CRTW 201 Hiner
The Stages of Development in Critical Thinking
These stages in the intellectual development of the critical thinker are paraphrased from the article “Critical Thinking Development: A Stage Theory” by Linda Paul and Richard Elder, available at www.criticalthinking.org.
Stage One: The Unreflective Thinker
Defining Features: These thinkers are basically unaware of the role of thinking in their lives and of potential problems with their own reasoning – they lack the ability to be metacognitive. They do not identify concepts or assumptions behind ideas, and they rarely assess the logic of their opinions or conclusions. They may have developed some skills in thinking (compare and contrast, analyze, conclude, etc.), but these skills are inconsistently applied and these thinkers tend to retain biases and prejudices. Though these thinkers may be highly educated, they tend to be unable to “fix” problems in thinking or adopt new strategies to solve problems.

Stage Two: The Challenged Thinker
Defining Features: These thinkers have become aware of the role thinking plays in their lives. They have begun to understand that problems in thinking and logic can cause significant trouble for them, and they recognize that productive thinking requires effort and deliberate attention. They have an understanding of the basic elements of reasoning (concepts, assumptions, questions at issue, purpose, point of view, information, implications and consequences, etc.) and standards for the assessment of thinking (clarity, accuracy, relevance, etc.), but they have only a superficial understanding of these concepts. They find it hard to apply these concepts consistently and deliberately in their reasoning. They may believe that they have critical thinking abilities, but they may not recognize that they apply these critical thinking abilities