Coping with Faculty Resistance to Teaching Critical Thinking

Paul F. Haas and Stuart M. Keeley

In their recent article "Coping with Stu-
dent Resistance to Critical Thinking",
Keeley et al. ( 1995 ) demonstrated
some similarities of students' resistance
to critical thinking and resistance to psy-
chotherapy and suggested ways for teach-
ers to cope with it. Addressing this resis-
tance is an important step in teachers'
encouraging students to become more
actively engaged in their own learning.
Yet, we can cope with the resistance of
students only after we have overcome the
resistance of faculty to teach critical rea-
soning activities. Keeley et al. acknowl-
edge this point in their final paragraph
when they state. "We teachers need to
examine our own resistances as well as
those of our students. In fact, we believe
that a continuing dialogue about the resis-
tance process is necessary for educators
to implement active learning in the class-
room" (145).

Our purpose here, then, is to continue
the dialogue about faculty resistance to
the teaching of critical thinking. On the
surface, such resistance may not seem
evident. After all, the term critical think-
ing occurs regularly in prefaces to texts
and in educational literature, and is
espoused by many faculty as a major
teaching goal (e.g., Siegal 1988). Yet,
while the concept of critical thinking has
become very common in educational lit-
erature ( Johnson 1992; Sears and Parsons
1991), other evidence suggests that many
faculty have not embraced critical think-
ing as an essential value and, in fact, may
not understand the concept as it has been
constructed over the years by those con-
vinced of its importance (see Ennis 1987,
Paul 1993).

For example, Barnes ( 1983 ) found that
professors asked few questions and that
most of their questions were at the lowest
cognitive level (information). She found
that the most common pattern was a pro-
fessor lecturing followed by a low-level
question, followed by more lecture. Brax-
ton and Nordvall (1985) examined course
exams in eighty-three colleges and found
that fewer than .5 percent of questions
could be classified as requiring evalua-
tion -- an important aspect of critical
thinking. More recently, Sears and Par-
sons (1991) argued, "For a long time,
there has been a disparity between social
studies as it is conceived by theorists at
universities and as it is practiced by
teachers. The fundamental difference
between the two groups is that the theo-
rists focus on developing critical thinking
abilities, while teachers have focused on
content acquisition as central" (46).

Many reasons help explain this failure
of faculty to make critical thinking a cen-
tral teaching ethic. One is that many pro-
fessors have not experienced the critical
thinking approach as part of their own
education; their models have been lectur-
ers and dispensers of information. They
teach what they know. Similarly, al-
though most faculty see themselves as
serious and effective thinkers, they really
have not been specifically trained in crit-
ical thinking and thus lack confidence in
making a shift. They may feel, "We can't
teach students skills we're not sure of
ourselves."

Additionally, many teachers are much
too busy providing information and help-
ing students understand models within
their own disciplines to worry about
whether they can think critically. They
want their students to be familiar with the
content and methods of their courses, and
they view a critical thinking emphasis as
inconsistent with content coverage. For
example, the use of Socratic dialogue
encourages many important learning
activities, such as self-questioning and
probing for examples and counter exam-
ples; however, its lack of acceptance
reflects the fact that the rate at which spe-
cific content is transmitted is relatively
low ( Collins and Stevens 1981).

Textbooks present further obstacles.
Most textbooks are organized to cover
content rather than to stimulate critical
thinking: they encourage an encyclope-
dic, factual approach to course content. If
the language of critical thinking is con-
sidered, the level of thinking is often only
that of analysis. For example, one or
more models or schools of thought are
presented, and students are asked to repli-
cate the model or school of thought rather

Paul F. Haas is a professor of economics,
and Stuart M. Keeley is a professor of psy-
chology at Bowling Green State University in
Bowling Green, Ohio.

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