Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
Abstract
This study considers the case of a tutor whose students repeatedly evidenced significantly
superior critical thinking in summative assessment. For the purpose of surfacing appropriate
pedagogical action to promote critical thinking (Bassey, 1999), the singularity of one tutor's
reported pedagogical practice was explored through focus-group discussion. Qualitative
analysis of the data, theoretically informed by phenomenography, suggested that the tutor's
reported practice, when compared with that of two peers, revealed clear pedagogical
intentions to be necessary for teaching critical thinking; and that these intentions can be
explained through the literatures on epistemic activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour
and student-centred learning. It is argued that a synthesised understanding of the literature
that explores the nature and purpose of critical thinking - as outlined in the first part of this
paper - is a prerequisite for constructing domain-specific pedagogical intentions for
developing learners' critical thinking, and that it is this extensive psychologically informed
knowledge base which attenuates the risk of educationally important aspects of learning being
overlooked. (De Corte, 2000).
Keywords
Metacognition; Critical Thinking; Higher Education Pedagogy; Student-Centred Learning,
Variation Theory
Critical thinking – what it is and why it matters
Critical thinking is a broad and diffuse construct which is understood variously (Abrami et
al., 2008). The Delphi Committee (Facione, 1990) characterised critical thinking as cognitive
skills (each with corresponding subskills) and affective dispositions (to ensure the use of these
skills outwith instructional settings); a characterisation which continues to resonate in much
of the critical thinking literature. The realisation that knowledge can be the object of
discussion, has varied uses and may be judged valuable or worthless according to agreed rules
of enquiry is fundamental to the development of critical thinking. Such critiquing of
knowledge invokes the use and development of psychological tools such as reading, writing
and social interactions; which allow us to make meaning, form concepts, construct
representations and be aware of self; and through their power we can distance ourselves from
an immediate situation to consider alternative responses or ways of proceeding, so that we
need not be 'slaves' responding directly to environmental demands (Säljö, 1995).
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Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
There is little dissent from the view that the capacity for critical thinking is a valuable
outcome of education (Kuhn, 2009; Kuhn & Udell, 2007; Magno, 2010). Being able to think
critically allows persons to avoid pseudoscientific thinking (Halpern, 1998) and to further
their own conceptual understanding (Bereiter, 2002; Kuhn & Udell, 2007). In our pluralistic
knowledge age of increasing amounts of freely available information of unknown
provenance, and ill-defined problems which defy algorithmic solution, the intellectual capital
of critical thinking is a necessary resource (Angeli & Valanides, 2009; Zohar & Peled, 2008).
Indeed, critical thinking is considered to be a crucial aspect of the competence which citizens
need to participate in daily life and society (Johanson, 2010; Ten Dam & Volman, 2004). In a
recent global ideas marketplace run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD, 2010), the top priority for action to take in education was to teach
people to think; and that teaching to this end was preferable to teaching to standardised tests.
Nevertheless, students in higher education find critical thinking very demanding (Flores,
Matkin, Burbach, Quinn, & Harding, 2011; Kuhn & Udell, 2007). Not only is demonstrating
critical thinking the most challenging dimension of argumentation (a social practice with the
potential to make thinking explicit) but such guidance as students are given to exercise critical
thinking is often unspecified and, when explicitly mentioned as a requirement, is generally
stated in vague terms (Andrews, 2007; Davies, 2008).
Metacognition: its important strategic and epistemic components
The perceived importance of critical thinking has resulted in many pedagogical interventions,
the effects of which are viewed as mostly positive. However while the relative superior
effects of general and infusion approaches are contested (Abrami, et al., 2008; Angeli &
Valanides, 2009), others argue (Kuhn, 2009; Kuhn & Udell, 2007; Magno, 2010; Ten Dam &
Volman, 2004; Zohar & Peled, 2008) that skill development of itself is insufficient, pointing
to the importance of metacognition in critical thinking.
