AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Critical thinking as a modern educational concept arguably began with John Dewey’s How We Think (1910), in which he characterized critical thought as reflective, evaluative and directed consideration of our beliefs. Since then, academic conceptualisation of critical thinking has been enriched by rapidly expanding contexts and discipline area growth. But this expansion of breadth has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the depth of our understanding of critical thinking or how it is to be developed. Nothing manifests this phenomenon more obviously than the broad range of definitions of critical thinking and the lack of consequent agreement about what it is and how it is best taught. This paper offers a solution to this problem that is both inclusive of existing definitions of critical thinking and more actionable than most in terms of its teaching and development. Using an analogy between science and thinking scientifically, it positions critical thinking as an area of study and thinking critically as a mode of thinking attuned to the quality of inferences.