indexes. The older literature discusses students’use of reference books within the context of an academic class.In these situations, the librarian works in cooperation with theinstructor. Publishers and database developers now providemuch of their material online. Yet they seldom provideinstruction in the use of this material, except in the case ofacademic law schools in which Westlaw and Lexis representa-tives provide instruction. Accordingly, instruction falls on theshoulders of librarians. What then is the role of the instructionlibrarian vis a vis the curriculum?

Librarians go beyond merely providing instruction. They aimto instill critical thinking skills in their students. McCormick hashigh ambitions when, writing in the early 80s, she maintains thatif librarians stopped at merely instructing how to findinformation, we would soon ‘‘bore the student’’ and that thestudent would miss the ‘‘challenge and creativity of usinginformation critically.’’17 McCormick mentions that one waylibrarians can help students develop critical thinking is in the‘‘evaluation of authorities, people, and publications.’’ In the

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ensuing twenty years, the explosion of information has renderedalmost impossible a librarian’s ability to evaluate many authors;that evaluation has evolved to an evaluation of Web sites.

Writing in 1988, Bodi maintains that it is appropriate forlibrarians involved in bibliographic instruction to instillcritical thinking skills in their students. She is aware of herplace in the development of this subject by summarizingMcPeck. Critical thinking is in large measure knowing whatsorts of questions to ask and when to ask them. Accordingly,critical thinking can be taught only as an integral part of asubject and is not a universal skill. While critical thinking isnot a skill that is transferable, there are personality traits orattitudes relevant to critical thinking that are transferable.18

However, she commits a leap in her reasoning when sheconcludes that, ‘‘By making available a diversity of view-points, by instructing students on how to find and evaluatethese differing views, librarians can encourage and reinforcethe ability to think critically.’’19 The leap lies in taking forgranted that having shown our students how to find andevaluate resources, they will henceforth have a criticalthinking attitude. It is difficult, if not impossible, to applyobjective criteria to measure the outcomes consisting insomething as subjective as attitudes.

The development of online databases changes the wayinstruction librarians conceive of the impact of critical thinkingin instruction. Consideration is now given to the influence ofcomputerized databases on students’ ability to think critically.Gibson asks several astute questions, two of which are as fol-lows. ‘‘Can we assume that students will automatically engage incritical thinking when they use electronic tools such as OPACSand CD-ROMS?’’20 He answers with, probably not. ‘‘Themagical effect of technology is too strong.’’21 We need to try toovercome the ‘‘supposed oracular nature of computers.’’22 Ano-ther question he poses and answers is, ‘‘Is it possible to teachcritical thinking skills in an information environment charac-terized by multiple user interfaces and rapidly changingtechnological developments?’’23 He answers this with a cau-tionary yes, provided that the focus of instruction shifts from themechanics of the databases to the ‘‘core skills,’’ viz. questioningwell, reasoning out the problem, predicting the location ofinformation, and evaluating the information once found.

While I agree with much of what Gibson has to say, Idisagree with his lists of core skills. Since 1995, the trend ofthe information environment is the aggregation of a largenumber of databases searchable by a common interface, e.g.Ovid, OCLC First Search, Dialog, SilverPlatter, and others.Accordingly, the core skills now involve developing anunderstanding of how databases work. Some critical questionsin the minds of our students should be: Is the databasebibliographic or full text? If it is bibliographic, does it have acontrolled vocabulary? Does the controlled vocabulary includeany special features, e.g. the MeSH Tree and Scope Notes inOvid MEDLINE? An anecdote may help make my point.Several years ago during the spring semester, I taught a libraryinstruction class to students in the Health Care Ethics depart-ment. At the time, one of the search interfaces was Ovid Client,a command-based system. Over the summer, Ovid upgraded itssystem to a Web-based product and Ovid Client was no longeravailable. When one of my students returned in the fall, he wasdismayed to learn that Ovid Client was replaced by Ovid Web,yet remembering what I taught, he was soon able to searchusing the upgraded version of Ovid.