Monitoring one's thinking processes, checking on progress towards appropriate goals,
ensuring accuracy, and balancing likely costs and benefits of expending time and mental
effort are generally agreed to be essential elements of metacognition. A range of studies
demonstrate that the more persons are aware of their thinking processes as they learn and the
more that this is made an explicit feature of instruction, the more able learners are to control
goals, behavioural tendencies, and attention (Huff & Nietfeld, 2009; Zimmerman, 2008;
Zohar & Peled, 2008). Indeed, the importance of monitoring and managing one's thinking was
recognised in the original Delphi Report (Facione, 1990) under the label of self-regulation,
defined as:
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Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
the self-conscious monitoring of one's cognitive activities, the elements used in those
activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis and evaluation to
one's own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or
correcting either one's reasoning or one's results (p.10)
As far back as 1998, Halpern was arguing that not only was metacognition's purpose to direct
and improve thinking skills but that metacognitive monitoring required to be explicit and
public to allow feedback on its effectiveness. This manuscript offers no conceptual
distinction for the constructs of metacognition and self-regulation. While the psychological
literature is concerned lest careless juxtaposition of the terms (together with that of selfregulated learning) detracts from the study of self-directed activity and its role in academic
development (Alexander, 2008; Azevedo, 2009), the authors here accept that there is little
precise or agreed-on meaning for many of the constructs used in the educational research
literature (Ball & Forzani, 2007). Consequently they also accept that while the phenomena
represented by each of metacognition, self-regulation and self-regulated learning are not the
same (Efklides, 2008); the commonalities of a conceptual core of learner self-awareness and
intention to act offer a rationale for allowing the terms to be used interchangeably in an
educational context (Dinsmore, Alexander, & Loughlin, 2008). The broad brush strokes with
which metacognition is characterised in this manuscript are grounded in the necessity of
pedagogical knowledge being expansive (Merrill, 2009).
The significance of metacognition is in the learner's intention to direct mental effort to
developing cognitive resources over and above those implicit in the completion of a task:
what Bereiter & Scardamalia (1989) and Sinatra (Sinatra & Pintrich, 2003) call intentional
learning. Intentional learning is purposeful, internally initiated cognitive activity in the service
of knowledge construction and skill development, but it is not an automatic consequence of
formal educational experiences; since learners may address tasks in ways that economise on
mental effort and thereby avoid the additional effort through which they might become more
expert. The distinction between metacognition and cognition is neither clear nor absolute but
as a rule-of-thumb, cognitive activities help one to acquire, retain and transfer knowledge for
task execution, whereas metacognitive activities allow one to regulate and govern task
execution to ensure satisfactory levels of performance (Ku & Ho, 2010). It is the intentional
(non-algorithmic) development of these metacognitive resources which constitute the
furtherance of the learner's conceptual understanding, albeit that the construction of such
understanding is mediated through what learners themselves understand by the idea of
'learning' and what they understand as their role in the learning process (Clark & Schroth,
2010). Being metacognitive allows one to challenge/ be critical of what is presented as 'self-
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Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
evident'. Such feelings of control free individuals to consider different and more nuanced
ways of judging information from the environment (Efklides, 2008). Nevertheless,
metacognition is contextualised in cognition such that the strategies of planning, monitoring
and evaluating both inform and are informed by, declarative, procedural and conditional
knowledge. When individuals are aware of the specifics of their meta-level activity (as in
being well informed about content when evaluating an argument, anticipating alternative
implications of any one position when constructing an argument, or trialling methods in
different conditions to see which is more fit-for-purpose) they are then in a better position to
discriminate among inferences, recognise unstated assumptions, reason deductively, weigh
evidence and distinguish between strong/relevant and weak/irrelevant arguments (Ku & Ho,
2010; Magno, 2010).
As well as the regulative component of metacognition through which persons manage and
debug their knowledge and behaviour, there is an epistemic component (Kuhn & Weinstock,
2002); though whether the adjective is 'epistemic' or 'epistemological' continues to be a moot
point (Mason & Bromme, 2010). Epistemic cognition refers to wider understandings of what
knowledge is, and is at least implicit in understanding alternative solutions to problems and in
choosing one solution strategy as opposed to others (Maggioni & Parkinson, 2008; Mason,
Boldrin, & Ariasi, 2010). Epistemic thinking demands reasoning as to whether a particular
problem is indeed solvable (and if so, to what extent) and what a better or worse solution
strategy might be (Kitchener, 1983) and thereby obviates problem solution on the basis of
chance. In considering the extent of a problem's solvability and the veracity of alternative
solutions, individuals draw from their assumptions (known more formally as epistemic
beliefs) of the nature and construction of knowledge. These beliefs can be understood as
developmental along a trajectory of knowledge being understood as absolute, as being mere
opinion with everyone's equally valid, and as judgements to be evaluated on the basis of
argument and evidence. They can also be understood as multidimensional in which
knowledge is viewed as some composite derived from views about the certainty, simplicity
and source of knowledge together with views about the kinds of justification needed for
accepting any claim (Muis & Franco, 2009). Quite how these epistemic beliefs operate is not
fully clear but they would appear to influence learning both directly and indirectly
(Stathopoulou & Vosniadou, 2007); invoke deeper processing (Pieschl, Stahl, & Bromme,
2008); be context-sensitive (Mason, et al., 2010); be necessary for constructing knowledge
(Strømsø & Bråten, 2010) – possibly because of the their mediating effects on implicit
theories of ability (Chen & Pajares, 2010) – and for the development of argumentation
(Mason & Scirica, 2006).
