By Smarak Samarjeet & Aniruddha Jena
In an era of technological disruption, the search for truth and the fight against misinformation are herculean tasks. Individuals’ tendency to over-reliance on generative artificial intelligence (AI) has led to cognitive offloading, increased bias and fallacies, and has threatened the existence of a rational society. Amid such tensions, educators face two important but mutually constitutive issues: fostering a critical-thinking mindset among students and ensuring critical thinking as a collaborative approach.
Critical thinking is a soft skill that empowers individuals to challenge ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. It helps with critical reflection rather than relying on intuition. Nobel Laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in his famous book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, reflects on the need for our mind to shift to System 2 thinking. This reflective thinking practice is slow, deliberate, and conscious, allowing individuals to analyze information, evaluate evidence, and make reasoned decisions. At the same time, System 1 thinking is automatic and effortless, and prone to cognitive biases and errors. The failure of individuals to manage the trade-off between System 1 and 2 thinking results in susceptibility to heuristics or cognitive shortcuts. These heuristics hinder critical thinking and compromise analytical and evidence-based reasoning. In a classroom, such an anomaly has far greater implications.
While educational institutions emphasize critical thinking in their curriculum, it is hardly encouraged in the classrooms, as Browne and Freeman argue in their 2000 study. A limited teaching strategy affects attention span. Students may not have proficiency in critical thinking, but a lack of cognitive engagement undermines the true purpose of critical thinking in the classroom. Further, the educational landscape is marked by intense competition and an obsession with rankings. The focus is more on acquiring fancy accreditations, gaining visibility, and establishing educational leadership than on implementing and adopting the suggested teaching practices, assessment models, or governance structures. Thus, proclaimed quality assurance does not necessarily mean that knowledge transfer and co-creation happen in a structured way and align with critical thinking.
In addition, perceptions of the transferability of thinking across disciplines are also contested, as Pithers and Soden note in their 2010 study. While educational institutions adopt lofty titles for critical thinking as a standalone subject, the transfer of this skill to other disciplines is limited. For instance, many accreditation processes require moving beyond traditional lectures toward active learning approaches that accommodate constructivist, inquiry-based, collaborative, and reflective methods. However, curriculum design involves only ornamental changes, without any progressive reforms. A limited presence of traditional critical thinking skills in course design weakens the connection to the broader concept of critical thinking, as Cananau and colleagues argue in their 2025 study.
What could be done differently?
With the educational landscape being redefined by demographic shifts and technological disruptions, the challenge for educators is far more critical in a post-truth world: to make critical thinking a ritual in modern classrooms. Using a structured approach, educators can inculcate in students the habits of questioning, interpretive skills, and ethical reflexivity. A step-by-step approach is given below:
- Creating a collective task rather than individual assignments: Students in study groups perform better and feel confident and empowered. A study group consisting of students from diverse backgrounds encourages deep thinking and appreciation for pluralism. Such collective tasks can be designed around a common problem, case, or reading so that students have to explain their reasoning to one another before arriving at a shared position. This process makes assumptions visible and encourages students to listen to interpretations shaped by different academic, social, and cultural experiences. The emphasis is not on reaching quick consensus, but on learning how to justify a position, question it, and revise it when stronger reasoning emerges.
- Seeding collaborative thinking before the class: Study groups can discuss the class reading material before the session begins. The purpose is to enable freewheeling of ideas, develop alternative viewpoints, build confidence, and ensure proactive engagement. This pre-class exchange also gives quieter students an opportunity to formulate their thoughts before entering a larger classroom discussion. When students encounter disagreement within the group, they begin to recognise that a text or problem may support more than one interpretation. By the time they reach the classroom, they are therefore not merely prepared with answers; they are prepared with questions, doubts, and competing explanations that can make the subsequent discussion more intellectually productive.
- Facilitating sideways thinking: In the classroom, study groups are encouraged to present diverse viewpoints on the assigned reading material. The role of the educator is not to engage in a traditional classroom format, but to facilitate problem-solving by letting the study groups unpack arguments. Instead of focusing on views/counterviews, the purpose is to stimulate lateral thinking. Sideways thinking can be encouraged by asking one group to examine an issue from the perspective of another stakeholder, discipline, or set of assumptions rather than simply defending a fixed position. The educator can then connect these different readings, probe the reasoning behind them, and identify contradictions that deserve further discussion. Such an approach keeps the classroom from becoming a sequence of teacher-led answers and instead turns it into a space where students learn to compare reasoning, evidence, and consequences.
- Post-session engagement: Post-class assignments in the form of an analytical memo serve as the final scaffolding. This aligns with the thick description approach used in anthropology, as described by Geertz in his 1975 work. Students value knowledge transfer within study groups and can critically evaluate a diverse chain of thoughts that emerge during class interaction and consolidate a critical stance. The memo need not be lengthy; its value lies in requiring students to revisit the discussion after the immediacy of classroom participation has passed. Students can identify which argument changed their understanding, which assumption they continue to question, and what evidence they would need before reaching a firmer conclusion. This final stage connects discussion with reflection and gives educators a clearer view of how students are processing competing ideas rather than merely reproducing what was said during the session.
Critical thinking is not simply an add-on. Since the quality of thinking leads to quality in decision-making, encouraging students to remain in the developmental tension in which they are challenged to think critically and engage with complex ideas fosters growth, transition, and maturation. Thus, irrespective of our affiliation and the type of education system we serve, assurance of learning begins with clear, measurable learning goals aligned with students’ critical thinking competencies. Educators themselves need to shift from System 1 to System 2 thinking.
– The authors of this article are Smarak Samarjeet, Assistant Professor, Communication Area, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur and Aniruddha Jena, Assistant Professor, School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi. Both teaches Communication, Critical Thinking and Interpersonal Skills course to MBA and Executive MBA students.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETEducation does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETEducation will not be responsible for any damage caused to any person or organisation directly or indirectly.