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Other obstacles to critical thinking in our current onlineenvironment are multiple interfaces and developing technolo-gies. Many instruction librarians only have an opportunity forone-shot classes. Litten commented on the luxury of offering alibrary instruction program over two semesters reinforcing in theminds of the students that research, like writing, is a process.Thought of as a process, students’ research will be more likely toavoid the top five articles syndrome in which students ‘‘enter asearch term, pick the first five articles that they find, and feel thattheir research is done.’’24 McGuigan refers to the scattered self-resulting from information overload.25 I maintain that librarianswho only have one-shot at instruction have to emphasize controlof the interface and use of controlled vocabularies in order tominimize our students’ scattered self.

The acknowledgement of lack of agreement of a definitionof critical thinking is significant because it admits to anambiguity in understanding critical thinking. Moreover, librar-ians’ efforts to instill a critical thinking attitude in theirstudents are a futile enterprise due to an ambiguous determi-nation of the outcome. Students may or may not employ acritical thinking attitude when completing assigned work.Accordingly, in our current environment of utilizing onlinedatabases, I suggest that the new criterion for evaluatingstudents’ work is control. Students need to exhibit control overdatabase search interfaces in order to attain relevant retrieval,regardless of their attitude.

‘‘The acknowledgement of lack of agreement ofa definition of critical thinking is significant

because it admits to an ambiguity inunderstanding critical thinking.’’

LUCK AS A FACTOR IN SEARCH STRATEGY

DEVELOPMENT

Occasionally, our students develop a search strategy and, aschance would have it, retrieve a few useful citations. Theymay believe that they used sound logic in their strategy.While this is a pragmatic approach, it is not good logic.Some introductory logic classes cover a series of logicalfallacies, one of which is the ‘‘post hoc’’ fallacy. Stated fully,this is the ‘‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’’ fallacy, which, whentranslated into English, reads, ‘‘after this therefore because ofthis.’’ In this reasoning pattern, a person infers that one eventcauses another simply because it occurs prior to thesecond.26 In other words, a sequential temporal relationshipbetween two events, or between a procedure and anoutcome, does not mean that the one brings about the latteras a result.

I can demonstrate this by mentioning a student’s searchstrategy developed in response to a search problem on a test.The problem is as follows:

In the early d90’s, Oregon enacted legislation that many claim had the

effect of rationing health care. One area of controversy surrounding this

move has been the impact of rationing on quality of life, particularly

those least able to pay: Medicaid patients. Find some literature that

addresses this issue.

To answer this problem, the student used Ovid to searchBioethicsLine. I gave the test in the spring of 2002. Thestudent’s search strategy looked as follows:

1. *Oregon (265)

2. *Medicaid (261)

3. 1 or 2 (462)

4. limit 3 to journal articles and abstracts (85)

5. from 4 keep (31)

The student apparently believes that this is a good searchbecause the citation retrieved is relevant to the problem. Imaintain that the student has committed the post hoc fallacy.Has the logic of the search brought about a retrieval that isspecific and relevant? I do not think so. The student got lucky.A patient searcher could have examined each of the citations ineither line 1 or in line 2 of the search to find a relevant article.

Has the student demonstrated control over the search system?BioethicsLine is an appropriate database to use to research thisissue; however, it is closed and another database could have beenused to be more current. The subject headings used areappropriate and line four of the search does demonstrate control;the student knows what he is looking for and that abstracts willhelp identify a relevant article. Line three is the major mistake inthis search. The student does not know the functions of Boolean‘‘and’’ and ‘‘or.’’ The implication of the student’s lack ofknowledge means that he had to scroll through 31 citationsbefore finding one he liked. Because of the logic used in line 3citation 31 does not include the subject heading of Medicaid.Restated, line three should read ‘‘1 and 2’’ which retrieves a setof 64 citations. Including the limits to journal articles andabstracts further restricts the retrieval to 16 citations.