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Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
Epistemic beliefs influence both learner and teacher. Learners’ beliefs begin as informal
knowledge which may influence reasoning, knowledge or study behaviour but are susceptible
to the influence of formal education (King & Kitchener, 1994; Maggioni, Riconscente, &
Alexander, 2006; Peters & Kitsantas, 2010; Valanides & Angeli, 2005) through which
learners can, iteratively, handle conflicting information, recognise authoritative sources and
become more sophisticated in their reasoning (Mason & Bromme, 2010). Maturing epistemic
beliefs thus exert a significant direct effect on academic achievement. But so, too, do teachers
whose different beliefs about knowledge and knowing result in different understanding of
specific pedagogical practices, such as which cognitive strategies better foster understanding
of domain knowledge, which methods foster construction of knowledge, and which questions
to ask (or not to ask) about the trustworthiness of available information (Maggioni &
Parkinson, 2008). These differences are manifest in different kinds of classroom discourse
that is likely to influence metacognitive processes. Furthermore, teachers' beliefs develop
into conceptually coherent frameworks of claims about, and practices in, the teaching of their
subject which are resistant to change (Van Driel, Bulte, & Verloop, 2007). Disciplinary
differences in conceptions of teaching and learning, pedagogical differences in teaching
approaches and outcomes, and the gap between learners and teachers in their respective
conceptions of teaching and learning can have implications for the types of provision made
for students which, in turn, may influence the extent of learners' conceptual change (Virtanen
& Lindblom-Ylänne, 2010).
The Study Context
The central importance of supporting students to become critical thinkers provides the context
for this study. One particular module within the field of Educational Studies, Children as
Learners, was designed to respond to the commonly reported phenomenon that many
students, but particularly novice students (in this case first year undergraduates in a Scottish
University), have difficulty in elaborating a problematised view of education. Structurally the
module positioned the student as pivotal in integrating the material from weekly lectures;
weekly student-led study groups; monthly tutor-led seminars; and prescribed reading in
preparation for lecture, study group and seminar attendance; to prepare for an end-of-module
examination. Access to the end-of-module examination was through satisfactory performance
on the Core Tasks (see below). Such integration is necessary if learners are to use their new
knowledge/skill in everyday life; and is enabled through personalised exemplification and
public demonstration of the knowledge/skill together with peer critique (Merrill, 2009).
Pedagogically, the module provided iterative opportunities for learners to:
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Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
1. Represent their thinking externally through expressing their own ideas and justifying
their views with reasoning informed by their reading
2. Interrogate journal articles to inform their understanding of:
a. what it means to adopt a critical stance
b. the conventions of academic writing
3. Integrate and record their thinking through construction and co-construction of
responses to open-ended tasks
4. Reflect on the nature of learning and the provisionality of knowledge
5. Work collaboratively to engender learners' collective cognitive responsibility in the
completion of Core Tasks (submitted for formative assessment, electronically).
The emphasis on student collaboration was underpinned by the evidence for learning
achieved through interactive engagement (Kirschner, Paas, & Kirschner, 2009) which
requires learners actively to complete a single, unified task that represents the shared
meaning, conclusions and effort of the group as a unit (Rochelle & Teasley, 1995). What
constitutes learning in collaborative work is not only the materials and the curricula but also
the challenges and opportunities of group interaction, particularly at solution-critical
moments, which are mediated through the metacognitions of the participants who question,
explain and reconcile relevant knowledge proffered by individual group members (Hurme,
Palonen, & Järvela, 2006; Kirschner, et al., 2009). Successful group task completion can
allow group members(Janssen, Kirschner, Erkens, Kirschner, & Paas, 2010) each to increase
flexibility and transferability in their own knowledge and skills provided the task requires
problem solution (Kirschner, et al., 2009). Goodyear (2007) suggests that tasks should foster
epistemic fluency: practising collectively the description, critique, argumentation and
explanation of ideas (Ohlsson, 1995). As well as epistemic activity (sharing efforts to
understand, identifying inconsistencies in collective knowledge, and using authoritative
sources) there must also be regulative activity (such as setting goals, monitoring collaborative
effort, and negotiating future courses of action). These process-related activities steer and
organise the construction of corporate knowledge, through reflecting intentions to engage
actively in the learning task, ensuring the co-ordination of different contributions, and
furthering the beneficial effects of social interaction (Damşa, Kirschner, Andriessen, Erkens,
& Sins, 2010; Hurme, et al., 2006). They also seem not unlike the negotiated elements of the
Joint Problem Space, which Rochelle & Teasley (1995) argue has to be constructed and
maintained if collaboration is to occur.
The impetus for the study was the observation that over three successive years, the end-ofmodule assessment performances amongst students being tutored by one particular person
6
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
(herewith known as the Target Tutor) were significantly higher (χr2 = 77.5, df = 2, p. < .001)
than the performances of students being tutored by two other tutors (herewith known as
Comparison Tutors). The end-of-module assessment was student identification and selection
of a new article (not one that had been suggested, prescribed or recommended) for critical
analysis in terms of its theoretical underpinnings of learning, development or motivation; the
authors' assumptions about children; the veracity of the evidence offered; and some situation
of the article in the wider, related literature. Blind marking of assignments underwent
moderation and cross-marking. Given that the cohort of students all had very similar
academic entrance qualifications, that students were randomly assigned to tutorial groups and
that the tutors had all been party to the design of the module, it was deduced that the variable
of interest was the Target Tutor's pedagogy. A case-study was a logical approach with
Variation Theory (Åkerlind, 2005; Marton, 2007) influencing the design decisions.
Conventional wisdom has it that findings from case studies are limited because generalisation
cannot be established. Such 'wisdom' seems to be premised on the view that generalisation is
the only criterion of scientific adequacy; and that it has only one "crude commonsense
singular meaning" (Larsson, 2009) (p26). However, while generalisation based on
representative random sampling can reveal rule-based typical behaviour, it cannot illuminate
the apparently effortless performance which is a mark of expertise (Alexander, 2005;
Flyvbjerg, 2007). It was precisely the variation in the Target Tutor's account that this study
sought to reveal since her account, paralleled with those of the Comparison Tutors, could
illuminate critical features of difference (Marton, 2007) with the intention of suggesting, if
not making plain, what might be contributing to the Target Tutor's students’ superior
performance. Variation is a fundamental idea in what is now referred to as Variation Theory
(Marton, 2007) which posits that a qualitative shift in one’s understanding (as distinct from
factual and/or procedural additions and/or elaborations) occurs when a phenomenon that was
once taken-for-granted is seen in a new light. This discernment, of simultaneously
experiencing the phenomenon as it was, and as it is now, signals that learning has taken place
(Bowden & Marton, 1998). Further, learning within a formal environment is significantly
enabled when the teacher situates learners to discern, and focus on, the critical aspects of
variation (Booth & Hultén, 2003; Marton & Pang, 2006). Variation Theory has evolved
within phenomenographic research; initially concerned with the ways in which particular
phenomena are experienced variously by different actors, but now further concerned with
how to characterise the different descriptions (Harris, 2011). The relevance of Variation
Theory to this study is that what was being sought was not an account of the most
representative tutoring experiences but of what were uncommon experiences; in order to
extrapolate to other relevant pedagogical situations in which the improvement of tutoring was
7
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
an aim (Flyvbjerg, 2007; Larsson, 2009; Postareff & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2008). The very
singularity of the case was examined for the typicality which might be instrumental (Stake,
2003) in the practice of the Target Tutor. Specifically, the question being addressed was,
'What psychological knowledge does the tutor implicitly bring to bear when teaching critical
thinking?' The question sought to elicit the variations amongst tutors in the expectations they
had of, and their experiences of engagement with, students in whom they were trying to
develop critical thinking. Expectations and Engagements as characterised in this study were
considered to be fundamental elements of the teaching endeavour. The teacher assumes, or
guides learners towards particular states of preparedness to establish common ground –
Expectations - and then constitutes with learners the meaningfulness of the intended learning
outcome(s) – Engagements - (Marton, 2007). As well as the data gathering described below,
the academic profiles of each participant tutor, as portrayed on personal web pages, were
scrutinised for educational and professional qualifications and experience.
Data Gathering and Explication
Data on tutors' pedagogical practices were gathered through focused group discussions in
which the efficacy of the module was being evaluated. Such evaluations were common
practice for the tutors since shared reflections on earlier teaching episodes provide a basis for
surfacing pedagogical points of emphasis. The overall focus of discussion was the teaching
of higher order thinking in terms of students' regulative and epistemic development.
Regulative development included the extent to which students were:

discovering implications for self-understanding from their reading

generalising from the module's accountability requirements to monitor and regulate
their study behaviours

developing intellectual curiosity
Epistemic development included the extent to which students were:

searching for evidence to justify a particular position

qualifying the certainty of their knowledge/understanding

examining and reconciling alternative viewpoints
The group discussions (two, each of about 90 minutes) were facilitated by an experienced, but
disinterested, academic and scribed by a (briefed) research assistant. Transcriptions were
checked by participants for factual accuracy, as a regular and accepted practice of meeting
notes being kept as an audit trail for subsequent continuing professional development and
8
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
quality assurance purposes. Focus group discussion allows shared and common knowledge to
be identified, variation in discussants' role conceptions to be examined, and possibilities for
professional development among discussants to emerge (Woodring, Foley, Rado, Brown, &
Hamner, 2006).