Another reasoning pattern that students sometimes exhibit isexpressed in a means–ends relationship. In this case, theirsearch strategy is the means and their retrieval is the end.Sometimes, students are of the opinion that the end justifies themeans. A student might say, ‘‘Who cares how I found thearticle citation(s), as long as I found something.’’ Obviously,this attitude overlooks the fact that they may not be as lucky thenext time. This attitude also overlooks their depth of under-standing of the database they used. Some terms in MEDLINE,for instance, are jargon whose meaning is not intuitivelyobvious; terms such as explode, focus, MeSH. A means–endsrelationship is important if we concentrate on the means. Onedemonstrates an understanding of the means available whendeveloping a search by including the relevant controls that areavailable to increase the relevance of the retrieved citations,minimizing false drops.

CONCLUSION

This essay has been an argument for an obvious way to evaluatestudent search strategies. It should not be assumed that students(and faculty) automatically control the systemmerely by the factthat they are using it. Control is especially important in adatabase the size of MEDLINE in which a search of a single

word or phrase could retrieve thousands of citations in manylanguages. Control increases relevancy. In addition, I believethat when a student demonstrates control over a search interface(Ovid or PubMed), the very act of control assumes that thestudent was using critical thinking (consciously or subcon-sciously). Because of today’s online environment, controlreplaces critical thinking as the preferred evaluative technique.We want our students to be skilled researchers, not lucky ones.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Association of College and Research Libraries, InformationLiteracy Competency Standards for Higher Education (Chicago:American Library Association, 2000) p. 3.

2. Ibid., 3–4.3. Ibid., 4.4. Robert Ennis, ‘‘A Concept of Critical Thinking,’’ Harvard Edu-cational Review 32 (1962): 83.

5. Ibid., 84.6. John E. McPeck, Critical Thinking and Education (New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1981) pp. 4–5.

7. Richard W. Paul, ‘‘McPeck’s Mistakes,’’ Informal Logic 7 (Winter1985): 36.

8. Mona Mccormick, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Library Instruction,’’RQ 22 (1982–1983): 339–342.

9. Ethelene Whitmire, ‘‘Development of Critical Thinking Skills: AnAnalysis of Academic Library Experiences and Other Measures,’’College & Research Libraries 59 (May 1998): 266–273.

10. Sonia Bodi, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Bibliographic Instruction: TheRelationship,’’ Journal of Academic Librarianship 14 (July 1988):150–153.

11. Gayle Poirier & Susan Hocker, ‘‘Teaching Critical Thinking in aLibrary Credit Course’’, Research Strategies 11 (1993): 233–241.

12. Craig Gibson, ‘‘Critical Thinking: Implications for Instruction,’’RQ 35 (Fall 1995): 27–33.

13. Janet Martorama & Carol Doyle, ‘‘Computers On, CriticalThinking Off: Challenges of Teaching in the Electronic Environ-ment,’’ Research Strategies 14 (1996): 184–191.

14. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by NormanKemp Smith (NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1965). See also Dean E.Cody, Kant’s Doctrine of the Multiplicity of Methods (Ph.D.Dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1989), Richard Robinson,Definition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954).

15. Bodi, 151.16. Ibid.17. McCormick, 340.18. Bodi, 151.19. Ibid.20. Gibson, 33.21. Ibid.22. Ibid.23. Ibid.24. Anna Litten ‘‘Information Literacy in the Research Lab: Evaluation

and Critical Thinking for First-Year Students,’’ in: First Impres-sions, Lasting Impact: Introducing the First-Year Student to theAcademic Library, edited by Julia Nims (Ann Arbor, MI: Pierian,2002) p. 86.

25. Glenn S. McGuigan, ‘‘Exorcising the Ghost from the Machine:Confronting Obstacles to Critical Thinking through LibraryInstruction,’’ Internet Reference Services Quarterly 7 (2002):53–62.

26. Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic, 5th ed. (New York:Macmillan Publishing, 1978) p. 97.

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