The data were explicated through a simplified version of Hycner's (1985) process.
Explication, rather than analysis (which implies - possibly uncritical- disaggregation), was the
means by which the data were interrogated, as this seeks to investigate the constituents of
tutors’ views in the context of their overall reflections on students' regulative and epistemic
development. Concern for a necessary relationship between overall context and units of data,
without which a unit of analysis has limited and possibly distorted meaning (Hycner, 1985),
is consistent with a phenomenographic approach (Marton & Booth, 1997). Briefing of the
research assistant emphasised the importance of bracketing her own world-view of pedagogy,
the likelihood that transcribed data would reflect variation and differences in views expressed,
the desirability of participant exemplification through reference to student behaviour, and the
value of noteworthy paralinguistic communication. The research assistant was also
responsible for tagging views to tutors (T1, T2, and T3) and to conceal tutor identity until
explication was complete. After units of general meaning (words, phrases, and non-verbal
expressions which reflected coherent meaning) had been delineated, about seven hundred
units of relevant meaning (those that made reference to either tutors' Expectations of students
or their Engagements with students) were extracted. Expectations were identified as what
tutors believed/anticipated students could do; and what they required/insisted upon from the
students. Examples would be 'many students are not good time managers' or 'I tell the
students that they must read in advance of the class'. Engagements were identified as tutors'
reported behavioural involvement in, and undertakings to, the students' tasks. Examples
would be 'I encourage students to express their views' or 'when students report that a task is
difficult; I ask them to reframe the task as two smaller tasks'. Engagements can be thought of
as pedagogical prompts to facilitate development while Expectations were regulative prerequisites to allow learning to take place. Disaggregating the units related to Expectations
and Engagements recognised the importance of the larger context when extracting relevant
meaning while focusing on the participants' pedagogical reasoning, and smoothing data
management (Åkerlind, 2005). To attenuate the possibility of inappropriate subjectivity
biasing the extraction process, a PhD student skilled in phenomenographic research was
trained to impartially ratify or rescind the extracted units. Elimination of redundancy in units
of relevant meaning was contextualised in repeated transcription readings to take account of
paralinguistic communication and the chronology of the focus group discussions. A validity
check of relevant meaning extracted with each of the participating tutors, by the research
9
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
assistant and the PhD student, confirmed the credibility and coherence of the clusters of
Expectations and Engagements.
Results
Inspection of tutors' curriculum vitae yielded modest distinguishing information: all had first
and higher degrees; all engaged in quality research and publication; all were licensed by the
General Teaching Council (Scotland); they were Associates/Fellows of the UK Higher
Education Academy; and had experience of teaching in higher education ranging from 10 to
25 years. Only the target tutor’s portfolio was psychologically informed.
Indicative Sample of Expectations and Engagements
Given the genesis of the study, the explication of the data resulted in the relevant units of
meaning being organised as (tutors’) Expectations and Engagement of Students. Tables 1 & 2
refer to Comparison and Target Tutors’ respective Expectations. Tables 3 & 4 refer to
Comparison and Target Tutors’ respective Engagements. Indicative units numbered within
Tables.
Insert Tables
Discussion
The issue underpinning this study was the significantly superior performance of one tutor's
groups of first-year students over three successive deliveries of an Educational Studies
module. Since there is a close relationship between what students learn and tutors'
conceptions of learning (Marton, 2007), understanding variation in Expectations and
Engagements can raise tutors' awareness and precipitate reflection on how variation in their
own practices might be related to their students' learning (Trigwell, Prosser, & Ginns, 2005);
and goes some way to addressing the regularly reported theory-practice gap (De Corte, 2000).
However, listing differences in Expectations and Engagements does not of itself explain the
effectiveness of the Target Tutor's pedagogy. Rather, the quality of such pedagogy emerges
as a function of the tutor's knowledge of (in this instance critical thinking) content and her use
of this content in nuanced, learner-centred judgements: when to provide information, when to
require learner accountability, when to question and challenge, when to direct and when to
require self-direction (Marton, 2007; Merrill, 2009). Her theoretical and practical
understanding of how to support students in their critical thinking can be understood in terms
of epistemic activity, regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning. In short there
seemed to be minimal disconnect between psychological research and educational practice.
10
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
Firstly, the practice of discourse (describing, explaining, critiquing etc.) about the module's
content was the clear focus in the types of response the Target Tutor expected from students
[See Units 2.3, 4.1, 4.3 in Tables]. Fostering connections between the abstract content of the
module and the full range of discursive practices allowed her to view the students' epistemic
development (Goodyear, 2007; Ohlsson, 1995) as something that she could influence, rather
than as being limited by a hypothesised developmental stage [Unit 4.6]. While all three tutors
expected students to engage in group activity, and organised tasks which required students to
communicate current understandings [Units 1.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6], the Target Tutor additionally
required students to co-construct agreed-upon meaning (through questioning a particular
position, marshalling evidence for alternative positions and reconciling differences) [Units
4.2, 4.3] thereby stimulating more sophisticated discourse and increasing attention to task
content; which in turn results in higher academic attainment (Gillies, 2003; Kirschner, et al.,
2009; Van den Bossche, Gijselaers, Segers, & Kirschner, 2006). Particularly with novice
students, epistemic activity is a means of getting students to understand the problematic
nature of tasks [Units 4.1, 4.8], rather than expecting them to be accomplished in their
communicative interactions and so to direct students to concentrate on the most fundamental
aspects of the task favours epistemic development (Baker, De Vries, Lund, & Quignard,
2001). Further, the refinement of epistemological understanding requires not only that there
be a divergence in view but that the point(s) of anomaly are debated and reconciled on actual
or hypothesised empirical evidence (Howe, Tolmie, Duchak-Tanner, & Rattay, 2000;
Schwarz & Linch, 2007) [Units 4.7, 4.8]; the outcome of which permits conceptual change.
To help students the Target Tutor seemed aware that not only were novice students in an early
phase of learning to be academically critical, but that it was necessary for their comparatively
primitive knowledge structures (mental organisation of information) to adapt and converge on
those of the (expert) tutor since knowledge structures are superior to knowledge acquisition in
predicting skilled performance (Kivlighan, Markin, Stahl, & Salahuddin, 2007) [Unit 4.5].
The Target Tutor seemed to view her role as one of engendering competence acquisition
rather than satisfaction with competence validation (Sternberg, 2005) [Unit 4.4].
Secondly, the Target Tutor seemed clear that epistemic activity would not take place in a
collaborative setting unless there was regulative behaviour amongst the group members
[Units 2.4, 2.7, 4.10]. Her appreciation of the beneficial effects of group activity on
individual achievement would include not only the social dimension (Tolmie et al., 2010) but
the recognition that constructing mutually shared cognition is predominantly a cognitive
activity (Olivera & Straus, 2004; Van den Bossche, et al., 2006) [Units 2.7, 4.3]. But while
metacognition allows the learner to manage and direct internally initiated cognitive activity,
there are reasons to believe that metacognitive consciousness has to be nurtured: knowledge
11
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
construction is necessarily time-consuming and effortful; a tendency to preserve extant
conceptual knowledge unless the necessity of its revision is compellingly obvious; and lack of
awareness as to how to think may reinforce strategic learners to be satisfied with the
procedural knowledge that allows immediate task resolution (Kuhn, 2009; Kuhn & Udell,
2007; Magno, 2010) [Unit 1.6]. However, the Target Tutor's own understanding of
metacognition (Wilson & Bai, 2010) would support her in underscoring the importance of
both intentionality and self-regulation through routinely probing students to provide further
explanations [Units 4.1, 4.4, 4.6, 4.9], in contrast to Comparison Tutors who accepted
incomplete or ambiguous explanations (Webb et al., 2008) [Unit 1.4]. Her emphasis on
evidence-based claims and their appraisal [Units 4.1, 4.2, 4.8, 4.9] being the focus of tutor
and student-led activity meant that the Target Tutor privileged critical thinking (over, say, the
administrivia of group arrangements). The need for time for constructive discussion and
debate and for the routinisation of regulative behaviour in the service of superior content and
epistemic knowledge, seems to be necessary (Brunstein, Betts, & Anderson, 2009; Ku & Ho,
2010; Maggioni & Parkinson, 2008; Magno, 2010; Peters & Kitsantas, 2010; Schunk, 2008)
and would appear to have been recognised by the Target Tutor [Units 2.1, 2.2].
Thirdly, the Target Tutor appeared to have a sophisticated conception of learning. While the
design of the module directed learning in a sequence of purposeful interdependent activities,
the Target Tutor also stressed student accountability in learning [Units 4.5, 4.10], unlike the
Comparison Tutors who seemed accepting of student dependence [Units 1.1, 1.2, 1.5, 3.2,
3.3]. Through preparation for, and engagement in, the Core Tasks each student was
responsible for representing ideas, working to develop ideas, monitoring the plausibility of
ideas, specifying the reasoning underlying particular positions, speculating on how ideas
might be tested, and judging the consistency and situational transfer of thinking. The Target
Tutor thus expected students to explain their understanding of knowledge, to make
connections between module material and real world-situations and to engage in substantive
and elaborated communication [Units 2.6, 4.3, 4.6, 4.7]; all practices which are characteristic
of constructivist pedagogy which precipitates superior academic achievement (Loyens,
Rikers, & Schmidt, 2008; Nie & Lau, 2010). Nuthall (2005) was of the view that much of
what sustains teaching is "ritualised routine supported by widely held myths about learning
and ability" (p 895) and that if teachers do not give primacy to searching for direct evidence
of student learning, they can only have some idealised judgement of their own practices in
relation to what is euphemistically referred to as 'good' or 'best' practice [Units 1.5, 1.6, 1.7].
Uncommonly, perhaps, the Target Tutor believed that her intervention would improve
thinking and increase expertise rather than viewing students as pathologically weak and/or
being unduly challenged (Rosenfeld & Rosenfeld, 2008; Sternberg, 2005) [Units 4.5, 4.6].
12
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
Regardless of whether students' thinking could be characterised as nascent, advanced,
competent, proficient or expert, the Tutor was concerned that tacit knowledge - a criterial
characteristic of expertise (Alexander, 2005) - be prioritised [Unit 4.9]. She recognised the
utility of developing verbal expertise (Didierjean & Gobet, 2008) as the mechanism through
which we learn the processes employed by experts in the emphasis she gave to the different
skills of argumentation [Units 4.2, 4.3]. Her extensive scaffolding and subsequent fading of
student learning (Nückles, Hübner, Dümer, & Renkl, 2010) [Units 2.1, 2.2, 2.5] would also
imply that she was aware of expertise reversal effects and the need to balance instructional
guidance with the learners' knowledge base (Kalyuga, 2007), to avoid excessive or redundant
cognitive overload.
Clearly the meaning given to the variation in Expectations and Engagements reported here are
open to challenge: other literature might well yield different insights. This is a criticism to
which qualitative research in general and phenomenographically-oriented research in
particular can be exposed (Åkerlind, 2005; Morse, 2006). However verification of the
meaning offered here is strengthened (Morse, 2006) by the care with which 'self-correcting'
checks were built into each stage of data explication: the transcribed records of the initial
discussions were checked by all participants for factual accuracy; the extracted clusters of
Expectations and Engagements were 'owned' by their respective tutors and corroborated as
credible and coherent; and finally the plausibility of the theoretical interpretations were
critiqued by a psychopedagogue within the authors' reference group.
Conclusion
The superior academic performance of one tutor's students, in an otherwise controlled
context, suggested that the Target Tutor's pedagogical practices were in some way(s) unusual.
Analysis of her reported pedagogy, compared with that of Comparison Tutors, revealed that
her expectations of students were clear and stringent and her engagement of students required
student argumentation. The differences between the Target Tutor and the Comparison Tutors
can be understood as differences in understandings of epistemic activity, metacognitive
regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning. Student-centredness is lauded as a
general mechanism to promote learning. However, what this study illustrates is that without
embedding student-centred features in the content of what is to be learned, tutor practices are
less incisive. While the Target Tutor's sources of psychological knowledge did not map onto
her behaviour in a simplistic way, they appeared to equip her synergistically with crucial
cognitions and metacognitions to allow her to determine what was academically, situationally
and subjectively appropriate in the particular teaching situation. At will she appeared to have
13
Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
flexible plans of action to engage students, to emphasise shared thinking and reasoning, to use
extant knowledge and to extrapolate to other situations. Such cognitive and metacognitive
knowledge is crucial for tutors (Maggioni & Parkinson, 2008) as it is this which supports
them in enabling students to persist with problems, become proficient in explaining their own
thinking and resolve differences in perspective. This study contributes to the evidence that
tutors’ explicit attention to salient variations in what it is that is to be learned (in this context
how to think more or less critically) determines how effective teaching will be. There was
variation in tutor Expectation of, and (cognitive) Engagements with, students. There was also
task and development-specific variation in the ways that the Target Tutor engaged particular
students in her classes. Clearly, given the agreed importance of the need for students to
become critical thinkers, there is a case for higher education pedagogy more generally to be
informed by the theoretical and practical implications of metacognition.
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activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
Indicative Sample of Expectations and Engagements
Table 1 Comparison Tutors' Expectations of Students
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
It's my experience that students new to higher education find time management difficult.
Although they are advised to spend the entire day doing module-related work I don’t blame
them for hovering round my ankles asking for direction as to which tasks they are to do
because they are not timetabled beyond lectures or tutor-led seminars
In the current climate students experience many demands on their time. They often cannot
overtake all the preparation that we set
I tell the students that I am interested in their views, and not to just report what others are
saying
Students can find the reading demanding. I'm not surprised if they set it aside, and ask for
explicit tutor interpretation at the class. We should not ask them to read journal articles in first
year
I often feel that if I get each student to speak at least once during the seminar, then I have
achieved my objectives
Students find critical thinking difficult. As a first step they need to be able to recognise the
difference between describing what is observable, and making interpretations of their
descriptions. When they can do that fairly easily I feel as though I have gone as far as I can
with first years
When students marshal their reading into categories indicating which articles speak to them
more/less clearly, I can see that they have thought about their reading
Table 2 Target Tutor's Expectations of Students
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
I make it clear that the time allocated to this module should be taken up with a mixture of
carrying out prescribed reading, working in student-led study groups on aspects of the Core
Tasks and attending lectures and/or seminars
I say to the students, "If you treat Fridays after the lecture as 'free' time you are unlikely to be
well enough prepared to cope with the module assessments"
I draw students' attention to the importance of their participation in the self-directed study
groups to achieve personal understanding of the material
Students are reminded that their study group is for them to manage and that it exists to enable
them to draft, re-draft and agree the Core Task response to which they are contributors
When some students invoke their idealised model of the tutor's role - to answer student
questions - I explain that there will probably be some questions which I will answer but there
will be lots of other times when I specifically want the students to share knowledge, ask
questions, and seek each other's feedback
I tell my students that it is not acceptable to report their critiques in terms such as, " I really
believe that…or personally, I think that…or in my opinion" unless these remarks are followed
by reference to psychologically informed texts
It is important that students come to seminars fully prepared. I emphasise that they must
engage with the prescribed reading, with their peers in the student-led study groups and with
the lecture-related tasks which have been assigned
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Psychological Knowledge for Teaching Critical Thinking: the agency of epistemic
activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning
Table 3 Comparison Tutors' Engagement of Students
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
I ask the students how they view the ideas of the study/article being considered.
During the tutor-led seminars, I keep a watching brief on how the groups are working
together. If there is a group in which all members don't appear to participate, I'll join that
group for a bit and give them the benefit of my experience
I model for the students how to 'gut' an article. They really appreciate this. If they've made
some attempt to determine the author's rationale, purpose and method, I'm pleased to be able
to elaborate on what they've done and point out what they’ve missed
Since this is a module about children as learners, I encourage the students to think about some
of their own ideas, practices and theories about children. It's always important to start from
where the students themselves are, so matters about which they may have had first-hand
experience (school refusal, buying gifts, restrictions on television viewing, going out with
friends etc.) are useful platforms from which to get the students to speak
I encourage students to express their views. They always seem keen to share these with peers.
Towards the end of the seminar I'll chair a Q and A session. The students help each other to
find the answers and if they get very stuck, I can make my contribution
I ask the students to make clear if they think the findings in the article ring true in their
experience of practice in the field
Table 4 Target Tutor's Engagement of Students
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
4.8
4.9
4.10
I ask the students what sort of evidence the study/article offers in support of its findings. At
other times I ask students for specific references to evidence that they are citing( to show them
that I might want to read the original source from which they are quoting)
I find that it is useful to have the students exemplify what evidence they will accept as
justification for favouring one educational practice over another. Students often remark that
they need to think hard when I ask them to include in their responses whose authority they
accept; and why this authority is a believable one
It's important for the students to learn that knowledge is not static so I have them speculate on
what further evidence might be gathered about the issue in question, and what that evidence
might be like so I ask questions like, "What is the problem?", "What do you know about the
problem so far?" "What would be useful to know about this problem?", "What's your plan to
gather such knowledge?"
Students need to be able to be aware of what might be implicit. I ask the students what they
can infer from their reading of an article about the author's assumptions of learning and how
it happens, or how discipline can work in the classroom or whatever
When students say that they can't determine the author's rationale I disaggregate this into
smaller segments such as, "What do the authors see as gaps in knowledge about the topic?"
"How do the authors know that there are gaps?" or " What do the authors intend to do about
such gaps?"
I suppose I emphasise the importance of good thinking being something that is made explicit
when I say to the students, "Can you compare how you used to think about this with how you
think about it now?" or "Explain to the others why you consider that that answer is correct or
wrong"
I try to draw their attention to the difference between anecdotal and substantiated views so I
might ask, "How does your explanation compare with the theoretical explanation offered at the
lecture earlier this morning?" or "Is this explanation a scientific definition or an everyday
definition?"
If the students make a claim such as, "children learn well when they are given specific
instructions", I ask them how they know this. For each unsubstantiated statement that they
make I ask, "What's your evidence"? I tell students to look for studies which provide evidence
When students tell me that they can't find evidence for a particular position, I set them the task
of searching for studies described in their prescribed reading text
A number of the students in my group have reported that if it weren't for the Core Tasks, they
wouldn't bother to do the preparatory reading tasks
19